Strength Is What Truly Matters

Ted let out a long breath and asked, "Can you tell me about The Boy Who Lived, Neville Longbottom? You know, I used to live in a Muggle orphanage. I only heard about him recently."

"Oh~" Old Tom raised his brows. "That's right! The savior, The Boy Who Lived. We have him to thank. Otherwise, who knows what things would be like now."

"He survived that disaster and somehow defeated The Dark Lord. After all, he was only one year old at the time..."

"I've heard he hasn't shown himself to be particularly remarkable. He's even a little, a little... disappointing. So some Wizards think he was just lucky..."

"But no matter what, The Dark Lord fell because of him. That's why we can sit here talking about this instead of living under darkness, terrified every day. We should all thank him."

After returning to his little storage room, Ted did not continue practicing spells. Instead, he picked up the secondhand copy of A History of Magic that he had never opened before.

The book's previous owner might not have been a very well-behaved child. Many of the portraits inside had been doodled on with mustaches and the like.

Still, it had been cheap, and it was perfectly usable.

Ted flipped straight to 1970, when Voldemort began openly leading the Death Eaters against the Ministry of Magic.

Since he did not know what had happened in the original story during those ten years, he had no idea whether anything had changed.

But when he reached 1981, he found a difference.

The book recorded that Voldemort had seized an opportunity to ambush the safe house of the elite Aurors, the Longbottoms. Mr. and Mrs. Longbottom had clearly had a chance to escape, but chose to fight to the death in order to protect their child.

Then, as Voldemort was preparing to kill Neville Longbottom, an accident occurred. He left an S-shaped scar on Neville's forehead and then "died"! And after Voldemort was "finished," the world soon experienced its second Celestial Conjunction.

If the first Celestial Conjunction had mainly brought massive changes to the stars and climate, along with creatures, plants, and even animals from many other worlds...

Then the second Celestial Conjunction had brought intelligent races from other realms.

Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, and demi-humans were currently recognized as "people" and accepted by the magical world.

Fishmen, Kobolds, Goblins, Bugbears, and the like... were regarded as humanoid monsters.

Though they had their own rudimentary civilizations and languages, they were savage by nature and ugly to boot...

It looked like this world ought to be renamed "Neville Longbottom"!

Voldemort had chosen Neville as his greatest enemy, and the savior had changed.

The two Celestial Conjunctions had filled this world with countless unknown magical creatures. Who knew how great their impact would be?

His greatest advantage—his familiarity with the plot—was gone.

"Haah... fine!" Ted put down the dog-eared copy of A History of Magic.

No matter what, he still had to live, didn't he?

Whether it was Neville or Harry, didn't he still need to study magic and grow stronger?

He even had a cheat. What was there to fear? It wasn't some tragic protagonist story...

He reopened Magical Theory.

The author of this book was Adalbert Waffling, a British Wizard who studied magical theory and was believed to have written "all magic." Waffling was more or less regarded as the "Father of Magical Theory," because every modern Wizard had read his works.

Waffling summarized the fundamental laws of magic and wrote Magical Theory, a book that remained a textbook for young Wizards at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to this day.

He was important enough to have appeared on a Chocolate Frog card.

Ted had started reading this book after learning several simple spells.

After all, it covered the basics, offering certain explanations of what Magic Power was, what spells did, and so on.

If he wanted to achieve anything in magic, he would have to learn these foundational theories sooner or later. He might even need to explore them in depth.

It was not impossible to simply use magic while knowing how it worked but not why.

But in that case, at most, he could only become a powerful elite Auror. Becoming a master of magic like Dumbledore, Grindelwald, or Voldemort would be impossible.

According to the view already accepted by the Wizarding public, magic was formed when Wizards used their will to control their Magic Power.

The final effect of magic was highly related to the caster's own desire.

Spells and wand movements were merely auxiliary tools for casting magic.

After all, Little Wizards had neither wands nor spells when their Magic Power erupted, yet they could still directly produce magical effects.

It was simply that such a primitive method was too uncontrollable, extremely difficult for most Wizards, and even dangerous.

That was why Wizards two thousand years ago had developed spells and wands: to "standardize" magic, reduce the difficulty of casting, and make it easier to learn more kinds of magic.

Back in the days before the Common Era, every Wizard had mastered only a limited number of spells. It depended on their talent.

For example, a kind-hearted Wizard who pitied all living things might know only a few healing spells and possess no combat ability at all.

Likewise, Witches who had grown up in the countryside might be best at brewing Potions. At most, they could use black Cats or ravens as lookouts. They had little combat ability as well.

Some were only good at Transfiguration, while others specialized solely in long-range curses... otherwise, the Witch hunts would not have been so effective.

In short, things had improved immensely by now.

Ted picked up another book he had borrowed from the bookshop, Control Your Magic—Required Reading for Little Wizards.

It was a simple guide teaching Little Wizards how to control their Magic Power and avoid major eruptions.

Though its contents were basic, it was particularly suitable for beginner Little Wizards.

Besides that, Ted also had a copy of The Power of Will.

That was the benefit of working at a bookshop: free books~ Deep in the Flourish and Blotts warehouse were many books that had piled up over the years, leftovers that had not sold out back then, as well as books no one had wanted to buy.

Ted had even found a copy of Invisible Monster's Invisible Book.

Apparently, the bookshop had ordered several copies back then, but they could never be found once they vanished from sight, so they had remained unsold.

These were all free treasures. Ted had taken detailed reading notes on every one of them...

If he had worked this hard back then, Ted would have graduated from Tsinghua University long ago.

Now, another skill had appeared in the skill column of his character interface: Spell Lv1.

It seemed he had finally gotten started with spells.

He had come to terms with it—no matter how the world changed, personal strength was what truly mattered.

Meet all changes with steadfastness!

The next day, Ted still went to the apothecary to process herbs.

By now, he could handle more than a dozen kinds of herbs. His progress had been remarkably fast.

This kind of work depended entirely on whether one put their heart into it. Ted wrote down every word Mr. Giggs said about Potion ingredients in his notebook, then organized and reviewed them at night.

Mr. Giggs usually did not need to say anything twice.

Giggs had now come to appreciate the benefits of having a reliable "child laborer" in the shop. It greatly reduced the tedious, repetitive, low-value work of processing basic ingredients that still had to be done.

Giggs had gone out to restock. When he returned, he carried a backpack. It had obviously been enchanted with an Undetectable Extension Charm, because he took out items totaling five times the backpack's volume.

"What are these herbs?" Ted asked.

"Hehe! These things aren't easy to get! They're all new varieties that appeared after the Celestial Conjunction. These ones have undergone extensive testing and been confirmed to have medicinal value..."

Giggs began showing off. "Look at this..." He picked up an ordinary-looking white flower. "It's called Peacebloom, and it can be used to make healing potions."

Ted froze. That name sounded familiar.

Giggs continued, "Unlike Dittany, healing potions can effectively treat many internal injuries. That's something Dittany can't replace."

"And this, Silverleaf, and this Earthroot... they're all herbs that appeared after the Celestial Conjunction."

"As for this~" Giggs took out a large glass jar filled with liquid. Something resembling a pig's brain floated inside.

"This is Drowner Brain—the brain of a Drowner. Drowners are monsters that appeared after the Celestial Conjunction too. You'd better be careful near water in the future. These things are extremely dangerous!"

Peacebloom? Silverleaf? Earthroot? Weren't these the herbs from World of Warcraft? Had Azeroth connected to this world?

Then what about the Burning Legion?!

As for Drowners, Ted had initially thought they were the water monkeys of legend!

But once Giggs mentioned Drowner Brain, he remembered. Wasn't this monster material from The Witcher 3, or rather, the Witcher world? Just what the hell had converged during these Celestial Conjunctions?! Although Ted gained plenty of experience today from learning new Herbology and Potion ingredient knowledge, he could not bring himself to feel happy.

There was no Well of Eternity in this world. The Burning Legion probably would not care about it, right? Please send some monthly votes~