Even though many of the people present had seen true Legendary-level battles before,
at this moment, everyone was still forced into silence by the terrifying pressure.
Because a wizard at the Legendary level had already surpassed the concept of a mere "human," effectively becoming a kind of "god".
Faced with power like this, even the most devoted materialist would feel the urge to worship.
Neville felt exactly that urge right now.
Because what was happening before his eyes also meant that Dumbledore had not abandoned Hogwarts.
He had merely been temporarily held up.
And judging by the current situation, he was about to break free.
When that happened, Hogwarts' crisis would be resolved, and those who remained would no longer need to sacrifice themselves.
It made him want to kneel down and sing hymns. It made him want to scream and cheer.
Yet amidst his excitement, he also noticed something strange.
At the far end of the grounds, where the forest met the surface of the Black Lake, a figure suddenly shot into the sky.
Neville frowned.
He rubbed his eyes hard, wondering if he had seen it wrong.
But when he opened them again, he suddenly realized that the blurry shadow had already rushed to the front of Hogwarts Castle and thrown a punch.
BOOOOOM!!
Darkness so dense it seemed impossible to dissolve erupted into the sky.
In an instant, it scattered the golden-white holy light filling the heavens and plunged the sky back into darkness.
Then the delayed sonic boom mixed with the unique sound of an enormous magical eruption and instantly blasted everyone's eardrums.
"Ah!"
Neville and the others clutched their ears and screamed.
Bright red blood flowed uncontrollably through their fingers.
All sound rapidly vanished from their ears, leaving behind only a terrifying ringing.
Yet despite the pain, most people still stared wide-eyed at the sky, their faces full of horror.
Dumbledore.
The strongest white wizard of this century.
The guardian deity of Hogwarts.
After taking that punch from the shadow, he had actually fallen from the clouds like a meteor, carving a trail through the dark night sky that lingered for a long time.
How was that possible?
Countless witnesses silently asked themselves.
That was everyone's "sun".
"Hahaha! Dumbledore! So you have this day too!"
An arrogant laugh echoed from underground.
Gerald, who had just been smashed into the earth, struggled out of the crater.
His once flashy and extravagant combat suit had already been reduced to rags, with only a few scraps still hanging from his body.
The exposed skin underneath was covered in bruises and burns, making him look miserable.
But his face was filled with satisfaction and mockery, as though he were ridiculing Dumbledore's overconfidence.
Laughing wildly, he raised the longsword in his hand high into the air.
The blood-red glow that had previously been suppressed by Dumbledore's holy light suddenly spread outward.
It expanded endlessly through the darkness before merging with the condensed blackness.
Together they formed a disgusting black-red color like dried blood, covering the sky.
The mass twisted continuously, first becoming a skull.
Then a giant black-red cloud serpent emerged from the skull's mouth.
It stretched its body freely across the heavens, its blood-red eyes greedily staring at Hogwarts Castle below.
"Is that the Dark Ma... Dark Mark?"
Looking at the sky, Neville muttered in a dazed voice.
The symbol he had once believed would never appear again in his lifetime was now openly displayed before everyone present.
And in such a terrifying way.
Terrified screams continuously erupted among the Hogwarts Allied Forces.
Voldemort's shadow had hung over the British magical world for more than twenty years.
The fear he left in people's hearts was something even Link could not completely erase in a short time.
Among the crowd, aside from the professors, the only person who had truly overcome that inner demon was Neville.
Faced with the Dark Mark before him, after recovering from his shock, a look of sudden realization appeared on his face.
Back when news first spread that the British and French magical worlds had come into conflict, Neville had wondered why Link would provoke the French magical world.
That curiosity only grew stronger as the situation escalated again and again.
Link simply had no reason to treat the French magical world so harshly.
Now, with elite French wizards and the Dark Mark appearing at the same time, Neville's doubts were finally answered.
So Voldemort, who had been driven out of the British magical world, had been hiding in France all along.
Link's target was never the French magical world.
It was Voldemort hiding within it.
Neville understood everything.
The flames of hatred in his heart burned even more fiercely.
At the same time, Dumbledore finally hit the ground.
"Don't get too excited! I won't let you pass!"
He roared with all his strength.
The dim golden-white holy light around him erupted once more.
Golden flames rose into the air and poured outward like rain.
The golden fire seemed to possess an extremely powerful purification effect.
Wherever it passed, the dense black-red magical power ignited instantly.
Then, amid screams resembling the cries of vengeful spirits, it rapidly dispersed.
In only a few seconds, all darkness within Hogwarts' area was completely driven away.
But that was all.
At some point, the mysterious figure who had delivered the punch to Dumbledore descended from the sky and landed beside Gerald.
His entire body was wrapped in thick darkness, concealing his appearance.
He slowly raised the wand in his right hand toward Dumbledore.
At the same time, Gerald grinned viciously and raised his sword in almost perfect synchronization.
Sword and wand fell together.
"ROAR!"
An indescribable beastly roar echoed through the sky.
An enormous amount of black-red cloud surged without wind, twisting and gathering together.
Above Hogwarts, it formed a horrifying vortex cloud nearly ten thousand meters wide.
Then black-red magical lightning struck down from its center.
BOOM!
The golden holy flames Dumbledore had just reignited were instantly shattered by the pillar-thick blood lightning.
Even Dumbledore himself groaned and was smashed into the ground again.
But this was only the beginning.
As the vortex cloud continued spinning, thick blood-red lightning dragons fell like rain.
In front of Hogwarts Castle, they formed a forbidden zone completely filled with blood lightning.
The thunderstorm raged.
Divine might descended like a prison.
The enormous thunder forced its way into everyone's ears in Hogwarts.
Even the sharp ringing in their ears had to give way to it.
Because under the lightning's bombardment, the entire world trembled continuously.
The violent vibrations traveled through the earth and walls into every person's body.
They shook deep within their minds, becoming inhuman roars.
And Dumbledore was suppressed beneath that endless blood lightning.
Strike after strike.
He was driven deeper and deeper into the ground.
Aside from the occasional flash of golden light proving he was still alive, he could barely move even a finger.
The situation was exactly like when Dumbledore had beaten Gerald earlier.
Only now the roles had been reversed.
The rioters occupying the upper levels of the shaft were the first to recover.
Naturally, they had also seen the giant vortex cloud and the enormous Dark Mark appearing within it.
But they did not care.
The only reason they had come here was revenge and destruction.
Spreading pain was the shared desire born from their deepest emotions.
Driven by overwhelming desire, whether they were being controlled and used as disposable pawns no longer mattered.
They roared savagely.
Their wands swung continuously, firing masses of twisted green death.
And when the rain-like Killing Curses pierced through the puppets still standing in the middle of the shaft and descended upon Hogwarts' defenders, the students had not yet recovered from the shock of Dumbledore's defeat.
That was Dumbledore.
The man who defeated the first Dark Lord, Grindelwald.
The man who had saved the world more than once.
The man who had always protected Hogwarts.
How could he lose?
And if he had lost, who could save them now?
Overwhelming despair spread through the crowd.
Some of Dumbledore's most devoted admirers even threw away their wands and collapsed to the ground, covering their faces as they cried.
And so, even though the professors roared and raised their wands, creating layer upon layer of powerful shields, the outcome had already been decided.
The beams symbolizing death and misfortune smashed through the shields without restraint.
Green flashes swept across the battlefield.
People fell in rows like wheat cut down by the Grim Reaper's scythe.
Only then did the stunned crowd finally react.
But the massive casualties had already shattered their will to fight.
Large numbers of students, including both Gryffindors and Slytherins, cried out as they instinctively fled deeper into the surrounding corridors.
They had had enough.
In the blink of an eye, only Hufflepuffs and a small number of students from the other houses remained on the battlefield.
Under John's leadership, everyone struggled to raise their wands.
But the loss of numbers had created a massive gap in combat power.
Their barrage was no longer dense.
Many hooded figures with twisted expressions had already broken through the puppet blockade.
Laughing wildly, they charged directly toward Hogwarts' defenders.
They swung their wands recklessly.
Green light poured out as they spread death everywhere like demons.
Although concentrated fire from the professors and students quickly reduced those hooded figures to charred corpses, more bloodshot hooded figures immediately rushed forward without fear of death.
Blood and severed limbs flew through the air.
Screams mixed with roars.
The smell of blood mixed with the stench of burning flesh and rose into the sky.
The entire Hogwarts shaft had become hell.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the battlefield, Gerald and the mysterious figure walked with identical steps.
Moving almost in perfect sync, they entered the crater that the blood lightning was continuously deepening.
The raging lightning prison around them weakened slightly due to their arrival.
That gave Dumbledore a brief moment to breathe.
Holy golden-white light continuously shone from his body.
With its help, he forced himself upright in the deep pit filled with scorching yellow magma.
He looked up at Gerald and the mysterious figure standing above the crater wall, both staring down at him with mocking expressions.
"Professor Dumbledore, at this moment, in this situation, do you regret refusing my request to return to Hogwarts?"
The mysterious figure, wrapped in darkness, spoke in a distorted voice.
Dumbledore quietly gazed at him.
The expression on his face was extremely complicated.
After a long while, he finally spoke in a hoarse voice.
"So it was you. In that case, everything makes sense. But Severus... how is he now?"
"You're asking about Snape?"
A trace of astonishment appeared on the mysterious figure's dark, corrupted face.
Then he burst into laughter.
"Ha! Did I hear that right? Weren't you the one who always treated him as a tool? And now you're concerned about Snape?"
Gerald sneered as well.
"He has always been this hypocritical. He does cruel things just like everyone else, but insists on covering them with a layer of white silk to hide the filth underneath while showing off his own kindness and greatness."
"He treated his family that way, Grindelwald that way, us that way, and naturally Harry Potter and Snape as well. He was like this decades ago, and now that vile nature hasn't faded at all. Time has only made it more poisonous!"
The mysterious figure clearly agreed with Gerald.
He laughed so hard that he bent over.
The dense darkness around him twisted and trembled along with his laughter, like a giant beast hidden in the shadows echoing its master's amusement.
Facing all of this, Dumbledore merely smiled bitterly.
"Enough talk."
Gerald cast one final glance toward the war-torn Hogwarts Castle in the distance.
"Dumbledore, things have come to this. Surrender. What flows through Hogwarts is also magical blood, and now magical blood can no longer afford to decrease."
"Fighting among ourselves only benefits the Muggles. So Dumbledore, cooperate with us. Help us unite all wizards together."
"Gradually there will be no borders, no regional divisions, no bloodline differences. We will simply be wizards. This is the only way for wizards to prosper!"
Dumbledore quietly turned to look toward Hogwarts.
Though he stood deep inside the crater and could only see crystalized rock walls scorched by heat, he could still feel the slaughter taking place within Hogwarts Castle.
A trace of sorrow appeared on his face.
His eyes beneath the golden-white holy light were tinged with red.
Then he looked back at Gerald and said, "What you said sounds very good, but I refuse. I do not agree with your ideals. What you want to do is too extreme. Whether it succeeds or fails, it will bring enormous suffering to this world. Of course, more importantly..."
He paused.
"You don't actually think you've already won, do you?"
Gerald froze briefly.
Then he burst into loud laughter.
"It doesn't matter. Those words weren't mine anyway. I was just delivering a message."
Gerald raised his sword toward Dumbledore.
"And now that you've rejected our proposal, I can only use my own methods. To be honest, I'm very, very pleased with that outcome, because I don't agree with those ideals either."
As Gerald finished speaking, terrifying blood-red light gathered on his sword.
Faced with death itself, Dumbledore remained calm.
There was even a victor's smile on his face.
That smile seemed to sting Gerald.
His expression instantly twisted with fury.
He raised his sword high, gathering power for the strike.
But at that moment, another tremendous explosion echoed from the sky.
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