[Inside a Small Hillock]
Grawp was chewing on an arm.
He ate very carefully, just like an ordinary person gnawing on a chicken claw, using his teeth and tongue to slowly peel the flesh away bit by bit, then swallowing it in one gulp. Throughout the process, his teeth barely touched the bone, so there was naturally no loud noise.
However, despite eating so "politely," the dull, innocent, and simple Grawp of the past was already gone. What filled his face now was cruelty and greed.
Just looking at those eyes of his, glinting with vigilance and vicious red light in the darkness, was enough to tell that he was desperately hungry.
If he could, he would not hesitate to bite the bones into pieces and swallow them as well.
The only reason he didn't was entirely to keep quiet.
This kind of survival instinct was something he had never understood before.
After all, whether in the giant tribe or after being taken away by Hagrid, Grawp had always been in a relatively weak position.
The other giants in the tribe bullied him cruelly on one hand, but on the other hand they also genuinely protected him, preventing him from being harmed by other creatures.
As for Hagrid, he had always tried to teach Grawp to become "civilized and well-mannered."
But after he broke free from the restraints and protection of the giant tribe and Hagrid, everything changed.
The volunteers' pursuit of him had lasted nearly half a month.
There was no denying that those two weeks had been extremely hard for him.
At the beginning, he could only survive by gnawing on dry tree bark and eating snow. He was often injured by the volunteers tracking him and could only endure it through sheer giant toughness.
But gradually, a change began to take place within Grawp.
The wild instincts that had once been suppressed inside him began to awaken.
Setting traps, processing prey, building nests, tracking, counter-tracking, identifying herbs…
Countless bits of knowledge flooded into his small head, as if they had always been there, merely waiting to be activated.
This transformation may have begun when he first tore open a unicorn's belly.
Or perhaps when he first experienced the sensation of being drenched in fresh blood.
But it was precisely because of this transformation that Grawp was able to survive the volunteers' relentless hunt.
And he liked it, this feeling of power, of being able to take the lives of other creatures.
In this Forbidden Forest, he was king!.
He even began to understand why the giants in the tribe had bullied him before, after all, the feeling of being able to inflict violence freely was truly exhilarating.
Crack! Crack…
Before he realized it, the arm had been completely eaten.
Grawp carefully placed the bone deep inside the cave, then dragged over a head from the entrance.
It was a centaur's head, the owner of that arm.
Grawp gazed at the head with deep emotion, his eyes filled with sorrow.
He thought of Hagrid.
That fellow giant who was even smaller than him, that companion who had treated him so kindly.
With his level of intelligence, he couldn't understand what "arrest" meant. In his eyes, Hagrid and the other small humans had simply been killed by other humans.
Such things were common in giant tribes. Humans had always been the most evil and treacherous creatures in giant legends. The reason the giant tribe had been driven into the wilderness was entirely because humans had once deceived and harmed them.
Most importantly, that persecution had never stopped.
Even now, hunters were still constantly chasing giants, forcing the giant tribes to keep migrating.
Now, this disaster had finally fallen upon Grawp himself.
Those magic-using hunters had not only killed his brother, but also intended to kill him.
But unlike before, he was now a true giant warrior.
A warrior does not fear battle.
Not only would he survive, he would take revenge.
Grawp felt this wouldn't be too difficult.
After all, he was already very strong now.
And he had already figured out where those "hunters'" lair was.
Inside that huge stone fortress outside the Forbidden Forest.
He had decided that once he grew a bit bigger and stronger, he would attack that stone fortress and make those evil, cunning humans taste the pain of losing loved ones and being hunted.
As he thought this, Grawp's expression became even more ferocious.
He stuffed the small centaur head into his mouth, crunching it into pieces and swallowing it.
Then he pushed aside the wall of branches blocking the wind and snow at the cave entrance and crawled out.
It was time to hunt.
Only by eating more food could he grow taller and stronger, this was something his mother had taught him, and he believed it without question.
———
"Sigefin, are you sure you smelled it?" In the dense forest, Newland frowned and whispered to Sigefin.
"We've been walking for almost half an hour, but I haven't even seen a shadow of a giant, let alone smelled anything!"
Sigefin stopped, straightened his bent back, and turned to Newland with a serious expression.
"Please don't doubt my sense of smell. It's a talent passed down in my family. If I say the giant is nearby, then it is definitely nearby."
"The reason we haven't found him is entirely because his concealment skills are too advanced. He didn't just erase his own tracks, he even deliberately protected the surrounding vegetation, creating the illusion that he isn't here."
"We need to be even more careful from now on. If he has concealment skills this high, then it means he's probably even stronger in other areas."
As Sigefin spoke, he rubbed his nose.
He genuinely felt that the stench around them was growing stronger and stronger.
This also made him start to feel contempt toward Newland, after all, such a strong smell and yet Newland didn't notice it at all. It was hard not to suspect that Newland's sense of smell might be underdeveloped.
The corner of Sigefin's mouth lifted slightly as he prepared to mock Newland using this topic.
But at that moment, he noticed something strange about Newland's expression.
The muscles on Newland's face were twitching slightly, and his pupils, previously constricted by the light, had widened a little.
Most importantly, Newland had raised his wand, flickering with dark light, and was pointing it straight at him.
This confused Sigefin greatly.
Even though his relationship with Newland wasn't good, one could even say they were hostile, there was no way Newland should be attacking him at a time like this.
After all, Lord Flamel was watching them from nearby.
So if Newland wasn't trying to attack him, what other possibility was there?
"Huff!"
Sigefin took a sharp breath and suddenly remembered the increasingly strong stench around them.
'Could it be…?'
Sigefin instinctively turned his head backward, only to see a massive shadow, wrapped in foul odor, smashing down toward his head.
A streak of gray light struck Sigefin even faster.
At the critical moment, it blasted his body away, slamming him hard onto the ground nearby.
At the same time, the shadow finally crashed down.
BOOM!
With a deafening roar, the solid frozen ground was smashed into a crater. Massive clods of earth flew everywhere, raining down onto nearby tree trunks with loud cracking sounds.
Sigefin's combat instincts were indeed sharp.
Even though Newland's desperate shove had left his head spinning, the instant he hit the ground he instinctively swung his wand and fired a Disarming Charm toward where he had just been standing.
And at that moment, he finally saw clearly what had attacked him.
It was a giant nearly five meters tall, holding a massive tree stump, its entire body filthy and covered in scars and bloodstains.
The crimson beam of the Disarming Charm struck the giant squarely in the chest. Yet Sigefin's furious attack, enough to knock an adult wizard unconscious, had absolutely no effect on the giant.
The creature didn't even bother glancing at the impact point. Instead, it opened its blood-smeared mouth and roared, "Hello..."
"Hello?"
Sigefin repeated the word blankly. Honestly, he couldn't understand why the giant said that, and judging by its behavior, it seemed to be using the greeting as a battle cry.
Because after shouting it, the giant charged again, lifting the tree stump.
Another gray streak shot out, blasting Sigefin away once more, barely letting him brush past the giant's attack.
"Idiot! Don't attack a giant directly with spells, its skin has extremely high magic resistance!"
Newland roared at Sigefin, then immediately pulled out Potion of the God of Battle's Roar and Mind-Stimulating Elixir and poured them into his mouth.
The moment the two completely different potions went down, they turned into two scorching currents that twisted together and surged straight into Newland's lower abdomen.
To be honest, the sensation wasn't pleasant, it was even somewhat painful.
But a faint smile appeared on Newland's face.
He could feel it.
The two potions were like sparks meant to ignite magic itself. The instant they entered his body, his magic began to boil.
At this moment, he was far stronger than usual.
"Die, you beast!"
Newland roared and fired a streak of red light.
Perhaps empowered by his newfound strength and confidence, he didn't use the cautious, indirect attack methods from before. Instead, he aimed straight at the giant's body.
A chain of explosions erupted across the giant's face.
Flesh burst apart, and dark red blood sprayed everywhere, staining a wide patch of snow.
"Roar! Hello!"
Grawp screamed in pain, clutching his face and rubbing hard until the remaining red light faded. His eyes, now completely crimson, locked onto Newland as he charged.
Seeing this, Newland showed no fear. His wand moved so fast it became a blur, firing low-cost Blasting Curses one after another at such high frequency that they nearly connected into a continuous stream.
For a moment, Grawp's body looked like it was erupting with fireworks.
Under this relentless bombardment, the giant's charge actually slowed.
At the same time, Sigefin, who had been knocked aside, finally rejoined the fight.
Two massive stone arms burst from the ground and tightly grabbed the giant's calves.
Then another stone pillar fell from above, smashing hard into Grawp's head.
"Augh!"
Grawp screamed as the tremendous force pressed his body downward. He barely managed to avoid collapsing by bracing himself with his hands.
But this was only the beginning.
Sigefin had also drunk the Potion of the God of Battle's Roar and Mind-Stimulating Elixir.
If Newland could become a magical artillery platform under the effects of the potions, then Sigefin, far superior in Transfiguration, was no exception.
"Stay down!"
Sigefin roared, plunging his wand into the soil.
The next moment, iron chains burst from the ground, wrapping around Grawp's body and gradually binding him.
Grawp's roaring suddenly stopped.
A blood-red smile split across his face. He reached out, grabbed a large rock, crushed it, then forcibly stretched his bound body and arms to their limit before hurling the fragments.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh…
A dense barrage of whistling air exploded as the stone shards shot toward Sigefin. Trees along the path shattered and exploded, turning into flying debris.
Only then did Sigefin understand why the forest they had passed through earlier had been left in such devastation.
But there was no time to dwell on it.
His pupils shrank as he instinctively cast a Shield Charm and raised a stone wall in front of him with Transfiguration.
Under the stone barrage, the outer translucent shield disintegrated almost instantly.
The inner stone wall held up against most of the fragments under Sigefin's sustained magic, but a few shards still pierced through and struck his body.
"Ugh!"
Sigefin groaned and collapsed, blood quickly spreading beneath him and staining the snow crimson.
As Sigefin fell, the chains binding Grawp, constructed from Sigefin's magic, shattered one after another.
Grawp slowly stood up.
"Sigefin!" Newland shouted instinctively.
Suppressing the urge to rush over and check on Sigefin, he clenched his wand and increased his attack frequency even further.
Explosions continued to bloom across Grawp's body.
This time, Grawp wasn't pushed back.
He raised his thick arms to shield his head, face, and groin, but the mocking grin at the corner of his mouth couldn't be hidden.
After adjusting slightly to Newland's attacks, Grawp lowered his arms and let the spells detonate across his body, blooming into bursts of blood.
Then he bent down and picked up another large rock.
Seeing this, every hair on Newland's body stood on end as a chilling sense of death enveloped him.
Newland knew exactly what was about to happen.
And he knew that if he didn't do something now, his life would end here.
Sure enough, in the next instant, Grawp's body stretched like a drawn bow.
He grinned at Newland, then spoke again in a low but clear voice, "Hello!~"