The second dragon roar was only halfway out before it abruptly stopped.
Rhys's face darkened. With a precise offensive spell, he struck the dragon-man directly in the throat, forcing the roar back into his mouth.
The next second, dark red blood sprayed from the gaps between every scale covering the dragon-man's body.
Below the platform, Helga and Rowena both changed expressions when they saw Rhys's face.
"How dare that idiot do something like that?" Helga felt as though she was about to start swearing.
That fool was finished.
And now that things had developed this far, it would probably be very difficult to bring matters to a peaceful end. Salazar had been thoroughly enraged. Even she and Rowena were not confident they could persuade him to stop in this state.
Rowena, however, was not worried at all. She simply stood there with her arms folded, looking like a spectator.
Seeing this, Helga could not help poking her friend's shoulder.
"Rowena, use that brain of yours and think of something!"
Rowena gave Helga a strange look.
"Think of what?"
"We can't just watch him kill that child, can we? Killing people is illegal in the modern wizarding world!" Helga lowered her voice and spoke rapidly.
She was somewhat worried that Salazar would kill Jack on the spot and bring the Ministry of Magic down on them.
She could understand with her toes that expecting Salazar to obey the law and serve time in Azkaban was even less realistic than expecting the sun to rise in the west.
There were only two circumstances under which Salazar would willingly go to Azkaban.
Either he had become interested in the Dementors there, or he needed Azkaban's prisoners as experimental material.
In any case, once matters reached that point, the impact on their plans would be enormous. The identity of "Rhys Lint" would certainly become unusable, the later stages of the tournament would also be affected, and it might even damage Hogwarts' reputation.
Rowena's expression became even stranger.
"Why do you think that monster is going to die?" Rowena glanced disdainfully at the dragon-man on the platform, who had turned into something resembling a small fountain.
Paying such a tremendous price for such a modest increase in strength was simply not worth it.
Of course, to modern wizards, this was already a potion beyond imagination.
"Salazar isn't that kind."
After silently mocking Jack for a moment, Rowena continued explaining her view.
"Kind?" Helga froze for a moment before finally understanding.
Indeed.
Jack had offended Salazar far too severely.
There was no chance Salazar would let him off easily.
Death would already be a form of release for Jack.
On the platform, the dragon-man's expression became extremely ferocious. He opened his mouth, but only a few hissing sounds like air leaking from a balloon came out.
Rhys's spell had pierced the scales on his skin and shattered his vocal cords.
"Abandoning your identity as a wizard and willingly degrading yourself into a beast. Hah."
Rhys looked at the dragon-man before him without the slightest emotion in his eyes, as though he were looking at a lump of raw meat.
Hearing Rhys's words, the dragon-man's eyes shifted and fixed firmly on him. Veins bulged across his face, clearly showing that Rhys's words had struck a nerve.
The muscles beneath his scales swelled as he gathered strength.
Even more astonishingly, perhaps because of the intense stimulation, two large bulges suddenly appeared on Jack's back.
With a harsh tearing sound, a pair of blood-soaked wings burst from behind him.
At this point, Jack looked very different from a human.
Compared to a person, he now resembled a dragon far more closely.
"Resistance is pointless."
Facing the increasingly terrifying Jack, Rhys shook his head and paid him no mind at all.
The moisture in the air, together with the blood that had just burst from Jack's body, rapidly condensed into hundreds of wafer-thin blade-like sheets.
Under Rhys's control, they swept towards Jack.
Jack tried to dodge, but reinforced by Rhys's magic, the blades were far faster and more agile than he was.
Of the hundreds of blades, Jack failed to avoid a single one.
Every last one struck him solidly.
The blades formed from condensed blood were extraordinarily sharp, but they were not particularly strong in terms of impact.
So Rhys deliberately changed their angle, making them slice across Jack rather than stab into him.
In a single exchange, more than a hundred scales were shaved from Jack's body.
Large amounts of skin and flesh beneath the scales were sliced away along with them, instantly robbing him of the ability to resist.
Below the platform, Rowena narrowed her eyes.
For some reason, the scene before her felt rather familiar.
Salazar seemed to have borrowed from the attack technique she was best at, merely replacing wind blades with blood blades.
Sure enough, after the blood blades swept past, they curved around and returned.
Once again, they shaved away a large patch of scales, flesh, and blood from Jack's back.
Jack collapsed directly onto his knees.
He opened his mouth wide, but no sound came out.
Rhys did not hesitate. He continued waving the wand in his hand like an orchestra conductor, making the tornado formed from blood-red blades sweep across Jack again and again.
In just two or three seconds, the wings Jack had newly grown were reduced to bare white bones.
At the same time, Rhys took a small potion bottle from his robes and threw it onto the ground, shattering it. The liquid that spilled out formed a short arrow, which shot forward with a whoosh and sank into Jack's abdomen.
The onlookers assumed this was another of Rhys's attacks, but Rowena and Helga saw clearly that it was not poison at all. On the contrary, it was an excellent healing potion!
This potion could strengthen the body's ability to heal itself while also keeping the mind clear. It was an extremely valuable and complicated potion.
Rhys's purpose in using such a potion on Jack at this moment was obvious.
From the moment Jack discarded the wand to the moment Rhys used the healing potion on him, less than half a minute had passed. Most of the people below the platform had not even realised what had happened before Jack had already completely lost the ability to resist.
And Rhys had no intention of stopping.
The blood-red tornado swept across Jack's body again and again. By now, every scale covering his body had been scraped away. Without the protection of the scales, the tornado could strip away his muscles much more efficiently. Transparent fascia and white bone were already visible in many places.
Looking at the barely recognisable Jack on the platform, Helga sighed.
"I hope this doesn't have any negative consequences for Rhys."
Although she did not particularly object, Helga still felt that Salazar's methods were rather visually shocking. She did not know whether modern wizards, with their excessively high moral standards, would be able to accept it.
"Why would it?" A mocking smile appeared at the corner of Rowena's mouth. "Has the modern wizarding world really become so tolerant of non-human creatures?"
She deliberately raised her voice for the second half of the sentence, ensuring that everyone watching the duel heard it.
Seraphina's expression immediately became awkward.
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12 Chaps ahead at Patreon.com/HornyFBI