The green light of the Killing Curse poured directly onto the giant serpentine body.
However, the Basilisk merely paused for a moment. A few breaths later, having shaken off the impact, the beast was absolutely enraged. It let out a deafening, furious hiss and whipped its massive head around to attack Damian.
Perhaps Damian's proficiency and malicious intent behind the Killing Curse simply weren't strong enough yet. Or perhaps the thousand-year-old Basilisk possessed a naturally absurd level of magic resistance. Whatever the reason, the unforgivable curse had failed to cause any significant damage.
Swoosh.
Nox continued to violently flick his tail. More and more fur balls detached and transformed into identical Kneazle clones. With their eyes squeezed firmly shut, the new clones charged fearlessly toward the Basilisk.
The earlier clones had already scrambled up the surrounding stone pillars and the colossal statue of Salazar Slytherin. Through his mental link, Nox monitored every single movement the giant snake made, feeding the visual information directly to Damian.
"Run, Damian! The big snake is charging right at you, meow!"
Damian quickly slashed his wand downward, casting a powerful, modified Hover Charm on his own cloak and shoes. With a sharp push off his toes, his body was lifted into a weightless, gliding leap.
This was a clever little trick he had developed himself. For a long time, Damian had experimented with ways to achieve true unassisted magical flight. While he hadn't fully cracked it yet, this specialized application of the Hover Charm allowed him to leap incredible distances and glide through the air for short bursts.
Keeping his eyes shut tight, Damian relied entirely on his magical perception to determine his direction. He launched himself through the air, gliding gracefully toward a stone pillar where one of Nox's clones was stationed.
Seeing its prey take flight, the Basilisk abruptly changed direction and crashed violently toward the stone pillar.
Along the way, its massive body slammed into several of the Kneazle clones that were rushing at it. However, the clones didn't disappear upon impact. Instead, each time they were violently struck, they split into two identical copies.
This was the terrifying characteristic of Nox's Kneazle bloodline: as long as his core magic wasn't exhausted, his physical clones would simply continue to multiply when attacked.
After landing softly on top of the tall stone pillar, Damian blindly slashed his wand through the air again, firing a rapid succession of spells toward the Basilisk's location.
Whoosh! Whoosh!
A sharp whistling sound tore through the chamber as several transparent, arc-shaped Wind Blades sliced through the air, cutting deep bloody gashes into the Basilisk's thick scales.
"The wounds aren't deep enough! It only broke the outer skin, meow!" Nox reported instantly, relaying the battle results through the mental images transmitted by his clones.
The Basilisk reached the base of Damian's pillar. Twisting its impossibly thick serpentine body, it began to rapidly slither up the carved stone, its massive jaws snapping upward toward Damian's position.
Damian immediately activated the Hover Charm on his clothes again, leaping off the edge and gliding through the dark air toward another pillar diagonally across the room.
The Basilisk let out a frustrated hiss, turning its heavy head to track him before launching its body toward the new pillar.
After a terrifying game of cat-and-mouse that went back and forth several times, the Basilisk's impossibly long body had become tangled and coiled around several of the towering stone pillars.
By this time, there were hundreds of Nox clones swarming the chamber floor.
"Nox," Damian called out calmly. "Use the swarm to buy me some time."
Nox instantly directed the hundreds of Kneazle clones to leap aggressively at the Basilisk's face, specifically targeting its deadly yellow eyes.
Because the giant serpent's body was tightly woven between the stone pillars, it had lost its terrifying agility. Faced with the relentless, scratching harassment of the clones, the Basilisk grew completely unhinged.
With a sudden, violent flex of its muscles, it crushed the ancient stone pillars it was coiled around. Massive chunks of heavy stone rained down, burying sections of the Basilisk under the rubble.
Taking advantage of the beast being temporarily pinned, Damian quickly reached into his Undetectable Extension Pouch. He pulled out dozens of heavy, solid steel spheres, tossing them onto the chamber floor. These were custom items Damian had previously commissioned Muggle metalworkers to forge specifically for him.
He intended to use these dense steel balls as the physical medium for his Transfiguration. Transfiguration was one of the magical arts Damian truly specialized in, and he had spent countless hours theorizing devastating combat applications for it.
Damian aimed his wand at the scattered steel spheres. With a complex flick, the heavy balls snapped together magnetically, linking one after another.
The sphere at the front rapidly warped and expanded into a jagged, metallic snake head, while the sphere at the very tail stretched out into a razor-sharp, double-edged blade.
Giant Steel Serpent—Transfiguration complete.
As the Basilisk furiously dug itself out from the pile of rubble, Damian commanded his metallic creation. The massive Giant Steel Snake launched itself forward with devastating momentum, slamming headfirst into the Basilisk.
BOOM!
A deafening crash echoed throughout the Chamber of Secrets. The thousand-year-old Basilisk was left visibly dizzy and dazed after being struck by a solid steel construct that was arguably even heavier than it was.
The Giant Steel Snake didn't pause. It violently twisted its metallic body, tightly coiling itself around the organic serpent.
When the Basilisk finally shook off the daze, it realized it had been trapped in an iron-grip. It thrashed and struggled with terrifying physical strength, desperately trying to break free from the metallic coils.
The two colossal serpents—one flesh, one steel—writhed wildly across the chamber floor, rolling over everything in their path and violently knocking down several more stone pillars.
Seeing the chaos below, Damian cast his Hover Charm once more, gliding safely to the top of the bald head of Salazar Slytherin's statue to avoid being crushed in the crossfire.
Landing securely on the stone head, Damian channeled his magic through his wand, maintaining his connection to the Giant Steel Snake and initiating a secondary Transfiguration.
Down below, terrifying new changes occurred on the steel serpent. Countless razor-sharp metal spikes violently erupted from its metallic scales, completely lining its inner coils.
The Basilisk, which was still tightly squeezed within those coils, was instantly impaled by hundreds of long steel spikes.
HISS! The unimaginable pain forced the Basilisk to let out a deafening, agonizing roar.
Standing atop the statue, Damian raised his left hand, clutching his Black Finger-Bone. In an instant, thirty-two glowing runic script models condensed in his palm.
Six seconds later...
Zzzzt!
A blinding, brilliant light erupted from Damian's hand. The Runic Magic violently transformed into a thick, jagged bolt of raw Lightning Bolt, striking down and pouring directly onto the writhing Basilisk.
The Basilisk was already covered in deep puncture wounds. Bright, highly corrosive snake blood flowed freely, dyeing its emerald scales red. The electrical current easily bypassed the beast's natural magic resistance, surging directly into its bloodstream through the open wounds and erupting with immense, boiling heat from the inside out.
The excruciating pain caused the giant snake to thrash uncontrollably against the chamber floor.
When the blinding lightning finally faded, the distinct, somewhat nauseating aroma of roasted meat filled the damp air.
The Basilisk's colossal body lay smoking on the floor, twitching violently. However, a millennium-old XXXXX-class magical creature possessed extremely tenacious vitality. Even these horrific injuries weren't quite enough to kill it instantly; if given time, it might actually recover.
Damian had no intention of giving it that chance.
With a sharp flick of his wand, he commanded the Giant Steel Snake to strike. The razor-sharp steel blade at the construct's tail whipped forward, brutally piercing straight through the Basilisk's skull and pinning its head firmly to the stone floor.
The dying Basilisk weakly thrashed its tail in its final death throes. A few minutes later, its struggles slowed, growing weaker and weaker.
Finally, the king of serpents lay completely still.
Keeping his eyes closed, Damian extended his magical perception. The terrifying, oppressive magical fluctuation that had surrounded the beast was now completely dead and silent.
After confirming the Basilisk was truly dead, Damian cast a Freezing Charm over the carcass, instantly icing over the massive puncture wounds to prevent any further blood loss. Basilisk blood was an incredibly rare and potent potion ingredient; he couldn't afford to waste a single drop.
He carefully levitated the colossal, partially frozen carcass and managed to stuff the entire thing into his Undetectable Extension Pouch. He intended to properly harvest and process the materials only after safely returning to his original timeline.
Damian opened his eyes and looked at the devastated chamber.
"Reparo!"
He cast the Mending Charm on the shattered stone pillars scattered across the ground, but absolutely nothing happened.
He raised an eyebrow in surprise. The stone pillars down here clearly couldn't withstand sheer physical impact, yet their innate magical resistance was astonishingly high, completely rejecting his repair spell.
Curious, he levitated a few large chunks of the broken stone and stowed them in his pouch as well. He would study them when he had free time; he couldn't even identify what kind of ancient masonry this was.
Damian then spent several minutes carefully searching the rest of the Chamber of Secrets, but he found absolutely nothing else of value left behind by Salazar Slytherin or Tom Riddle.
With his prize secured, he left the main chamber and headed down the dark, damp tunnel located behind Slytherin's statue. This specific secret passage was the hidden hunting route the Basilisk used to access the grounds. It led directly out into the dense thickets of the Forbidden Forest.
The forest was eerily quiet in the dead of night. Damian didn't linger beneath the dark canopy, making his way straight back toward the towering silhouette of Hogwarts Castle.
He still needed to reach the portrait of Merlin in the Slytherin Common Room to return to his proper time.
By now, the heavy oak front doors of the castle were firmly locked for the night. To avoid alerting the caretaker, Damian didn't attempt to unlock them. Instead, he used his Hover Charm technique to silently scale the outer stone wall and slip through an open upper-floor window.
Fortunately, it was well past curfew, and the dark corridors were completely deserted.
However, just as Damian was silently making his way across the Entrance Hall toward the dungeons, a sharp voice echoed down from the marble staircase.
"What exactly are you doing wandering around so late, Black?"
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