Chapter 689
Harry's Match Experience
Chapter 689 Harry's Match Experience
Since separating from Natalia, Harry has not encountered any other players.
In the silent forest, it seemed that only his own breathing could be heard, along with the occasional unidentified noise.
This made him begin to have some doubts—
Did I go in the wrong direction?
Perhaps he should have chosen a different route when he took the detour... Maybe someone is already close to getting the trophy?
It's unclear whether, after the champion is crowned, the remaining contestants will compete for a ranking, or someone will simply eliminate them...
As Harry hurried on, all sorts of random thoughts kept popping into his head. He pulled out his compass for the third time and saw the needle, after swaying for a while, stubbornly point in the same direction.
Not wrong.
But where did everyone else go?
While he was still figuring out how to get there, the others had already arrived near the trophy and started a fierce battle for it?
And he—the famous Harry Potter—wandered around like a fool, far from the battlefield, battling thorns and vines. By the time he reached the trophy's location, it was probably all over.
For some reason, all of these thoughts in Harry's mind were automatically tuned to Snape's tone and manner, with the laughter of the Slytherins as background music.
The imagined scene gave him a slight stomachache. Harry wiped the sweat from his face and suddenly realized that he wasn't even sure how much time had passed. The dense canopy of the Forbidden Forest blocked out the sunlight, making it impossible for him to tell whether it was afternoon or evening.
A small blue bird would sometimes fly beside him, and sometimes fly away into the sky. Whenever it got close, Harry wanted to hide.
He didn't know if the audience would laugh at him for choosing such a warrior when they saw him covered in sweat and panting heavily.
He gritted his teeth and forced himself to continue in the direction the compass was pointing; in the dense forest, this was the only thing he could trust.
Harry walked for a long time, always ending up in dead ends or impassable sections of the road—he had never known before that traveling through the forest could be so difficult.
Sweat soaked through my shirt, sticking stickily to my back. Every time I lifted my leg, my body felt as heavy as if it were filled with lead, and I wished I could just lie down and rest.
He sat down against an old oak tree, exhausted, and pulled out the supplies Sirius had prepared for him from his backpack—
A large bottle of chilled pumpkin juice, still radiating coolness even now, with fine water droplets covering the bottle when held in hand;
A box of beef pies, the dough baked to a golden brown, the beef inside smelling delicious;
Then came a few honey-flavored energy bars, a chocolate shaped like a golden thief, and a fist-sized piece of cream cake.
Harry knew that eating too much would affect his subsequent actions, so he restrained himself and only ate half of the pie. But when he felt he had rested enough and stood up from the ground, he realized he had still eaten too much.
Just as he was about to stuff the pies back into his backpack, a strange "click" sound came from above. Harry looked up and saw a spider as big as a cartwheel slowly descending from the treetop, its eight black eyes gleaming coldly, inexplicably reminding him of Snape's eyes.
"Collapse!"
Harry rolled to his feet, and the red light struck the spider's abdomen, but the effect was as if Harry had thrown a stone at it.
The spider twitched, quickly descended from the tree, and then rushed towards Harry.
Harry cast spells while moving quickly:
"Stupid! Obstacles everywhere! Stupified!"
But it didn't work... or rather, it didn't have any significant effect...
The spider crawled forward with twitching movements. Harry's spell did not stop it; instead, it seemed to anger it. Suddenly, it leaped, its pincers sweeping across Harry, who barely dodged. However, the backpack strap was torn, and various supplies were scattered all over the ground.
The instant the spider pinned him down with its forelegs, Harry instinctively shouted out his most familiar spell—
"Except your weapons!"
Surprisingly, the spider actually let go of him. Seizing this fleeting opportunity, Harry shouted, "Burning Flame!"
The spider's body, covered in black hair, burst into flames instantly. It let out a terrified scream and retreated several steps, its body almost curled into a ball. It frantically patted out the flames, still not daring to approach Harry, but its eyes darted around cunningly.
Harry keenly sensed that the big guy was observing the power of his fire spell, and seemed to doubt that his magical level was enough to pose a threat to it.
He leaped up and waved his wand again: "Patriot!" A silver stag burst forth from the tip of the wand, the guardian deity in human form moving with agility and grace, its footsteps clattering as it ran.
The antlers slammed into the spider's eyes, and the eight-eyed giant spider let out a piercing screech. When the stag charged again, the spider completely gave up the fight, turned tail, and ran away as fast as it could.
Harry, panting heavily, gripped his wand and slumped to the ground.
He tried to stand up, but as soon as he moved, he realized that his shoulder was in excruciating pain, and a hideous wound was bleeding profusely. Every breath he took was accompanied by a burning pain.
When the spider pincers grabbed him, they cut his shoulder, but Harry was too tense to notice.
The guardian spirit came running back, pacing around and vigilantly watching the surroundings. Its whole body shimmered with silver light, exuding holiness and purity.
After confirming that it was temporarily safe, Harry gritted his teeth and rummaged through his backpack, pulling out a small bottle of White Essence from his pocket. Fortunately, the bottle hadn't been broken in the fight.
The gruesome wound resembled an open baby's mouth. As soon as the medicine was poured on, fine bubbles immediately appeared. Harry gasped in pain and clenched his fists tightly.
At the same time, the flesh and blood wriggled and connected at a speed visible to the naked eye, and after a few minutes, only a new pink scar remained.
After resting for a while, Harry leaned on the tree trunk to stand up. His legs were still a little weak, but he decided he couldn't stay any longer.
He checked the compass, and the pointer pointed directly into the dense forest ahead.
This time, Harry didn't take a detour. He pushed aside the weeds, used a spell to move the bushes, and climbed over the huge dead tree blocking his way, leaving the path clear.
Before them appeared a lush, green meadow, flat and soft. Further ahead, however, stood a towering wall of thorns that inspired awe and fear.
There was only one low, narrow passage through the dense thorns.
"If another monster like the one we just saw appears here... I'm afraid we won't be able to handle it, will we?"
Harry muttered to himself.
The guardian stag had disappeared at some point. He paused on the grass for a moment, then walked in without hesitation.
……
In the audience, someone muttered, "Am I the only one who thinks this contestant's style is completely different from the others?"
Fuji Yuanyuan's ears twitched slightly upon hearing this, and the muscles on his face twitched slightly.
To be fair, although he didn't like this savior promoted by Dumbledore, Harry Potter's experience in the game was exactly the style of the league he envisioned.
The warriors braved dangerous monsters, unpredictable plants, and traps set by the Ministry of Magic in the Forbidden Forest, sometimes fighting and sometimes cooperating, until finally engaging in a fierce battle before the Goblet of Fire...
Just like in a Quidditch match, the Seekers scramble for the one and only Golden Snitch, and the moment they touch it, victory is assured.
But who could have imagined that Wade Grey, single-handedly, would completely rewrite the competition into a battle between the contestants and the puppets, making Harry Potter, who had experienced normalcy, seem different all of a sudden.
"Ward Vader Gray went easy on him, didn't he? Didn't you see the puppets didn't attack him?"
The audience was discussing it.
"But Cedric was the first one to be eliminated!"
"I heard Potter and Gray are friends... but when they get to the trophy, what will they choose? Will they lift the Goblet of Fire together?"
"Hey, wait... Look, the puppet has appeared!"
On the big screen, the lizard puppet appeared silently, its eyes moving eerily as it stared in the direction Harry had left.
(End of this chapter)