Chapter 124 Duel
As soon as these words were spoken, the crowd in the audience became excited again, and they all 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 the floating spell was quietly released. In the envious eyes of everyone, he floated to Professor Flitwick's side like a leaf, quietly waiting for his opponent.
The first contestant had been finalized, but the remaining one made Lockhart feel troubled. 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!"
Hearing this, the group of Hufflepuff students cheered, and Cedric shook his head with a wry smile. He had heard about Mike's strength a long time ago. 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.
His way of going on stage was very similar to Professor Flitwick's. He also used Transfiguration to conjure a huge stone hand to send himself up. But his Transfiguration level was obviously not as high as Flitwick's. The movement of the stone hand was very stiff, and many stone chips fell when the joints turned.
When Cedric stood firm, Lockhart and Flitwick left the stage one after another, leaving only Mike and Cedric on the stage.
The two people on the stage did not communicate. According to the duel etiquette demonstrated by Flitwick and Lockhart before, they bowed to each other, and the two occupied one side of the stage and stood solemnly.
The huge light words above the stage kept counting down, and the people in the audience held their breath.
Mike was alert and looked at the boy opposite him. Although Cedric was killed by Wormtail with the killing curse in the original book, it does not mean that he is weak. In fact, he is the strongest among all the students in Hogwarts.
You should know that the mechanism of selecting warriors in the Goblet of Fire is to select the strongest, and Cedric was a warrior selected from countless Hogwarts students. If he had not been killed by Wormtail later, Cedric would almost certainly have achieved great things.
As the light words exploded, the two people on the stage moved at the same time.
"Expelliarmus!" "Armor!"
The two people almost released the spells at the same time. Mike's disarming spell hit the transparent shield in front of Cedric, and a red light exploded.
The Hufflepuff students in the audience breathed a sigh of relief. After resisting Mike's disarming spell, the shield in front of Cedric only had dense cracks and did not dissipate. Now Cedric's situation is very good.
But is it really the case?
Mike's mouth pulled out a sneer, 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 made an inaudible sound, "Stone spears appear."
Cedric on the other side should have sensed the movement under his feet through magic perception, and frantically activated the Transfiguration. A stone pillar suddenly protruded from the ground, pushing Cedric out, and narrowly avoided Mike's ground spikes.
"Tsk!"
Mike in the distance made a sound, and his hands kept moving. Soon, several lavender fireballs the size of ping-pong balls flew towards Cedric. These fireballs were all controlled by Mike's mental power. No matter how Cedric dodged, he was still blown up.
"Boom!"
The continuous explosions stirred up a lot of smoke that blocked everyone's sight. Many Hufflepuff students in the audience closed their eyes in pain, as if they couldn't bear to see Cedric's miserable condition.
However, they guessed wrong again.
Three stone arrows shot out of the smoke in the shape of a finished product, shooting towards Mike.
Mike waved his wand, and the armor protection was released. There were three crisp sounds of "Dangdangdang!", and all three arrows were blocked.
However, more arrows had already shot out from the smoke. Mike stepped on his feet, using the speed brought by the wind speed spell to move in a zigzag pattern on the stage to avoid the arrows. At the same time, his hands did not stop. One by one, lavender fireballs quickly emerged from the black prickly pear wand and counterattacked in the direction of the arrows.
The smoke on the stage was also gradually dissipating, and Cedric was seen constantly transforming the stone floor of the stage into arrows and shooting at Mike. Seeing the fireballs coming again, Cedric hurriedly stopped releasing arrows. With a sharp point of his wand, 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 sphere, shattering the surface of the stone sphere, and at the same time stirring up a lot of smoke again.
Mike did not stop releasing the fire spell, and controlled more fireballs to hit the stone ball, because he could see clearly from his magic vision that his bombardment did not hurt Cedric in the stone ball.
The bombardment lasted for two minutes before Mike stopped panting, but before Mike could rest for long, arrows shot at him again.
Mike's heart sank as he managed to avoid the arrows.
His magic power was almost at the bottom, and the long-lasting bombardment just now did not hurt Cedric at all as Cedric continued to thicken the stone ball.
His legs were also in pain from using the wind speed spell for a long time. Mike only felt that his mouth was full of rust, which was a sign that his physical strength was approaching the limit.
Cedric's defense was really amazing. If he continued like this, he might be exhausted to death.
He glanced at Professor Flitwick below the stage, and seeing the disappointed look on his face, Mike's heart suddenly twitched.
"No, I absolutely cannot lose!"
Gritting his teeth, Mike squeezed out the remaining magic power in his body and cast the last fire spell.
A purple fireball the size of an egg appeared on the tip of Mike's wand. As Mike's magic power continued to be infused, the color of the fireball continued to deepen, and finally turned into a dark purple fireball the size of a heart.
This fireball did not seem to be very stable. It kept beating like a real heart, and every time it beat, it would emit an amazing amount of heat.
"Boom!"
The dark purple fireball fell off the tip of Mike's wand and flew towards Cedric.
After releasing the fireball, Mike collapsed to the ground, and forced himself 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, who were on both sides of the stage, to his side. At the same time, he cast a "Universal Protection" to cover the entire stage.
"Boom!"
As the dark purple fireball hit the stone wall that Cedric had built before, 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 dissipated, everyone saw that the transparent shield covering the stage was full of cracks, and at this moment, most of the stage had disappeared. The place where Cedric was originally located had turned into a deep pit, and there was still fiery red magma flowing slowly at the bottom of the pit.
Cedric stared blankly at the big pit and said tremblingly,
"I...I lost."