Conqueror of the Sky (Two-in-One)

Thestrals have an extraordinary sensitivity to death.

Much like sharks in the ocean can smell blood from kilometers away, Thestrals can perceive death from over ten kilometers away.

They eat grass, meat, and are also scavengers; they are a very easy-to-keep magical creature. Furthermore, in the Forbidden Forest, where they have no natural predators and no one actively harms them, Thestrals possess a great deal of curiosity.

Ezio skinned the deer with some clumsiness. He rarely did this kind of work, only occasionally helping Giovanni with the whole roasted lamb at home. Fortunately, his blade was fast and steady, and he finished skinning the deer in no time.

This skinned prey was a favorite of the Thestrals; they loved pure meat and organs, and were also fond of the scent of blood.

They were only two or three hundred meters from the Thestral camp, and there were no other fierce predators in the vicinity.

A series of very light, soft footsteps approached. Ezio looked up and saw over a dozen pairs of eyes that appeared deep and dark even in the night.

"Come over, this is a gift for you."

Ezio beckoned toward the direction of the Thestrals, and these highly intelligent winged horses quickened their pace to approach.

The Thestrals were all skin and bones, looking almost like a horse's skeleton covered in a layer of black hide. However, their heads resembled those of dragons, appearing exceptionally fierce, like a fusion of a small undead dragon and an undead horse. Yet, this world had no necromancers; dark wizards could only play with small trifles like Inferi. Dark magic needed improvement; the dark wizards were too lazy.

The group of Thestrals walked over generously. They sniffed Ezio's clothes and then buried their heads to feast. If someone who had never witnessed death were present, they would have seen a somewhat eerie scene.

Fresh venison was torn by some invisible presence and then easily dragged away. It was as if a dozen greedy, devouring mouths existed in the air, silently and rapidly dismembering and consuming the carcass.

Even the scraps of meat stuck to the bones were not spared. The Thestrals' barbed tongues acted like sharp files, scraping the bones clean and revealing their slightly pinkish, pale white color.

A deer was completely devoured by the Thestrals in less than ten minutes. After a hearty meal, the black winged horses' favor toward Ezio increased significantly.

Ezio reached out to stroke the Thestrals' skin, which was as smooth and taut as high-quality leather. Their wings were bat-like membranes, with a wingspan even wider than that of a Hippogriff.

"Can you take me to a place?" Ezio asked a relatively sturdy and larger Thestral. This intelligent winged horse, which understood human nature, rubbed its head against Ezio's arm, seemingly inviting him to ride on its back.

"I don't know exactly where that place is. I only know it's the place where the 'Twelve Moons rise'. A very important relative of mine died there, and I want to find him."

The Thestral's pitch-black eyes stared at Ezio. It seemed to understand Ezio's words, but it didn't seem to grasp what the place where the Twelve Moons rise was.

Ezio flipped onto the Thestral's back. The winged horse beneath him silently spread its wings. With just a gentle flap, the Thestral instantly soared into the air, leaving Neil, who was circling in mid-air, behind. Its speed was extreme, almost four or five times the climbing speed of a Nimbus 2000.

Neil, who had seen something black flash past him, was stunned for a moment, then quickly changed direction to give chase. The Thestral, flying as if strolling through the sky, was not moving at its fastest, but it still took Neil some time to catch up. The flight of magical creatures did not strictly follow the laws of physics; magical power provided them with super-strong lift, allowing massive dragons weighing several tons or even dozens of tons to fly easily into the sky, and at no slow speed either.

The Thestral turned its head to look at the little fellow flapping its wings to catch up. It smelled the exact same scent on Neil as it did on Ezio, so it slowed down slightly, allowing Neil to land on its back for a free ride.

After the second little passenger sat steady, the Thestral, which had been flying leisurely in the sky, suddenly accelerated. This was faster than Neil's top speed during a dive. In just a few breaths, the castle of Hogwarts became a tiny dot. It carried Ezio in a rapid climb, breaking through the clouds above in a spiral trajectory, allowing the moon hanging in the night sky to shine its refracted light infinitely upon Ezio.

"You don't know where the place where the Twelve Moons rise is either, do you?"

Ezio looked at the moon hanging high above, his voice tinged with slight regret. The Thestral's pathfinding magic was not omnipotent; this vague description made it impossible for it to activate the Global Magic Network navigation. After all, this was an unknown location not registered on any map.

In the magical world, names held magic. The ubiquitous magic wove into an invisible net. Including people's names and place names, magic passively stored and recorded all of this. When creatures capable of connecting to this magic network, such as Thestrals or owls, needed navigation, the network would provide them with precise coordinates. This was the secret behind how owls could deliver letters to recipients without error. Wizards had explored this, but only to a superficial degree.

Wizards, who followed the principle of "as long as it works," rarely got to the bottom of things. Perhaps because of the mysterious nature of magic, or perhaps because the research was too complex and lacked clear returns, wizards only dabbled in many things. They couldn't even explain the one-two-three of why magic worked.

The Thestral turned its head to look at Ezio, its large eyes filled with a trace of innocence, as if saying: "I can only bring you up to see the moon; as for where the Twelve Moons are, I really don't know."

"Then please fly higher, even higher, to the highest place, can you?"

The Thestral understood Ezio's words, then shook its body, shaking Neil off. A bewildered Neil flapped its wings to stabilize itself in the air, and then watched as this mischievous black horse soared upward with a sky-piercing momentum, sprinting at a ninety-degree angle toward the position where the full moon hung high!

Ezio hugged the Thestral's neck tightly. He felt as if his soul had been left behind in that instant. Upon entering high-speed flight, there seemed to be a transparent shield supported by magic on the Thestral's body, which kept the strong wind at bay. Ezio, pressed closely against the Thestral's back, heard the whistling wind turn from ear-piercing noise to gradually fading. After breaking through a certain critical point, he entered a silent realm.

The sound barrier that plagued aircraft was broken silently, but it did not produce a piercing sonic boom. Magic allowed the Thestral to seem to merge into the air, unaffected by the constraints it brought.

But gradually, Ezio felt the suffocating sensation brought by the thin air. He tentatively used the Bubble-Head Charm, yet this spell, which allowed one to breathe underwater, could not sustain his normal breathing in the oxygen-thin stratosphere. The Bubble-Head Charm could filter air, but it could not create oxygen out of thin air.

"Stop... stop for a moment."

Ezio patted the Thestral's neck. To be honest, this supersonic flight at every turn was a bit much for Ezio. It wasn't because of the acceleration G-force—he hadn't felt much of that discomfort while riding the Thestral—but simply because of the hypoxia caused by the rapidly decreasing oxygen concentration.

The sound of the wind rushed in all at once. After the Thestral slowed down, the silent realm was lifted.

Looking into the distance, Ezio could already make out a gentle arc with a very small curvature. He was currently in the middle section of the stratosphere, about 15,000 meters above the ground.

"You really are amazing. Next time I bring an oxygen tank, I'll let you fly to the highest place."

Ezio gasped for air. His physical fitness was much better than an ordinary person's; after all, an ordinary person couldn't grab some poor guy's ankle and use them as a human meteor hammer. Ezio suspected he had the bloodline of the Isu from Assassin's Creed; after all, he could use Isu artifacts the moment he picked them up.

"Although I didn't find the location of the Twelve Moons, I'm not surprised. Thank you."

"But since we're already here..."

Ezio looked at the pitch-black world below, opened his Eagle Vision, and synchronized with Neil's field of vision. Neil, who was not very convinced, tried his best to increase his altitude, but the little fellow couldn't fly any higher than three thousand meters. The highest-flying bird in the world was the Rüppell's vulture, which could fly to an altitude of about 11,000 meters, but it was still far inferior to the Thestral. After all, the Thestral's flight relied mainly on magic; its appearance did not conform to aerodynamics.

After sharing vision with Ezio, Neil no longer tried to fly higher. It tucked its wings and dove, skimming past the Forbidden Forest at a height of three hundred meters at an incredible speed, its eyes shining, observing everything below.

After searching for about ten minutes, in the gaps of the dense canopy of the Forbidden Forest, Neil luckily found the object it was looking for—a nest of filthy Trolls, all of whom exuded a foul, stinking odor.

Trolls had the habit of living in caves, but it was summer now, and the already dirty caves would emit a stench ten thousand times more disgusting than a septic tank. Even Trolls couldn't really stand this toxic gas, so sleeping on flat ground was their current choice.

However, no magical creature would bother with these three-meter-tall, physically robust, and heavily mud-encrusted disgusting things. Make no mistake, Troll meat exuded a foul odor and was simply inedible.

In the Forbidden Forest, they had no natural predators other than Hagrid. Giants would occasionally catch Trolls that mindlessly wandered into their territory and treat them like dolls. In terms of physical strength, Giants were several orders of magnitude stronger than Trolls. In the magical world, some powerful Giants were among the few creatures capable of hunting top-tier beings like dragons. They could throw hundreds of kilograms of boulders at near-sonic speeds, flying straight for hundreds of meters, breaking the bones of dragons flying in the sky, and then rushing over to tear them apart.

Neil found the target, and the Thestral also brought Ezio to the sky above the target point.

"Thanks, let's play again later."

Ezio stood steady on the Thestral's back, then spread his arms and jumped down. The whistling wind made his cloak snap loudly, while Ezio's gaze was fixed on a certain spot in the forest below. Cutting off the visual link with Neil, Ezio switched his Eagle Vision mode to an insight that enhanced his own vision. In this state, he could see the target marked through Neil's perspective. The Trolls' bodies seemed highlighted, appearing particularly conspicuous in the pitch-black night. Even with obstacles in between, Ezio could lock onto them precisely.

The Broken Spear of Leonidas was gripped in his right hand, and the Thunderbird Wand in his left hand popped out at this moment. As a secondary weapon and backup wand for his left hand, the Thunderbird Wand's casting speed was faster than the Elder and Phoenix Feather Wand, slightly inferior in power, but equally easy to use.

The Troll, deep in a slumber, remained completely unaware of the threat descending from the high heavens.

Three thousand meters... one thousand meters... five hundred meters... one hundred meters...

Just as Ezio was about to brush against the towering treetops of the Forbidden Forest, the sleeping Troll suddenly snapped its eyes open. Its powerful intuition had sensed the arrival of threat and death, yet there was no time left to react.

Without slowing down in the slightest, Ezio plummeted through the air like a falling meteorite. Just before he could catch the stench emanating from the Troll, he hurled the Broken Spear he had been holding in readiness. In the blink of an eye, it crossed the final few dozen meters. Ezio's figure vanished abruptly in mid-air, only to reappear as he gripped the falling spear with terrifying momentum, driving the sharp blade into the back of the Troll's head with a ruthless strike that split its skull and spine in two.

The ground at his landing spot transformed into a mound of loose soil just before Ezio landed heavily. With a soft thud, he held his breath and nimbly rolled away from the mound, then leaped once more to deliver a horizontal slash that severed the connection between the Troll's head and neck. A potato-shaped head flew high into the air before crashing down several meters away.

[Milestone (Area-Limited): Conqueror of the Sky (Unlocked)]

[Conqueror of the Sky: Regardless of the height from which you fall, the landing spot is treated as having a conceptual haystack, and you will make no noise while falling through the air.]

Glancing at the notification that had just popped up, Ezio quickly withdrew. Trolls were pack creatures; by the time he killed the first one, several others nearby had already awakened, grabbing the crude clubs they had fashioned from tree trunks.

Without a word of farewell, Ezio pulled up his hood and vanished into the pitch-black night of the Forbidden Forest in the blink of an eye.

The Trolls' smooth, simple brains struggled to process what had just happened before them. A few of the awakened Trolls let out confused grunts, but they were soon distracted by the corpse of their fallen companion.

A series of happy grunts and calls erupted as one Troll grabbed the body of its kin and, savoring the warm blood, opened its foul-smelling maw to tear into the flesh with glee.

The scent of blood and the sounds of feeding drew the other Trolls over as well. They swarmed forward, and the sound of muscle and bone being torn apart echoed through the night of the Forbidden Forest. Nothing made these Trolls happier than waking up at night to an extra meal; as for what they were eating, it didn't matter, as long as it was meat.