"So this is the method you came up with to finish me? A wizard's duel?"
Dumbledore's voice had already turned incomparably cold. The ancient and powerful wand in his hand slowly rose as well,
but it still did not point fully at Grindelwald.
"Fifty years ago, even when you still possessed that wand, you failed to defeat me. And now, not only has that wand fallen into my hands, but you yourself have spent fifty long years sitting in a tower, while during that same time I have gone on to defeat another Dark Lord whose strength was no less than yours... Or are you planning to call in a few more people to fight me together?"
"Do you have no awareness of your own condition at all, Albus?"
Seeing Dumbledore force himself to stand like this, Grindelwald could not help curling his lip.
"That phoenix that can only die in your place once is temporarily out of commission now. The magic from earlier has already consumed more than half your strength, and on top of that, you've been poisoned by Karkaroff. I brewed that poison personally. As for how effective it is, I think you are the one who knows best, aren't you?"
"I gave you the Elder Wand, but I took away your phoenix and part of your strength... That's fair. We're standing on equal ground now, Albus."
"...Very well."
At this point, Dumbledore had completely straightened his back. The weariness and weakness from before seemed as though they had never existed.
He no longer looked like a kind and amiable old man, but had become once again that overwhelmingly powerful, domineering great wizard who had personally brought an end to two generations of Dark Lords, whose influence reached across Europe and even the entire world—a figure worthy of awe. A sharp, unstoppable aura faintly surrounded him.
"Then let me see what progress you've made over these past fifty years, Gellert!"
"That's exactly what I was waiting for!"
With a thunderous shout from Grindelwald, two vast oceans of flame—one red, one blue—instantly split the entire battlefield evenly in half. Then they crashed together in the middle like towering waves, and with a deafening roar, a gigantic wall of fire dozens of meters high shot upward, temporarily cutting off the line of sight between Dumbledore and Grindelwald and nearly slicing the whole battlefield in two!
And that alone was not enough.
Very quickly, an army clad in armor slowly emerged from the red flames. They seemed utterly unafraid of the fire scorching them. Bearing swords, bows, and crossbows, they charged without hesitation into the territory of the blue flames—
It was none other than Dumbledore's most skilled art: a Transfiguration army!
Naturally, Grindelwald was not willing to fall behind. With a sweep of his wand, creatures formed entirely from blue fire began emerging one after another from those flames, and they too threw themselves into battle against Dumbledore's Transfiguration army.
At the same time, hexes and Dark Magic cast by Dumbledore and Grindelwald themselves began streaking toward one another through the air.
For a time, powerful and deadly magical attacks filled every corner of the battlefield, forming a meat grinder made of spells that mercilessly devoured the Transfiguration constructs on both sides.
And what could not be seen was even more dangerous by orders of magnitude—
Invisible exchanges of curses had already begun in the air in utter silence, and the ground beneath them, which had originally been reinforced to resist destruction, had now become a second battlefield as well.
With the power of just two old men, the sheer firepower and destruction unleashed within this area was no less than a true, full-scale wizarding war!
As for Karkaroff and Barty Crouch Jr., they had long since wisely retreated to a much greater distance and were jointly maintaining protective magic around themselves. Yet even the defense constructed by two such powerful wizards quickly began to totter under the aftershocks of Grindelwald's magic alone, forcing them to pour even more power into it.
Grindelwald is actually this strong...
While struggling to maintain the shield, Barty could not help feeling inwardly alarmed.
This strength is probably no less than the Dark Lord in his prime, is it? And this is after he lost that powerful wand and spent fifty years wasting away in a tower... Just how terrifying must he have been at the height of his power?!
Dumbledore, on the other hand, looks like he's having an extremely hard time holding out... It seems defeating him won't cost Grindelwald too much effort after all. I'd originally thought I might see whether I could snatch that powerful wand after their fight and present it to my master, but now it seems I'd better behave myself...
"How have you declined this much, Albus?!"
Within the sea of fire woven together from red and blue, Grindelwald's wild voice rang through the entire underwater chamber.
"Has only a little more than ten years of peace made your bones soft? Or is it that spending every day among children has gradually robbed you of your instinct for battle?"
No sound came from the other side of the wall of fire. But the scarlet flames clearly surged more violently, as though representing Dumbledore's final shred of refusal to submit.
But that was all.
Under the relentless pressure of the blue flames controlled by Grindelwald, the red flames—which had once been evenly matched—had already been weakened more and more. Now they could only barely hold onto a small corner, and even that territory was continuing to shrink.
It seemed that the earlier exhaustion and poisoning had produced an astonishing effect—
Dumbledore, who fifty years ago had managed to defeat Grindelwald even while Grindelwald held the Elder Wand, had now been suppressed to this extent!
...
Three thousand feet away from the battlefield of the two men, by the lakeshore at Durmstrang.
The screen made of mist still continued to display everything taking place in that underwater chamber, utterly indifferent to the kind of shock those images were inflicting upon the people on shore.
On the screen, red and blue flames had long since filled the entire scene. Within them were countless soldiers and monsters slaughtering each other. In the air, all manner of spells that no one had ever seen before crisscrossed one another, accurately blasting apart the other side's Transfiguration constructs with ease before continuing forward to strike directly at the enemy leader—only to be defused by various strange and powerful methods.
From time to time, all sorts of bizarre magic also erupted from the ground, but every one of them was swiftly reduced to nothing beneath the flames.
If not for the fact that the blue flames were gradually pressing further and further into the space occupied by the red flames as time passed, the students' eyes would not even have been able to tell who held the upper hand.
Even quite a few professors were the same.
Dumbledore is about to lose.
Among the crowd watching the battle, Baron's left hand had already quietly clenched.
In truth, after seeing all of this actually happen right before his eyes, he was less nervous than he had been at the start. Dumbledore's impending defeat had long since been part of the plan that had been explained to him.
So at this point, he only needed to focus on doing one thing...
"The Headmaster can't hold on much longer!"
He suddenly pointed at the screen and cried out anxiously, startling the classmates around him. Then he pulled out that mysterious key and drove it into the ground.
"We can't help by staying here, and once they're finished, they'll probably come after us next... I have an alchemical device for escaping disaster. Come with me!"
As he spoke, he twisted the key hard.
At once, an exquisite doorway opened in the ground.
And on the other side of that door was none other than the first-floor hall of Leach University—a place Avada had once set foot in.
(End of Chapter)