Mounted on the dragon, Rose raised both hands and almost brought them together as if she were holding an invisible ball. Her eyes were brighter than ever, a gigantic equation began to form in her mind. An equation that involved manipulating space over large areas while jointly calculating the weight and mass of the object she wanted to send away.
Without the red worm noticing that it was being targeted, the space where the worm was began to shrink in a way that was almost visible to the naked eye. Each time the space shrank, so did the space between Rose's hands. Sweat began to trickle down her face as she tried to concentrate, feeling the massive headache ravaging her brain at the moment.
Seeing Rose's pained expression, Asterion's face turned grim, under normal conditions he could put an end to this cursed spirit by summoning one of his Cursed Spirits like the Fate Serpent Ouroboros or even the dimension-devouring Al-Meissa Mercury, but both of these summons were Special Grade Cursed Spirits that expended insane amounts of magical energy to be summoned into the real world.
Honestly, if he wanted to, he could summon one of the two, it wouldn't be as strong as it normally was, but it was enough to fight a Special Grade Cursed Spirit. But Asterion didn't.
He looked at Rose struggling and decided not to summon Al-Meissa Mercury. Don't misunderstand, he didn't want to see Rose get hurt, but as he had promised earlier, he had to protect Rose, who, once she had finished teleporting the Special Grade Cursed Spirit, would take a few minutes to regenerate her magical energy reserves. A period that would be no different from that of a Muggle without magical energy.
Suddenly, Rose let out a pained groan and accidentally, her hands touched, closing the ball with her hands!
As the space followed the movement of Rose's hands, it obviously moved when she closed her hands, but this time, it wasn't gentle and invisible at all, the space seemed to turn into two gigantic invisible walls, trapping the worm-like Cursed Spirit.
Naturally, sensing that it was trapped, the Special Grade Cursed Spirit did what any being would do when it found itself trapped and immobilized: it began to struggle violently in an attempt to break free. And the more it struggled, the whole city seemed to shake under the creature's enormous weight. A crimson light ran through its body extremely quickly!
The next second, a flash appeared in the center of the city, like a second sun shining brightly! After the flash came the deafening sound that seemed to herald the end of the world and along with the sound, a gigantic wave of heat swept over everything around.
Asterion and Rose, who had already sensed the imminent danger, didn't care about anything else and retreated with both dragons.
However, as the dragons weren't as fast as the riders themselves, the distance of the retreat wasn't far enough, nor was the height, causing the heat wave to hit Asterion and Rose full on.
Rose quickly covered Oberon with her Limitless and protected the dragon in time, but Asterion let himself be hit as he made his own armor cover the entire dragon instead of himself.
At the same moment, Asterion felt his flesh burning and his blood evaporating as an extremely white flash blurred his vision.
A second later, the heat wave passed them by as everything returned to normal.
Rose looked at Asterion and couldn't help but open her eyes in utter horror and disbelief. It was no wonder she had such a look on her face.
Asterion's condition was grave to say the least, a large part of his body was covered in burns of the highest degree, his flesh was blackened and dried blood covered almost his entire body, he remained upright on the dragon, the cell had already turned into nothing at this point.
Breathing heavily, Asterion looked down at his body, but what he saw was only darkness, at that moment, he was completely blind. It was a feeling he perhaps never thought he would have in his life, the complete deprivation of one of his senses - sight.
Before Asterion could do anything, he felt himself being hugged, although he was extremely sore from the act of being hugged, it brought some clarity to his mind.
"Are you all right, Asty?" He heard Rose's voice full of concern tinged with an overwhelming guilt in her tone. A guilt that Asterion didn't understand, she had already said that it couldn't work and they had both agreed to take the risk.
Not answering Rose, Asterion muttered in an extremely weak voice as he still stood erect on the dragon's neck.
"Baskerville."
Under Rose's shocked eyes, all the skin on Asterion's body began to recover at a speed to the naked eye, second later, Asterion fully intact with no shirt and almost no pants appeared in front of her!
Opening his eyes, Asterion looked at his hands and seeing the clear, clean image again, he breathed a sigh of relief, although he knew he could regenerate thanks to the Baskerville, he still felt a little apprehensive in the face of blindness.
Asterion grabbed a couple of changes of clothes from the Baskerville space and got dressed under Rose's shocked and curious eyes. Somewhat understandably, she had just seen him almost die. At the same time, he himself couldn't help but notice how fragile humans are. Even though he was one of the strongest, in the face of a magical attack, his flesh was completely insignificant.
This feeling of helplessness for a strong man like him equally unnerving, a thought appeared in his mind.
"Should I follow that insane plan? No. I don't want to be Leto II." Asterion thought of something, but dismissed the thought the instant it appeared.
[Note: If you understand the reference and have read the Dune books, no spoilers.]
Turning to look at Rose, who was on Ancalagon still showing a guilty expression, he simply jabbed her in the forehead, making the white-haired girl hold her own forehead and show a pained expression.
"Stop blaming yourself for something normal, we knew it could go wrong, we bear the consequences of our actions, Rose." Asterion ignored the dissatisfied look coming from the girl and spoke in a calm tone.
Rose rolled her eyes and muttered unsatisfactorily to herself. "It hurt a lot, and I was only worried about you."
Ignoring an upset Rose, Asterion's eyes focused back on the Desert City, his eyes fixed on the huge Special Grade Cursed Spirit in the shape of a worm. A cold look passed through Asterion's eyes, it was the second being that had caused him to suffer such a high degree of injury in his life, the first being Salazar Slytherin.
Honestly, Asterion no longer cared if the entire city was destroyed, he would kill that damn worm.
"Rose, focus on recovering your magical energy, I'm going to exorcise that Special Grade Cursed Spirit." Making his armor return to his body, Asterion didn't look at Rose and spoke in a calm voice.
Without waiting for her reply, he flew without Ancalagon towards the city while the red cloak on his shoulders fluttered in the wind.
"You always like to have all the fun." Rose gave a disgruntled pout at Asterion's words, but didn't move and focused on recovering her magical energy. Although it wasn't empty, it was dangerously close.
"Now that I think about it, it'll probably be the first Live Exorcism of a Special Grade Spirit?" A smile appeared on Rose's lips at the thought of this, even if she wasn't the shrewdest politician in the world, she could see the benefit of something like this.
She could imagine that the status of a Special Grade Wizard will be even more dazzling in the wizarding world after this exorcism, the reason for Rose assuming something like this was simple, the population will know that all Special Grade Wizards fight against these extremely powerful and destructive aberrations, which could destroy a city so easily...
It may not sound like much, but don't forget that the witch population has rarely seen a Special Grade Wizard or even once seen a Special Grade Cursed Spirit fighting in person. Special Grade in the eyes of most people in the world was a distant scenario that they never had the chance to observe, now, they could get a taste of what it was like.
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