"This is…"
Staring up at the black silhouette floating in midair, surrounded at the center as if held up like stars by a crowd of black wizards, Scrimgeour muttered to himself.
The muscles on his face were twitching without him noticing, and even his hands, which almost never shook, were trembling.
All of this came from that silhouette.
Scrimgeour was a veteran.
He had once followed behind old predecessors like Mad-Eye Moody, bravely fighting against the Death Eaters.
So he had seen Voldemort himself.
He had even swung his wand and personally launched an attack at Voldemort.
But that attack did not end well, and it directly caused him to become a permanent cripple.
Yet because of that, his impression of Voldemort was incredibly deep.
Especially that terrifying and overwhelming aura the man radiated.
Scrimgeour didn't understand what that aura meant at first.
Later, as he lived through more and more battles and saw more and more of his comrades, those he lived with day and night, die or be injured, he suddenly realized, that aura was called death and despair.
For a very long time, that aura hovered in his dreams, waking him up in the middle of the night countless times.
It wasn't until later, when news spread that Voldemort had died at Harry Potter's hands and the Death Eaters had been completely wiped out, that things finally improved.
After all, the source of the nightmare was dead.
But now, that familiar aura had appeared again.
And its source was that shadow right in front of him.
Years of living comfortably in high office had made Scrimgeour think he had overcome his inner demons, but at this moment he finally understood he was still that same fragile little Auror from back then.
Under the pressure of that aura, his body was trembling, and the old wound on his leg, long healed, had even begun to faintly ache again.
"This is impossible. You've been dead for fifteen years! How can you come back?!"
Scrimgeour roared hysterically.
Even now he couldn't accept the truth that Voldemort had truly returned.
Nor did he want to accept that the Death Eaters he led had killed their way to him this quickly.
Because if all this was true, it meant the squads of Aurors and Hit Wizards he had left behind in the Gringotts main hall had already been completely wiped out.
But the Voldemort hovering above them proved his identity through action.
A huge mass of Fiendfyre was flung downward with a sweep of Voldemort's arm.
This Fiendfyre was completely different from any Fiendfyre Link had ever seen; its overall color was a black-red shade similar to dirty blood, and it carried that unique aura of death belonging only to Voldemort.
What was even more terrifying was that this Fiendfyre didn't expand by freely devouring stray energy around it like usual. Instead, it was fully powered by Voldemort himself.
Even under those conditions, it still showed shocking expansion efficiency.
Just three seconds after it appeared, it swelled into a giant serpent over ten meters thick.
BOOM!
The black-red Fiendfyre serpent roared past Scrimgeour's side. Three Aurors who had instinctively gathered at his flank to protect their commander were instantly burned to ash, not even leaving behind a scream.
And with the appearance of this black-red Fiendfyre serpent, the Death Eaters around Voldemort surged forward, laughing madly as if they had received a signal.
In an instant, a flood of Killing Curses began to rain down. The ominous green light even merged into a sheet within the dark cavern.
This sight drained all color from Scrimgeour's face, and his last sliver of hope was completely destroyed.
———
At the same time, on the Hunter defensive line at the bottom of the cavern, Link's expression was also extremely grave.
The goblet, as a Horcrux, was unquestionably important to Voldemort.
So as soon as Link learned that Barty Crouch Jr. had released the Dark Mike, he knew Voldemort was definitely coming in person.
Because of that, when Voldemort truly appeared before him leading his Death Eaters, he didn't collapse like Scrimgeour.
But that didn't mean he wasn't under enormous pressure.
He turned to an elderly Old Saint beside him and said, "How's the work going on breaking the Anti-Apparition Jinx?"
"Even though more than half our people are gone, our progress has actually sped up," the old Saint said while continuing to cast spells. "We've broken almost 90% now. At most five more minutes and we'll be done."
Hearing that, Link nodded. He didn't assign more helpers to them. Instead, he shouted, "Stop attacking the Aurors! Send them a signal, redirect all firepower toward the Death Eaters!"
After he said that, Link ignored how the Hunters around him suddenly became even busier because of his order. His body lifted into the air using the Flight Charm, and with a sharp twist of his wrist, a torrent of curse-power poured out, forming a pale-gray magic layer above the Aurors' heads.
The next second, a dense barrage of Killing Curses arrived almost instantly.
But against this curse-magic barrier, whose energy level far exceeded normal Killing Curses, the only effect they had was dispersing part of Link's curse-power and causing faint ripples to spread across the shield.
Strictly speaking, the barrier wasn't large enough to cover all the Aurors, but it perfectly covered the Hunters' defensive line, blocking all the Killing Curses that would have fallen on the Hunters, Emily, and the others.
Not only that, while he maintained the shield, Link's other hand didn't stay idle.
A mass of dark-blue viscous liquid instantly bloomed from the tip of his ebony wand. Under Link's water-control ability, it rapidly spread outward, wrapping around the Fiendfyre serpent devouring life on the Auror side.
Ssss!
The moment water touched fire, a massive plume of steam erupted.
At the same time, the collision of the two forces allowed Link to understand the structure of this Fiendfyre serpent in greater depth.
Voldemort's Fiendfyre wasn't like Link's, which strengthened itself by constantly refining and raising the energy level of curse-power. Instead, it was built on an already extremely high energy base and blended with a strange, indescribable force full of Voldemort's extreme personal imprint.
This power was fused into almost all of Voldemort's attacks.
The most representative example was those terrifying blood-lightning bolts.
It was hard to say whose path of Fiendfyre was "correct," but Link had to admit, the Fiendfyre Voldemort had tinkered into existence was very strong.
The water sphere he created kept deforming as the Fiendfyre serpent struggled violently. Several times it even came close to bursting.
Thankfully, they were deep underground, very close to a groundwater source.
By continuously drawing on underground water, Link managed to forcefully trap this special Fiendfyre serpent and slowly wear it down to death.
This sudden turn finally snapped Scrimgeour out of the shock of Voldemort's appearance.
What rose in his heart next was endless fury.
He was furious because after Voldemort and the Death Eaters' attack, the Auror forces he brought had been devastated again.
Their numbers weren't even a third of what they had been at the start.
If he included the Aurors and Hit Wizards back in the Gringotts hall who were probably already wiped out, then right now, aside from the new recruits, the Ministry's active-duty Auror and Hit Wizard forces had been almost completely destroyed.
He was shocked because the mysterious robbers who had just been fighting them to the death had suddenly stopped attacking them and were now attacking Voldemort and the Death Eaters instead.
Especially that leader who was clearly using Polyjuice Potion to hide his face.
Whether it was the strange shield blocking a whole swath of Killing Curses, or the water prison trapping the black-red Fiendfyre, both displayed terrifying strength.
At least Scrimgeour knew he wasn't their equal.
Beep!
A sharp buzzing sound rang by Scrimgeour's ear.
He turned blankly and happened to see a faint yellow light explode, forming a crooked rhombus pattern in the air.
Scrimgeour's expression grew even stranger.
Because that pattern was clearly an Auror tactical code meaning, focus firepower.
Combining this with the current situation, Scrimgeour immediately understood the other side's true intent.
If it were someone else, they would probably hesitate, after all, the two groups were enemies just moments ago.
But Scrimgeour was different.
He instantly shot back the same coded signal downward, then commanded the remaining Aurors to move closer toward the robbers' position below while launching a strained counterattack upward at the Death Eaters.
If you think carefully, it made sense.
This was pretty much the optimal solution right now.
The Aurors were caught between the robbers and the Death Eaters.
If the robbers and Death Eaters started exchanging all-out bombardments with no restraint, the Aurors would be the first faction wiped out.
But Scrimgeour wasn't foolish enough to fully trust the robbers.
After dropping down and clearing their line of fire, the Aurors didn't merge directly with the robbers. Instead, they formed up about fifty meters away, providing support fire.
By this time, the black-red Fiendfyre serpent had been completely shredded inside the water prison.
Link looked down at both the now-organized Hunter formation and the Auror formation, then dispelled the curse-power barrier above everyone's heads.
This kind of large-scale shield drained an insane amount of magic, Link didn't want to sustain it any longer than necessary.
And the moment the barrier vanished, an even denser curtain of sickly green Killing Curses came pouring down, the Death Eaters attacked even more eagerly now that the "turtle shell" was gone.
But the Hunters and Aurors below, who had gained a brief moment to breathe thanks to Link, were no longer as passive as before.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM…
The long-silent dragon-slayer ballistas roared again and again.
The Hunters raised their wands high, pouring out magic without pause.
Even Emily, Newland, and Sigefin joined the battle, the energy level of their attacks wasn't any weaker than that of ordinary Hunters or Old Saints.
In the cavern, two completely different tides of spells collided violently.
As the spells cancelled each other out, enormous blasts erupted again and again, forming a powerful magic layer in midair, somewhat similar to the curse-power barrier Link had created earlier.
Spells from both sides were often destroyed by the explosions within this magic layer before reaching the enemy lines, turning into pure magic and becoming part of the layer itself.
Of course, there were still occasional spells that made it through.
But they were few, and even if they reached the opposite formation, most were easily blocked by the vigilant Hunters or Death Eaters.
Only the unluckiest fools got hit by those "ricochets."
Thus, an extremely bizarre stalemate unfolded on the battlefield.
Scrimgeour watched this scene with a complicated mood.
No one on the field understood better than him, this stalemate was no coincidence, it was a tactic the Auror forces had developed during the Second Wizarding War.
To actually execute it required not just high magical power, but extremely tight team coordination.
After the Second Wizarding War ended and large numbers of old Auror veterans were retired, this tactic had practically vanished, not because people forgot it, but because the new post-war Aurors simply weren't capable of performing it.
But what was he seeing now?
A group of unknown robbers had just pulled it off.
And the Aurors beside him had unknowingly been guided into contributing to this formation.
Aurors and robbers were cooperating seamlessly, almost intimately?
This was the biggest joke in the world.
But despite the absurdity, with Scrimgeour's many years of combat experience, he still identified the fundamental reason behind this situation, this group of robbers surpassed the current Aurors by several levels in both individual skill and coordinated teamwork.
Not only that, they were extremely familiar with Auror combat methods.
The light in Scrimgeour's eyes dimmed even further.
Now he understood why his Aurors had been beaten so badly earlier even with full combat permission granted.
What he couldn't accept was that the once-glorious Aurors had grown this weak.
Compared to the Aurors wearing the Ministry badge on their chests, these robbers in strange combat suits seemed more like the true successors of traditional Aurors.
Letting out a deep sigh, Scrimgeour still raised his wand and joined the battle.
It wasn't the time to dwell on emotions. Right now, getting through this crisis alongside the robbers and preserving the Auror forces' last remaining "bloodline" was the most important thing.
At the same time, high above the battlefield, Link finally clashed head-on with the diving Voldemort.