On Saturday morning, the Ronan gang gathered once again, puffing away on cigarettes together.
A large military-grade crate sat on the floor, and everyone carefully steered clear of it.
As the leader of this small organization, Ronan harbored grand ambitions—he dreamed that one day he would be the boss of an organization with hundreds of members, rather than just running errands as he was now, and eventually establish his own criminal family.
He was very strict with his subordinates; he didn’t want any junkies who lacked the strength even to fight.
He had rented a room in the building across from the library to serve as the headquarters for the Ronan gang.
He considered himself a man of style, though this also brought him trouble—many things had to be done at night.
Now, transporting this shipment also meant he had to wait until nightfall to act.
He had managed to get three cars for his men, and everyone was reasonably well-off, but he was not satisfied with just this many people.
The streetlights began to flicker on.
He signaled his brothers to start moving the goods downstairs.
There had been too many vendettas lately, and he had to be cautious.
His gang only had three pistols and one shotgun, but they also had an automatic rifle, which could be considered strong firepower.
If things went south and they encountered tough opposition, he would use this shipment—as long as he had enough combat achievements, it would become his capital for promotion.
The heavy crate was carried downstairs by two of his brothers.
By now, there were not many people left outside.
Ronan saw a little girl crouching across the street, looking like a very pretty girl.
He had noticed this girl over the past few days, often looking around—if only he had such a pretty daughter, how nice that would be.
The library was already closed; had her parents failed to pick her up?
Ronan subconsciously shielded the crate being moved, and the girl happened to look over just then.
He glared back fiercely—at this hour, there were only bad people outside.
The girl was frightened and hid back inside the library; he remembered there was someone on duty in the library.
In any case, he didn’t want any complications.
“Let’s go.” The Ronan gang all got into the cars, the arms crate was placed in the middle vehicle, and Ronan took personal command.
They drove off toward the outskirts of London.
What they didn’t know was that, not far behind them, a Dementor was following from a distance.
Elara had transformed into a Dementor and followed this carefully driving convoy out of London.
She flew to a rock in front of the convoy, waiting for them to arrive.
“Reducto.”
Elara shouted the spell, aiming at the engine of the lead car.
A bright white light erupted from her wand, hitting the mark, and the first car exploded instantly.
Before the people in the cars could react, a second “Reducto” reached the car behind.
The vehicle was torn apart, and although the people inside were not the primary targets, the metal shrapnel from the car surely wouldn’t allow them to have any fighting capability left.
The middle car tried to swerve around from the side of the road.
Elara heard them shouting, “They used a mortar!” Clearly, they were terrified out of their wits.
Elara had put her full power into the spell, but she hadn’t expected it to be this powerful.
But there was no time to be surprised.
She used a Severing Charm—”Diffindo”—aiming at the tires.
The tires were destroyed, and the driver fought desperately to grip the steering wheel, but in the end, he could only crash fruitlessly into a tree by the side of the road.
A man holding a MAC-10 smashed the window, crawled out from the other side, and then fired continuously toward Elara’s direction.
Elara didn’t dare to be careless and ducked directly behind the rock.
The MAC-10, the star weapon of British gangs, could be fitted with a silencer and was made by engineers modifying decommissioned guns.
Elara noticed he was rescuing his partners from the middle vehicle while firing potshots.
What a nuisance.
Her “Protego” effect was not as powerful as her offensive spells, and most spells required hitting the enemy, while submachine guns were much faster than her spells.
Elara still cast “Protego” on herself, better than nothing.
She heard sounds of surrender from the other side, but remained unmoved.
She was alone; once discovered, the other side might start harboring sinister intentions.
A dazzling orange-red light condensed at the tip of her wand, shooting out a high-speed projectile of fire that arched through the air toward the side.
A small-scale explosion went off some distance away from the middle vehicle—Elara still wanted to try not to hit that car if possible.
She discovered that many spells in the Harry Potter world required accuracy, but fortunately, the magic from the other world didn’t need that.
She had mastered a first-level spell, the kind that didn’t require a wand.
She heard the guy with the submachine gun had already rescued his partners and was starting to distribute weapons.
Elara lowered her wand.
Her nimble fingers made a gesture, and then she chanted a simple spell—
Charm Person.
Although she had just attacked the other side, who could blame her when her Charisma was high enough—a full 18 points.
The target was the person who had just been rescued.
Elara finally spoke up: “Please help me, big brother, the person next to you is a bad guy.”
Ronan was bewildered for a moment—in the ambush party that had bombarded them with what seemed to be a mortar, there was actually a little girl?
What was going on?
And what she said was also incomprehensible to him.
He looked at the partner beside him—was he being betrayed because he was an undercover agent?
He couldn’t fall for the enemy’s sowing of discord.
However, the partner next to Ronan raised his arm.
“Brother Ronan, I’m sorry.” He aimed at Ronan.
Ronan struck first, knocking the pistol out of his partner’s hand.
“What are you doing?” Ronan asked in disbelief.
Then, the partner rushed forward directly, trying to grab hold of Ronan.
Ronan couldn’t dodge in time and could only fire, but he saw his partner clinging tightly to his arm.
“Have you been bewitched by sorcery?”
Everything happened in just an instant.
And Elara had already caught Ronan, who had exposed his head.
The tip of her wand shimmered with a dull, rigid, silver-gray magical aura—”Petrificus Totalus.” The Petrificus Totalus spell hit Ronan directly; he felt his whole body stiffen, and then he was pushed to the ground by his partner, who had already been shot several times.
It really was sorcery.
Elara walked beside Ronan with light steps and treated the other two gang members stuck in the car to a “Petrificus Totalus” each.
Then, she fired two more “Reducto” spells at the wreckage of the front and rear cars.
Having done all this, she walked over to the petrified Ronan and picked up the submachine gun he had dropped on the ground.
Only then did Ronan see clearly that the young girl before him was the same one he had seen at the library earlier.
He wore a look of terror, yet his whole body was unable to move.
“Thank you for the delivery, Uncle Ronan.
I remember you; you’ve borrowed books from the library before, haven’t you?
You didn’t set your base there just because you like books, did you?
You really are a person who loves books, just like me.
But—goodbye forever.”
Elara picked up the submachine gun, “Honestly, this gun of yours really scared me; I was terrified of getting grazed by it, otherwise it would be hard to explain when I got back.
I was almost hit by you.”
She pulled the trigger.
The massive recoil caused her to stumble.
The bullets flew over Ronan’s head.
“Sorry about that, my Strength stat is too low; it looks like I really need to increase my training in the future.”
“Now, if you would be so kind, my partner.” Elara turned to the gang member beside her, who was already bleeding heavily and under the effect of the Charm, “Kill him and the two people in the car, and then commit suicide.”
The young girl, as beautiful as a mountain elf, said with a smile.
In Ronan’s eyes at this moment, she was like a devil—was there only one person?
To think such a beautiful girl had a heart even more venomous than a scorpion’s.
She had charmed his partner, his younger brother.
He wanted to curse her, to revile her, but he couldn’t say a single word.
He saw his partner numbly pick up the submachine gun and pull the trigger—aiming at Ronan.
Then at the other two partners in the same car.
Finally, with trembling hands, he aimed it at himself.
Elara noticed that he was gradually breaking free from the influence of the Charm.
“So, I can’t issue commands that are harmful to you.
It seems you didn’t view the others as partners after all.”
“Petrificus Totalus.”
Elara petrified the terrified gang member.
She suddenly stepped forward and wiped the blood-stained face of the young man slightly.
“So it was you; the world is truly small.
Why didn’t you stick to that promising job as a ‘thief’ instead of going into this dead-end job as a gangster?” Elara recognized him—he was the leader of the small group of thieves she had encountered before she entered Leaky Cauldron.
“The world is unpredictable.”
She kicked the young man down and then used the Levitation Charm to move the arms crate away.
Two “Reducto” spells later, she left no survivors.
What she needed to worry about next was: how to bring these weapons back—she only had a Strength of 7, after all.
Also, how to explain her late return.