'...As expected of a genius capable of becoming a champion.'
Watching Fleur's flying silver hair gradually settle back down in the arena, and seeing the wings behind her drag her gently to the ground before folding up and vanishing as though they had never existed at all, Avada could not help letting out a sigh of admiration.
The other spectators were still in a daze, but he had already roughly guessed what had just happened.
If his guess was correct, then Fleur had directly deciphered the method by which the charging pillars produced restorative magic by analyzing the scattered fragments of the shattered charging pillar together with the dragon-breath simulation potion in her hand.
And since she herself possessed Veela blood, then naturally, besides mental charm magic, she had also inherited the Veela's other innate gift—that form from earlier, with wings on her back and fire she could hurl at will. If she had been a full-blooded Veela, then in that form she should also have grown a sharp birdlike beak...
Fortunately, Fleur had not inherited that gift completely.
And since both were flames produced by magical creatures, the Veela's fireballs and a dragon's breath already shared certain similar properties. With that plus Fleur's complete understanding of the charging pillar's structure, all she had needed to do was use her wand and that bottle of dragon-breath simulation potion to make a few adjustments to her own flames, and that had been enough to create a fire the pillar would recognize as dragon breath—allowing her to complete the first stage of the task in an extraordinarily flashy and inconceivable way.
It could only be said that it suited her style perfectly.
As for the second stage, after the dragon's wings were unsealed, Fleur's performance had exceeded even Avada's expectations. He had not anticipated that a half-Veela in that transformed state would possess such overwhelming firepower and flight capability—enough to suppress the world's largest dragon so thoroughly that it had not been able to take to the air even once from start to finish...
Even Avada himself would probably have found it difficult to accomplish that without using those restricted arts.
"Look! Under Miss Delacour's suppression, this poor dragon never got airborne even once!"
After the staff responsible for handling the dragons rushed into the arena for the second time, thoroughly inspected the Ukrainian Ironbelly, and then packed it into a crate and carried it out of the field, Bagman's excited voice rang out once more.
"What astonishing power! I'm almost unable to tell which one was supposed to be the champion and which one was the dragon!"
"Er, perhaps that's a somewhat improper way to describe a beautiful young lady, but only a comparison like that can truly convey just how breathtaking her performance just now was... And now, the judges are about to score!"
"Alright, after combining the scores of all five judges, I now announce Miss Delacour's final score for this match—"
"Bagman" ran down from the stands, went to confer with the four judges for a while, then returned holding a small booklet and loudly read out Fleur's final result:
"Forty-six points!"
Standing in the middle of the arena, Fleur's face looked somewhat pale. It was obvious that the transformation just now had drained her quite a bit as well. After hearing her score, she merely gave her head a light shake as usual, making her long hair sway back and forth, without showing any particular excitement or dissatisfaction.
There was no helping it. Although the fact that she had charged the golden egg to full in one stroke using her innate gift had indeed been dazzling, the problem was that she had taken far too long—more than three times as long as Ken. And she had also lost one pillar.
So in her eyes, getting this score was already quite good.
...
"And now, our third champion, Mr. Viktor Krum, please begin the match!"
After yet another brand-new Ukrainian Ironbelly had been brought into the arena, "Ludo Bagman" led Krum out from the tent while shouting to the stands. The moment Krum saw the mountain-like dragon before him, he very obviously froze for a second. The expression on his face was almost exactly the same as the previous two champions'.
And after reading through the little rulebook detailing the match regulations, his face visibly twisted as well. It seemed Karkaroff had not privately revealed the contents of this task to him after all. This time, the secrecy work had been done rather well.
"Mr. Krum has entered the arena—ha! The dragon he's facing seems especially full of energy. It opens the match by immediately breathing fire! For a dragon, using its breath attack is actually quite taxing... but that may actually be good luck for Mr. Krum, because it should make his charging process much easier!"
Bagman's voice continued to provide lively real-time commentary on the match. "As expected of a champion trained by battle-focused Durmstrang, Mr. Krum neither dodges nor defends himself with a Shield Charm—he's chosen to clash head-on with the dragon's fire! If anyone else did that, I'd think they'd gone mad, but Mr. Krum's magic actually seems to be working... Look! Those tongues of flame in midair seem to be frozen by something. They simply can't get any closer to him at all!"
"Haha! He even seems to think the curse on his cloak isn't enough and has actively provoked the dragon further! That great brute is probably furious now... If I were the dragon, I imagine there'd only be one thought in my head at this moment: I must use fire to burn this fellow, who dared resist my breath, clean to ashes... This is also a way of guiding the dragon's mentality!"
"And just as expected, its second attack is fire again... Krum's approach is correct!"
'...'
Avada felt his molars aching a little.
Why were all the good things happening to the other two champions?
First Fleur had gotten a free charging opportunity right at the start from a fragile pillar, and now Krum had run into a dragon that especially loved breathing fire, saving him a whole pile of trouble from the start...
So he was the only unlucky one?
Not only had he never pulled anything especially useful from the fragile pillars, but one charging pillar had even been crushed out of nowhere when the dragon sat on it, costing him three points for nothing...
If the differences in luck had been just a little more extreme, Avada would have started suspecting that there was some kind of hidden rigging behind the organizers' so-called "randomness."
"The first fragile pillar has risen!"
On the field, Bagman's voice rang out again in live commentary. "This is actually a problem for Krum—his dragon loves using its breath attacks so much that it may become difficult for him to get it to smash the fragile pillars and collect items. If this continues, then his second stage may end up being much harder than the other champions'... er, although to be fair, the other two champions didn't really make much use of the items from the pillars either."
"My goodness! Mr. Krum has directly shattered the fragile pillar with his own power! That spell... was that Confringo? As expected of Durmstrang's champion!"
'...'
Avada suddenly felt that he might have played things a bit too conservatively.
Among the three champions, he was clearly the one with the most cheats available, and yet in terms of visible performance, he had somehow ended up being the most orthodox and restrained of them all. Apart from his brilliant tactics, he had shown almost no particularly distinctive personal flair.
Analyzing the magical structure of dragon breath, using high-powered Dark Magic... those had both been ideas he had come up with first.
So why had things turned out like this?
(End of Chapter)