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A blinding, silver-white beam erupted from the tip of Ian's wand.
Morgan, who had been reclining casually in her armchair moments before, instantly went rigid. Her fingers twitched, and a flicker of astonishment, rare for her, crossed her eyes.
"This is..."
Morgan's voice was now sharp with wariness.
In the next instant, the silver brilliance streaming from Ian's wand twisted rapidly and coalesced into the shape of a man. A handsome young warrior clad in gleaming armor and wielding a long sword appeared, and without hesitating for a moment, he charged directly at the room's mistress.
His eyes were blank and unnervingly empty.
He had only one drive, one instinct: to defeat anyone who stood in his path. His silver armor shimmered, his golden hair flew wildly, and the longsword in his hand radiated a deep, chilling frost.
He looked magnificent.
But the one truly drowning in terror was Ian, the poor, sweat-drenched "caster." No, he hadn't cast anything! Pandero had burst from his wand all on his own.
These ancient, mysterious figures always had equally mysterious, reality-defying methods. Just like now, with Pandero materializing unbidden from Ian's wand.
Ian's mind flashed with instant comprehension. This was the response to the distress signal he'd sent during his near-death experience in the Forbidden Forest.
But the timing couldn't have been more disastrous.
"Don't-- !"
Ian tried to shout a warning, but Pandero was lightning fast. His eyes blazed with relentless purpose, and every swing of his sword carried the crushing, overwhelming weight of a falling mountain.
Dozens of strikes in a single second.
He was a blur of motion, intent on obliterating every obstacle in his path.
"BOOM! BOOM!"
Morgan was quick to react. In a blink, the floor beneath her surged, and thick slabs of stone erupted like living earth, forming a barricade. But it was all for naught against Pandero's terrifying advance. The moment he swept his sword out, the stone tiles shattered like brittle eggshells.
He didn't slow down for even a second.
All obstacles were meaningless to him. With his ironclad certainty of victory, Pandero charged like a raging beast. Dust and debris exploded outward as he stormed ahead.
"Ian! Watch your heroic rescue!" Pandero likely had no idea where he had appeared. Perhaps, in this Patronus-like state, his vision was warped.
Because he hadn't adjusted to the form yet, he didn't recognize the person he was charging at. All he remembered was Ariana's panicked instruction: "Turn into a Patronus to save Ian!"
And now, he'd made his grand, flashy entrance. Of course, he had to show off his coolest form yet.
"In the Twilight Zone, there's no boss I can't cut down!"
It all happened too fast. King Arthur's figure became a streak of silver lightning. His sword traced a flawless arc through the air, piercing every barrier and heading straight for Morgan's throat.
"You damned executioner!"
Morgan's face twisted into an enraged snarl as she cursed. Faced with Arthur's deadly assault, she vanished on the spot, only to reappear nearly twenty meters away.
However, Pandero's attack hadn't actually missed.
From Ian's perspective, Pandero moved with the terrible precision of a guided projectile. The instant Morgan vanished, King Arthur was already twisting in midair.
Even before Morgan reappeared, he began his strike, slashing toward the precise spot where she was about to materialize.
And yet, despite his uncanny perception, he still hadn't grasped the most basic fact.
This was not the life-or-death battle he had imagined.
"You're not truly this dense, are you?" Naturally, Ian judged the ancient warrior by his own standards of malice and cunning.
But he didn't have time for an inner monologue. Morgan's face had turned completely black, and she was raising her hands, clearly preparing to unleash something catastrophic. Ian snapped out of his thoughts and lifted his wand in a panic, seizing control of his Patronus, Pandero.
Arthur Pendragon, that is, though no one knew exactly when he'd changed his surname, Ian had chosen the name Arthur long ago.
Perhaps that was where this thread of chaos had begun.
"Ah?"
Pandero was yanked violently by Ian's spell and crashed into a heap of broken stone and rubble. He burst out of the dust as a cloud of silvery mist, looking utterly bewildered by the sudden maneuver.
"What in Merlin's name are you doing?!" Pandero glared at Ian in astonishment. "Is this what you people call teammate sabotage?"
He looked genuinely wounded, as if Ian had betrayed him in a duel. His tone was so aggrieved that anyone overhearing them might have thought Ian had committed a terrible crime.
"..."
Ian was left speechless.
"Open your eyes and look around to see where we are!" He roared.
"Didn't you call me to save you?" Pandero scratched his head blankly, still staring straight at Ian and not sparing a glance for their surroundings.
"You did this on purpose! You did this completely on purpose!"
Ian nearly spontaneously combusted with fury.
"I didn't need your help ages ago! If I'd waited for you, I'd be dead by now, no, my corpse would be a skeleton! I'm already back, and this is Professor Morgan's territory!"
He was convinced that Pandero was seizing this chance for "personal revenge." After all, it's clear from history that he and Morgan were never on good terms. They were siblings, but they had spent half their lives fighting each other. In fact, this wasn't the first time. Pandero had once taken the opportunity to cut down one of Morgan's prized guards, and Ian had painstakingly repaired the damaged alchemical artifacts afterwards.
"Ah?"
Pandero froze, his eyes finally widening as he looked around. He resembled a blind man regaining his sight, only now grasping the absurdity of the situation.
"Oh, so that's what's going on."
Pandero scratched his head awkwardly and forced a sheepish, apologetic grin.
"Apologize! Apologize right now!" Ian bellowed, noticing Morgan's trembling frame and the dangerous blaze in her eyes. He knew what would happen if her rage wasn't appeased immediately, the consequences would be apocalyptic. He turned toward Arthur and screamed as loudly as he could.
His intention was clear, Morgan needed to hear his sincerity above all else.
"All right, all right. You could've just said so earlier."
Pandero sheathed his sword and casually brushed imaginary dust off his gleaming silver armor. But when Ian demanded an apology, Pandero merely offered a blindingly bright grin.
"Well, uh, hehe..."
That cluelessly cheerful laugh made Ian's stomach plummet with a sense of utter doom.
Sure enough, as soon as the laugh faded, Pandero's shimmering body dissolved into countless points of light and flowed back into Ian's wand like a swiftly retreating tide.
The magic coursing through the woods stopped instantly.
The silver glow vanished.
With a soft, almost inaudible click, the wand returned to its ordinary, inert state as if the preceding chaos had never occurred. The overwhelming magical strain Ian had been under disappeared completely.
However, Ian couldn't breathe a sigh of relief. His heart felt like it was going to leap out of his throat. He didn't even dare turn his head to look at the disheveled Morgan, who was standing only twenty feet away.
Because the expression on Morgan's face was no longer merely angry. It was a suffocating calm, the silence before a volcano rips itself open. Raw power still shimmered faintly at her fingertips, refusing to dissipate.
The air was thick with pressure, heavy enough to crush.
Silence.
A dreadful, bone-chilling silence descended.
Ian felt as though he had been instantly plunged into an ice cellar.
The atmosphere within the castle had become sticky, dense and utterly suffocating.
It pressed down on him like a massive, immovable boulder.
(To Be Continued…)