Hogwarts Raven's Claw

Chapter 124 Duel
As soon as these words were spoken, everyone in the audience became excited again and raised their armbands to signal Lockhart to choose them.

Professor Flitwick received Lockhart's hint and did not embarrass Lockhart. He looked directly at Mike in the audience and said loudly, "Mr. Mike Townley, please come up."

Mike was not surprised at all. He moved his wand slightly and released the levitation spell quietly. Under everyone's envious eyes, he floated to Professor Flitwick like a leaf and waited quietly for his opponent.

The first contestant had been chosen, but the remaining one troubled Lockhart. With so many waving hands in the audience, he really didn't know who to choose.

At this moment, a tall and handsome boy was dragged to the edge of the stage by a group of Hufflepuff students.

Lockhart's eyes lit up the moment he saw the boy, and he announced loudly: "Mr. Cedric Diggory, please come up!"

The Hufflepuff students cheered upon hearing this, while Cedric shook his head with a wry smile. He had heard about Mike's strength a long time ago, and to be honest, he really didn't want to fight with Mike, but his classmates were too enthusiastic. At this point, Cedric was no longer distressed, and took out his wand and went on stage.

The way he came on stage was very similar to Professor Flitwick's, both of them used Transfiguration to conjure a giant stone hand to send themselves up. However, his Transfiguration skills were obviously not as good as Flitwick's, and the movements of the stone hand were very stiff, with many stone chips falling off when the joints turned.

When Cedric stood firm, Lockhart and Flitwick left the stage, leaving only Mike and Cedric on the stage.

The two people on the stage did not communicate with each other. They bowed to each other according to the duel etiquette demonstrated by Flitwick and Lockhart before, and then they each took one side of the stage and stood solemnly.

The huge light words above the stage kept counting down, and the people below the stage held their breath.

Mike was extremely alert and looked at the boy opposite him. In the original book, although Cedric was killed instantly by Wormtail's Killing Curse at the first sight, it didn't mean that he was weak. In fact, he was the strongest among all the students in Hogwarts today.

You have to know that the mechanism of selecting the champions of the Goblet of Fire is to select the strongest, and Cedric was a champion selected from countless Hogwarts students. If he had not been killed by Wormtail later, Cedric would almost certainly have achieved great things.

As the words of light exploded, the two people on the stage moved at the same time.

"Expelliarmus!" "Protect yourself with armor!"

The two of them completed the release of the spell almost at the same time. Mike's disarming spell hit the transparent shield in front of Cedric, exploding a red light.

The Hufflepuff students in the audience breathed a sigh of relief when they saw this. After resisting Mike's disarming spell, the shield in front of Cedric only showed dense cracks and did not dissipate. Now Cedric's situation was very good.

But is this really the case?
Mike sneered, and the wind speed spell was activated. Mike stepped sideways and came directly to the other side of the stage. At the same time, he uttered an inaudible voice, "The stone spear appears."

On the other side, Cedric must have sensed the movement under his feet through magic perception, and frantically activated the Transfiguration Technique. Suddenly, a stone pillar protruded from the ground, knocking Cedric out. He narrowly avoided Mike's Ground Spike Technique.

"Tsk!"

Mike in the distance groaned, and his hands kept moving. Soon, several lavender fireballs the size of ping-pong balls flew towards Cedric. These fireballs were controlled by Mike's mental power, and no matter how Cedric dodged, he was still blown up.

"Boom!"

The continuous explosions stirred up a large amount of smoke that blocked everyone's view. Many Hufflepuff students in the audience closed their eyes in pain, as if they couldn't bear to see Cedric's miserable condition.

But they guessed wrong again.

Three stone arrows shot out from the smoke in the shape of a "品" (a Chinese character for "product"). They shot towards Mike.

Mike waved his wand, and the armor protection was released. There were three consecutive "clang clang clang!" sounds, and all three arrows were blocked. However, more arrows were shot out from the smoke. Mike stepped on the stage, using the speed brought by the wind speed spell to zigzag on the stage to avoid the arrows. At the same time, his hands did not stop, and lavender fireballs quickly emerged from the black prickly pear wand, counterattacking in the direction of the arrows.

The smoke on the stage was gradually dissipating, and Cedric was seen transforming the stone floor of the stage into arrows and shooting them at Mike. Seeing the fireball coming again, Cedric hurriedly stopped releasing arrows, pointed his wand fiercely, and the floor around him seemed to come alive and wrapped around him, forming a stone sphere to protect him.

Several fireballs hit the huge stone ball, shattering the surface of the stone ball into pieces and stirring up a large amount of smoke again.

Mike did not stop releasing the fire spell, but controlled more fireballs to hit the stone ball, because he could see clearly from his magical vision that his previous bombing did not hurt Cedric inside the stone ball.

The bombing lasted for two minutes before Mike stopped, panting. However, before Mike could rest for long, arrows shot at him again.

Mike's heart sank as he managed to avoid the arrow.

His own magic power was almost exhausted, and the long-lasting bombardment just now did not hurt Cedric at all as he continued to thicken the stone ball.

His legs were already aching from using the wind speed spell for a long time, and Mike could feel a taste of rust in his mouth, which was a sign that his physical strength was approaching its limit.

Cedric's defense is so amazing that if he continues like this, he will probably kill me.

Mike's heart skipped a beat as he glanced at Professor Flitwick in the audience and saw the somewhat disappointed look on his face.

"No, we absolutely cannot lose!"

Gritting his teeth, Mike squeezed out the remaining magic power in his body and cast the final fire spell.

A purple fireball the size of an egg appeared on the tip of Mike's staff. As Mike continued to infuse his magic power, the color of the fireball continued to deepen, and finally turned into a dark purple fireball the size of a heart.

This fireball does not seem to be very stable. It keeps beating like a real heart, and every beat emits an astonishing amount of heat.

"Bo!"

A dark purple fireball fell off the tip of Mike's staff and flew in Cedric's direction.

After releasing the fireball, Mike collapsed to the ground, and struggled to crawl into a hole he had blown up before, curling up into a ball.

Mike knew very well what kind of terrible damage this dark purple fireball could cause. This was already Mike's most destructive spell at the moment. If Cedric could still block this attack, Mike would be willing to admit defeat.

Professor Flitwick's face changed drastically when he saw the fireball. He flicked his wand and pulled Cedric and Mike on both sides of the stage to his side. At the same time, a "Universal Protection" covered the entire stage.

"Boom!"

As the dark purple fireball hit the stone wall that Cedric had built earlier, the powerful explosion energy carried a large amount of rubble and hit the transparent shield. The people in the audience stared in amazement as a dazzling light lit up from the stage. The brightness was so high that the entire auditorium went dark.

When the light faded, everyone saw that the transparent shield covering the stage was full of cracks, and most of the stage had disappeared. The place where Cedric had been originally located had turned into a deep pit, with fiery red magma slowly flowing at the bottom of the pit.

Cedric stared blankly at the big pit and said tremblingly:
"I...I lost."

(End of this chapter)