Mysterious Journey

Chapter 1126 Moonlight Waltz (7)

“Did we come to the wrong place?” Lokana said in a low voice, his face full of confusion.

“No, look over there,” Atif whispered.

Unlike the monotonous, dim forest they had seen for the past ten minutes, the view ahead of them suddenly opened up.

The bright moonlight shone on this clearing, which was at least the size of half a Quidditch pitch. This was not a naturally formed depression. Nearly a hundred thick trees had been cut off at the waist. The smooth cross-sections and the neatly fallen crowns suggested that everything had happened in an instant.

Just as Atif and the others had been informed, the majority of European werewolves were indeed gathered here.

Hundreds of dark gray beastly shadows roamed among the broken stumps, howling at the burning bonfire in the center.

In the towering flames, a blurry figure loomed, calmly using spells to drive back the tidal wave of werewolves.

The surrounding tree crowns and crossbeams were covered with frost, and small puddles reflected the moonlight. Apart from the werewolves prowling around the bonfire, looking for a chance to pounce, there were at least thirty or forty werewolves lying in various corners of the field, their wounds and limbs twisted unnaturally.

In the brief interval between their conversation, another werewolf was “thrown” out from the front like a rag doll.

Lokana and Atif were about to take a few steps back to avoid the unfortunate fellow who had been blasted away by the spell when they heard a series of dense footsteps behind them, as well as the rustling sound of robes being quickly raised.

Without thinking, Atif didn’t even turn his head and shouted to his side, "Get down!"

He grabbed the guy who was still foolishly holding a camera and trying to take a picture, dragging him and the camera to the ground.

“Stupefy!”

A dozen voices shouted simultaneously.

Immediately afterward, a dazzling flash of light suddenly erupted.

Atif felt all the hairs on his neck stand on end.

He raised his head slightly and saw streaks of searing red light streak over their heads, most of them striking the "unlucky guy," while a small portion collided with each other and diverged, hitting the surrounding thick tree trunks and bouncing even further away—

“Stop!” a familiar voice roared angrily, “You British bastards, what the hell do you think you’re doing?!”

The rain of spells came to an abrupt halt. Atif slowly got up from the ground, casually pulling up his old friend who was still lying there.

Behind him, his deputy, Ballard, was leading a group of Turkish Aurors in a standoff with the British wizards, their wands pointed at each other, while the French, Azerbaijanis, and Greeks stood further away, not involved in the conflict between the Aurors of the two magical governments.

“Sorry, we were just a little anxious just now, after all—”

“I’m fine, those guys’ spells are as slow as my grandma washing cotton socks…”

Atif raised his hand and patted the dirt off his body, giving Cornelius Fudge and the others a cold look.

"After this incident is over, the Turkish Ministry of Magic will demand an explanation from the British side, along with the forced border crossing."

As the head of the Turkish Auror Office, he was very clear about the trajectory of those spells just now. If he and Lokana hadn't dodged, at least two or three Stunners would have "accidentally" hit them before hitting the werewolves. Atif was all too familiar with such underhanded tactics.

A few years ago, when the wizards of the former Soviet Ministry of Magic Internal Affairs encountered them, similar "accidental injuries" would occasionally occur.

“It’s an emergency, hey, friend, you don’t want to get bitten by a werewolf, do you?”

Cornelius Fudge shrugged his shoulders, voluntarily lowered the wand in his hand, and said in a rather regretful tone.

“I thought you would thank us for our timely assistance, after all, no matter what, our British Aurors did knock down an evil werewolf who was about to attack you and the editor-in-chief of the *Magical Times*. I said before, werewolves are very dangerous in the moonlight, you must have experienced…”

"First…knock down the werewolf? I’m afraid not –”

Atif snorted lightly and pointed to the fire in the distance, as well as the werewolves curled up beside the stumps, unable to fight.

"The protagonist tonight is not me, not the Turkish Ministry of Magic, and certainly not the gentlemen of the British Ministry of Magic—before we arrived, a powerful wizard had already taken control of this battle. I don't think casting spells on a non-resisting 'corpse' requires any experience."

In fact, Atif didn't even need to remind them. The eyes of the Aurors from various countries who arrived one after another had already fallen on the figure by the bonfire.

If facing a single werewolf, most of the wizards present were confident of retreating safely, or even defeating the opponent head-on.

But when the number of enemies increased dozens of times, not to mention that the opponents were werewolves, even if they were unarmed Muggles, wizards were not necessarily sure of surviving their attacks—in the Middle Ages, a dozen Muggle farmers had the opportunity to capture or even kill an adult wizard.

And now the number of werewolves prowling around the bonfire and attacking frantically was more than dozens, at least a hundred at a rough glance.

Even more terrifying was that, even under such a vast difference in numbers, the mysterious wizard hidden in the fire could still repel the werewolves without killing them. Any Auror who had participated in a few missions knew the huge difference between "arrest" and "kill."

If a wizard could handle hundreds of werewolves with ease, then he could easily take down dozens of Aurors.

"What do we do now?" Lokana asked, looking ahead with a solemn expression.

"Well, anyway, we can't stand here and wait for that gentleman—or lady—to solve all the werewolves," Atif said. "Later, I will have the Aurors control the werewolves along the way in turn, to prevent them from hurting people, after all, he still needs help... Oh, heavens—"

Before Atif could finish speaking, he suddenly sensed a powerful magic gathering in front of him.

“Careful!” He hurriedly pulled Lokana back, “That might be—”

“Might be what—”

Cornelius Fudge raised his eyebrows and turned his head to look not far away in confusion.

The originally distant fire suddenly flared up, and the scarlet flames engulfed the open space almost instantly.

Boom!

Boom!

Boom!

Eerily-blue flames, emanating an aura of death, also rose one after another in the surrounding woodland, interwoven with some mysterious rhythm, weaving an extremely complex "flame web". The eerie-blue and gold-red flames intertwined and soared, as if fire dragons were soaring within it.

And he and a group of Ministry of Magic Aurors, as well as the werewolves located in the open space, were precisely the prey that were divided and trapped in the grid.

“Everyone, don’t act rashly! Don’t Apparate casually! You’ll die!”

Just as Cornelius Fudge was about to draw his wand and try to extinguish the flames, he heard the terrified and even slightly tearful, chaotic voices of the French Aurors, and temporary chaos also occurred among the Aurors of other magical governments besides Britain.

“This, this is… Merlin above, damn it—why would this magic appear here…”

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Yay!