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Africa
–Damian Hawthorne–
Dropping down, he kept his senses peeled for both, magical and any other interference around him, wary of any tricks that Wakanda might pull now that they had access to magic as well, but thankfully, he touched down without much issue.
Despite the volatile magic detected by his satellites, he could not see anything that might denote such heavy magic use, especially by dozens of such wizards. With a thought, he flew into the city, towards the cluster of buildings kept in good enough condition, hoping that he might find something there, only for a metaphorical avalanche of magic to hit his senses as soon as he crossed an invisible boundary.
He stopped mid air, looking around, but to his confusion, he found nothing. Then, he looked down and remembered Wakanda's propensity to hide stuff in plain sight. "Oh," He muttered to himself before backing away and activating an enchantment that did not get much use, mostly because of its rather lethal nature when used against humans.
Shaped Durability.
The enchantment activated with a thought, as energy glowed from his body into his clothing, altering the shape of the force field he had around his body, turning it into a vague drill shape, with his legs acting as the drill. Better to be safe and go legs first instead of face first. He kept his mind there, and he would like that to be protected from becoming Swiss cheese by some random Wakanda laser mesh that protected their underground compounds.
Wakanda could be savage like that.
As soon as he was underground, the difference was immediately clear to him. They had some sort of dampeners installed, both above and below the ground, masking the magic being cast underground but now that he was drilling towards them? He could feel it, clear as day.
A malevolent, dark bloodlust blasted all over the place as he increased his pace towards the magic being cast, which would be just below the airstrips. Why Wakanda would build something hidden beneath their sham of a city was beyond him.
He got the confidence of keeping everything hidden, but why do that in the first place? The entire point of this fake city was to show the world how poor they were. What would be the point if the one place they planned to keep open to the public was somehow discovered to have tech centuries ahead of the rest of the world, just buried underneath?
Shaking his head, he winced as his forcefield cut through what was hardened sheathing before bursting through the other side, to see an empty futuristic hallway, bathed in the red light of warning.
Looking back, he saw earth bursting out of the small hole as he took the panel of metal and plugged it, haphazardly before running towards the magic. Not bothering to remain visible, he ran through three more turns before finally reaching the site of the battle.
He winced as his arrival was noticed by one of Wakanda's border tribe members, who immediately screamed and pointed at his general location, and raised his hands. Common sense made him move the hell away from his current position as a light of purple came out of that man's hand and stuck the ground, liquifying it. Wide eyed at the damage done, he gave a mental command and with a giant burst of kinetic energy that buffeted the hallway, he punched a hole in the wall as he used it as a launchpad, reaching the open hangar instantly.
Mid air, he was hit by a very nauseating smell, as he reoriented himself and latched himself onto the ceiling, noticing the veritable tide of wizards on the other end, advancing towards the small doors that would take them deeper into the base.
His eyes narrowed as he saw vampires, Giants, even Werewolves, mixed in with the wizards, and yet, they were all fighting together, coordinating clumsily as they attacked the Wakandan forces, a far cry from what happened when Wizards and Magical Creatures fought together, especially ones who were infamous for having very little restraint.
He noted the dead bodies on the ground, both from the wizards and Wakandans, easily identifiable because of their respective uniforms.
Wait. Uniforms?
He took a closer look at the clothing worn by the wizards with the red glowing eyes and recoiled in horror as he recognised them.
They were students!
The wizards were wearing official uniforms of the Uagadou School here, the largest wizarding school on the planet. The golden armbands, the pink robes for the witches, clinched it for him.
Now he realised why the Wakandans were not outright obliterating this place. They probably had their own students in the middle of it, not to mention how much of an international disaster it would be to have so many magical students just die in one fell swoop.
Advanced magical civilization or not, Wakanda would have to answer for a lot if that happened. Magical kids were a treasure, for every single school out there and for so many of them to die in a single day would be the largest tragedy since World War II.
His mind frantically moved to create a plan to stop the wizards, since it was quite clear that they were being mind controlled to do this. Everyone, even the vampires who were supposedly naturally resistant to the Mind Arts, sported the same glazed look with the glowing red eyes as they attacked in unison, not even caring or flinching when they were attacked by forces that were regularly cracking their magical shields.
The Wakandans were clearly pulling their punches here.
He could not coordinate with the Wakandans since they would just shoot him first and ask questions later. He would have to do this on his own, at least until the Black Panther arrived and started killing everyone en masse.
Shit, he had to stop them before the Black Panther came here. Where was T'Chaka anyway? Was he after the mastermind somewhere else? That introduced even more variables.
Taking a risk, he took out a pebble from his pocket and tossed it towards the side of the Wakandans, hoping that they would not shoot it before it did its job, as he looked at the wave of incoming wizards, trying to identify any outlier. Not finding any, he palmed the forcefield sphere in his jacket.
It would not be enough to cover the entire hallway at its strongest settings. He would have to lower the strength for it to cover everything, but even then, it should hold for a couple minutes at the very least.
In the meantime, the pebble had dropped in front of the Wakandan forces and thankfully, they had not shot it yet, which meant they thought it was just some piece of rubble. He also noted the bracelets that Wakandan wizards wore, which glowed purple whenever they cast a spell, which meant it was their version of a wand.
"Wakandans!" He whispered from his position, moving a bit ahead to see the tide of wizards from the top, but did not find anything. The voice was amplified and transmitted through the pebble.
"Where is the Black Panther? Who is controlling the students here? I am here to help!" With that, he dropped the sphere and jumped back, letting it do its job as mid flight, it split into four pieces and created a curtain of glowing white and blue, cutting off the wizards' spellfire, which was very dark magic and very strong as well, judging by the holes in the ground, which was presumably made of very sturdy material.
After that, he made himself visible and dropped from the sky, floating in front of over a dozen angry, scared, and now confused Wakandans who stared at the robed man in the sky.
Eventually, one of them broke rank and spoke in surprisingly good English, "Whoever you are, get out of here. You are invading Wakandan soil. In the name of the King–"
He shook his head, as whatever little hope he had from them died an ugly death as they began threatening him, but not shooting him as even they, in their xenophobic isolationist minds, knew that he was the one responsible for the giant shield keeping the wizards at bay.
Even so, he winced as he felt cracks forming on the outer layers of the shield. Due to it being at a lower strength setting, it only had three layers, as opposed to the standard 7, which was also a magically significant number, resulting in much stronger shields.
It was far from his defensive magnum opus, Rho Aias, but that particular item was neither portable, nor flexible. The less said about its power requirements, the better.
He had to do this by himself, it would seem. There was not even a single jet here, nor were they using the multitude of weapons present everywhere nearby for a lethal shot.
Probably orders from their King to reduce casualties.
What was even their objective? He tried to find a way to differentiate between the wizards but all of them looked mind controlled to him. He could see the magic affecting them, see the threads woven through each and every one of them, some thicker, some thinner, but the origin of all that was somewhere in the middle of the wizards themselves.
Some sort of relic, then.
"It's you!" He looked back, ready to fight if need be, when one of the Wakandans shouted, "You're the Giant Killer, from Britain! What are you doing here?"
Hmm. It would seem he was more famous than expected.
"Like I said, I am here to help but aside from that," He gestured at the shield, "is there any way we can stop them? They are clearly being controlled by someone. Do you have any leads as to where?"
The soldiers exchanged conflicted looks before someone tried to step forward, shrugging off and even pushing one of the soldiers to speak up, "We have no idea. All contacts with the higher ups have ceased. We only received orders to reduce casualties as much as we can, on both sides. There are wards everywhere. No form of teleportation works and—"
It was only due to the High Magical Talent perk he got from ROB that let him sense the attack before it hit him, but even then, he had to instantly shed his clothing, as the magical attack, a curse, touched his forcefield, spreading quickly.
He watched, wide eyed, as his enchanted clothing, built to survive a hit from realistically anything disintegrated before it even had a chance to hit the ground.
"F*ck!" He cursed as he instantly dropped down, only managing to slow himself using his own magic, being used as a rather crude telekinetic cloud. Quickly, he thrust his hand into the rubble around him, frantically analysing its magical strength before enchanting it to form a crude mask and the rest to be used as explosives.
Lots and lots of explosives.
Not having his best enchanted equipment on him made him feel more than naked, as he frantically looked around, his hands busy as they created a small artillery for him. His shield was gone, that was expected but what he did not expect was a hole in the middle of that wave of wizards, with dozens of wizards probably gone instantly.
He went rigid as he noted the attack came from one of the walls, from a canon of all things that was currently melting. Wakanda could use these attacks without a wizard?
The Wakandans were clearly shocked as well, as they fell back, deeper into the tunnel, as he looked at the wizards, crying, screaming, and fainting as the vampires and werewolves began moving.
His eyes narrowed as he took a piece of the metal, put down a hasty Shaped Durability on it before moving, cutting through two werewolves before they began covering on him, ignoring the sudden feast of weak, vulnerable wizards in front of them.
He did not know what overtook him but he wanted to forget that absolutely overwhelming feeling of weakness he felt a few moments ago, and killing Vampires was absolutely the first thing that came to mind.
As he cut through them, some of them realised they could not win and began retreating. One Vampire managed to teleport even, prompting the Wakandands behind him to do so as well, each disappearing in a flash of purple, leaving him alone, to deal with about 50 surviving students, all traumatised and helpless.
No matter how much he wanted to help them, he couldn't. Now that he was thinking somewhat clearly, he realised he had to get out of here.
His overconfident ass had come here, expecting a slightly stronger Wakanda, armed with magic but mostly reliant on tech, and in exchange, had most of his equipment disintegrated in a single attack, and was now a sitting duck.
His identity was probably gone, not that he had ever registered himself, but it might make attending Hogwarts next year a bit more complicated.
Desperately hoping that the first thing he would not see after coming out was a Wakandan fleet, he began running into the tunnel, and then desperately flew through the tunnel. Once out, he did not even look back as he began running away from the mountains of Wakanda and towards the sea.
He had to get away from here.
What was he thinking? A quick visit before coming back to see the Daily Prophet and what the Ministry of Magic had to say about him?
He could have died here. Today was the closest he had come to death.
Not that ritual, not his mind being taken over by the sight of an injured Baby Unicorn, and not doing his experiments. No, he had almost died today because he wanted to stick his nose where it didn't belong and got his ass handed to him for that.
He was still running around buck naked, picking up stuff to create rudimentary stealth, before he could make his way back home. He didn't even have anything to call for help, and even so, Master Corven was pretty clear that he would have to make his own way back home.
He was f*cked.
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