"Now that you could consciously control your magic to perform a few little tricks, perhaps we could try combining it with spells to cast some magic." Uncle Mu En's voice slowly drifted through the living room.
"Really?!" Harry, who had been reading at the table, immediately perked up. A week had passed since he had first successfully lit a fire.
Now, driven by conscious intent, he could light fires, snap branches, or make flowers bloom early.
At first, he had been rather proud of himself. But then Mr. Lucifer had quietly told him that at Harry's age, Uncle Mu En had already mastered his magic perfectly and could cast spells with any part of his body.
He had once cast spells with his feet while lying in bed and breathed fire from his butt.
That immediately left Harry unsure whether to laugh or cry.
In any case, ever since then, he had felt Uncle Mu En's greatness even more deeply...
"The first spell—Reparo." Uncle Mu En opened Standard Spells: Elementary and pushed it in front of Harry.
Reparo
This spell could repair damaged objects and restore them to their original state.
Harry had already read quite a few magic books during this time, so he was naturally familiar with this spell. The book even contained detailed notes on its intonation and wand movements.
He cautiously looked up at Uncle Mu En and saw that smug catlike face nod. "That's right. No wand. Use your hand."
Well, that was expected. Harry was not particularly disappointed; on the contrary, he was eager to begin. He had only wanted a definite answer.
"You can use your hand to point, and your glasses as the target," Uncle Mu En said.
Harry's glasses were terribly broken. The arms and nose pads had been held together with tape, and the lenses were cracked as well. They could not have been more suitable as a target for repair.
Harry nodded, took off his glasses, set them on the table, and began trying again and again.
"Reparo!" Harry waved one finger before his eyes and spoke the spell at the same time.
The glasses suddenly gave two little hops on the table, then fell still again.
"Don't rush, kid." Uncle Mu En smiled, stepped beside him, and held out his hand.
"Watch my movements," he instructed, then clearly recited the spell, "Reparo!"
Whoosh, whoosh—
The tape on Harry's glasses suddenly began to spin. Tiny bursts of silver light exploded over the damaged areas, the cracks in the lenses began to shrink, and then fused together.
In the blink of an eye, a brand-new pair of glasses appeared. The rust on the metal arms had vanished, the broken parts had healed, and the old tape had come loose from the glasses and lay on the table.
"Wow!" Harry could not help exclaiming. It was rare for him to observe spellcasting in such detail, and the sensation of reality being rewritten left him deeply shaken.
"Merlin was the founder of Modern Magic. He combined Runes, Latin, and the legacies of Ancient Greek magical script and Egyptian Magical Script, laying a solid foundation for modern magic," Uncle Mu En explained slowly.
"Tell me, what are the three elements of casting Modern Magic?"
"Gestures, spells, and desire!" Harry answered loudly. The books he had read lately had not been for nothing. Besides Charms, Transfiguration, and Potions, he had read many history books as well.
What Uncle Mu En had said—"Use history as a mirror, and learn from the ancients."—had already been written on the first page of his notebook.
"And what is the most fundamental difference from Ancient Magic?" Uncle Mu En asked again.
That question made Harry think for quite a while before he finally said, "Desire!"
"That's right. Before Merlin's era, aside from certain Dark Magic from ancient Egypt that required malice, the vast majority of Ancient Magic was an absolutely rational discipline. Runes, arrays, spells, and the like, which communicated with the origin of the world, allowed absolutely no errors.
Rigor was the basic requirement for becoming an outstanding wizard in that era.
But after Merlin, he innovatively combined countless fields of knowledge and simplified spells and runes, allowing people to successfully cast magic simply by reciting a single word or short phrase."
As he spoke, Uncle Mu En placed his hand on the table and drew runes.
"These simplified spells and gestures serve as the skeleton during spellcasting.
And our desire to cast is what drives the laws of the world, making them follow the prescribed path of our skeleton to fill it with flesh and blood."
Harry nodded. "I understand."
Uncle Mu En nodded too, then waved his hand. A flash of silver light passed, and the glasses returned to their previous battered state, with the tape wrapping itself back around them.
Facing Harry's stunned expression, Uncle Mu En smiled. "There's no better practice tool than this, is there?"
Harry gave a helpless, wry smile in agreement. "True..."
Although Uncle Mu En had only encountered this world's magic for the first time, his vast theoretical knowledge and spellcasting experience had already allowed him to master quite a few simple spells.
But he had not chosen to repair Harry's glasses before, nor had he dealt with many of the minor damages around the castle. He had been waiting for this day.
Knowledge was meant to be put into practice, wasn't it?
Besides, he was not a nanny.
With that, Harry began practicing again, chanting the spell over and over. "Reparo!"
After continuing like that for quite some time, the glasses showed no change. Harry looked at Uncle Mu En in frustration, hoping for an explanation.
Uncle Mu En smiled, picked up History of Modern Magic from nearby, opened it to a page, and handed it to Harry.
"The book has the answer," Uncle Mu En said.
Harry was a little puzzled, but he still began reading it word by word, trying to find the answer. Before long, he suddenly spotted a passage.
"...The blended development of Latin and English undoubtedly changed spells as well. What can be confirmed is that all current spells are merely imitations of ancient incantations.
And because modern spells are written with Latin letters that have developed over many years, discrepancies have inevitably arisen between their recorded forms and their actual pronunciation.
Therefore, when studying contemporary spells, we must cast aside our everyday speech habits and find the awkward rises and falls in tone, tonal differences, and altered sounds. Only then can we quickly master a spell..."
Harry's ears immediately grew hot. He had read this page before, but he had not noticed such a passage at all. He had been completely drawn in by the thrilling stories from history.
"Reparo—"
Uncle Mu En said slowly, "Rise, fall, gradual fall, rise. Use a low tone for the L."
Harry nodded. He fixed his gaze on the glasses and tried several more times. At last, he focused his attention on the crack in the lens.
He understood now. If he could not repair the glasses all at once, then he would do it step by step.
As he recited the spell once more, a tiny silver light suddenly appeared at the edge of the crack in the lens and began moving along it.
Wherever the silver light passed, that sliver of crack vanished.
Harry lifted the glasses and looked at Uncle Mu En happily. "Uncle Mu En, I did it."
Seeing this, Uncle Mu En nodded in satisfaction. To achieve this much barehanded—if Harry were given a focusing tool, he should be able to repair the entire pair of glasses.
If he were given an amplifier, repairing larger objects would not be a problem either.
"Not bad," Uncle Mu En praised him, then smiled. "But that still doesn't count as truly knowing how."
"It doesn't?" Harry was somewhat confused. He noticed the 'good-fruit smile' on Uncle Mu En's face.
"If you can restore those old things around the castle, then I'll believe you."
Before you continue