Allen felt incredibly unlucky at that moment.
He looked down at his flowing black trench coat, then touched the purple-striped fox mask he had carefully selected and bought, and mentally cursed the system.
"Didn't you say I was just here for tourism?"
The system remained silent, refusing to speak.
Playing dead, huh? Okay, you're really something.
Allen took a deep breath, shifted his gaze from the system screen, and refocused on the situation before him.
The Great Hall was filled with the smell of burning and smoke. Several rows of long tables were overturned, with tableware and food scattered all over the floor, and several students were lying on the table legs.
Hagrid's massive body lay sprawled in the passageway not far away, with Fang curled up motionless beside him.
Before him stood a dozen or so men in black robes, all raising their wands at him.
The leader's hood was pulled low, revealing only a section of his pale chin, and the faint light from the tip of his cane flickered in the dim Great Hall.
"Visit?" the leader in black robes repeated the word, his tone carrying an undisguised mockery.
He looked Allen up and down a few times, as if he were examining an unexpected piece that had suddenly appeared on a chessboard.
But then a disdainful smile appeared on his lips.
He had once followed that great leader and had seen Dumbledore from afar, standing on a high platform looking down at the crowd.
Truly powerful people inspire awe even when they are just standing.
The guy in front of me wearing a fox mask didn't have that aura of a powerful person.
It's obvious he's just a weakling who appeared out of nowhere.
They need to leave now; they can't wait for the others to return.
And since the person in the fox mask happened to appear on their only route, they had no choice but to...
"You're blocking my way." The leader of the men in black robes shrugged and tilted his head to the left and right.
"Take care of him."
Before the words were even finished, more than a dozen magic spells lit up simultaneously.
Red, blue, and white light, like a burst of fireworks, shot towards Allen from different angles.
Allen's pupils contracted sharply.
Without thinking twice, he instinctively activated the limited character card on the system panel, which was available only once.
[ Limited Character Card) activated. Duration: 5 minutes. Uses: 1/2 → 0/2.]
A blurry, slender figure flashed past him with incredible speed.
The figure was draped in an old-fashioned robe, his outline blurred, and his features completely indistinct. But just before the figure vanished, his gaze seemed to unconsciously shift, glancing towards the dome of the Great Hall.
In that direction, the blue-bronze eagle emblem of Ravenclaw was quietly embedded in the stone wall, its outstretched wings gleaming dimly in the candlelight.
As if reminiscing or bidding farewell, the blurry figure seemed to smile slightly.
As the figure behind him vanished into thin air, the system panel suddenly lit up, displaying a line of red text twice the size of usual.
[Special Circumstances! Due to certain reasons, the duration of the Limited Character Card) has been extended: 5 minutes → 15 minutes]
Allen stared wide-eyed at the system light screen that had suddenly appeared.
He had no time to think. A torrent of magical skills and combat experience poured into his consciousness as if being poured into a cup, and a vast stream of information swept through his mind.
He raised his wand almost instinctively.
" Protego."
Silent and instantaneous!
A semi-transparent barrier unfolded before him, briefly blocking all the incoming spells.
The recoil caused Allen's black trench coat to billow backwards, and he used the momentum to fly upwards.
The Flying Charm was almost an instinctive reaction embedded in his bones. He soared into the sky like a hawk launched from the ground, heading straight for the dome.
His trench coat unfurled behind him like a pair of black wings.
A Death Eaters instinctively looked up to see what was happening, but before he could adjust the wand's angle, a Stunning Spell had already fallen precisely from the tip of Allen's wand, striking him squarely in the face.
The Death Eaters didn't even utter a sound before falling backward and crashing into the shattered porcelain shards.
The few remaining students in the Great Hall all looked up, dumbfounded.
The girl who had been crying just moments before, sitting next to the Gryffindor Table, stopped crying. Her lips parted slightly, and tear tracks still clung to her chin.
"Who... who is that...?"
Hermione was helping Ron up from the ground when she looked up and saw the man in black wearing a fox mask hovering in mid-air, the light from the tip of his wand drawing a flickering arc in the dimly Great Hall.
Ron clutched the wound on his forehead, his voice still filled with confusion. "Where did this guy come from?"
Outside the light screen, the Ministry Atrium was deathly silent.
Then it exploded like a powder keg that had been lit.
"He took off! How did he fly? Was that Flight Spell?!"
"That Shield Charm... he didn't chant the spell! He didn't even move his lips!"
Who is he? Where did he come from?!
Fudge rested one hand on the back of the chair, the other gripping the hem of his robe, his gaze fixed intently on the black figure in the light screen.
Amelia stood beside him, her expression betraying her inner turmoil, though her demeanor remained relatively calm.
"This person," she whispered, "Is completely immune to Hogwarts ' Anti-Apparition Jinx."
The white-haired old man from Wizengamot stroked his beard, his gaze sharp. "Moreover, he can cast spells without making a sound; it's an extremely skilled Nonverbal Spell."
"This level of Nonverbal Spellcasting is rare even among Hogwarts professors."
The tall male wizard from the International Confederation of Wizards stood at the front of the crowd, his brow furrowed, one hand supporting his chin.
He had only wanted to see Dumbledore fail, but then this mysterious... tourist? suddenly appeared in the frame.
"He said he was here to visit?" a witch in the crowd repeated incredulously. "He said he was here to visit in that situation?"
The female reporter in the round hat rushed to the front row, her Quick-Quotes Quill frantically scribbling on the paper. "He's wearing a fox mask! A trench coat! And he can fly without a broom! Like he stepped out of a storybook—"
"Of course we don't need brooms!" An old wizard in a dark red robe chimed in, his voice brimming with barely suppressed excitement.
"That's a very high-level flight magic, said to be mastered by only a very few wizards! The last time I heard of someone using such a spell was—"
He swallowed the rest of his sentence, but the people around him could read the initials of that name from his face.
In an instant, all the reporters' Quick-Quotes Quill seemed to have new material, frantically copying something into their notebooks.
The main hall was abuzz with discussion, while the battle inside the light screen continued.
The leader in black robes finally drew his wand. He hadn't made a move until now, but now he finally took action himself.
"I thought you were some ordinary person," his voice was low and cold, "But you've been pretending all along."
With a flick of his wrist, a dark purple spell swept across the ground.
The spell's trajectory twisted like a snake, bypassing Allen's Shield Charm barrier from the side.
Allen's pupils contracted, and he flipped sideways in mid-air. The hem of his trench coat brushed against the edge of the purple light, and the edge of the fabric made a soft "hiss" sound, leaving a scorch mark.
"Tsk."
Before he could regain his footing, three more spells surrounded him from three different angles.
The leader in black robes was clearly not only strong himself, but also very good at commanding. The Death Eaters cooperated exceptionally well, and the angles of their blockade left almost no gaps.
Relying on Quirrell's combat memory and maxed-out fighting skills, Allen flipped and spun in the air to avoid two attacks, and then used the Shield Charm to block the third.
Then his wand drew a short arc in the air.
" Reducto."
A beam of blue light shot towards the ground beneath the feet of the nearest Death Eaters, shattering the stone slab and sending up a cloud of rubble and dust that obscured the attacker's vision for half a second.
Taking advantage of that half-second gap, Allen leaped upwards, his trench coat drawing an arc behind him, but before his ankles were fully off the ground, the black-robed leader's spell had already begun.
It was a silent Binding Charm, cast much faster than the ones cast by the others before it.
Allen shifted his body slightly at the last moment, but the Binding Charm still wrapped around his left leg, pulling him off the ground and causing him to stagger.
His knee hit the overturned stool, and his mask tilted for a moment.
"Ha." The leader of the black-robed men took a step closer to him. "How much longer can you hold out?"
Allen braced himself on the ground with one hand, and with the other hand, the wand he held trembled. A Disarming Charm shot out from the tip of the wand in a very tricky direction, flying close to the ground towards the ankle of the leader in black robes.
The leader of the black-robed men stepped aside, but the Death Eaters behind him, who was about to charge forward, didn't have time to dodge and was struck in the knee, falling forward.
Taking advantage of the opening, Allen flipped himself up, forcefully ripped off the remaining Binding Charm on his legs, and swung his wand to the left and right at the same time.
" Impediment Jinx!"
" Shield Charm!"
Two defensive lines deployed to the left and right, barely managing to block the three beams of light that were pressing in from the front.
Allen's breathing began to become increasingly rapid.
"This guy's skill level is probably not much lower than Quirrell's."
Allen gritted his teeth and dodged a Severing Charm, glancing at the system panel out of the corner of his eye. The character card had about eleven minutes left.
"Where did such a powerful figure come from among the Death Eaters?!"
Without time to think, he dealt with the various spells attacking from all directions.
The dozen or so people on the other side were cooperating more and more seamlessly. After the leader in black robes stabilized the formation, they stopped fighting individually and began to form groups to provide cover and take turns casting spells, creating wave after wave of suppression.
However, Allen managed to keep up by relying on his superior fighting skills, the unexpected use of Nonverbal Spell, and Quirrell's powerful magical reserves.
but...
I'm completely exhausted.
Allen patted his face, forcing himself to pull himself together and continue facing the onslaught of the dozen or so men in black robes.
At that moment, under the table next to the Ravenclaw Table, Cho Chang was huddled up, covering her ears with her hands.
She just saw a red light grazed past the person in the black trench coat and embed itself in the stone wall behind him, shards of stone splashing all over her face.
She quickly shrank further under the long table, and just then she inadvertently raised her head, her gaze sweeping over the top of the table and seeing the huge bronze eagle emblem under the dome of the Great Hall.
The eagle's eyes seemed to be flashing, shimmering with a blue light she had never seen before.
Qiu Zhang blinked, thinking he was hallucinating.
But the blue light in the eagle emblem's eyes did not go out; instead, it flashed more and more frequently.
"What... is that?" Qiu Zhang looked at the eagle emblem with some confusion.
Just then, she caught a glimpse of a dazzling blue light coming from the side.
She glanced over instinctively and saw a majestic blue eagle rise from behind the man in the trench coat, its purple-patterned fox mask appearing particularly mysterious in the flickering blue light.
A slightly muffled yet incredibly firm voice echoed throughout the Great Hall:
"I no longer pursue illusory power; wisdom is my true home."