Chapter 80: Ambush: Natasha's Fight 1
"Don't kill. Just permanently maim."
Hearing that, Natasha inwardly grinned.
She generally disliked violence but she also wanted to be useful to Tom, to show her worth, and in her opinion, fighting for him was the best way to do it.
Even if he reassured her again and again that he didn't care about that, she saw this matter differently. It was how she was raised and while she was aware it was the Red Room that instilled this need to prove her value in her, it was still a part of her. One that she had a hard time ignoring. Updated from novelbIn.(c)om
Unfortunately, Tom didn't get into trouble very often and when he did, he usually made damn sure it never reached the stage where her particular talents would be required.
It was the source of some seriously mixed feelings for Natasha.
She absolutely loved how peaceful her life became since she had met Tom but she hated how useless she felt at times. There was nothing where she could be helpful to Tom in their everyday lives other than making him her special hot chocolate.
It was really grating sometimes.
All these feelings were piling up and up inside of Natasha... so much so that now, when she had a clear enemy in front of herself, one that was vying to hurt her Tom, she couldn't bring herself to care about all the violence she was about to unleash onto them. In fact, she wholeheartedly welcomed it.
After getting permission from Tom, Natasha slowly but steadily advanced, raising one of her pistols and aiming it at her first victim, without any hesitation, she fired the first shot...
The fool-hardy wizard could see this coming from a mile away but he didn't even try to dodge, just casting Protego and believing in his pureblood superiority. He recognized the silly muggle weapons Natasha held but there was simply no way that his mighty wizardly shield could be penetrated by such pathetic contraptions!
Alas, that... was a mistake of an overzealous fanatical young mind.
Natasha's magically-created bullet imbued with her Power of Destruction tore through the Protego as if it didn't even exist and before the wizard's mind could even compute what just happened, his world exploded in pain as the bullet tore itself a path through his muscles, lodging itself deep into his right upper arm.
And then, when the wizard finally realized his mighty pureblood magic failed to protect him and his expression was full of incomprehensible disbelief, the primary function of the Power of Destruction imbuement activated and the bullet exploded.
With a mild squelch, the wizard's upper arm where the bullet was located burst with a crimson burst of light before everything below the elbow of his arm was sent flying away while his whole upper arm was blown out of existence, leaving the shrieking wizard only with a bloody stump gushing out blood as he flailed it around due to panic and pain.
There would be no healing that arm even by wizarding means. From what Natasha heard, wizards had a lot of powerful healing spells and that's why she decided to 'erase' a part of his arm so the rest could not be reattached back later on.
Just as Tom wanted, the man was now permanently crippled considering wizards still could not regrow entire limbs.
Before the remaining wizards could waver due to the loss of their comrades, the guy who previously ordered them to take cover once again shouted out an order, restoring the morale.
"Quick! Use area of effect spells!"
Natasha wryly smiled, knowing it was an amateur mistake for them to not use these right from the get-go, especially in a fight where trees are being used as a cover, but she didn't dwell on it for long because she knew she had to react fast... and hard.
She ran from behind her tree, sprinting towards the apparent leader of her enemies, just as a Bombarda spell impacted the place where she was just five seconds ago, blowing it up.
Another wizard was peering from behind his tree, his wand raised and he was about to also use some kind of spell, but Natasha noticed him in time and rapidly shot three bullets at him, no longer in a mood to play with them.
The lower trunk of the tree was not only blown up, but the explosion of the second bullet propelled it through the air, right at the wizard who was previously hiding behind it. The flying tree trunk only slightly glanced at the wizard's side but it was enough of a distraction to make him stagger and Natasha's third bullet found purchase in one of his legs.
But Natasha was not paying overly much attention and therefore did not restrain the subsequent explosion, hence, the result was a tad bit worse than his comrade who lost only his arm. This time, when the bullet exploded, it was strong enough to destroy both of his legs.
He was lucky he got shot in his calf instead of the thigh or it would have been his whole lower body. Well, Natasha was sure the screaming guy didn't see it that way nor did he appreciate her mercy.
Natasha weaved through the spells once again as she ran towards her target, no longer just side-stepping them, but using her speed to make sure she was far away when the spells went off behind her.
Explosions reverberated from behind her.
Various transfigured animals chased after her.
Various debilitating area-of-effect curses actually affected her body.
Yet, it was all for naught and Natasha started to realize why the rest of the supernatural world looked down on wizards. Right now, her body was nothing special by supernatural standards. But...
She was fast enough to outrun their spellfire. Definitely faster than the transfigured animals. And the curses had almost no or very negligible effect on her because of her own potent mana reserves.
Maybe if these were trained fighters, the battle would have been much harder but she was not fighting battle-hardened veterans. These people were at best comparable to street thugs rather than soldiers.
In almost no time at all, she reached the leader, both of her pistols disappearing from her hands back into her pocket space while she grabbed him by his neck, raising his body into the air as she slammed his back against a tree.
Unsurprisingly, the spellfire ceased the second she got near him, the other wizards not knowing what to do in this situation.
Before Natasha could speak or even decide how to cripple this wide-eyed one, he blurted out, "V-vampire!"