The Interesting Part of Magic

Regulus sat cross-legged on the ground, muttering a single word: ritual.

He only had a broad concept of ritual Magic.

That's not something that can be accomplished with a single spell; it requires multiple steps, specific conditions, and sometimes sacrifices, contracts, or some kind of more complex Magic framework.

Its Magic feedback is usually very strong, but the cost is usually also very high.

Animagus should be considered a standard form of ritual Magic.

That thing has a fixed sequence, a long process, requires specific materials, requires celestial phenomena to cooperate, and requires specific environmental conditions.

If successful, one can acquire animal form while retaining full consciousness.

If you fail, you'll be forever half-human, half-beast, with no chance of recovery.

Voldemort's resurrection also counts.

The father's bone, the servant's flesh, and the enemy's blood—these three elements are indispensable.

Voluntary, unintentional, and forced – these three different ways of acquiring magic correspond to three different meanings of Magic.

Success! A complete physical body has been rebuilt, even stronger than before.

Failure... failure might cause it to explode?

Unbreakable Vow is one too.

Once it is established, it is an absolute Magic contract; to break it is to die, with no room for negotiation. It is a constraint bound to the soul.

What about the Fidelius Charm?

It's likely that the secret is permanently hidden within the soul of the keeper, and only the keeper can voluntarily reveal it.

There is also the oldest form of protection: Sacrificial Protection, which involves voluntarily dying to create a protective barrier against death for others out of love.

The same kind of protection Lily gave Harry, it is too.

Regulus pondered to himself that these rituals all had something in common.

They all leave an imprint on the soul, and once successful, they achieve effects far exceeding those of ordinary spells.

They are irreversible, unchangeable, and irrevocable.

What about Saiph?

His guesses--

It may be necessary to exert decisive influence proactively for the first time, rather than responding passively.

It could mean seeing through things that others can't see through, and using that to achieve one's goals.

It may be necessary to accept the fact that sharpness can bring destruction, but not to give up using it because of that.

If this is indeed true, then the process itself conforms to the characteristics of a ritual.

Long-term preparation, specific conditions, powerful effects, involving the soul.

Bellatrix and Saiph are different.

Bellatrix is also difficult, but that's internal.

Protection one's personal boundaries—that concept may be abstract, but it's easy to understand.

As long as you know what you want to Protection, you can ignite it, and even if external forces intervene, the process will be clear.

Saiph, on the other hand, may need to exert decisive influence on the outside world.

But the question is, how big is enough?

Does it affect one person, or ten thousand people?

Will it affect one day, or one year?

To let your opponent lose a duel, or to make an entire family never dare to raise their heads again?

What about the scope?

Is it only at Hogwarts, or throughout the entire UK Wizarding World?

What about depth?

Does he want people to remember his name, or does he want people to avoid him at all costs?

Regulus couldn't figure it out; he wasn't even sure if his guesses were correct, or even completely wrong.

But if it truly requires some kind of explicit ritual, then in a sense, it is seeking externally.

He seeks influence, feedback, and some kind of response from the world.

Bellatrix is inward-facing, Saiph is outward-facing.

It's like two paths, one leading to inner strength, the other to outward expansion.

Can they walk at the same time?

Can it be done in parallel?

Or perhaps they don't affect each other, or even complement each other?

Regulus was thinking when he suddenly stopped.

feedback.

If his conjecture is correct, if the process of illuminating Saiph is some kind of ritual, and if he truly fulfilled all the requirements corresponding to the ritual—

Who will give him this feedback?

How do I provide feedback?

What is the principle behind this?

Is it Magic Power, or Magic itself?

Or perhaps this world contains some deeper mechanism, some unseen rule, something that automatically responds to those who complete the ritual?

Regulus couldn't figure it out; his knowledge was insufficient.

Records about ritual Magic are mostly vague, with successful cases being repeatedly circulated and failed cases being deliberately buried.

The truly core concepts may be hidden in the Chamber of Secrets of certain families, or in the minds of certain individuals; they are certainly not found in books that can be borrowed from Library.

But there might be some in the Forbidden Section; now we have our next target.

He then shook his head, dismissing those thoughts; if he couldn't understand something, he shouldn't think about it for now.

But that's what makes Magic so interesting.

What's the point of Magic that's so easily understood, or spells that can be learned by flipping through a book?

Aren't these the very things we can't understand what's truly worth spending a lifetime pursuing?

He closed his eyes and let his consciousness sink deep into the depths.

In the Spiritual World, the six stars are still in motion: Betelgeuse burns in the farthest distance, Bellatrix Protection the center, Saiph shines quietly in the lower right corner.

The Soul Avatar stood where all the light converged, radiating light.

Regulus gazed at Saiph and sensed it carefully for a while.

The starlight of that star was peculiar, neither as intense as Betelgeuse nor as gentle as Bellatrix.

It hasn't changed; it's still the same, faint and weak, just glowing.

It's more like it's conveying an emotion: I'm just staying put, don't bother me if you can't handle it.

Regulus chuckled at his own idea.

But the lack of change itself is also a form of information.

This suggests that his guesses might be in the right direction, but the timing wasn't right.

It's also possible that we're going in the wrong direction and need to start all over again.

It may just need a catalyst, like Bellatrix, which took nearly half a year to go from faintly lit to fully illuminated.

All he's doing now is planting the seeds; watering and fertilizing are things to come later.

Whether it will grow, and when it will grow, depends on fate.

If it doesn't grow, try planting it in another location.

Regulus opened his eyes.

If you can't figure something out, don't think about it for now. If you lack the knowledge, read a book. If it's not in a book, ask someone.

Dumbledore couldn't possibly be ignorant of ritual Magic, and Professor McGonagall, being Animagus herself, must know quite a bit about it.

That concludes today's discussion. Moving forward, by continuing to observe the changes in Saiph, we can verify his hypothesis.

Perhaps one day, it will suddenly light up when he's not paying any attention.

Just like when Bellatrix began to light up when facing the spiritual erosion of the Abyssal Whisper of the abyss.

Regulus pulled himself out of his thoughts, no longer dwelling on those questions that had no answers for the time being.

He stood up, stood in the Cabin for a moment, and then sat down cross-legged again.

The Spatial Network project hasn't even been done yet.

After spending more than three hours in the Cabin, the Spatial Network expanded from five spells to six.

The trajectory, the intersection points, and the timing of the exit all need to be readjusted.

The Six Realms are far more complex than the Five Realms.

When there are five paths, there are ten main trajectories and eight intersection points.

With one more track added, the main trajectories become fourteen, and the number of intersections increases to fifteen.

With four more tracks, there are seven more potential collision points, and each one needs to be calculated carefully.

Regulus spent two hours modeling and one hour debugging before it was finally done.

The six mantras operate simultaneously on the network, staggered and without interfering with each other.

They can be released whenever they want, and from whichever opening they want.

Regulus stood up and pushed open the door of the Cabin.

He glanced at the Training Ground; Alex was already lying on the ground, panting, his chest heaving, clearly exhausted.

Regulus ignored him.

Over at the Dummy Area, Hermes was still there, standing between four dummies, bracing himself against the Shield Charm, enduring the spells fired from the dummies.

The barrier swayed precariously, breaking into pieces with each hit. He gritted his teeth, replenished it with Magic Power, and then it would break again, and he would rebuild it.

Regulus looked at him, finding it amusing.

Hermes's demeanor just now made him seem disdainful of everything, scoffing at foreign powers and considering anything that didn't belong to him as trash.

And the result?

He immediately started practicing the Shield Charm, clearly still caring about it.

He simply wanted to improve through his own efforts, unlike Alex who wanted to take shortcuts.

Regulus walked over and gestured for the dummy to stop. Hermes, still holding up the barrier, didn't react in time.

Two seconds later, he slowly turned his head, glancing at Regulus with half-closed eyelids.

Then he removed the barrier, staggered to Alex's side, and collapsed straight to the ground.

Limbs outstretched, chest rising and falling, eyes half-closed.

Waiting to be rescued.

Regulus was speechless; this guy's attitude was way too obvious.

He ignored the two and turned to walk towards the Dummy Area.

With a wave of his hand, Magic Power surged forth, and the dummies began to move again. This time, he didn't make them cast spells; he simply made them move.

He turned the speed up to the highest setting, and the mannequins moved so fast they were almost invisible, like streaks of black shadow flashing by.

Hermes lay on the ground, glanced at it from the side, and then his eyes widened slightly.

That speed...

He turned to look at Regulus.

Regulus stood among the mannequins, ignoring him, and went about his own business.

He first used Spatial Warp to create the passageway.

Then anchor points are driven in, twelve anchor points, each fixing one of the twelve independent channels.

The next step is to connect them to form a complete network.

Then comes the flow, which makes the network dynamic and cyclical, constantly changing.

After doing all this, he raised his wand and cast six Disarming Charm into it.

One beam of red light after another shot into the passage and disappeared.

However, the distance is too short; the passage is right in front of the tip of the stick, making the process almost invisible.

It looked like he conjured a magic wand and tapped it a few times out of thin air.

Now they are all operating at high speed and intersecting with each other within that network of twelve channels.

Regulus's consciousness followed, monitoring every trajectory.

After waiting for ten seconds, he opened all six exits at the same time.

Six spells were simultaneously fired from six different anchor points, weaving into a net in the air and striking all six dummies at the same time.

The dummy's fake wand flew out of its hand and crashed to the ground.

Regulus watched this scene and nodded.

The Six Paths were formed.

You can gradually increase the number of questions, seven, eight, nine. As long as you can keep up with the mental and calculation abilities, you can keep adding questions.

However, if the goal is simply to maximize the number of casts in a single instance, this complexity is unnecessary.

There's no need to make them cycle through the network, and no need to calculate so many intersection points.

All you need to do is allow them to exist simultaneously for a very short time, a fraction of a second, enough for them to be launched from different anchor points at the same time.

That would reduce the amount of calculations considerably, allowing for up to ten problems, or even more.

Regulus withdrew his Magic Power, the network dissipated, and he stood there, still thinking about the data.

Hermes lay on the ground, his eyes wide open.

He saw what just happened.

Six incantations were simultaneously launched from six different locations.

Those locations were far from Regulus, and the spell appeared suddenly as if it had no source.

He imagined what would happen if those spells were directed at him—

How to prevent it?

The Shield Charm can block the Disarming Charm, but what if it were replaced by the Killing Curse?

As for dodging, with six incantations shooting in from six different directions simultaneously, where can one dodge?

That thing is impossible to defend against, let alone dodge.

Hermes lay there, watching Regulus's retreating figure, when a thought suddenly popped into his head.

This guy was hiding something?

What if you use this to hit me?

He twitched his lips, whether as a laugh or a sigh was unclear.

Then he closed his eyes and continued lying down.

Forget it, why think about that?

Even without Regulus's trick, I still couldn't beat him.

Just wait to be bailed out.