Bab 85: 85- The Battle in the Forbidden Forest
Harry felt his mind struggling to keep up.
After Daphne put away the crystal vial and took a few steps forward, he finally snapped out of his daze and caught up to her. "What are you doing?" he asked.
Daphne gave him a strange look. "This is unicorn blood. It's very precious and rarely seen. Now that we have the chance, of course we should collect some."
Perhaps sensing Harry might want to follow her lead, she added, "Unicorn blood obtained through hunting carries a terrible curse. Drinking it is a heinous crime, and those who do will be forever cursed."
Harry suddenly understood. "So, because you didn't hurt the unicorn, you can use this blood without being affected by the curse, right?"
Daphne paused for a moment, then shook her head.
"When a unicorn is harmed, the curse seeps into its blood. So, the blood in that vial is already cursed, regardless of who hunted the unicorn."
"Then why..."
"There are ways to remove the curse, but they're very complicated." With that, Daphne refused to say more. Harry figured it must involve some secret method passed down in the Greengrass family.
He couldn't help but feel a bit envious. Daphne was about the same age as him, yet she knew so much more and had mastered advanced magic far beyond their peers.
'Is this the depth of a pure-blood family?'
Harry instinctively attributed Daphne's success to her privileged background, but he quickly dismissed the thought.
After all, not all pure-blood students were as exceptional as she was. Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle were perfect examples, even his friend Ron and Hufflepuff's Neville Longbottom.
They all came from pure-blood families but weren't any different from him, a wizard raised in a Muggle family.
Some, like Crabbe and Goyle, might even be worse off, with their "pure" bloodline potentially linked to trolls.
After explaining her reasons for collecting the blood, Daphne and Harry continued deeper into the Forbidden Forest.
The bloodstains grew thicker as they went, and Daphne's movements became more skillful, allowing her to collect the blood into the vial as they walked.
"What spell is that? Professor Flitwick never taught us anything like it," Harry said, his eyes filled with envy.
Honestly, he wanted to learn it too, though he wasn't sure if Daphne would be willing to teach him.
"It's not a spell," Daphne explained. She wasn't using any incantation but was simply manipulating her magic to gather the unicorn blood from various spots.
This highlighted a key difference between ancient and modern wizards. Ancient wizards did have spells, but they focused more on the flow of magic during casting. Modern wizards, on the other hand, emphasized the precise pronunciation of spells and hand movements.
As a wizard trained by Rhys, Daphne's casting style resembled that of a sorcerer from a thousand years ago.
"Not good," Daphne muttered, stopping in front of a large bloodstain.
The spread of the blood indicated that the injured unicorn had stayed here for some time, showing its strength was nearly depleted. Considering the freshness of the blood, Daphne believed they were close to finding it.
"Get ready to shoot the green sparks," she instructed Harry, but secretly she tightened her grip on her wand.
The injured unicorn was nearby, so the creature that attacked it couldn't be far either.
After walking a few more steps, an open clearing appeared before them. Daphne didn't enter it right away; she stopped in the shadow of the trees and held out her arm to stop Harry as well.
They saw a white form lying on its side in the clearing, its fur glistening in the moonlight. It was the unicorn they were searching for, but it was already dead.
The dead unicorn, bathed in moonlight, created a beautiful yet tragic scene. Its long legs were positioned as if it had fallen, its mane spread over the dark leaves, with pearl-like drops of blood scattered around.
Suddenly, Daphne yanked Harry to the side, narrowly avoiding a spell that flew past them.
The misfired spell hit a nearby tree, shattering its trunk. A hooded figure emerged from the shadows of the forest, moving in a strange, almost crawling manner.
"Send up the sparks!" Daphne shouted. She cast a Disillusionment Charm on herself while activating the defensive magic stored in her necklace to protect Harry.
Her form quickly vanished from sight, while Harry stood frozen, clutching his forehead instead of sending up the sparks as planned.
The appearance of the hooded figure had sent a piercing pain through his head, making his scar feel as if it were on fire. The pain blurred his vision, causing him to stumble backward.
Daphne couldn't worry about that now. Under the cover of her Disillusionment Charm, she rose into the air and launched a counterattack against the hooded figure.
A spell shot down from above, but the hooded figure quickly cast a Shield Charm to deflect it. At the same time, the tip of its wand produced a black rope that fell to the ground, transforming into black beads which then morphed into sharp black spikes aimed at the source of the attacking spell.
All the black spikes missed their mark because Daphne had already changed her position after casting her spell. She lightly landed on the ground, her wand pointed at the hooded figure.
It was as if the hooded figure could see through her Disillusionment Charm. As soon as Daphne's wand pointed towards it, it turned and conjured a shield in mid-air.
The ground beneath its feet rippled like liquid, forming a defensive earthen wall beneath the shield.
In the next moment, the shield shattered with a thunderous explosion as a powerful spell struck it, tearing it apart and slicing through the wall behind it.
The weakened spell continued through the defenses, hurtling towards the astonished hooded figure. In a desperate attempt to dodge, it twisted its body, but the spell still struck its right arm.
The spell severed the arm cleanly, causing it to fall to the ground with a smooth, mirror-like surface where the arm had been.
As the attack spell broke through its defense, the blood of the unicorn scattered on the ground seemed to be reborn, and shot towards the hooded man like bullets - this was Daphne's attack.
The powerful attack spell just now was the spell stored in Daphne's necklace, and these dozen blood bullets were her real killer move.
Daphne's original plan was to use the attack magic in the necklace to attract the hooded man's attention, and then take the opportunity to launch a sneak attack with the unicorn's blood.
However, the power of the attack magic that Rhys left for her exceeded her expectations, and the feint attack turned into the main attack.
Bullets made of blood hit the hooded man, splashing a few blood flowers. After being injured many times, it no longer wanted to tangle here.
With a bang, a thick black fog emerged from the open space. When the fog dissipated, the hooded man had disappeared, and even the broken arm that fell on the ground disappeared.
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