Kitchen and the Room of Requirement (Part 2)

The entire room suddenly began to shake violently...

The dining table before him vanished abruptly, taking Jon's unfinished breakfast with it.

The violent shaking did not stop until half a minute later. Jon had nearly thought it was an earthquake.

However, the expected nuclear missile silo and nuclear missiles did not appear... In fact, after the violent shaking, the entire room was empty. Nothing had happened at all!

Jon was somewhat disappointed.

It looked like the Room of Requirement had done its best, but it simply lacked the ability!

"Let's try something lower-level..." Jon cleared his throat. "Then give me a multiple rocket launcher capable of covering all of Hogwarts, including the Forbidden Forest, with firepower within thirty seconds. Either a Weishi-class or Tornado-class will do!"

The violent shaking began again. Just as Jon was about to fall to the floor, a pillar suddenly appeared before him, allowing him to grab onto it and keep his balance.

That was the extent of the Room of Requirement's response.

The expected rocket launcher still did not appear!

"Damn, even that won't work..."

"Then something even lower-level... a Type 59 main battle tank!"

"Still no?"

"A 35mm Type 87 grenade launcher... That can't be difficult, right..."

"Let's switch again... an AK-47 assault rifle?"

"What about a Type 92 semi-automatic pistol?"

"A bayonet?"

"Fuck, you can't even conjure up a bayonet?" Jon could no longer sit still.

At first, he had thought the Room of Requirement simply had not reacted in time, so he deliberately repeated "a bayonet" several times... Yet the result was the same as before. After the violent shaking, the entire room remained completely empty.

"And you call yourself the Room of Requirement?" Jon rolled his eyes helplessly at the wall beside him. "You can't even make a bayonet or a pistol!"

Several unpleasant sounds suddenly came from the wall... More precisely, they sounded somewhat like crying.

Then a table appeared before Jon. A bottle of Scotch whisky and a glass materialized on it out of thin air... The bottle poured a full glass of ale, and the glass flew over to Jon.

"Fuck, this room has become sentient!" Taking the drink, Jon could not help blinking. "It can actually feel sad and apologize... Didn't they ban things from becoming sentient after 1949?"

Then Jon realized something!

Hogwarts had been established in 993 AD, which was 999 years ago; barring any surprises, the Room of Requirement should have been built around that same period!

"Give me a set of Crusader armor, and a Tang dao!" he said with a serious expression.

This time, the Room of Requirement gave an accurate response.

A set of heavy armor and a sharp long blade appeared before Jon almost instantly.

The armor was extremely heavy, and Jon struggled even to lift it. Though it certainly could not stop bullets, ordinary arrows might not be able to pierce it. The long blade was equally sharp, and the four Chinese characters "Fifth year of Tianbao" were engraved on its hilt.

Casually tossing the armor and Tang dao aside, Jon knew that his guess was probably correct.

The Room of Requirement had been built almost at the same time as Hogwarts. Its creator was probably one or more of Hogwarts' four Founders. Like the Sorting Hat, powerful magic had granted the Room of Requirement a degree of intelligence, but the scope of its intelligence and abilities remained consistent with that of its creators...

Therefore, the Room of Requirement could not provide anything beyond its era, even something as structurally simple as a bayonet!

Jon used another method to confirm this.

He asked the Room of Requirement for several books on "Defense Against the Dark Arts," and books immediately appeared: Curses and Counter-Curses, Common Dark Magic and Its Defense Outline, Compendium of Self-Protection Magic... Carefully checking their publication dates, he found that without exception, all of them had been published before the ninth and tenth centuries AD.

It seemed these Defense Against the Dark Arts books were not very useful... Jon tossed them aside as well. Magic from a thousand years ago had no doubt gone through countless generations of development and was certainly vastly different from modern magic... They lacked practical value, and blindly studying them would only lead him down many unnecessary detours.

With a wave of his hand, the armor, Tang dao, and books disappeared.

In their place appeared a row of Sneakoscopes and Secreting Devices, along with a large Demon Mirror... A great number of Defense Against the Dark Arts devices, though they might not necessarily be truly effective.

There were also huge silk cushions and several Dummies.

Raising his Green Bamboo wand, he began practicing the Petrifying Spell here again...

It was the only offensive spell he could use at this stage. Though its destructive power was not high, he still needed to become more proficient with it... Only then would he possess some ability to resist if he encountered an enemy.

By the time he left the Room of Requirement, it was already eight o'clock.

Classes at Hogwarts began at eight-thirty in the morning. The first class after the start of term was Minerva McGonagall's Transfiguration class, attended jointly by Hufflepuff and Gryffindor.

The Transfiguration classroom was on the seventh floor of Hogwarts Castle. Jon reached it in only a few minutes.

The classroom door was open, and there was no one inside. It seemed the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff first-years were still having breakfast in the Great Hall...

Except for a tabby cat standing on the podium.

Jon did not dare be careless. He walked respectfully to the podium and gave the cat a deep bow.

"Professor McGonagall."

The tabby cat glanced at Jon and nodded, but did not transform into human form.

Jon found a seat near the front and opened his copy of A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration, written by Emeric Switch.

As he absentmindedly flipped through it—the contents of the book had long since been memorized from beginning to end—he watched the tabby cat on the podium from the corner of his eye.

Animagus was indeed powerful magic. The tabby cat Professor McGonagall had transformed into did not merely look like a cat; even its physiological habits were exactly the same as a cat's. It could be said that she possessed some of a cat's animal instincts.

However, Jon felt that this magic did not seem particularly meaningful.

After all, Animagus transformations were limited to non-magical creatures. Transforming into magical creatures, such as Phoenixes, fire dragons, Hippogriffs, and the like, would bring unpredictable consequences... So, turning into an animal would not improve one's combat power in any way. Instead, it would turn a wizard capable of going pew-pew-pew into an ordinary animal that could only use its claws and teeth.

More importantly, ordinary Transfiguration could likewise turn a wizard into an animal for a short period of time, though the effect was not as good as an Animagus transformation. But if all one needed was to turn into an animal for reconnaissance, that seemed sufficient... And it offered a variety of forms, rather than restricting one to a single animal like an Animagus.

Not to mention that mastering Animagus transformation took several years, and even after spending those years, there was still a considerable chance of failure and great danger involved. Only seven registered Animagi existed throughout the twentieth century; including those unregistered, there were probably only around twenty in total. It could be said that it was an extremely difficult form of magic for ordinary wizards.

Put simply, the investment and return were completely disproportionate...