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Faced with the all-encompassing attack, Ian remained completely unruffled.
"Renewal of All Things!"
Naturally, this was another spell of his own creation. What modern wizard still relied on the rigid spells from Hogwarts textbooks? Not when they had the ability to create their own.
Ian lightly tapped the air with his wand. A storm eye radiating an aura of complete control formed in front of him. It slowly rotated, creating an irresistible pull. But instead of absorbing energy, it worked like the world's most efficient air purifier, drawing in every trace of the deadly, poisonous mist swirling toward him.
This was wind-element magic. Since it also purified impurities, Ian had named it Renewal of All Things. Inside the eye of the storm, pure wind elemental energy intertwined with intricate purification runes, forcibly separating and breaking down the corruption and toxins until they became harmless wisps of gray smoke that quietly faded away.
Seeing the poison fail, the monster's lower body, still trapped inside the stone coffin, suddenly erupted with even greater power.
Boom!
The stone prison shattered completely. But after breaking free, the monster didn't immediately attack Ian. Instead, dozens of its thickest tentacles twisted together like enormous pythons, merging into a colossal black hand made of flesh and energy that blotted out the sky.
At the center of its palm, an unimaginably complex corrupted rune suddenly lit up. It was unlike anything Ian had ever seen; it was completely outside his knowledge. Of course, not recognizing the rune didn't make Ian an idiot; he could still judge its purpose from the power it emitted. It carried the aura of something capable of corrupting another person's laws and powers, as if it wanted to assimilate Ian himself.
Perhaps this was the very force that had turned the once-fallen god into the horrifying thing it had become.
Ian immediately grew even more cautious. The giant hand slowly descended, carrying an aura that promised total annihilation.
It wasn't fast, but it carried an unmistakable sense of inevitability, as though Ian's very existence had already been marked. No matter where he fled, the hand would eventually reach him and corrupt him on a conceptual level.
"Can the African Ministry of Magic really hope to accomplish anything by using a power like this?"
It wasn't that Ian looked down on the African Ministry of Magic. He simply couldn't believe there was a wizard in Africa powerful enough to imprison something like this and make use of its power. Even he, a legendary wizard, was struggling this much.
If Africa truly had legendary wizards of that caliber, there was no way they would be completely unknown on the international stage.
The more he thought about it, the more confused he became about the African Ministry of Magic. Still, that could wait. His first priority was escaping this cursed place. After that, he could investigate the Ministry properly.
"Does anyone even remember that I only came here to find Professor Newt...?" Ian sighed to himself.
Talking to himself had become second nature long ago. Even though everything had spiraled far beyond what he'd expected, he didn't regret coming to the Ministry. He knew he'd stumbled onto yet another earth-shattering secret.
Faced with an attack that operated on the level of fundamental laws, a faint smile appeared on Ian's lips. "Interesting... But that's all."
Rather than confronting the law of corruption directly, Ian raised his wand vertically before his chest. He closed his eyes for a brief moment. When they opened again, countless stars seemed to be born and extinguished within them as the laws of the universe flowed before his gaze.
"Mirror of Paradox - Causal Reflection!"
The monster was actually easier to deal with now than when it still possessed Divine Authority. At least, it was for Ian. There was a reason so many ancient wizards had pursued Divine Authorities; for most wizards, the current monster would probably be even stronger than the fallen god it once was.
But for someone who also wielded Divine Authority, Ian actually felt less pressure than before. Using his own authority placed far less strain on him now, which meant it was considerably more powerful.
A seemingly ordinary mirror materialized in front of Ian, yet it appeared to be woven together from countless contradictory concepts. The moment the giant black hand carrying the law of Existence Corruption touched its surface, something bizarre happened.
The hand neither passed through nor was it reflected. Instead, it sank into the mirror as though falling into deep mud. The corruption law contained within it was forcibly captured, analyzed, and then... sent straight back.
A force carrying the exact same law of corruption instantly traveled back along an invisible chain of cause and effect, this time targeting the monster that had cast the attack.
"Urrrgh...!!!"
For the first time since the battle began, the monster let out a scream filled with genuine terror. Its enormous body twisted and flickered like a corrupted image losing signal. Parts of it warped into even more grotesque shapes, making it almost impossible to look at.
Clearly, it couldn't completely withstand an attack aimed at the very essence of its existence. It desperately drew in the surrounding energy and the corrupted laws filling the space, barely managing to stabilize itself before the distortion became irreversible.
After that exchange, the way it looked at Ian changed. The endless madness and greed were still there, but now there was something new: fear. It had finally realized that this wizard was far more troublesome than it had imagined.
Ian possessed countless techniques, and worse, he could use an enemy's own power against them. Even attacks on the level of fundamental laws could be twisted and reflected back.
"Oh... I think I'm starting to figure something out."
Ian continued floating calmly in midair. His robes fluttered wildly in the raging energy storm, but his expression remained as relaxed as ever, as though the life-or-death clash of conceptual powers had been nothing more than routine spell practice. He even took a moment to straighten the slightly wrinkled cuff of his sleeve after all that high-speed movement.
The monster's strange reaction had given him an idea. Still, before jumping to conclusions, he wanted to try a few more things and see if there was a more effective way to attack it.
"Come on. Next round." Ian curled a finger in a taunting gesture.
His relaxed attitude only enraged the monster further. Driven almost entirely by madness now, it no longer rushed to unleash another devastating attack. Instead, it slowly circled Ian, its countless eyes remaining locked onto him, searching for even the smallest opening.
At the same time, its low, hypnotic whisper echoed through the cavern once more. "Join us..."
It was still trying to interfere with his mind. Meanwhile, Ian took advantage of the brief lull to glance once again toward that region of absolute darkness. His eyes also lingered on the subtle distance the monster always kept from it. Another theory was beginning to take shape.
"JOIN US! JOIN US!!"
The monster continued shouting the same words. Then again, perhaps they weren't meaningless after all. Maybe every repetition carried a different emotion or intent, kind of like how a cat only says "meow," but every meow means something different.
...A strange comparison, perhaps. Maybe even a little unsettling. But living creatures often shared more similarities than people realized. The monster was still a living being, after all, so there was nothing strange about it following certain biological patterns.
"Shut up!"
That voice was unbelievably annoying. Ian felt like his head was about to split from all the constant droning. Unfortunately, scolding it accomplished absolutely nothing. The monster just kept roaring; it clearly couldn't understand human language anymore.
Which actually made sense. If the part of its brain responsible for language had completely mutated, then it wouldn't just lose the ability to speak normally, it would also lose the ability to understand speech.
Maybe that wasn't very magical, but it was perfectly scientific. Magic and science had more in common than most people thought.
"Judgment of Thunder!"
Undeterred, Ian raised his wand toward the empty void. A gigantic spear of pure destructive lightning materialized out of nowhere, radiating overwhelming heavenly might capable of purifying evil. It shot straight toward the monster's core.
BOOM!!!
The lightning exploded, and blinding white light swallowed everything. The monster's massive body was torn apart, with over half of it vaporized in the storm of lightning. Its agonized scream echoed throughout the cavern.
But as the light faded, the destroyed flesh regenerated. As though time itself had reversed, new tissue grew wildly from the remaining chunks of flesh and the surrounding corrupted energy, rebuilding the monster into an even more indescribable form.
It now resembled a gigantic, pulsating mass of flesh covered with countless eyes and mouths. As the surrounding energy poured endlessly into it, its regenerated body became even larger and even more horrifying.
"Shadow Severance!"
Ian immediately changed tactics. This time, he used a spell especially effective against negative energy and shadow creatures, attempting to strip away the darkness that formed the foundation of the monster's existence.
An invisible force tore great sheets of living shadow away from its body. For a brief moment, it worked. But then the dark-purple light within the monster's core flashed, and more shadows were pulled directly from the surrounding void, instantly replacing everything that had been removed.
As for the negative energy Ian had managed to strip away, he couldn't absorb or convert it into his own power. It was as though those energies already belonged to a higher master. The instant they were separated, they escaped, and no matter what Ian tried, he couldn't stop them.
"Is it the same mysterious existence that took away the fallen god earlier?" Ian silently made another guess. Even in the middle of the battle, he never stopped gathering information.
"Life Drain!"
Ian even took the risk of using Dark Magic, attempting to drain the monster's life force instead. Thanks to his mentor Grindelwald and his senior, Voldemort, his mastery of Dark Magic was exceptional.
The title of the self proclaimed Third Dark Lord wasn't just for show, he might not have been the most scholarly Dark Lord in history, but he was undoubtedly the strongest.
A massive torrent of life force poured into Ian's body. It was unimaginably vast, violently turbulent, and filled with madness and corruption. His vision immediately blurred, and it felt as though even his soul had been stained.
Startled, he instantly severed the connection before the corruption could spread back into him. He had nearly been contaminated in reverse.
"Damn! This thing's life force is poisonous! Even Voldemort would throw it back up after swallowing it!"
Ian dry-heaved several times, genuinely sickened by what he'd just absorbed. Honestly, he had never encountered life energy this disgusting before; even its purest essence had been corrupted. The feeling was revolting. Fortunately, cutting the spell off in time had let him "throw it back up," so to speak, and he'd avoided mutating himself.
After that little scare, Ian became even more curious about the force capable of corrupting even a god. Most likely, it was another alien lifeform, just like the Titans. The fallen ancient god already looked alien to begin with, so if something could corrupt even an alien like that, then it had to be an even stronger kind of alien.
That sounded a bit like stating the obvious, but it wasn't entirely meaningless. After all, even aliens had stronger and weaker members.
The Harry Potter world did, in fact, contain many extraterrestrial civilizations; it was one of the hidden pieces of lore buried within Fantastic Beasts. And by now, Ian had come into close contact with that hidden side of the world, which really wasn't that surprising. In a magical world, aliens weren't exactly hard to accept.
If you weren't going to explore alternate dimensions, then adding alien civilizations was another natural way to expand the universe.
While Ian's thoughts wandered, the monster's whisper continued endlessly in the background. "Join... us... share... eternity..."
The voice itself carried a corrupting influence, but Ian had simply blocked it out. Of course, that was easy enough for him, but fighting the corruption while battling nonstop for this long was still taking its toll.
"I really am still too young... My stamina just isn't there yet."
Sweat beaded on Ian's forehead, and his breathing grew noticeably heavier. By now, he had tried almost everything: the strongest elemental magic, conceptual spells that erased or denied existence, mental attacks and defenses, and even forbidden Dark Magic.
He had drawn upon everything, from Hogwarts' thousand years of magical knowledge, to everything he'd learned while traveling the world, to the countless spells he had created himself. It was a complete display of what a legendary wizard was capable of. If any modern master had witnessed this battle, they would have been left speechless.
And yet, against a monster fused with the entire corrupted space, a creature with nearly limitless regeneration and adaptation, none of it seemed to matter. It was like fighting an ever-evolving nightmare.
Every "death" only became the foundation for an even more twisted rebirth. It couldn't be killed, it couldn't be sealed, and it couldn't even be banished. The battle had become a hopeless war of attrition.
"I really don't want to spend the next few months fighting like this."
Ian possessed enormous magical reserves, but they weren't infinite. And no matter how resilient his mind was, even he couldn't endlessly resist the erosion of the monster's maddening whispers. The fight itself wasn't the difficult part; resisting the corruption was.
Meanwhile, the monster showed no signs of fatigue whatsoever. Its attacks grew increasingly violent, its regeneration became faster and faster, and it was even stronger now than when Ian had first been fighting it with ease.
Still, Ian didn't seem particularly bothered. If one of his earlier theories was correct, the monster's increasing strength might actually become its greatest weakness. Dragging the battle out didn't necessarily mean he would be the one to lose.
"I don't mind a long fight."
After narrowly avoiding another attack, Ian deliberately widened the distance between them. Taking advantage of the brief opening, he swallowed a bottle of golden potion of his own making, a potion that rapidly restored magical power.
His magical energy immediately became active once more as his sharp eyes locked onto the constantly writhing mountain of flesh.
"Fortunately, it doesn't attack all that often, so I don't have to rely on my Paradox Authority all the time. Using a Magic Power Restoration Potion costs me far less than using Divine Authority. Besides, if I keep dragging this out, I can also test my theory. Though after I get back, I'll definitely need to eat something nourishing."
He wasn't in a hurry. Because if Ian was right, even the monster's mutations had a limit. Once it passed that limit, its genes would begin to collapse.
And that was the most likely path to his victory.
(End of Chapter)