"Everyone, don't move! Stay where you are!"
The blindfolded Severus suddenly ripped the cloth from his face!
He seized the perfect moment. The Basilisk had just swallowed the Auror and was tilting its massive head back to complete the action. Its death-dealing eyes were still fixed on the ceiling above.
Severus raised his wand, aiming at the Basilisk's underside, a spot clearly more soft and vulnerable compared to other parts.
The next moment, he uttered the Unforgivable Curse.
"Avada Kedavra!"
A sickly green light shot violently from the tip of Severus's wand!
The light from the curse illuminated the entire underground space, also painting the faces of Kabunara and the other surviving Auror, who stood frozen, deathly pale.
The Basilisk, having just consumed an Auror, also sensed the lethal threat!
It let out a sharp hiss, frantically twisting its body to avoid the curse.
But no matter how swift it was, it couldn't outpace a spell already launched from a wand.
The beam of sickly green light struck the vulnerable skin on the Basilisk's underside squarely!
The ground, which had been shaking, ceased its tremors. The rumbling noise from the Basilisk's tail crashing against the stone walls vanished in an instant.
The confined space transitioned from extreme motion to extreme stillness almost in a heartbeat. Then, a loud thud echoed.
Boom!
Dust that had begun to settle was kicked up again.
"Ventus." A gust of wind blew from Severus's wand, sweeping away the yellowish-gray dust and revealing the ravaged state of the underground chamber.
By now, Kabunara had also opened his eyes.
He saw the blood and fragments of flesh littering the ground, and the massive, pure-white Basilisk lying motionless.
The Albanian Auror-in-Charge's eyes were filled with grief as he saw the horrifying remains of his colleagues.
The Auror who had drawn the Basilisk's attention by casting a spell had been utterly consumed, leaving no trace. The mangled corpses on the ground belonged to the three Aurors who hadn't reacted in time and had met the Basilisk's gaze when its eyes opened in the mural.
After dying instantly, they were further crushed by the Basilisk's thrashing body.
At a glance, there were hardly any intact body parts left on the ground!
For a small Ministry like Albania's, training wizards to Auror standards was never easy. And now, four had died here in a single day.
But soon, Kabunara composed himself.
He ordered his remaining subordinate to leave immediately, return to the surface, and summon reinforcements. Then, he turned to look at Severus, who was examining the Basilisk's corpse.
"An ordinary person couldn't cast a Killing Curse with that kind of power," he said, his tone complex.
Severus shifted his attention from the Basilisk's corpse to Kabunara. He wasn't surprised by such a remark.
The reason dark magic is called dark magic is precisely because spells primarily designed to harm, or even kill, require the caster to harbor immense malice and ill intent.
Frequent use of dark magic, with malice and ill intent appearing more and more often, would in turn affect the wizard themselves, making them view lives as worthless, become indifferent to harming others, and grow accustomed to taking lives.
Therefore, in the Wizarding World, those wizards deeply versed in dark magic were almost exclusively dark wizards!
The vast majority of normal wizards, even if they knew the incantation and technique for the Killing Curse, couldn't cast a proper one due to their inability to muster such malice.
Aimed at a person, it might at most cause a nosebleed… some couldn't even achieve that.
The Basilisk before them was no ordinary Dark Magical Creature. Basilisks themselves had exceptionally long lifespans, and historical rumors suggested the most famous originally created Basilisk lived for over nine hundred years.
Judging by its size, this one's age have surpassed nine hundred years, without a doubt!
Given its current size, it had undoubtedly shed its skin countless times.
A normal Basilisk's skin should be emerald green, but this one had completely lost its original color, becoming pure white.
It was precisely these innumerable shedding cycles that endowed its skin with magic resistance surpassing that of Dragons and Trolls.
Even attacking its weak points, Kabunara had every reason to believe, an ordinary dark wizard's Killing Curse couldn't possibly kill such a monster outright… at best, it would drive it into a dizzy, frenzied state.
Yet Severus's Killing Curse had slain it with a single strike!
Such prowess was something even notoriously vicious dark wizards in the Wizarding World couldn't achieve.
This naturally made Kabunara, a professional Auror, uneasy towards Severus, who had demonstrated such ability.
Facing his unease, Severus merely shrugged and said casually,
"And I'm indeed not an ordinary person, am I? Those newspapers didn't just report my recent exploits, did they? They dug up quite a few of my past misdeeds. Some were wildly inaccurate, but some were indeed true."
"I was a dark wizard once, so being proficient with the Killing Curse is quite reasonable, isn't it?"
Kabunara, hearing this response, just took a deep breath. He didn't know how to answer Severus's statement, which sounded reasonable on the surface but was essentially sophistry upon closer inspection.
Severus had already turned back and was waving his wand, attempting to extract the massive fangs from the Basilisk's mouth.
"Alright, Mr. Kabunara, stop dwelling on the Killing Curse. If I were truly someone who abused dark magic, I wouldn't have hesitated initially, telling you to stay put to avoid collateral damage. I would have cursed it directly."
"Unless Albanian magical law is different from other European countries? Is using Unforgivable Curses on Dark Magical Creatures illegal here too?"
Hearing this, Kabunara, who had participated in drafting Albanian magical law, shook his head.
"No, Unforgivable Curses are only prohibited against humans. During internal Auror training, specialized instructors use animals to demonstrate the dangers of Unforgivable Curses."
"Then that's settled. Stop standing there and come help. I just want one of its fangs, one pint of venom, and one pint of blood. The rest is yours."
Kabunara hesitated for a moment, then stepped forward to assist Severus in collecting the fang, venom, and blood he wanted.
After completing this, their attention finally shifted from the Basilisk's corpse to the mural, which had remarkably remained intact despite the destruction.
"A Basilisk like this isn't something just anyone can breed."
Severus looked towards the spot on the mural where the Basilisk's eyes had opened and it emerged, which was originally the location of the giant, blind, white worm in the story.
The worm's head with its ferocious maw had vanished, replaced by a dark, deep hole.
That hole was clearly where the Basilisk had resided, over five feet in diameter.
"There must be another passage here. The Basilisk couldn't have stayed motionless in a narrow hole every day." Severus judged.
Kabunara had certainly considered this possibility, but he showed obvious hesitation towards Severus's eager desire to press forward.
"Should we wait for sufficient backup before taking any further action?"
Severus just glanced back at him.
"This opening is very narrow. If we encounter danger, no matter how many people we have, we won't be able to maneuver. And you saw what happened with the Basilisk earlier. Ordinary Aurors, in such situations, can only get themselves killed… they're of no help."
After hearing Severus's words, Kabunara gritted his teeth.
"Then let the two of us go in first and investigate what requires a Basilisk that has lived who knows how many years to guard it!"
As he spoke, Severus was already taking the lead. He reached the mural and climbed into the hole where the Basilisk had lived.
The hole was indeed only about five feet, less than six feet tall. Severus had to bend over to proceed.
Just after entering the tunnel, a fishy smell identical to the one Basilisk made Severus instinctively cover his nose. He raised his wand and cast Lumos.
Behind him, Kabunara followed.
He was slightly shorter than Severus but still had to crouch to move through the tunnel.
"Does it even... relieve itself here too?" Kabunara said, wrinkling his nose at the stench.
Severus raised his brightly lit wand, illuminating marks on the tunnel ceiling left clearly by the Basilisk's sliding movement.
"The wizard who created this Basilisk must have given it orders to guard this place. I found its passage to the surface for hunting in the plaza outside, but it seems aside from going out to feed, it spent the vast majority of its time in this tunnel."
They pressed forward for about ten minutes until a massive shed snakeskin blocked their path.
"My goodness!" Kabunara was astonished by the size of the shed skin. Even having seen the Basilisk's actual size, this shed skin was clearly a full size larger than the creature itself!
"It stored its shed skins here. There's more than one!"
Their path forward was completely blocked. The number of skins piled up was uncountable, like paper towels stuffed into a straw. To pass, they had to clear these skins out.
"It did this on purpose," Severus concluded, "It deliberately blocked the passage with its shed skins to prevent anyone from sneaking in while it was away."
Kabunara asked hesitantly, "What should we do now?"
Severus simply rolled up his sleeves.
"Although troublesome, at least the extent of the problem is right in front of us, isn't it? We've come this far, so we can't just turn back because of some snakeskins, right?"
"Step back a bit." He told Kabunara.
Kabunara complied, stepping back several paces. Severus also retreated to a safe distance. Then he raised his wand, aiming at the barrier of snakeskins.
Before casting, he seemed to remember something and asked, "In Albania, that... evil fire... isn't prohibited by law, is it?"
Kabunara was somewhat stunned, "What?"
"Ordinary fire won't burn these skins. We need some... forbidden power."
As Severus's words fell, he flicked his wand lightly towards the snakeskins.
As if intentionally controlling the spell's intensity, he didn't incant aloud, but performed non-verbal magic.
The next second, a cluster of deep red flames materialized out of thin air!
It seemed to possess a life of its own, morphing into a red pouncing wolf charging at the Basilisk skins.
The skins, shed from the Basilisk and imbued with strong magic resistance, disintegrated upon contact with the flames like butter on a hot pan.
The snakeskins were quickly consumed by the flames, turning into a shower of ashes, carried upward by the rising heat and blowing away from Severus and Kabunara.
The scorching temperature baked Kabunara's face. He stared wide-eyed at Severus, clearly recognizing what spell that was!
Fiendfyre!
An advanced dark magic spell. While not among the top-tier dark magic like the Unforgivable Curses, it was still one of the spells ordinary wizards could hardly master in a lifetime.
Of course, this difficulty wasn't about casting it. Fiendfyre was relatively easy to conjure, but controlling it, especially with the precision Severus demonstrated, was exceedingly difficult.
Kabunara stared at the back of Severus's head, feeling somewhat numb by now.
At this point, even if Severus turned around and claimed he was actually the Voldemort who had plagued the British Wizarding World for years, Kabunara doubted he would show much surprise.
Following the progress of the Fiendfyre, Severus, who had already started moving forward, noticed Kabunara had stopped. He turned back and called out,
"Don't be afraid. I'm taking the lead. The ashes are blowing inward, which is good news for us. It means we're not far from the end of this tunnel!"