0849 The Attack
"Interesting—"
Bryan said indifferently as he observed the smoldering remains of his once-magnificent Fiendfyre serpent.
"To be able to extinguish Fiendfyre," He continued, tilting his head slightly as his gaze swept over the vampires, "is this blood magic unique to your lineage? It's quite fascinating."
"Heh, it seems that the great Bryan Watson's magic isn't quite as invincible as the legends claim, is it?"
The serpent's annihilation gave the remaining vampires tremendous encouragement and this taunting voice belonged to a figure who emerged from the shadows among a group of vampires newly flooding into the café.
The female vampire moved with a grace, her each step appeared coquettish and hypnotic.
Bryan chuckled softly. He didn't rush to continue attacking, but instead swept his gaze across the vampires filling the hall, and said thoughtfully,
"You've certainly gone to great lengths, mobilizing what appears to be an entire coven, orchestrating this ambush, all just to silence Haruto Lee and myself." He paused slightly then continued, "Such desperation means there's something far more significant hidden behind your collection of magical creatures than simple blood consumption, doesn't it?"
The female vampire's smile widened, revealing fangs that gleamed like daggers. "Oh, how I absolutely adore conversing with wizards of your ability," She purred, her each word dripping with honeyed venom. "Such intelligence, such raw power, it's hissss…. intoxicating."
She glided forward like a cat stalking its prey, her movements causing the tattered remains of her black dress to flutter around her like dark wings. The other vampires instinctively parted, creating a clear path.
As she placed herself at the forefront of her group, the female vampire's performance became even more theatrical.
Her blood-red lips curved into a smile which appeared sinister and gave a flirtatious glance. She slowly lifted one hand to her mouth and blew a kiss toward Bryan.
"If you were willing to embrace the gift of our eternal existence," She whispered, her voice taking on a hypnotic tone, "then all of my deepest, darkest secrets could become yours to command."
She bit down on her lower lip with just enough pressure to draw a single drop of crimson blood, the sight of which caused several of the younger vampires behind her to shift restlessly, their eyes flashing with hunger.
Her eyes had become filled with seductive suggestion after saying those words.
"Shameless, vile creature of darkness!"
Amelia's shoulders trembled with rage as she spoke through gritted teeth. Her anger intensified when she noticed that Haruto Lee, who had caused all this trouble, was staring at the female vampire in a trance, his eyes were growing more filled with despicable desire by the moment.
"How utterly ridiculous."
Bryan shook his head calmly. Even the natural charm carried by a pure veela couldn't shake a powerful wizard's mind protected by Occulumency, let alone the half-baked enchantment magic of a vampire.
"I'm not particularly interested in what you're doing with the blood of those magical creatures. I got involved in this matter to help Newt. Since you've appeared before me of your own accord, go explain yourselves to Newt and the MACUSA—"
Bryan's expression turned cold as he extended his hand toward Amelia.
Amelia blinked in confusion for a moment, her mind was still whirling from the chaos surrounding them, before she understood what he meant. Her hands fumbled slightly as she reached into her robes, pulled out her wand and placed it in Bryan's outstretched palm.
The loss of his wand was the real reason this group of vampires dared to appear here. When Bryan grasped the Auror's wand from the MACUSA, all the vampires present in the café felt an instinctive urge to retreat.
Any vampire who had read the reports of Bryan Watson's duel with Cliodna wouldn't believe that human wave tactics could overwhelm Watson. After all, just two months ago, he had single-handedly decimated hundreds of skilled remnant dark wizards.
But since they had already appeared before Bryan, whether to stay or leave was no longer up to these vampires to decide.
Crack—
The sound wasn't particularly loud, but it seemed to resonate through every molecule of air in the café. Bryan made a single, seemingly effortless sweeping motion with the borrowed wand, and reality itself seemed to respond to his will.
The pressure that came upon the vampires was unlike anything they had experienced in their lives. It wasn't simply physical force though that alone was crushing enough to drive them to their knees.
Vampires who had moments before swaggered with confidence now were driven to the floor with bone-crushing force. Even their enhanced physiques, strengthened by dark blood magic that made them far superior to ordinary humans, was utterly inadequate against this overwhelming display of power.
The sounds of breaking bones filled the air. White bone fragments pierced through pale flesh with wet, tearing sounds, pressing against the café's hardwood floors and leaving growing pools of dark blood that soaked into the dust and debris.
Amelia's face was drained of all color as she witnessed the carnage unfolding in front of her. Her hand flew to her mouth in a futile attempt to stifle the wave of nausea that tried to overwhelm her.
What made the scene even more unsettling was the vampires' reaction to their catastrophic injuries. Where wizards would have been screaming in agony or unconscious from shock, these creatures simply looked wretched and degraded. Their underdeveloped nervous systems, adapted for their unnatural existence, meant they experienced physical pain as little more than some discomfort.
Bryan himself appeared completely unmoved by the carnage he had brought. He had walked through various underground markets, had witnessed horrors that would have broken somes minds, and the suffering of creatures who trafficked in death and misery stirred no sympathy in his heart. He stepped forward raising the wand once more to complete the binding of his defeated enemies.
But—
The female vampire, who had been seductive moments before and now appeared utterly degraded, glared at Bryan with venomous hatred while enduring the heavy pressure. Then her pale skin quickly turned ashen gray, her sharp fangs rapidly elongated, and her eyes became blood red.
"AHHHHHHHH!!!"
A piercing shriek echoed through the dark café. In this ear-splitting sharp cry, Amelia suddenly felt the blood in her body surging faster, with a strange sensation as if it might burst from her body.
Haruto Lee, already weakened from his earlier injuries and the magical binding that held him immobile, began to tremble violently despite his immobility. Fresh blood seeped from wounds that had barely begun to heal, staining his coat an increasingly intense crimson.
Bryan's sharp gaze immediately judged the threat. He smoothly transitioned his wand movement from a sweeping gesture to a precise thrust, preparing to render the shrieking vampire unconscious before her magic could be fatal to the others.
But just as he was about to strike, the now-hideous female vampire suddenly exploded on her own accord!
BANG!
The vampire's body didn't simply explode and die but it deconstructed itself, dissolving into component parts like that of a complex ritual rather than the result of destruction.
Under the influence of ancient and forbidden magic, her flesh and blood didn't splatter randomly but instead flowed together, forming streams of blood that glowed with a light more sinister than any flame. The blood seemed almost alive as it pooled and merged, and from within its depths, something began to emerge.
Blood-red chains seemed to emerge from the void itself, forged from the vampire's willing sacrifice of her own existence.
They shot toward Bryan with ghostly speed, moving like living serpents made of conserved malice. These weren't simple physical restraints—they thumped with the same dark magic of their creator, carrying with them the accumulated hatred and hunger.
Bryan's instant response was a magical barrier that had protected them throughout the battle. But as the blood-forged chains made contact with the inverted dome of protective energy, they didn't simply strike and rebound.
Instead, they began to coil around the barrier like parasitic vines, clinging and spreading as if trying to corrupt the magic that sustained Bryan's defense.
The moment Bryan found himself covered within the crimson bonds, the crushing pressure that had been driving the other vampires into the floor vanished completely. The supernatural weight that had been slowly grinding their bones to powder simply stopped, as if it had never been there at all.
The remaining vampires, their supernatural healing already working to mend their shattered limbs at a pace that would have been impossible for any mortal creature, began to move with new purpose.
But rather than pressing their attack against a briefly restrained enemy, they began to retreat with an orderly coordination.
"You believe you can simply leave?"
The words came from Bryan's position within the blood-red restraints.
Purple lightning flickered in his eyes, visible even through the crimson chains that bound him, and the temperature in the room dropped so suddenly that breath became visible as white vapor.
CRACK!
The sound of the blood chains shattering was like thunder breaking directly in the skies. A wave of raw power exploded out from Bryan's position, the sheer heat of which created a rolling wall of superheated air that swept through the café like the breath of a dragon.
The crimson restraints that had seemed so tough moments ago simply ceased to exist, vaporized by the overwhelming force of Bryan's power.
Where they had been, only empty air remained, shimmering with residual energy that made the space around Bryan appear to ripple like water.
His gaze swept over the retreating vampires with cold calculation. They moved with swiftness and coordination, but there was something almost mechanical about their retreat and looked too organized, too disciplined for creatures supposedly acting out of desperation.
Bryan slowly raised the wand high above his head.
A cage of golden flame appeared in the air above the fleeing vampires, massive beyond understanding and blazing with the terrible beauty of an unchained Fiendfyre. It crashed down with its bars formed from flames so intense that they seemed to burn with the light of a newborn star.
Most of the vampires found themselves trapped within the burning prison, the golden bars rising around them were like the walls of their own personal hell. Those few who couldn't dodge in time and made direct contact with the Fiendfyre didn't even have the opportunity to scream—they were simply erased from existence, reduced to less than ash and scattered to the wind as if they had never been.
A moment of wild joy flashed across Amelia's face as she witnessed what appeared to be Bryan's complete victory over their attackers. But her expression of relief transformed to horror as she observed what happened next.
The vampires trapped within the cage of golden flame, after a brief moment of what appeared to be terror at their predicament, underwent a chilling transformation.
Rather than attempting to break free or pleading for mercy, they began to move toward the burning bars with decisive determination.
Knowing that escape was impossible, they chose to embrace destruction on their own terms, throwing themselves against the Fiendfyre with the same orderly precision like their earlier retreat.
The sight of these creatures voluntarily sacrificing themselves was disturbing enough to give even Bryan pause. His brow furrowed deeply as he considered the reason behind what he was witnessing.
Even if vampires had a different concept of life than humans, they shouldn't have shown such coordinated self-sacrifice without some form of external compulsion or conditioning.
Their behavior almost showed military-level discipline, the kind of absolute obedience that could only be instilled through brutal training or supernatural control.
"Bryan..."
Amelia's called out in a daze as her mind struggled to process the orderly mass suicide she was witnessing. But Bryan's attention had already shifted beyond the burning cage, drawn by movement in the darkness that lay beyond the café's shattered windows.
Under his sharp gaze, a lone figure emerged from the shadows—another vampire, but this one moved against the flow of retreat.
Upon seeing his appearance, both Bryan and Amelia unconsciously narrowed their eyes—
This vampire with sinister eyes flew into the café, and threw in mid-air a palm-sized object made of ebony wood and silver, it was a coffin. When this coffin touched the flame cage bars, it shattered with a bang, releasing a pool of blood that glowed with shiny red light.
The blood expanded rapidly in the wind, actually extinguishing the Fiendfyre that formed the cage bars.
In an instant, it had broken through the ceiling, forming a surging river of blood above the heads of Bryan and the other two, then came crashing down like an overturned canopy!
Bryan's expression, which had remained calm throughout even the most apparent desperate moments of the battle, finally showed subtle changes.
So far, his Fiendfyre had only been suppressed once that was when he was pursuing Sirius as a criminal and accidentally had a brief confrontation with Dumbledore while trying to break into 12 Grimmauld Place.
Dumbledore had ultimately extinguished the flames he had released. But this pool of blood—
As the blood containing incomparably dark evil magic was about to fall, Bryan's expression became solemn.
He raised his wand, preparing to respond, when suddenly he felt a burning sensation at his chest. Looking down, he saw an object break free from his bag, transforming into a blur as it shot toward the surging river of blood in mid-air!
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