Chapter 206: Advanced Elemental Lightning Rune, Thunderstorm Downpour
The gale howled. Icy rain was dragged into long, silver streaks by the rushing air.
Aether's broad, triple-paired wings beat in powerful sweeps, each flap twisting up a vortex that tore the curtain of rain apart. He let out a high, ringing cry, the meaning sliding neatly into Leonardo's mind.
"Boss, that long worm down there is disgusting. Want me to jump in and fight?"
Leonardo sat steady on Aether's back. He patted the thunderbird's neck, calm as ever.
"No need. You stay up here and watch. When I tell you, help me draw and guide the lightning."
The wind hurled fat raindrops at Leonardo, but they slid off an invisible barrier before they could reach him, never even dampening the edge of his robes.
The smile on Leonardo's face had nothing to do with the incoming battle. It was because of the system prompt floating in his vision.
[Loan triggered: Advanced Elemental Lightning Rune (monthly loan)]
[Loan effect: Gain Advanced Elemental Lightning Rune. Increases the host's affinity with lightning. Increases learning speed for lightning magic. Increases the power of lightning spells by 50%.]
[Loan task: Slay one mature basilisk.]
[Would you like to borrow?]
So it finally rolled a loan related to elemental runes.
Leonardo's mood lifted at once. It was like being handed a pillow the moment you got sleepy.
The beginner lightning rune had already been worth it. It boosted the power of every lightning spell he cast. The higher the spell, the more terrifying that boost became.
And those elemental runes did more than add raw power. When he cast, they helped him commune with the element itself. Even the beginner rune could tug at natural lightning, pushing his magic to another level.
If the rune had advanced, then his pull on lightning would be stronger too. At its core, it was a rise in elemental affinity.
Besides, he still remembered the system's comment last time. Gather every elemental rune, and there would be a "little surprise".
He was, admittedly, curious.
As for a mature basilisk, there was one right below him.
A basilisk's lifespan was only eight or nine hundred years. This one had survived from Slytherin's era to the present. It had to be over a thousand. It more than qualified.
"Borrow."
[Ding! Loan application successful!]
[Evaluation: One step closer to completing the elemental rune compendium. Keep going (¯︶¯)]
A compendium. What, exactly, had the system been playing at lately?
Leonardo's thought barely finished before a scorching, immense force surged into his right hand.
He lowered his gaze. The silver-white lightning mark branded on his thumb became visibly more intricate and profound, as if it contained the authority of thunder itself.
Around the purple arcs that had once danced along the surface, a strand of livelier, sharper green electricity now coiled.
A faint pressure rolled out from Leonardo, subtle but unmistakable.
As if answering a call from the same source, the storm clouds overhead turned even more violent. Silver serpents of lightning lashed across the sky. Thunder boomed in heavy waves. For a brief moment, the might of heaven and earth seemed to resonate with Leonardo's presence.
"Oy, boss, you smell even better now!" Aether cried, excited, because thunderbirds were keenly sensitive to pure, powerful lightning.
Leonardo laughed and patted him again, then turned a sharper gaze down through the rain.
The basilisk's brilliant green scales stood out even in the gloom. Its massive body thrashed and slammed through the mud, raging as it tried to shake off its pursuer.
The black-red alchemical automaton spun and darted around it, leaving a bright trail of magical light as it struck and repositioned, driving the basilisk exactly where Leonardo wanted, towards the empty stretch of open grass.
In Leonardo's eyes, the black vortex spun faster and faster.
He murmured under his breath, amused in a way that suggested everything was going to plan.
"One basilisk, and I can still get several uses out of it."
Rain hammered down. Thunder rolled without pause.
On the open lawn, the basilisk writhed through the mud, its hard scales scraping the ground. It repeatedly opened its enormous jaws and sprayed corrosive venom that steamed white as it struck the earth, trying to melt the automaton that moved like a phantom around it.
The automaton was lifeless matter, so the basilisk's yellow death-eyes meant nothing to it.
But the basilisk's bulk and bone-eating venom were still a real threat.
Heat-bright magical flame burned across the automaton's surface, turning nearby raindrops into hissing vapour. It avoided a direct collision again and again, nimble, unyielding.
Suddenly, the Philosopher's Stone embedded in its chest flared like a tiny sun.
A sharp, searing sound split the rain.
More than a hundred compressed beams of magical power burst from the automaton's body. They curved through the air as if alive, twisting into eerie arcs and automatically tracking towards the basilisk.
The basilisk hissed and did not dodge. It snapped its body into a tight coil, armouring its relatively vulnerable eyes and mouth behind layers of scale.
Impact after impact struck.
A few beams slid off the scales and slammed into the ground, blasting muddy craters that spat water and filth into the air.
Most, however, hit the basilisk's armour head-on.
Yet the power was weakened before it even fully landed. What remained exploded into dazzling, largely useless showers of magic, like fireworks shattering against steel. Violent to look at, but hard to turn into real damage.
In a blink, puppet and serpent crossed paths dozens of times.
When the basilisk used its body to block the barrage again, its view fully obscured for the briefest instant, the automaton stopped.
Its right arm rose high. Plates unfolded in layered segments. A deep hum built as blinding magic gathered at terrifying speed.
It was preparing another ultra-high-output magical cannon.
That, however, was the opening the basilisk had been waiting for.
Almost the moment the automaton began charging, the basilisk's coiled body snapped open like a spring released at its limit.
Its long, heavy length turned into a runaway train, a brutal mass that crushed anything in its path as it slammed forward.
The automaton tried to halt the charge and dodge, but the forced interruption introduced a fraction of sluggishness.
The basilisk's thick tail, like a stone pillar, screamed through the rain and whipped into the automaton's waist.
A sharp crack rang out, cutting through wind and downpour.
The black-red automaton flew like a kite with its string cut, smashed into the mud far away, and lay half-buried in the mire.
The basilisk raised its head. Its yellow slit pupils stared greedily past the empty lawn, towards the distant castle, barely visible through the storm.
There, countless lives waited. Warm. Living.
To a basilisk that had gone hungry for far too long, it was irresistible.
For years, it had spent most of its time in sleep, feeding only occasionally. The last time it had eaten its fill was a memory from long ago.
More than that, the presence that commanded it demanded a grand slaughter.
Desire and orders drove the basilisk's killing intent into a frenzied peak.
It ignored the fallen construct. Its body twisted, ready to surge for the castle, faster and faster.
Then the sky split.
A massive bolt of lightning, wrapped in purple and green arcs, slammed down and struck the basilisk's lifted head dead-on.
Only as the pillar of lightning began to fade did the sound arrive, rolling over everything with a deafening boom.
Numbness and searing pain tore through the basilisk at once. It shrieked and thrashed in the mud, churning the ground into a spray of filthy sludge.
When the glare finally thinned, the basilisk shook its head. It was blackened and smoking. Its bloodthirsty yellow eyes locked onto a new figure ahead.
A boy stood in the rain, wrapped in wild arcs of electricity. One purple and one green current were the thickest, coiling around him like living serpents, elegant and dangerous as they slid through the air.
Rainwater shattered and steamed before it could touch him, broken apart by the leaping arcs until a pale mist formed around his body.
Between the rain and that misty veil, the basilisk's lethal yellow eyes met the boy's calm, dark green gaze.
Death did not fall.
Neither did Petrification.
The silver-framed spectacles on the boy's nose flared with a deep, black light. When the killing gaze touched the lenses, the magic and curse within it were swallowed and deflected, dissolving into nothing.
Leonardo stood unscathed.
He had watched the automaton's exchange with the basilisk long enough to confirm it. Ordinary magical attacks did little against scales that hard.
Leonardo's gaze flicked to the basilisk's side, where dark red blood seeped slowly from a damaged patch.
That wound had come from the automaton's earlier ultra-high-output blast, and it was only that, a wound, nothing more.
Then his eyes swept across the arcs still crawling over the basilisk's body, and the patches of scorched, cracked scale.
Lightning, at least, seemed to work.
Was it lightning itself that countered a creature like this?
Then he would simply increase the force.
At the same time, the basilisk hesitated briefly.
Its death gaze had failed against a living target.
And its ancient instincts screamed a warning. The small human before it was giving it a dread it had never felt.
A hateful hiss crawled from its vast mouth, broken but clear in meaning as it reached Leonardo.
"You are not Harry Potter."
"But you will die all the same."
Leonardo watched as the basilisk slowly raised its body, drawing itself into a poised, attacking coil. Inside him, magic surged like a flood released, racing into his wand.
On the wand's surface, brilliant magical flame and savage purple-green lightning intertwined and leapt, making the wood hum with restrained violence.
The boost from the Advanced Elemental Lightning Rune was, indeed, impressive.
A fifty percent increase in power pushed his lightning spells across a boundary they should not have crossed.
It was not only strength. The rune dramatically raised his affinity with lightning itself.
Now, with a mere flicker of intent, the scattered lightning element around him rushed in as if summoned, swift and smooth.
And more than that.
Leonardo felt the vast sea of lightning churning within the thick clouds overhead.
He had never perceived natural thunder so clearly. It felt as if he were only one step away from directly wielding it.
The higher the elemental rune, the sharper the sense of nature became.
And then, borrowing the force of heaven itself.
At that moment, a clear, piercing cry tore through the storm and reached Leonardo's ears.
With Aether's confirmation, Leonardo's lips curved slightly. He looked at the basilisk, coiled and ready, and let out a quiet laugh.
"What are you waiting for?"
The basilisk's furious hiss exploded out, the intent obvious.
"Kill."
A flood of silver-white lightning, thick as molten metal, poured down from the sky like a waterfall. It carried the full weight of the heavens as it drowned the basilisk in an instant.
Only then did a second thunderclap, far more violent than the first, detonate above Hogwarts.
Inside the castle, the first thunderclap had startled a few students, but it only made heads turn.
Moments later, the second roar arrived.
It came with pure destruction in its wake.
The ancient castle seemed to tremble. Even the portraits fell silent, shocked into stillness.
It was as if a god who ruled lightning had hurled wrath into the world.
It was around the time before supper, when students were scattered across corridors and common rooms. The sky-darkening boom inevitably stirred a ripple of panic.
Voices rose. Exclamations echoed through the halls.
Soon, students higher up in the towers, with better views, noticed the abnormality first. It was impossible to look away.
It was as if the sky had been torn open into a vast hole. Black clouds spun madly, forming a colossal vortex.
At the vortex's centre, countless thick bolts of searing lightning "grew" out of the cloudbank, as if defying the laws of nature.
They did not flash and vanish. They gathered, and they poured.
It looked like an inverted mountain built entirely from thunder.
Tens of thousands of strands of lightning intertwined and detonated. The glare briefly drove back the darkness around the castle, bleaching every terrified, stunned face in stark white.
In a corridor by a window, students crowded together, craning to see.
"I can't see anything. That flash was blinding, and it's too dark now!"
"Hold on. I've got something. A telescope, bought for watching Quidditch. Didn't think I'd be using it for this!"
The student raised the telescope at once, pointing it towards the lawn near the Black Lake, towards the ground that looked as if it had been ploughed by some unseen force.
The next second, he sucked in a sharp breath. His voice jumped into panic.
"Merlin. A snake. A huge snake!"
"What snake? Let me see!"
Someone snatched the telescope, glanced once, and nearly dropped it.
"Merlin's beard. It's still moving!"
"I know, I know. I read about this. It's undergoing a tribulation. It's about to take human form!"
"Get a grip. You've read too many novels from the Seventh Workshop. This is the wizarding world. There's only magic here. No magical creatures 'taking human form'."
Another student stared hard out of the window, voice shaking with uncertainty.
"Look. Near the snake, is that a person? Damn it, it's too dark. I can't make it out."