The Rune Mage Starting at Hogwarts

Chapter 196: Next Opponent, Fleur Delacour

On the dueling platform, Ryze watched Sato Hiroshi being blasted into the air, feeling extremely satisfied with the effect of "Light Them Up!"

This rune is indeed very useful. Once the flames ignite the ropes, every target that comes into contact with the flames can be marked by the flames.

The protective charm and Sato Hiroshi were judged as two separate targets in the judgment, which is why the area-of-effect spell, Flame Blaze, could be detonated again after being detonated once.

However, at this point, Ryze decided not to use this move anymore.

He has achieved his goal; there's no need to reveal all his cards now.

Let those people in the audience think that he can only use this kind of magic once or twice in a duel at most.

Taking advantage of the moment when Sato Hiroshi lost his balance in mid-air and had not yet had time to cast a levitation spell to regain his footing, Ryze calmly raised his wand again.

He didn't continue to demonstrate any fancy magical techniques, but instead used a very simple disarming spell.

"Except your weapons!"

A beam of red light struck Sato Hiroshi precisely in mid-air.

Sato Hiroshi was already confused and disoriented from the impact of the explosion, and now, under Ryze's attack, he was completely unable to hold his wand.

The cherry wood wand flew out of his hand, arced through the air, and fell outside the dueling ring.

As Hiroshi Sato, now wandless, crashed onto the dueling ring, the referee quickly walked onto the stage.

After confirming that Sato Hiroshi had lost the will and ability to fight, he loudly announced the result of the duel: "The winner, Hogwarts, Rhett White!"

As the referee finished speaking, the entire stadium erupted in enthusiastic applause after a brief silence.

In the stands at Hogwarts, Anthony was the one clapping the loudest.

With Ryze's victory once again, if some people still felt that Ryze's defeat of Pierre yesterday was somewhat questionable, then today's duel truly demonstrated Ryze's formidable strength.

Before that final series of bizarre spells, Ryze had been fighting head-on against the elite fifth-year students of the magic institute for over a minute.

The frequency and precision of that spellcasting were simply not something an eleven-year-old child could achieve.

"His double protective spell is too reliable," a senior student in the stands sighed softly. "Sato's offensive was so fierce, yet he couldn't gain any advantage over him. Even without that last move, it was only a matter of time before Ryze won the match."

Ultimately, Hiroshi Sato made a misjudgment, relinquishing the initiative to Reiz.

If the fight continues like that, dragging on for another three to five minutes, Ryze definitely has a better chance of winning.

However, Ryze himself didn't want to expend too much magic power. This wasn't a training session, so naturally, the faster he could eliminate the opponent, the better.

On the dueling platform, Hiroshi Sato had already retrieved the wand.

He reviewed the duel he had just fought, then bowed to Ryze with a complicated expression.

After Ryze politely returned the greeting, the two of them said nothing more and walked off the dueling ring.

"Well done, Ryze!" Professor Flitwick returned from the other professors to congratulate Ryze. "I imagine the professors from other schools will be losing sleep tonight trying to figure out your magic."

Professor Flitwick's misleading remarks about the other professors were not impromptu, but rather a tactic they had discussed before the match.

According to their plan, since this "ancient magic" with a marked detonation effect has already been brought out, there is no need to hide it anymore, but the difficulty of obtaining it should be obscured.

As long as other schools perceive this as a high-level research project being pursued by Hogwarts, they will devote a great deal of energy to studying the principles and defenses of this magic.

When the main tournament began and they discovered that only Rhett could use this magic, before they could even lower their guard, Hogwarts' true trump card, the Light Magic, was officially revealed, putting even more pressure on the other schools.

Professor Flitwick lowered his voice and winked mischievously at Rezs: "Let them think about it. The more they think, the more mistakes they'll make."

It can only be said that there is no simple tactician among them.

Ritz smiled and nodded to Professor Flitwick, then indicated that he would now have to deal with the lower-grade students from other schools.

Since his victory yesterday, many lower-grade students from other schools have come over to greet him.

These lower-grade students weren't necessarily there to gather information; more often, they were genuinely there to congratulate Ryze, a freshman, on advancing to the next round by defeating upper-grade students, and to wish him continued success.

Even more students came over to say hello today.

After all, most of the lower-grade students here were actually eliminated in the loser's bracket this morning, and their journey in this year's duel has come to an end here.

However, their failure was mainly due to their insufficient magical power.

Four years from now, they will most likely become Anthony's biggest rivals on his path to the dueling championship, and Ryze can also help Anthony gather some information about his future opponents.

As for why there's no Ryze?

Because Ryze will win the junior division of the Duel Tournament in two years at the latest, he can directly register for the adult division when he comes to the Duel Tournament again.

According to Professor Flitwick, with the combined power of light magic and ancient magic, Ryze does indeed have a chance to become the champion of this duel, although the probability may be less than 10%, it is not entirely impossible.

In short, Reese spent most of her time interacting with these younger students, exchanging information with them.

While he was analyzing the duel with the students, he was also, as he had agreed with Professor Flitwick, seemingly "unintentionally" spreading his magic, half-truthfully and half-jokingly.

Similarly, he also obtained a lot of information, some true and some false, from these students, which he needed to discuss with Flitwick and the other students when he got back.

As night fell, the torches in the dueling arena were lit once more.

Today, a quarter of the contestants were eliminated, and another quarter will be eliminated tomorrow.

After five rounds of competition, more than 80% of the participants will be eliminated. Finally, an additional match will be held on the last night to determine the 32 participants for the main competition.

The referees continued to cast their spells, drawing the list of tomorrow's matchups from two lottery boxes.

Soon, Ryze learned who his opponent would be in the third round.

Fleur Delacour from Beauxbatons.

I don't know if this was a draw deliberately made by Beauxbatons.

But now Ryze is watching his opponent from afar, while Fleur is also looking at Ryze, responding with a friendly smile.

Is Beauxbatons trying to get this fourth-year honor student to experience his magic effects firsthand?

Chapter 197: Undefeated in the Qualifying Rounds

On the third day, Rizzi and Furong, two star fighters of this year's duel, were placed last on the day.

One is a first-year student at Hogwarts with exceptional talent from the ancient Blake family, and the other is the most dazzling flower in the dueling arena, a fourth-year student from Beauxbatons with Veela blood.

This match did indeed attract a lot of attention.

Moreover, because it was the weekend, many students from Beauxbatons, even those in their third year and above, had left school to watch the match, and the entire arena was filled with students wearing dark blue wizard robes.

Everyone wanted to know how Ryze, the new student, would perform in the face of Hibiscus's allure.

And this highly anticipated match was indeed quite exciting.

From the very beginning, Hibiscus used her allure to try and disrupt Ryze's magic output, but Ryze's spellcasting remained as stable as it had been the previous two days, without making any mistakes.

Fleur even felt that in Ryze's eyes, the person in front of him was not a charming young woman, but a lifeless stone statue.

Although Hibiscus had long sensed that her charms would have little effect on Ryze, her combat skills as a fourth-year student were not much worse than those of Sato Hiroshi yesterday, and she was even more cautious than Sato Hiroshi.

After more than three minutes of magical exchange, Fleur made a mistake in the intense battle, giving Ryze an opportunity to break through her protective spell with a specific effect and defeat her with a disarming spell.

As the referee announced the winner, enthusiastic applause erupted from the stands.

Although their players lost, and in a way that was hard for them to understand, they were still very satisfied with the high-level offensive and defensive battle.

After bowing to Ritz and leaving the stage, Furong did not appear particularly upset.

She retrieved her wand, stepped off the dueling ring, glanced back at Rhett Butler who was talking to Professor Flitwick, and shrugged helplessly: "My charm has absolutely no effect on him. He looks at me the same way he would look at a rock."

“That’s not surprising, Fleur,” the professor from Beauxbatons pushed up his glasses, observing Ryze’s retreating figure. “According to our intelligence, this Mr. White possesses an exceptionally high talent for divination. Diviners are generally more determined than ordinary wizards, and he also bears traces of astrological divination, which is specifically used to observe the world. A person’s charm is clearly incomparable to that of the entire world.”

“This is not something to be discouraged about. The more important thing is whether you saw his magic clearly.”

Fleur nodded and said to her professor, "I saw it clearly. There was indeed an inconspicuous spot of light on the protective charm, and the explosion occurred from that spot."

She described her feelings in detail.

"So, the opponent's magic does indeed contain the power of some kind of ancient runes. As long as you come into contact with the opponent's magic, you can 'mark' the target and trigger an explosion..." the professor analyzed quickly. "It seems to be an ability of ancient magic, but we are not sure which kind of ancient magic it is."

There are many types of magic known as "ancient magic".

One type is magic that has been passed down from ancient times. Magic that has a history of over a thousand years and has not had much room for improvement until modern times can be called ancient magic.

Aside from being a bit difficult to learn, this ancient magic doesn't actually require much talent from wizards; with hard work, most can master it.

The other type is the true ancient magic that has been passed down from ancient times and requires innate talent to master.

According to some sources, people without natural talent cannot even detect the traces of that magic.

"In any case, leave the research on this magic to our professor. We should be able to come up with some countermeasures before the main competition begins," the professor said, but his expression remained serious.

Although only Rhett is currently using this spell, and no other Hogwarts students have demonstrated it, if two or three other upperclassmen at Hogwarts were to master this technique, then this spell would still be a huge advantage for Hogwarts on the dueling ring.

He told Furong to focus on preparing for the next two days of competition.

The match between Ryze and Fleur was indeed deliberately arranged by them, because they needed someone to personally experience Ryze's magic in the qualifiers.

They didn't send out their main sixth-grade players because they were worried that if Ryze faced too many strong players, he wouldn't be able to use this tactic.

In the end, Fleur took on the task voluntarily, and she did indeed fight Ryze for several minutes without holding back, finally completing the task.

Although they have now fallen into the loser's bracket, there is still a chance to fight their way back up.

On the fourth and fifth days, the qualifiers entered an even more intense phase.

Rizzi did not let his guard down after defeating Hibiscus.

In the last two days, his opponents became stronger and stronger.

One sixth-grade student from Skordos Dorez, Russia, even used a wide-range ice and snow magic to suppress his casting space in the dueling ring.

But Ryze performed very steadily.

He almost never wasted the protective shield of the double protective spell, and his swift movements and concise spell connections were never flawed.

In particular, during his days of watching the games, he actually learned a bit of close-combat magic from Durmstrang.

He deduced this little by little using his divination abilities, and in close-quarters combat, his reaction advantage was indeed significant.

He will seize any opportunity to detonate the marker as soon as his opponent makes even the slightest mistake, thus securing victory.

By the evening of the fifth day, after five rounds of selection, most of the more than two hundred students from various schools were unfortunately eliminated due to accumulating two defeats.

As a freshman, Ryze defeated all five opponents in a perfect record, becoming the biggest dark horse of this year's duel tournament.

At the same time, Ryze became one of the first eight contestants in the junior division of this duel tournament to be confirmed to enter the main competition.

The eight undefeated players are: two from Durmstrang, two from Hogwarts, one from Beauxbatons, one from Cordostadt, one from Ilvermorny, and one from the School of Magic.

Apart from Reese, everyone else was a sixth-grader. Reese seemed out of place among them, but no one underestimated him.

Because Ryze's performance over the past few days has completely won over everyone present.

Chapter 198: The Post-Match Turmoil

As for the remaining 24 spots in the main tournament, the final selection will be made tonight from the 40 players in the losers' bracket.

This is basically the most exciting match in the qualifiers every year, since all you have to do is cheer yourself on to stand on the stage of the main competition and show your fighting skills.

Basically, as long as you can enter the main competition, it means that your fighting level has reached the top level among your peers, and these things look very good on your resume.

Therefore, in order to qualify for the main competition, everyone will go all out at this stage, and basically they will reveal all their trump cards at this time.

The atmosphere in the stands was even more lively than during the day, and the sparks from the clash of spells on the dueling platform were particularly dazzling in the night.

“This level of intensity of confrontation would indeed be very difficult to fight without using that move,” Professor Flitwick said, standing in the Hogwarts rest area, his gaze sweeping over the fierce battle on the field before turning to look at the senior students beside him.

Professor Flitwick also stated that when facing opponents of similar skill levels, those simple light magic spells can also be used in this situation.

However, faced with the professor's suggestion, the remaining four Hogwarts students in the loser's group exchanged glances and firmly shook their heads.

One of the sixth-year students from Ravenclaw had a determined look in his eyes: "Hogwarts hasn't won the tournament for many years. This year, with Rhett Butler and our new tactics, this year is probably the closest we've been to the trophy in over a decade. If we reveal our weakness now and fail to win the match quickly, professors from other schools might be able to develop a counter-spell in just a few days."

“That’s right, individual rankings don’t matter,” another Hufflepuff senior nodded in agreement. “What we need is the final victory. If we have to rely on our trump cards to get through the qualifiers, then we’re not qualified to stand on the main stage.”

At this moment, the advantage of having fewer people but a united heart also became apparent.

The Hogwarts Duels Club has a small number of members, only about ten in total.

But these dozen or so people were basically all personally selected and trained by Professor Flitwick.

Over the past few months, they have witnessed Ryze's talent and the effort Professor Flitwick has put into perfecting light magic. Even Principal Dumbledore has been brought in to participate in the research and development.

So when Rizz said on the first day that he would hide the light magic until the main tournament and then use it, the upperclassmen tacitly accepted Rizz's idea.

They preferred to fight a tough battle in the loser's bracket rather than prematurely squander the school's chances of winning for the sake of stability.