"Green light... so it's that kind of pillar that can be smashed and has items hidden inside?"
The instant he saw that patch of green light, Avada immediately dispersed the white fog, which had already been mostly burned away by dragonfire anyway, allowing himself to reappear in the dragon's field of vision.
"That pillar has a high resistance to ordinary magic. I'm afraid only something like the Blasting Curse, a Dark spell, could destroy it—but obviously that's not something I can use in a tournament."
"Or I could use Transfiguration to turn something into a heavy object and attack it physically, but I don't have suitable materials for that on hand right now... so for the moment, I'll just guide the dragon properly."
"Five, four, three..."
Silently counting down the five seconds in his mind, Avada suddenly accelerated and crossed over the area glowing green. In the distance, the Ironbelly had finally recovered from the choking white fog. Its eyes, now bloodshot, swept the arena once and immediately locked onto Avada again. Then it let out a thunderous roar and drove its massive body forward with all four limbs, charging straight at him...
"Two, one!"
Boom!
A thick gray stone pillar, as massive as a giant tree, suddenly burst up from the glowing green patch of ground. In just a few seconds, it shot over ten meters into the air. The enraged dragon, however, had apparently never paid any attention to those glowing signals in the first place. By now, it was only a few meters away from the pillar—far too close to stop in time...
Crack...
There was not even much noise. The moment the dragon slammed solidly into the pillar, the part it struck first let out an ominous brittle cracking sound, and then in the next instant exploded into a shower of flying stone fragments. The pillar, which had stood over ten meters high, slowly tipped over, then crashed heavily onto the reinforced ground and snapped into who knew how many pieces.
"ROAR!"
That poor pillar had not impeded the dragon's speed in the slightest. On the contrary, it was the Ironbelly itself that got startled when it suddenly saw an obstacle appear in front of it, causing it to slow slightly. After smashing through the pillar, it came to a halt, looked around in confusion, and then discovered with fury that it was once again surrounded by thick mist...
"Next time, maybe I can try controlling the direction the pillar falls and see if I can make it crash directly onto the dragon. It should do at least some damage..."
Naturally, the aftershocks of the collision did nothing to Avada, who had already set up a Shield Charm. He even had the spare attention to conjure more fog again while the dragon's focus was on the pillar, hiding his own figure and planning to continue his observations.
Then, in the very next moment, he saw a small ball of light quietly floating in midair where the pillar had originally stood.
"So that's the item hidden inside the pillar? Good thing I set up cover in advance..."
He decisively sped over, then snatched the little orb before the dragon could react. It was actually a small glass bottle filled with potion, with an eye-catching label stuck to the side.
"Skele-Gro?"
Avada frowned. Judging by the bottle's size, it was only enough for a single gulp. The cap could also be popped off quickly. This was probably designed for champions who got hit by the dragon's body—so that after having several bones broken, they could drink it and keep going.
"I won't need it for now... and probably won't need it for the entire match."
He quickly put the little bottle away, then continued testing the dragon's attack patterns while keeping constant watch on the changes in the lights across the arena. But to his surprise, not long after he resumed observing, four or five patches of blue light suddenly lit up in another area not far from either him or the dragon, clustered fairly close together.
"Blue?"
Avada's brows rose. "So those are the sturdy pillars that are hard to destroy—these things appear in groups?"
"Come to think of it, that dragon just smashed a pillar, so it probably now thinks all of them can be broken easily... Should I let it ram into a sturdy one next and teach it a lesson? That way, when the charging pillars appear, it probably won't just brainlessly crash into them... Yes, let's do that."
"Three, two, one..."
Avada stacked several speed-enhancing spells onto himself in rapid succession. Almost in an instant, he opened up a huge distance between himself and the Ironbelly, arriving in the middle of the blue-lit patches and calmly waiting there for it to come crashing in on its own.
What greeted him instead was a terrifying hundred-foot stream of dragonfire.
"..."
His reaction was fast enough. Before the flames reached him, he immediately cast a Shield Charm to block the first wave of impact. Then the sturdy pillars in front of him rapidly rose from the ground, intercepting the rest of the attack for him.
"Well, fine. At least I've tested one way to guide the dragon into breathing fire."
After frowning slightly, Avada immediately dispelled the Shield Charm and retreated a considerable distance to the side. He still remembered very clearly that sturdy pillars only lasted five seconds, and he had no intention of stupidly standing there motionless only to find himself face-to-face with the Ukrainian Ironbelly after the pillars sank away.
As it turned out, though, he had worried too much. The Ironbelly did not seem to have a habit of advancing while breathing fire. Throughout the several seconds that the stream of dragonfire continued, the beast remained crouched in place like a small mountain. Only after the flames gradually died out, and it realized that its breath had achieved absolutely nothing, did it once again charge forward in fury.
"Should I maybe help this dragon build a little confidence?"
While continuing to dodge the Ironbelly's assaults—and, in the process, luring it into smashing another fragile pillar, from which he gained a one-use dragonhide cloak capable of blocking a single dragon breath attack—Avada continued thinking with growing irritation.
"Dragon breath should be exhausting for a dragon too. And it's already breathed fire twice without getting any result at all, whereas its close-range attacks have smashed several pillars... Will that gradually change its mentality and make it reduce the frequency of its fire breath even more? Which in turn would increase the odds of it crashing into a charging pillar?"
"Could this be one of the real difficulties of the task? That the champion not only has to survive the dragon's attacks, but also has to account for the dragon's mentality?!"
"But if I really want to make it feel that breathing fire is more efficient than melee attacks, then what exactly am I supposed to let it burn? The pillars appear randomly, and they're not necessarily fragile pillars..."
"Wait?"
As he thought that, the corner of Avada's eye suddenly caught the remains of the two fragile pillars that had already been smashed apart earlier, their broken pieces scattered all across the ground. Once the dragon had shattered them, the protective magic originally contained within them had completely failed. Now they were nothing but ordinary stone, stripped of all magical properties...
"Aren't those ready-made Transfiguration materials?!"
(End of Chapter)