"Damn it! Where's the artillery? Why has the shelling stopped?"
Bloodshot veins had crept into Ossis's eyes. He roared, watching through his binoculars as the wizards who had been blasted off their feet were suddenly freed from the bombardment.
"Calm down, Ossis!"
Morgan said coldly:
"We've always known what wizards are capable of. Why else do you think we've tolerated them until now?"
He looked at Ossis and said, stressing every word:
"Because we've assessed it countless times. Unless we have a chance to crush the wizards completely, a war with the Wizarding World will devastate both sides!"
Ossis fell silent, because he knew Morgan was right. Why hadn't they wiped out the wizards before? Because wizards were adorable and harmless?
No. They feared mutual destruction, or the wizards launching decapitation strikes once war broke out! The Muggle elite feared for their own lives!
The Church had always maintained close ties with secular powers. Or rather, even before the Middle Ages, the Church's special combatants working alongside Muggle armies had been the Wizarding World's greatest fear.
Before the Middle Ages, wizards needed lengthy incantations or complex magic arrays to cast a spell. Before they could finish chanting, the Church's holy silver bolts might already have turned them into pincushions.
How powerful had the Church been then? How brazen?
Even from the scattered fragments recorded in ancient texts, Ossis could feel the Church's unbridled arrogance in that era. Even Muggle kings had to prostrate themselves before them and beg to be crowned!
But those shameless wizards had soon seized the moment when both sides were devastated by the Crusades to establish Hogwarts, a school the Church hated with a teeth-grinding fury.
For a long time, the Church had not even known what had happened. They could not understand why fewer and