The Expansion Curse

Orion didn't speak, his brows furrowed.

He knew Manhattan; it was an island on the East Sea of the United States, the financial center of Muggle, and part of New York.

MACUSA, the Magical Congress of the United States, Woolworth Building are also in that area.

The Pureblood families of UK weren't particularly enthusiastic about the Magic influence in the Americas, but they did have a basic understanding of the geography. The Black family had businesses on the Europe continent, so they weren't completely ignorant of the situation across the sea.

But the Manhattan Project?

What plan?

He thought about it carefully, but couldn't recall it.

There aren't many things in the Wizarding World that have anything to do with Manhattan. MACUSA has been operating in New York for over two hundred years, and occasionally news of bill changes or elections comes through.

But that's a matter for United States wizards themselves, and has nothing to do with the UK.

He slowly shook his head, a look of doubt on his face. "Never heard of it."

Regulus nodded, leaning back in his chair, his tone becoming calm. "In 1945, Muggle created a weapon." Orion looked at him, not interrupting.

"They've found something," Regulus said slowly, trying to keep it simple. "It's countless times smaller than a grain of sand, the most basic structure of matter, and it took Muggle decades to figure out what it looks like."

He continued, "They discovered that if you hit something smaller into this thing, it would crack open, and when it cracked open, it would throw out even more tiny things, and a whole bunch of energy."

"Those little things that get flung out will hit the surrounding matter, causing it to crack and fling out even more, releasing energy as well." Regulus looked at Orion: "One hits another, one cracks another, forming a chain. The chain moves forward on its own, and once it starts, it can't stop."

Orion listened quietly, and to be honest, he understood.

Regulus's description was straightforward, without jargon or Muggle words he couldn't understand.

Matter cracks, releasing energy; this energy drives more matter to crack, releasing even more energy, creating a continuous, self-sustaining cycle. He also understood the meaning of the chain, similar to Fiendfyre, which, once released, is no longer under control and only stops when everything is burned away.

He could understand the logic; it was like an ever- Expansion Curse. But he didn't know what Regulus meant by it, or what it had to do with the Disintegration Charm.

He didn't ask, just nodded slightly and continued listening.

"They called this project the Manhattan Project," Regulus continued. "They gathered the smartest Muggle from all over the world and locked them up in a desert for three years."

They are not ordinary people, but the very best in this field in the entire Muggle world.

They call their field of study physics, the study of the rules governing the workings of everything in the world. Each of them is a top expert in their field.

Upon hearing this, Orion's lips twitched slightly, but he remained silent.

Three years, thousands of the smartest Muggle, doing only one thing.

His view of Muggle as a whole was similar to that of the vast majority of Pureblood Wizards.

A race without Magic is inherently inferior in the eyes of a wizard—this needs no explanation, just as Giant view Gnomes and Fire Dragon view Puffskein. But he is not a blindly foolish Pure-blood supremacy supremacist.

He had read a few Muggle books when he was young, which gave him a general understanding of something.

The vast majority of Muggle are indeed mediocre, differing from livestock only in that they can wear clothes and talk.

But the very top few, those who truly use their brains to think things through, possess a depth and sharpness of thought that rivals even the best minds among wizards.

Acknowledging this wouldn't make him feel ashamed; he acknowledged the wisdom of Muggle who took something to the extreme.

Anyone who can push a skill to its limits, whether a wizard or Muggle, deserves to be taken seriously.

Regulus's voice continued, "In three years, they built three of these weapons, the first of which was tested in the desert."

A glint flashed in his eyes. "At the moment of the explosion, the temperature at the center exceeded that of the sun's surface, and the sand within a radius of several kilometers melted directly, turning into glass."

The shockwave spread outward from the center, flattening everything that couldn't escape in time. A mushroom-shaped cloud shot into the sky, visible from tens of kilometers away.

Orion's fingers tightened slightly on the table.

Temperatures exceeding those of the sun's surface melted the sand into glass, leveling an area spanning several kilometers.

He quickly did the mental calculation.

The maximum kill radius of explosive spells is approximately tens of meters, while Fire-Making Spell can cover an even smaller area.

As for the Fiendfyre, Fiendfyre doesn't follow a radius; it burns wherever it goes, but it takes time to spread, not just an instant.

Within a radius of several kilometers.

None of the spells he knew, including those lost War Magic, could accomplish this.

"The second one," Regulus's voice was flat, "Was thrown on a city."

"Hiroshima, with a population of over 200,000, was hit by a single bomb, which detonated a few hundred meters above the ground. A white light, brighter than the sun, shone through, and the temperature directly below the epicenter reached millions of degrees."

Everything below—buildings, streets, people—evaporated instantly. There was no time to feel anything before it was all gone, not even ashes remained. Within a kilometer of the epicenter, nothing was left; two kilometers outward, all buildings collapsed, and the fire burned for days.

Regulus held up one finger. "Hundreds of thousands died that day, and tens of thousands more died in the following months—burns, Radiation sickness, starvation."

A city, over two hundred thousand people, one seed, gone.

Orion's brows furrowed deeply, and his breathing slowed.

He recalled the Ministry of Magic's war archives, which recorded another medieval War Magic effect.

The entire army was swallowed up by the Black Mist in an instant, and the Castle walls collapsed within seconds. The spell cast by dozens of wizards could change the course of a battle.

But those are all legends, the records are vague, and the effects have been exaggerated and passed down from generation to generation, so the truth is long gone.

Moreover, it requires the coordinated Spellcasting by dozens of people, time for preparation, and specific celestial phenomena and geographical locations.

The thing Regulus was talking about, one, instantly, hundreds of thousands of people.

"The third one, three days later, was thrown into Nagasaki." Regulus's voice didn't stop.

"Another seventy or eighty thousand died, and a few days later, the Muggle war was over."

The Study was quiet for a moment, then the fire in the fireplace crackled.

Orion didn't say anything.

Regulus was silent for a moment, then continued.

"Muggle don't have Magic. They found another way. They dismantled something to its very core, smaller than a grain of sand, smaller than dust, until it couldn't be dismantled any further."

Then they discovered that at that scale, matter contained locked power, locked for billions of years, locked inside since the day the planet was born.

They opened it and then let it blow itself up.

He raised his hand and gestured with his fingertips towards the fireplace.

"The way to open it is to put a smaller thing inside, one after another, and the chain will start and run on its own."

They only provided the initial burst; the rest, the matter handled itself. From detonation to detonation, the entire process took less than a second.

Regulus withdrew his hand and looked at Orion.

"Thirty years have passed, and they have built bigger and bigger, more and more of them."

"The Muggle currently have about 50,000 of these, and some of them are worth dozens of times more than the one in Hiroshima. That's enough to turn the Earth's surface upside down several times over." Orion was silent for a long time.

Regulus didn't say anything more, leaning back and waiting.

The flame in the fireplace flickered again.

Orion wasn't unaware that Muggle could wage war.

He knew that there were large-scale wars among Muggle, and that the last war that swept across the entire Muggle world was thirty years ago.

Knowing that Grindelwald had once used the chaos of that war to advance his Greater Good.

In 1945, Grindelwald was defeated by Dumbledore, and in the same year, the Muggle Wars also ended.

The Wizarding World knows something about that war; they know it was brutal and that many people died.

But he was unaware that Muggle weapons had developed to this extent.

There were indeed some rumors that year that Muggle dropped something on an island, destroying the entire city.

But the Pure-blood Circle never cares about Muggle matters; they hear about them and move on, no one bothers to investigate.

He didn't take it seriously either.

Now, hearing Regulus speak of it with numbers, details, emotion, and scope, it's no longer just a rumor.

Hundreds of thousands of lives are an impossible number to achieve in any Wizarding War.

The Killing Curse requires killing one by one, the Cruciatus Curse requires torturing one by one, Fiendfyre requires time to spread, and the Black Death Curse requires a carrier to spread.

Wizards have countless ways to kill, but each one comes at a cost.

And this thing, one pellet, one second, hundreds of thousands, wipes out a city.

But he wasn't panicked, much less fearful. He was the Patriarch of the Black family and had seen far too much to be frightened by a single fact. A single green light could take a life, and a single bullet could wipe out a city; the result was death, and the difference in quantity wouldn't cause him to lose his composure.

He brought his thoughts back and began to make a calm assessment.

This weapon is far more powerful than any spell, there's no argument about that, but the wizard's strength doesn't lie in that; the wizard's advantage over Muggle has never been in firepower.

The Muggle-Repelling Charm can cover every corner of the Wizarding World.

From Diagon Alley to Hogwarts, from the Quidditch Pitch to every Pure-bloods manor, Muggle would walk right up to them and not see them, then suddenly remember they had urgent business to attend to and would turn around and leave.

The Unplottable Charm prevents Magic structures from ever appearing on Muggle maps; they can't take a single picture of them, not even from the sky, on the ground, or in the water.

Apparition allows wizards to instantly escape from any location where they are attacked; they are gone before the attack even arrives.

The Fidelius Charm is even more thorough; the secret is sealed within a person's soul, and no amount of means, Magic, or torture can uncover that address except through the Secret Keeper's own words.

That's how 12 Grimmauld Place was hidden; the house number jumped directly from 11 to 13, and the building in between vanished from the memory of this world.

For Muggle to use a weapon, they first need to know where the person is.

They couldn't even find the entrance to the Wizarding World, nor a single wizard village. How were they supposed to throw that thing?

Where should I throw it?

Wizards don't exist for Muggle. What can you use to fight a non-existent target?

Tens of thousands of them are enough to turn the Earth upside down several times over. Let it turn upside down, only Muggle will die.

So, for wizards, this kind of weapon is ultimately someone else's business; it may be powerful, but it has nothing to do with the Wizarding World.

Orion went through these thoughts, then stopped, suddenly realizing something.

He looked at Regulus.

Regulus wouldn't spend so much time in his Study explaining a Muggle weapon unrelated to the Wizarding World.

So he told him all this not to say how great Muggle, nor to promote any Muggle threat theory.

He was referring to the Disintegration Charm.

The Manhattan Project, Muggle Weapons, Disintegration Charm, Expansion Curse.

Orion's back lifted off the chair.

He had been thinking about Muggle, because Muggle weapons couldn't hit wizards, since wizards could hide.

But what if it's a wizard fighting a wizard?

Fidelius Charm can conceal a house, but it cannot conceal an entire city.

The Muggle-Repelling Charm only works on Muggle, while the Unplottable Charm only protects against Muggle maps and photographs.

If a wizard could cause that level of destruction, all they need to do is know which area you're in, then wipe the entire area away. A house protected by a Fidelius Charm would still be there, but everything within a three-kilometer radius would evaporate, the soil beneath the foundations would be burned to glass. Where would you be hiding?

Orion's breathing was heavier than before.

If the Disintegration Charm can achieve this level of power, then all his previous calm assessments regarding the advantages of wizards would have to be overturned in a wizard-versus-wizard scenario.

He stared intently at Regulus, his voice no longer steady. "You can do it? The Disintegration Charm?"

Regulus met his father's gaze and shook his head. "I can't do it, there are a few hurdles to overcome."

Orion paused for a moment, then slowly leaned back in his chair and exhaled.

He realized he had just lost his composure; it was unlike him for a Black family patriarch to become so agitated after guessing at a single idea.

But it really is

If this is true, what does it mean?

The wars between wizards have always been wizards against wizards, spells against spells; a conflict involving a hundred or so people is already considered large-scale.

At his peak, Grindelwald commanded thousands of men and shook the entire Europe Wizarding World, wreaking havoc in what is known as the greatest Wizarding War in centuries. Yet, Grindelwald never managed to destroy a single city.

If a wizard could achieve the effect of that weapon, one wizard, one spell, one city...

He suppressed the thought.

It's normal to not be able to do it.

That kind of thing took the smartest minds out of thousands of Muggle three years of working together to develop. He didn't know the specifics of the process, but he could imagine that it must have required a massive investment of resources.

Regulus is only thirteen years old, yet he has already reached a level that most wizards cannot even dream of. If he can directly reach that level, it will not be a matter of talent.

Then he realized that Regulus had said he couldn't do it, but there was another sentence. "There are a few hurdles to overcome."

Then it's not that it's impossible.

Where there are obstacles, there is direction; where there is direction, there is a path.