"Wingardium Leviosa!"
Seeing the ground rapidly expanding in front of him, Krum hurriedly cast a Levitation Charm on the poor broom that had already caught fire, slowing his fall just a tiny bit—before he still slammed into the ground with a heavy thud at considerable speed…
"Urgh!!"
A sharp, piercing pain instantly shot into his mind from the leg that had hit the ground first, turning his face deathly pale as beads of cold sweat immediately seeped from his forehead. But that was not the end of it. As his whole body and broom crashed fully into the earth, the same sensation spread through his left arm, his other leg, and part of his chest.
That feeling was all too familiar to Krum, a veteran of the Quidditch pitch.
That fall had probably broken several bones.
And that was already the lighter outcome—if his Levitation Charm had been even a split second slower, it would not have been just a few bones breaking right now.
Looks like I'm going to lose quite a few points…
Feeling the fractures in several places, along with the dull throbbing pain on the skin along his back where the dragonfire had scorched him, Krum—unable to rise—could not help but let out a bitter laugh. Then, enduring the pain, he tried his best to lift his head and saw the fire dragon that had been relentlessly pursuing him a moment ago also falling, trailing a streak of black smoke, only slightly slower than he was.
The corners of his mouth immediately twitched upward into a smile mixed with both pain and joy.
He had won in the end.
That dragon had been clever. At the very instant the distance between it and Krum had shrunk to the absolute limit, it had instinctively tilted its head slightly to avoid an Eye-Blinding Curse while opening its mouth to gather dragonfire, thereby preventing the wizard holding a wand in front of it from interrupting its attack.
It was a very smart move.
But that also meant Krum would disappear from the dragon's field of vision for an instant.
And in that very instant, Krum had silently attached a curse to the dragon's tongue.
In the magic system used by modern wizards, there are quite a number of spells that cannot be cast from very far away. Some of them do not even produce any visible light at all. The most typical example was the Levitation Charm Krum had just used—no light, no sound, and effective the moment the incantation was formed in the mind, but with an extremely short effective range.
The same applied to all sorts of strange little curses.
So, in that instant when he slipped out of the dragon's sight, the curse had been attached to the dragon's tongue without it noticing in the slightest. And the effect of that curse was this—
Three seconds later, the dragon's tongue would harden and swell, completely blocking its throat…
And what happened next was exactly what everyone had seen. Three seconds later, the remaining dragonfire had been blocked by the dragon's own tongue and detonated inside its mouth.
Overall, it worked… If only my movements had been a little faster. Maybe then I could've completely dodged that blast and stayed in the air to admire the way the dragon fell…
Krum struggled to raise his wand and hastily cast several healing spells on the broken areas. After the pain eased a little, he managed to stand up and look toward the dragon not far away.
The scales above its neck had already been charred black. Its wings drooped limply, and it no longer moved at all.
And the barrier surrounding the arena finally dissipated completely, allowing the uproar from the spectators outside—as well as Ludo Bagman's excited shouting—to surge in all at once.
"Mr. Krum has finished the match in a completely unexpected fashion!!"
Amid wave after wave of frenzied cheering, "Bagman" had to bellow at the top of his lungs so his own voice would not be drowned out even to himself. "He made the dragon's breath explode inside its own mouth! And ended the match in one stroke! I'd bet he absolutely used a brilliant curse to pull that off… Look! He's standing up!"
Besides Bagman, the dragon handlers who had just rushed onto the field also looked tense.
That last move Krum had used on the dragon had been vicious even by their standards. Even for the largest and sturdiest fire dragon in the world, they were not sure whether this one could survive an explosion like that, followed by the fall.
However, as their examination began, their expressions quickly relaxed again.
It seemed this Ironbelly was not only still alive—it was even in better condition than they had expected.
"That was magnificent, Viktor!"
A Durmstrang professor hurried over to Krum with a floating stretcher. "You're definitely going to get a very high score—but before the judges announce it, I need to take you to the medical tent. Your injuries are a little too serious…"
"I could even walk there myself."
Krum joked with an easy expression as he promptly collapsed onto the stretcher, suggesting that this professor normally had a pretty good relationship with him. "I've had worse injuries than this before…"
Lying on the stretcher, he watched Ludo Bagman jog up to the judges' platform behind the stands and quietly confer with the other four judges while holding his notebook, occasionally scribbling things down in it. They were probably evaluating his final performance.
I wonder how Ken and Fleur scored… They were both hiding things, so I doubt they did any worse than I did.
He thought silently to himself.
But that conspiracy Ken mentioned is still unsettling. If it's not in this task… then it'll most likely be in the third one. Good thing I fully charged that golden egg. Maybe I can study it in advance… Should I discuss it with them when the time comes?
…
"And now, let me announce Mr. Viktor Krum's score for this match!"
After Krum entered the medical tent and had all his injuries completely healed in less than a minute, Ludo Bagman's voice rang out once again.
"Taking the scores given by all five judges into account, Viktor Krum's final score is…"
"Forty-six points!"
This result did not cause much commotion.
After all, the audience had seen the performances of all three champions with their own eyes, and they knew the scores the judges gave were generally appropriate.
Among the three champions, Ken had completed the match the fastest and had not been injured. His only deduction came from breaking one charging pillar—but everyone knew that had nothing to do with his actual performance. He had simply been outrageously unlucky.
As for the second champion, Fleur, she had broken one pillar through her own actions, and her total completion time had been the longest among the three. However, after observing and analyzing the situation for quite some time, she had suddenly made a brilliant breakthrough by figuring out how to manually charge the pillars herself. Combined with the absolute suppressive power she displayed in the second stage, she had earned herself a considerable amount of extra credit.
And Krum…
Although luck had seemingly accounted for a rather large part of his success in this round, and he had also suffered fairly serious injuries in the end, he was still the only one of the three to preserve all three pillars. His completion time had also been slightly faster than Fleur's. On top of that, his spectacular aerial combat in the second stage and his battle of wits with that clever fire dragon had been plain for all to see…
Overall, this score was not unfair.