Chapter 331: Brute Force Miracles
Chapter 331: Chapter 331: Brute Force Miracles
Regulus unleashed everything at once, every reserve of magic flooding into his wand.
It wasn’t like normal casting. The power tore through every pathway in his body, forcing its way through muscle and bone. His arm shook, veins rising, the wand burning hot in his grip.
The dragon heartstring inside trembled, a low hum spreading through his hand. Light gathered at the tip, dense and heavy, almost dark.
"Quassare!"
He slashed downward. The spell fired, and the world fell silent.
A thick beam shot forward, crossing the distance in an instant. It made no sound, but the air around it screamed, tearing apart as shockwaves rippled outward in heavy layers.
Below it, the sea collapsed. Water was crushed down, exposing bare reef as waves slammed outward and rebounded into violent currents.
The beam pulsed, each surge brighter and stronger than the last. Mist formed in the air, glowing amber in the light.
It burned near white-hot at the core, dark bands twisting along its edges. The air itself trembled with its weight.
Even in the sky, Regulus felt his footing waver.
Under its glow, the ocean turned amber, and the clouds above shifted to deep copper, reflecting the beam’s relentless light.
Regulus’s robes and hair whipped backward in the spillover current. The fabric cracked behind him, the hem flipping up against his legs, collar buttons cinching tight around his throat.
Constant Protego triggered on its own. A silver barrier flickered across his skin, then retracted.
It pulsed in sync with the beam. Each shockwave lit it up; each lull dimmed it again. Bright, dark, dark, bright. A silver lantern burning steady in the gale, impossible to blow out.
He stood at the storm’s center, body tilted slightly back by the wind, wand raised, output unbroken.
Then the beam struck the island.
The entire island absorbed the blow as one body. Every inch of it received the vibration simultaneously.
Rock around the impact point convulsed, and a deep, muffled boom rolled outward.
It kept going. Shockwaves ricocheted through the island’s interior, each rebound producing a deeper echo, echoes layering on echoes, a low growl building into a roar.
The corner of his mouth twitched upward.
Satisfying.
He rarely felt this. Every spell he cast was calculated, measured, not a drop wasted.
Full output was something else entirely. Magic flooding out of his body unchecked, no flow control, no path management, just pouring. As much as he had. However he wanted.
The beam hammered the island. The whole mass shook. The sea trembled. The air droned.
He was the source of all of it, fist clenched around the wand, magic surging from his body into a column of light that crashed against stone.
Exhilarating.
The island began to crack.
Fractures kept spreading. Denser and denser.
Regulus pushed the output up another notch.
A sustained growl resonated from inside the island, the sound of internal fractures propagating mingled with boiling seawater, punctuated by the sharp snap of rock being wrenched apart.
The whole structure began to disintegrate, splitting down the middle along the main fault line, a gap several meters wide tearing open from the peak all the way down to the granite base below the waterline.
Slabs of granite peeled away to either side, massive blocks separating along the cracks, tumbling through the air and crashing into the sea.
Water erupted outward. Concentric waves radiated from the island, spreading fast.
The wave crests rose nearly two stories high, racing outward and smashing into the open water with explosions of white foam. After they passed, the surface kept churning and bubbling.
Every seabird on the island had fled the instant the rock split, a dark mass of beating wings scrambling toward distant water.
A few slower fledglings were struck mid-flight by falling debris. They dropped into the sea without a sound.
Where the island’s center had been, there was nothing. The granite that had stood there moments ago was gone, replaced by a sunken pool of seawater.
Its edges kept crumbling inward, each collapse dragging whole slabs of rock beneath the surface, the resulting water spouts lower each time.
The island was folding in on itself from the middle out.
Regulus ended the spell.
His wand hand dropped to his side. His breathing ran faster than normal, chest rising and falling.
Adrenaline still burned through his veins. His palm was damp with sweat, the wand grip hot from being held so tight.
Sea wind washed over him again. He looked down.
The two halves of the island were still collapsing.
The crashing went on for a dozen seconds, one boom after another.
In less than a minute, the sea was calm again.
Only a ring of fading ripples still moved outward, growing lower and wider, merging with the normal swells a hundred meters out.
The island was gone.
Regulus hovered in midair, staring at the empty water.
Wind blew in from the west, snapping his robes, tossing hair across his face.
His mouth curved upward. He tried to stop it. Couldn’t.
He let himself smile for a while. When he was done, he pressed his lips back into a line, slowly, deliberately.
One island. One spell. Gone.
He slid the wand back into his sleeve.
Star Guided Meditation was already running, magic trickling back in. He could feel fresh power filling the empty spaces inside him. Slow, but steady.
The magic cost had been considerable. Nearly a minute of sustained full output had drained roughly two-thirds of his reserves.
He drifted a while longer, waiting until his reserves recovered enough to be functional, then Apparated onto the clifftop ashore.