The Optimal Build

Professor McGonagall's first lesson covered the basics of the Transfiguration Charm, and the class assignment was to turn a matchstick into a needle.

This involved transforming one inanimate object into another of similar size and shape, requiring a brief change in material and subtle alterations to its form. It was indeed a very suitable first lesson for beginners.

Adam pointed his wand at the matchstick and recited the incantation. The next moment, it became long and slender, sharp, and gleaming with a metallic sheen... until it finally turned into a glittering silver sewing needle.

"Excellent!"

Professor McGonagall, who had already been paying Adam some extra attention, brightened. She walked over and picked up the needle for a closer look. Not only had the material changed evenly, but its shape was nearly perfect. He had even created the eye at the end of the needle.

"Try turning it back."

Professor McGonagall placed the needle back in front of Adam.

Adam gave it a try and found it somewhat difficult this time. But after thinking for a moment, he understood the key and succeeded in one go.

"Wonderful! Five points to Hufflepuff!"

Professor McGonagall had originally intended to offer Adam some guidance if he could not figure it out, but she had not expected him to accomplish it on his own.

He was a Transfiguration genius!

With proper nurturing, he would surely become another master of Transfiguration.

As a Hogwarts professor, was there anything more fulfilling than seeing a student she had taught achieve great accomplishments in their field?

Professor McGonagall encouraged Adam a few more times before moving on to guide the others. Some students' matchsticks had not changed at all, clearly because they had not understood the earlier explanation or had made mistakes while casting.

After Professor McGonagall left, Adam stared at the matchstick and began considering his second casting just now.

Based on his current understanding, casting magic was like guiding Magical Power through a boundless maze with countless exits. Moreover, the dead ends within that maze were not meaningless; they might grant a spell special effects.

A mage cast spells by honestly studying the maze, finding a route from the entrance to the exit, and then controlling Magical Power to travel along that route once. If they wanted special effects, they would take specific dead ends—though actual spellcasting also involved all sorts of occult elements and was extremely complex. This was merely a simplified description of the process.

The advantage of this casting method was that it was simple and straightforward. External tools such as incantations and wands only served to amplify it. As long as one had enough Magical Power, once one had learned the spell, one could cast it silently and wandlessly.

Its disadvantage, however, was that the caster had to fully understand the magic. Either they knew it or they did not. Creating new magic also required enormous amounts of time and effort for exploration and research, placing high demands on the creator.

Wizards, on the other hand, cast spells in a somewhat rougher manner. Their spellcasting ability came from their bloodlines, so they could cast magic without finely controlling the direction of their Magical Power. Thus, the current method of casting was to first use an incantation and casting motions to outline a boundary containing both the entrance and the exit, then simply pour Magical Power into the entrance.

Although the loss was somewhat high, the boundary ensured that Magical Power could only emerge from the correct exit, allowing the spell to take effect. The ancestors of wizards had been very satisfied with this.

This casting method allowed multiple different boundaries to be set for the same route, which meant that a single spell could develop numerous variants. For example, variants with greater precision and lower Magical Power consumption, or variants that included certain dead ends to give the spell special effects.

But its drawbacks were also obvious. If the boundary was drawn inaccurately at the outset, trouble would arise. In other words, when inventing a spell, the effect of the spell was highly random, and later developments were not very controllable.

The task Professor McGonagall had assigned was equivalent to, after pouring Magical Power in and traversing the route, not waiting for the Magical Power on the route to dissipate and for the spell to undo itself, but instead traveling back from the exit along the original path.

Adam suspected that this was the principle behind a spell's counterspell. His basis was that the flow of Magical Power in Lumos and Nox was reversed. At the same time, his successful transformation of the silver needle back into a matchstick had confirmed this conjecture.

Because their perspectives differed, wizards did not see counterspells this way. The counterspells they used often had incantations and motions distinct from the original spell. This was equivalent to outlining a new boundary, but in Adam's eyes, the new boundary merely caused Magical Power to travel the original spell's route in reverse.

It was also easy to infer another flaw in wizard counterspells: because they could not control the precise direction of the injected Magical Power, not every spell could be given an opposite route merely by changing its boundary.

In other words, not every spell could have a counterspell developed for it.

Fortunately, wizards were not entirely helpless. They could directly dismantle the boundary and let Magical Power disperse through the maze's countless paths, making it unable to sustain the spell. In a sense, this also removed the spell. That was the principle behind the general counterspells Finite Incantatem and Protego Diabolica.

Through this method, the overwhelming majority of spells could be removed—except for the legendary Unforgivable Curses, the three spells proven to have no counterspells.

Thinking of this, Adam felt that the Unforgivable Curses might not be entirely impossible to counter. Based on this principle, perhaps he could try using his own method... Unfortunately, no one was currently under an Unforgivable Curse, and he had no interest in taking one himself just to test it.

After grasping this point, Adam suddenly realized: combining the two casting methods and using wizard magic as nourishment for rapid growth along the mage's path seemed to be the optimal build!

He could use his advantage in precisely controlling Magical Power to rapidly learn wizard spells, create targeted counterspells for each one, and even use the boundaries already outlined by wizard spells to convert their casting methods into mage-style magic...

The last point might seem redundant, but in truth, it could bring Adam tremendous benefits both early on and later.

For Adam in the early stages, mage-style magic was simpler, more accurate, and more efficient to cast. More importantly, his Magical Power grew in proportion to his magical knowledge. The process of converting spells would inevitably increase his magical knowledge considerably.

For Adam in the later stages, once he had mastered a great deal of magic and magical knowledge, the mage's path would inevitably suit him better if he wished to go farther and higher. Compared to wizards, who knew what magic did but not why, Adam still wanted complete mastery over his own magical power. Besides... the upper limit of wizards—or rather, sorcerers—depended on bloodlines, while the upper limit of mages depended on intelligence.

If those bloodlines came from a god, a demon, or something similar, that would be one thing. But the bloodlines of wizards in this world came from magical creatures that had intermarried with their ancestors... The pinnacle of magical creatures was roughly something like Fawkes, whom he had touched yesterday. That ceiling was far too low compared with the ceiling of mages.