Regulus's Little Invention

Three hundred years ago, the Muggle world did one thing: they created instruments.

With a microscope, the lens is ground to a certain curvature and the focus is adjusted to the appropriate position, so that everyone can see the same cellular structure, regardless of whether their eyes are nearsighted or farsighted.

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The Telescope, with two lenses embedded in a copper tube, allows everyone to see the same moons of Jupiter, whether standing on a plain or a mountaintop.

A thermometer, with a glass tube filled with mercury, allows everyone to read the same boiling point, regardless of how sensitive their fingers are to heat.

A slide rule, with two sets of logarithmic scales sliding relative to each other, allows everyone to arrive at the same multiplication and division results, regardless of how fast they can do mental calculations.

Measurement became standardized, individual talent was replaced by tools, and then science exploded.

Before that, every field of study was based on personal experience.

Blacksmiths judge the temperature of iron billets by touch; a cherry-red color indicates one type of hardness, while a bright orange color indicates another.

Winemakers rely on their tongues to judge the degree of fermentation—whether it's too sour or too bitter—a slight difference can mean two different batches.

Doctors rely on their fingers to determine the strength and rhythm of the pulse, depending entirely on the subtle tactile sensation at their fingertips.

Talented people do it well, and untalented people do it poorly. That's not science, that's craft.

The advent of instruments changed all of this. People no longer needed the feel of a blacksmith, only a thermometer; they no longer needed the tongue of a brewer, only an alcohol meter.

The measurement results are objective and repeatable; anyone who operates the instrument will obtain the same reading.

Whether the Wizarding World had ever done this, Regulus didn't know; at least he hadn't seen it.

Alchemy textbooks focus entirely on how to use one's Magic Perception to detect the textures of materials, without mentioning any auxiliary tools.

The same applies to Potions Class: judging the temperature of the cauldron relies on touch, judging the degree of stirring relies on experience, judging the concentration of the potion relies on smell and sight, and judging the reaction stage of the potion relies on Magic Perception.

Herbology Class judges a plant's health by observing the color and texture of its leaves, while Charms Class adjusts the precision of Spellcasting by the feel of the wand and the effect of the spell.

All of these have one thing in common: they rely on personal perception and lack any standardized measurement tools.

In at least his thirteen years of life, in the classrooms of Hogwarts, in the Black family's library, and in the public knowledge system of the UK Wizarding World, he had never seen any instrument that could replace a wizard's personal perception.

Perhaps someone else has made a similar attempt somewhere he is unaware of.

Six hundred years of Flamel, several hundred years of Beauxbatons ' history—the history of the Wizarding World is long enough that anything is possible, but at least in the open knowledge market, he had never seen it.

The Magic Power patterns perceived by two Alchemy may differ from the same piece of metal. The patterns themselves are, of course, fixed, but the resolution they perceive is different.

Those with high precision can see more, while those with low precision can only see a general picture. Then, based on what they see, they design circuits, and the products they make are naturally of a lower quality.

The entire Alchemy is built upon personal perception. Flamel did not need tools; his six hundred years of Alchemy practice made his perceptual precision the best instrument.

Those professors at Beauxbatons, renowned alchemists across Europe, didn't need them. Those who reached that position had already been honed to a level unattainable by others through talent and training.

However, for the vast majority of learners, perceptual accuracy is a natural barrier.

Furthermore, the precision of Magic Manipulation, the spatial imagination for circuit design, and the intuitive judgment of material properties all depend on personal qualities, and there are no external tools to assist in this.

This isn't a monopoly. No one deliberately shuts the door to Alchemy. Beauxbatons started teaching it from the third grade, and the textbooks were published publicly, so any wizard could buy them and read them.

But the effect is similar to a monopoly; only a very few people with sufficiently high talent can truly delve into the depths of Alchemy.

Others are stuck at the ceiling of their talent, destined to spend their entire lives doing basic operations, such as material sorting, circuit design, and quality control.

The technological barriers are a natural consequence; no one is stopping them, it's just that the threshold is too high.

The core of the threshold, or at least one of its core aspects, is the lack of instruments.

The Muggle world has spent three hundred years proving one thing: when measurement is standardized, and when individual talent is removed from the equation, knowledge flows from the hands of a very few to everyone who has access to it.

When ordinary people can use tools to do what only geniuses can do, the progress of the scientific revolution will no longer be determined by the number of geniuses.

What if Alchemy could take this step too?

Regulus's eyes lit up as he looked at the copper plates on the table.

He decided to create something, drawing inspiration from the Disintegration Charm.

The core of the Disintegration Charm is oscillation. The Conduction and superimposes within the target, triggering resonance. When the resonance amplifies to a critical point, the structure collapses.

Vibrations vary in speed, and different materials have different natural frequencies. The frequency required to break a piece of granite is different from that required to break a piece of limestone.

His understanding of oscillation and resonance comes from the entire process of extracting the Disintegration Charm from the Magic Circuit of the Whomping Willow; he had already thoroughly grasped it.

Now, let's reverse the principle: instead of actively outputting oscillations to destroy the target, we'll receive the Magic Power vibrations emitted by the target itself.

A piece of metal, with alchemical circuits engraved on its surface, is designed to passively receive and capture Magic Power vibration signals emitted by substances that approach it, instead of altering the material's structure.

Different Magic Power patterns generate different vibration modes, and the receiving circuit converts the vibrations into Magic Power pulses, which are then transmitted to the display layer.

The display layer uses moonstone, a common Potions ingredient. It is naturally translucent, has a faint fluorescent property, and is also an alchemical material.

He flipped through the book "Principles of Optics" and learned the correspondence between the wavelength of light and the vibration frequency, and that vibrations of different frequencies can be mapped onto different colors of light.

The vibration ranges of Magic Power energy and visible light do not overlap, but the principles are the same. He has already worked with Light Magic and is very familiar with it; all he needs to do is create a conversion circuit.

The principle is not complicated. The Disintegration Charm outputs Magic Power as vibrations to destroy the target. What he needs to do is input the target's Magic Power vibrations as signals to display patterns.

The same principle, just in reverse: one is used to dissect, the other to analyze.

Get started.

Take a copper coin, cut it into a palm-sized disc, polish it smooth, and engrave a receiving alchemical circuit on the surface.

This circuit wasn't in the textbook; he designed it himself, referencing the oscillation model of the Disintegration Charm for the location of the key nodes.

By reversing the output to become the input, the capture range of the oscillation rhythm is widened to the maximum, and the power is reduced to the minimum. No destructive Magic Power output is needed; only sufficiently fine receiving resolution is required.

The node spacing of the receiving loop, the path direction, and the compensation structure for Magic Power attenuation were all drawn from scratch. If any mistakes were made, they were scraped off and redone. The copper plate was polished three times before the fourth version was stable.

A thin layer of moonstone was applied to the surface of the copper disc. The moonstone had a display circuit pre-engraved inside to convert the received Magic Power signals into light patterns.

The thickness, brightness, and color of the lines correspond to the density, intensity, and properties of the Magic Power pattern, respectively.

The copper disk receives the signal, the moonstone displays the signal, and the interface circuit between the two layers is responsible for signal conversion.

The attenuation rate of the interface loop took the longest to debug. Transmitting too much would cause light pattern distortion, while transmitting too little would result in loss of detail. Finally, a seven-level attenuation was determined, which was just enough.

It was finished. The palm-sized disc was placed on the table, with a copper base and silver surface. The moonstone surface shimmered with a faint white glow under the light.

Next came the test. He took a piece of Morocco dark grey ore he had bought in Marseille from the pile of materials and placed it on the plate.

Linear, pale golden light patterns emerged within the moonstone layer, arranged cleanly and orderly along the crystal lattice, just as those detected directly by sensory perception.

Place a section of grapevine on it, and the light patterns change from pale gold to yellowish-green, forming a net-like pattern with messy branches, still slowly flowing. As a living plant, the Magic Power is dynamic, and the light patterns move accordingly.

Then he placed the bistable copper plate on it, and the disk simultaneously displayed the structure of two circuits, one on and one off. He input Magic Power to switch the state, and the on and off states were reversed, and the circuit direction changed accordingly.

Baruk propped himself up from the corner of the table. He had been lying quietly, but now, seeing the glowing patterns on the plate, the spider slowly raised his head.

Eight amber eyes moved closer to the pale gold and green light, then stopped, staring at Regulus.

Regulus looked at its large head as it approached and tapped the edge of the plate. "Stretch your legs up."

Baruk looked down at his thick forelegs, then at the bronze plate, which was even smaller than when he was smaller, and hesitated for a moment.

Then, he carefully placed his front leg on it, only putting the tip of his claw on it, while supporting the weight of the entire leg himself.

The light patterns on the dial suddenly exploded.

Three completely different Magic Power structures emerged simultaneously, intertwining so densely that the surface of the disc was almost entirely filled with light.

The bottom layer is a rough, dark gray mesh structure with a clear orientation.

The Magic Power system of the Acromantula, its silk glands, venom glands, and the sensory circuits of its eight eyes are all connected into a web, extending from the tips of its legs all the way to the center of its body.

This is something inherent in Baruk; it is his foundation.

The middle layer is a cluster of orange-red veins, concentrated in the middle section of the carapace, Radiation outwards with fine branches. The location where the Salamander's Fire Affinity and Magic Seed are implanted is clearly visible.

The Magic Circuit that grew outward from that point had merged with the spider's gray-black network, their boundaries blurred, and they had grown together.

The top layer is a fine, pale blue-white silk thread that covers the surface of the first two layers. Its direction is parallel to, but does not overlap with, the spider's sensory circuits.

The Plant Perception module of the Bowtruckle, which is much thinner and denser than the other two layers, is slowly flowing.

Three sets of patterns overlap, gray-black, orange-red, and pale blue-white, weaving together to form an extremely complex Magic Power pattern on the surface of the moonstone.

Baruk stared at the light for a long time, then gently opened and closed his chelicerae twice, making a clicking sound.

It lifted its toes to look again, probably to confirm whether the light it had just seen was emitted by its own legs.

Then, when the forelegs were retracted, the light patterns on the plate immediately disappeared. When they were placed back on, the light patterns exploded once more.

Baruk's chelicerae were spread wide, making a long series of clicking sounds, and the spider's head was held high.

"Alright," Regulus reached out and removed its legs from the plate. "Go back to lying down."

Baruk clenched his claws and rubbed his large head against him, reluctantly, but still withdrew his legs, retreated to the corner of the table, and lay down.

Regulus looked at the vanished light patterns on the disc and a slight smile curved his lips.

The precision of the Resonance Disk is still very rough; the light patterns are blurry, and many details are lost.

The Moonstone's display circuitry is not dense enough, and the attenuation rate of the interface circuitry also needs adjustment. Compared to its own Magic Perception for direct detection, it is far inferior.

But that's not important. What's left are technical details. By using better materials, engraving more precise patterns, and optimizing the attenuation compensation structure, the accuracy can always be improved.

Importantly, it does not depend on the user's talent.

Anyone with eyes can see it, and if you put something on it, the light pattern you see will be the same; it's objective, repeatable, and standardized.

In the world of Alchemy, he created the first microscope he could imagine.

He stared at the Resonance Disk for a while, then removed everything around him, stretched out his right hand, palm down, and held it above the disk, about a fist's distance away without touching it.

In theory, every wizard has Magic Power overflowing, and there are slight fluctuations even when at rest. His Magic Power control level is high enough that the amount of overflowing energy in his daily state is extremely small, but not zero.

A blurry light appeared on the screen.

Cool tones, bluish-gray, flowed slowly and rhythmically, their structure indistinct, with only a blurry spot of light floating within the translucent layer of moonstone.

It's nothing compared to the clear light patterns when a solid material is placed on it, and it's also nothing compared to when a living material like Baruk is placed directly on it.

But there was a reaction, so the principle is clear.

This disc can not only display materials, but also Magic Power — the Magic Power of wizards.

(And there's more!)