Time passed quickly. It felt as though he'd blinked, and July had slipped away. Then August was gone too, and the calendar had suddenly turned to September 1.
He was still staying in a hotel room. Ezio changed his lodgings every so often, and during that time, he hadn't run into any trouble. His magical studies had gone smoothly as well.
The only problem was that the spells taught in the upper years were much more difficult than those from the lower years. The main challenge lay in the parts that the textbooks didn't explain in detail, where students had to rely on a professor's instruction to guide their learning.
Take the fourth-year spell, Accio, for example. It wasn't hard to make an object fly to you, but getting it to fly to you precisely presented many more challenges.
The farther away an object was, the harder it became to summon with Accio. And that was nothing compared to the series of "summoning" spells developed around it. When wizards conjured food out of thin air, they weren't relying on Transfiguration. They used advanced summoning spells developed from Accio.
This involved precisely directing a spell at its target. The explanation in Standard Book of Spells, Grade 5 was woefully inadequate. There was no way to learn it just by following the book. You either had to practice on your own until you figured it out, or listen to your teacher and practice under their guidance.
The limit of what you could teach yourself in Charms was probably fourth year. Learning spells beyond that required guidance from a professor. Trying to figure them out on your own was no easy task.
During this time, Ezio had also tried teaching himself Potions. Unlike Charms, Potions was something even Muggles could master with ease if not for the prerequisite that magic had to be involved. At least before advanced Potions came into the picture, there was nothing particularly difficult about the subject. As long as you had a steady hand, followed the standard steps, stayed focused, and didn't try any "I think it should work this way" nonsense, your potion wouldn't go wrong.
But once you reached advanced Potions, brewing required the wizard to take a more active role. During the process, the wizard had to stir with a wand and use other methods to blend magic into the potion. At this stage, a wizard's control over magic—and even their talent—was put to the test. Some fools never figured it out, while others caught on at once. In the end, it was another subject where talent determined your ceiling.
As he studied magic, Ezio came to understand just how important magical talent was to a wizard's future. Without the right talent, even a hundred times the effort might not get you to the level someone else could reach with barely any work.
This was especially true of Transfiguration. Compared with Charms and Potions, the subject was highly abstract from the very beginning. Ezio had managed to cram every spell from the first four years, yet he hit a wall with Transfiguration. Even after setting aside a full four hours every day to study it, all he'd managed after days of effort was the beginner-level transformation of one inanimate object into another.
"Even Peter Pettigrew managed to learn how to turn into a rat in fifth year. Am I really worse than him?"
Ezio was baffled and a little frustrated. His enthusiasm for Transfiguration was every bit as strong as his passion for Charms. If he could use Transfiguration proficiently, he'd be practically Jackie Chan in a furniture store: anything within reach could become a deadly weapon. He might even develop one or more techniques that would make his Assassin predecessors turn pale, truly killing without a trace.
But the books weren't what inspired him most. It was a few magic books he'd bought from Borgin. Borgin had insisted they were unique copies from wizarding family collections and had charged him an outrageous price: five books at an average of eighty Galleons each. The man was definitely a heartless shopkeeper.
Aside from some knowledge of Dark Magic, Ezio's greatest discovery in those books was something the modern Wizarding World had abandoned, but that he found very useful.
Spell Materialization.
The technique had originally been used to solidify curses, turning curse magic from an abstract concept into a physical object that could be spread. Wizards of the past had also used it to temporarily enchant weapons and other equipment. It was the earliest form of magical artifact.
In the early days, most wizards carried a wand as well as a weapon for self-defense, such as a Wizard Sword. Magic spells hadn't yet been perfected in those days, and many of the combat spells commonly used now hadn't been developed. The ability to make magic and even curses tangible was a useful supplement.
Modern wizards, with all their means at their disposal, had long since abandoned this magical technique. But as an Assassin, Ezio was very interested in it.
If he solidified spells into throwing knives, then with his speed, he could unleash two rapid volleys in a single second—sixteen knives in all. Within a range of thirty meters, every one would hit its target. That was the equivalent of sixteen spells per second, and the knives would fly far faster than spells fired directly from a wand.
Spells shot from a wizard's wand seemed fast, but to Ezio, who could dodge a crossbow bolt by turning his head within ten meters, they moved like an old woman running a hundred-meter race, as if afraid they might die halfway through.
And when those wizards raised their hands, Ezio could tell where they were aiming just by watching their movements.
With plenty of questions about magic on his mind, Ezio began packing for the trip. But before heading to Hogwarts to study, he went through his usual inventory. He treated his studies as a long-term mission, and there was no excuse for slacking off on a mission.
The reason Ezio didn't call his golden finger a system was simple.
It had no shop or lottery, let alone a newbie gift package. At present, it offered only three functions: a Map Module, a Training Space with an independent flow of time, and a Mission Release System that activated when certain conditions were met.
The crude interface barely deserved to be called a panel. His body hadn't been turned into data; the only things recorded were mission information and rewards.
★ Missions Completed: 9149 ★★ Missions Completed: 455 ★★★ Missions Completed: 1 Total Time Spent in Training Space: 43566 hours, Remaining Available Time: 5763 hours, Total Kills: 1001135, Milestone Completion: 10/10 Unlocked Skills: Leap of Faith (Milestone Completed: First High-Altitude Fall!): As long as there is a soft buffer below your jump point, you can ignore fall damage. Eagle Vision (Milestone Completed: Partner, I'm Here!): Share the vision of your contracted eagle, mark enemies, or gain a falcon's sharp eyesight. Narrow Escape (Milestone Completed: The End of Death Is New Life.): When you dodge an attack at the right moment, your perception will be enhanced for a short time. Phantom Stealth (Milestone Completed: Ambush!): Once you enter a stealth stance, you blend into your surroundings. Silent Assassination (Milestone Completed: The Assassin Came and Went Unseen.): You've learned the supreme assassination technique of killing a target without making a sound. Assassin Intuition (Milestone Completed: What? A Sneak Attack?!): You can easily detect any target that feels hostility or wariness toward you. Weapon Master (Milestone Completed: I Can Slaughter You with Anything!): You can wield any weapon with greater power than other people. Brutal Grip (Milestone Completed: Human Flail!): You can wield a two-handed weapon with one hand. Berserker Spirit (Milestone Completed: Come and Die, You Scum!): When fighting enemies head-on, you gain an all-around boost to strength, agility, and intuition. Ares War Cry (Milestone Completed: Who Is the God of War!!!): Release a bellowing war cry imbued with divine power, instilling fear in your enemies. For the next thirty seconds, you cannot die.
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