Kasen meant: "Kill the Competition..."
But...
"Kill the dragon?" Cedric glanced at the still-confused dragon not far away, lips pressing together with a hint of reluctance. But since that was the professor's instruction…
Clack!
With a crisp sound, two mechanical arms unfolded from behind Cedric.
"Let me think… how should I do this…" Cedric murmured as he began considering his options. Since Professor Kasen was an alchemy professor, then he absolutely shouldn't use anything other than alchemical methods to take down the dragon…
Close-quarters combat… also possible…
The next moment, one of the mechanical arms behind him stabbed its sharp blade straight into the ground, propping his body up. After a small angle adjustment, it snapped forward like a slingshot and hurled him directly toward the dragon.
Mid-air, Cedric adjusted his posture. But this kind of physical acceleration clearly wasn't as fast as Kasen's alchemical jetpack—Kasen could move fast enough that the dragon couldn't react.
Cedric, however, could be reacted to.
Dragonfire blasted toward him. Cedric's pupils shrank. The two mechanical arms behind him spread outward, forming two glider wings. Then, at a bizarre angle, he twisted his entire body straight upward in a way that made physics give up and go home.
"Should I use a spell?" Cedric dodged the dragonfire in an instant, frowned, and finally chose alchemy without hesitation. In mid-air, with parkour-master speed, he pulled out a simple Enchanting Table.
The moment the enchanted book opened, dense runes surfaced across its pages in response to his will.
"Why isn't that kid using a spell and instead pulling out an Enchanting Table? That's way too dangerous?" Kasen frowned from the stands.
"Maybe he's trying to learn from you," Professor Sprout said.
"Learn from me? I don't use an Enchanting Table to fight…" Kasen muttered, brows furrowed.
Meanwhile, Cedric grabbed the magic from the enchanted book with both hands, one in each, and the now-uncontrolled Enchanting Table was kicked straight toward the dragon's eye.
"I wonder if you're afraid of your own flames," he murmured, throwing the two bursts of magic in completely different directions.
One shot toward the dragon's body, the other straight into the dragonfire it had just spewed.
A flash of purple light swept across the entire arena. The previously chaotic dragonfire seemed to gain consciousness in an instant, coiling back toward the dragon's own body.
"Huh? A binding curse? Who taught him to fight like this?" Kasen shouted, utterly dumbfounded.
"Didn't you use it before? Back in the Forbidden Forest?" Snape asked suddenly.
"I used a Vanishing Curse," Kasen said through gritted teeth.
Off to the side, Professor Flitwick and Ollivander—who had come along just to watch the excitement—stared at the scene with blank expressions.
"Charms theory has ceased to exist…"
"Old Alchemy has ceased to exist…"
Gliding through the air, Cedric watched the dragon entangled in its own flames and finally relaxed a little. Then he decisively continued climbing higher.
"Isn't this just pure Cedric Diggory? Did I even teach him this?" Kasen muttered in a daze.
Once he reached a suitable altitude, Cedric took a deep breath, completely gave up on ascending, and instead began a full-speed descent—or, to put it more forcefully—
His entire body turned into a bullet-shaped meteor, slamming straight down toward the dragon's skull.
Bang!
The dragon, which had still been holding its head high while struggling with its own flames, was instantly smashed face-first into the ground, letting out a pained roar.
After all, a dragon's magical resistance was indeed high, but against basic physical attacks, they felt pain just the same.
With their rich nervous systems and large brains, their perception of pain was even sharper.
Cedric, however, paid no attention to the dragon's howling. He still remembered Kasen's earnest teachings.
"Kill the dragon!"
The next moment, he raised his arm high, his fist clenched tight. Under the strength of the alchemical framework and the finely tuned redstone mechanisms, as he stomped hard on the ground, his ankle, knee, hip—along with his entire spine, shoulders, arms, and every joint—began executing a continuous series of lever motions under the redstone program's control.
Boom!
With a thunderous crash, the dragon's skull caved inward over a wide area, centered on Cedric's fist.
The mechanical arms behind him didn't stay idle either. One stabbed deep into the dragon's hide to keep it from thrashing in pain and throwing him off.
The other mechanical arm acted like a precise surgical blade, effortlessly slicing open the section of dragon hide that Cedric had dented with his punch, exposing shattered dragon bone hanging together by mere strands.
"Trust me, I'm helping you leave more comfortably…" Cedric murmured as he brutally tore the broken bones free. The remaining mechanical arm plunged straight in and began spinning rapidly, like the blades of a juicer.
In an instant, the dragon let out a final, agonized roar, then tilted its head and collapsed flat on the ground.
"What the hell! What is he doing?! They told him to go up and grab the golden egg! Did redstone powder get into his brain that he went and killed the dragon instead?!"
Kasen sprang to his feet, utterly dumbfounded.
Meanwhile, Cedric, clutching the golden egg as he left the arena, was immediately surrounded by a swarm of fearless reporters.
"Mr. Cedric Diggory, may I ask why you chose such a bloody and brutal method—and even went so far as to slay the dragon—to obtain the golden egg?" one reporter asked, already shoving a sound-recording quill right up to his mouth.
"Why did I slay the dragon? Isn't that already answered in your question? For the golden egg, of course!" Cedric replied without even thinking.
"No, what I mean is, there are many ways to obtain the golden egg. Why did you choose dragon slaying?"
"You know, Hogwarts has two champions this time. I had to perform well enough, eye-catching enough, to bring glory to Hogwarts…"
"But even so, that doesn't justify using such a method. May I ask if someone instructed you to do this?"
"I'm sorry, I don't want to answer that. Go ask my mentor, Professor Kasenhis."
"I think that even your mentor wouldn't approve of using such a brutal and bloody method to obtain the golden egg. What do you think?"
"I don't know. I really don't know why, when I clearly took part in the competition, you're all treating me like this. When we were all giving it our all to bring honor to Hogwarts…"
In the stands, Kasen's mouth twitched as he watched Cedric gradually lose all restraint and start talking complete nonsense, irritation rising uncontrollably.
After all, the things Cedric was saying just now were a bit too textbook...
_________
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