Published at 27th of May 2024 12:15 am

Chapter 261: Tempest Incarnate

This chapter is updated by JustRead.pl

I would like to thank my beta, Awdyr, for his help in this chapter.

If you want to support me, check out my patréon at patréon dotcom /athassprkr

I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions of them so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.

7 November 1994, Beauxbatons, France

It was corruption at its finest, but Harry had dealt with worse. At least that supported his theory about the task… Despite all of this, the last Potter could feel himself grinning in excitement, "At least this isn't going to be boring."

Both Harry and the beast stared at each other as if they were communicating. Well, the beast looked like it was waiting for a command to attack, and Harry wasn't going to waste his precious preparation time.

Now, planning. He decided to observe his opponent, this time without the surprise factor… Hmm, reptilian skin, oddly reminiscent of dragons. That meant that the beast had a high likelihood of magical resistance. However, the way it was hunched while standing on two legs… Vaguely humanoid… Adding the fact that it seemed to have fins on its back… Four eyes, as well, which wasn't really common in magical creatures, or mammals, really.

That's not even mentioning the magic. Large-scale water magic wasn't something that could be easily mastered and was something that could definitely not be harnessed easily by magical creatures that don't live under the sea. Merpeople did have a very high affinity for aqua kinesis, and so did water dragons….

Oh, shit…

A Chimera then… That was very unfortunate. Harry had never expected the ICW to allow that kind of selective breeding of magical creatures, and that's not to mention the definite use of Alchemy to make this happen.

When people spoke of Chimeras, they expected to see the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and the tail of a dragon. Unfortunately, that wasn't really true. Chimera is what every single magical combination of two beasts was called until they were officially named by the ministry. The lion-goat-dragon hybrid was simply the first one to be made successfully.

Whoever made the creature in front of Harry was a master in Chimera creation, that was for sure. Harry could see the signs of water dragons, some kind of bipedal creature – probably a Demiguise from the creature's agility – and Graphorn for the aggression and claws. And that was just scratching the surface. Harry wouldn't have been surprised if hundreds of creatures were used in small ways. He could tell that Thunderbirds could have definitely been used considering the lightning storm that was above the forest.

Well, wasn't that a pickle… Normally, a creature like this wouldn't have been anywhere near the tournament due to its aggression. So, that meant that it had to be controlled with some kind of enchantment, to make it the weapon the ICW wanted it to be.

Messing with the control enchantment was a bad idea, since the moment the beast was free, it would probably massacre everyone in sight.

A bolt of lightning landed next to them, and the beast must have taken this as a sign to start its assault. Harry dodged once more, and hundreds of scenarios unfolded in his mind. So, yeah, the chimaera was mainly draconic in origin, so eyes were obvious targets… A strong sense of smell was probable.

Harry conjured a flash of light, followed up with four stinging hexes, each one aimed at the creature's eyes, and a small ball that exploded on the creature's snout, which created a sonic disturbance and a strong smell to mess with it further.

The creatures screamed in both pain and anger, and he took the chance to hide himself with invisibility, sound-dampening, and smell-removal spells. That should have been enough to hide him for enough time to get away.

However, even blind and deaf, the creature still leapt at him. Harry dodged once more and repeated the combination of spells. Hmm, did it somehow sense him using the rain?

Harry created a large spherical ward that stopped all rain from falling in their location. The beast roared and the rain got even stronger… Even then, the beast was coming for Harry, who conjured ice chains in front of it, stopping the creature.

He needed to defeat the creature without using his space or time magic. Those two were probably going to paint a large target on his back if their usage was too obvious… Slowly, a small idea occurred to him and he grinned at the reactions this was probably going to cause.

The last Potter was just starting to implement his plan, only for his Arcane Hearing to warn him that there was a spell coming his way. Harry dodged and animated the ice chains to fling the Chimera towards whoever did that. It was probably a petty move, but they really should have known better.

The beast righted itself in the air and landed on its feet. However, its tail took out a few people, who happened to be Durmstrang students. Harry dodged the beam of water coming his way and used a shield to redirect it at the other champions who were trying to hide from him. Harry quickly conjured a spear of ice, that he enchanted to have a strong piercing charm and act as an overpowered lightning rod, and cast it at the creature.

The chimaera tried to dodge it, but it was impaled by the spear through its back. It was a shallow wound at best, and it was already healing around the ice spear.

Harry smirked for a fraction of a second but quickly conjured an ice shield against a beam of darkness going at him. He retaliated by sending a spear of ice at his attacker, who managed to dodge, but that brought him right into the spell of the person behind him, knocking him out.

He noticed that the rain was getting stronger, and a few of the other champions were even casting shield charms to protect themselves. Harry felt an artificial wave coming at him, and he quickly redirected it around him, sending it everywhere and breaking most of the shield charms of the other champions who sought to take advantage of the situation, which washed them away.

With that done, most of the other champions had fallen. Yet, the Chimera was obviously gunning for him specifically. Well, that was the ICW's fairness for you…

The monster did not hesitate before attacking Harry once more, making him conjure a glowing rope to send himself away and land on a raised platform of Earth. Harry manipulated the roots to grow and tied them to bind the beast, only for the roots to break immediately.

Harry dodged a claw coming at him, and jumped onto the arms of the beast, running wildly until he found the spear sticking out of its back, and pushed it in further. The beast jumped onto its back, making Harry conjure another rope.

The water definitely wasn't working, and Harry heard the clouds rumble while suppressing a grin. The Chimera must have had enough and summoned a bolt of lightning at him. Harry quickly used a lightning-repelling shield which redirected the bolt onto the ice spear lodged in the creature's back.

The beast roared, but any sign of further attacks faltered when a giant rune matrix glowed underneath it, freezing it as if it was petrified. He had been carving this rune discreetly ever since the confrontation began.

Harry grinned, "You can try to move all you want, but this is a momentum negation runic schema, that I combined with a water magic negation schema. That was a tricky thing to come up with on the fly, I'll tell you that. Isolating your water magic to make it more efficient took some serious work. Don't worry, the creature is fine, but any form of movement or water magic is negated until the rune runs out, and considering that it was powered by the energy of a bolt of lightning… Well, I'll let you make the conclusions."

Of course, the world was too nice for things to wrap up so easily, since Harry had to shield against a spell by his attackers who seemed to have recovered from the wave of water he'd sent at them. Admittedly, it wasn't really the best of attacks…

Harry raised an unimpressed eyebrow, "Seriously?"

One of the boys responded with a harsh voice, with a strong accent, "Surrender now!"

He took a good look around, "I have to admit to being surprised at seeing students from both Durmstrang and Nebelheim working together. Aren't you supposed to be mortal enemies? This is, after all, a school competition."

"We will deal with them after you…"

"I did hear that someone had put a bounty on my head… Not very sportsmanlike to go after the youngest competitor, I have to say."

The crowd looked incredulously at the petrified chimaera, then at him, and Harry raised his hands in exasperation, "Come on guys, don't be like that. That could be a fluke… I'm very prone to flukes, you know."

They still didn't deign to respond, and Harry looked exasperated, "Look, how much was the bounty again? A thousand Galleons? Ten thousand Galleons? Holy shit, even more than that? That's insane for a school tournament. Don't you think that someone paying so much money wouldn't really be about competition but something more… Do you think you really know what you're being complicit to by taking me out? Or maybe it was all a hoax because let me tell you, I don't know anyone who would be happy to pay that much just to take out a competitor."

Harry kept looking at their expressions, analysing how they think, and smirking at their looks of indecision. At least around half of them looked slightly guilty. Of course, that was when some idiot spoke up, "Why does that matter? If we don't do it, then someone else will. And we already have him surrounded. I'm not going to let go of that much gold now, and if you want to, well, that's more for me."

"What about the fact that I beat this thing over here? Am I really that defenceless? Will you be able to defeat me so easily? And even if you did, who would really get the gold? Will you split it amongst yourselves? Even when you're in different schools?"

One of the attackers scoffed, "Do you seriously think we're idiots?"

"How so?"

"Do you really think you'll be able to pit us against each other? That's your brilliant plan?"

Harry snorted, "No, of course not. I knew that this wouldn't work at all. After all, I knew that you had to have made your frankly weird alliance before attacking me…. My plan is a lot more complex than that. You see if someone who really knows their runes tried to analyse my trap, they would easily realize that I didn't put in any regulation against excess energy. Normally, people would think it was a blunder of some sort since the rune could be overwhelmed if it's succumbed to too much power. They would also realize that while I did block the water magic, I did nothing to block against the subtle storm magic that the creature has. Of course, that's a fatal flaw in the design… After all, the creature could slowly manipulate the storm and summon a bolt of lightning to overwhelm the runes and free itself. Of course, the creature doesn't understand runes, so this should be completely useless."

He smirked at the dumbfounded expressions on their faces, "But bear with me, what if someone could see through the creature? What if someone outside the forest analysed the runes, found the vulnerability and then commanded the creature to exploit it?"

The clouds rumbled ominously, and Harry's smile turned feral, "Then, the unlikely happens and lightning strikes the same spot twice."

As if his words were prophetic, a bolt of lightning hit the ice spear on the back of the creature. However, instead of overwhelming the runes, it was, for some reason, divided into five lesser bolts, each one being sent towards a different ice spear, which happened to be conveniently near his opponents.

In a split second, Harry's attackers were knocked out and fell down. Harry trotted up to them and took their medallions, putting them in his pocket. He slowly walked towards the frozen Chimera, "A bit of advice. If someone leaves a glaring security flaw, then they're either idiots or it's a trap. I'd like to think I'm not an idiot. I wouldn't try to send any more bolts of lightning. You might electrocute the idiots to death…"

Harry took out his wand and pointed it at the beast. Without any distractions, he had the time to analyse the creature's songs. Slowly, he crafted a spell that would specifically counter them, one by one. It took a good minute, and the spell became a large bolt of red light that soared towards the frozen beast, Harry could tell it broke through its protections like a knife through butter and knocked out the beast.

Harry released the runic schema, and let the creature fall down, unconscious. He smiled to himself… All he had to do was get a medallion from a Beauxbatons champion and he'd be done. Oh, how he wished he could see the look on whoever controlled this creature's face. It must have been priceless.

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I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions of them so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.

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