An Experiment in Love

"First experiment!"

"Lily Potter!" Ryan recited, picturing Lily's wedding photo in his mind.

A strange, regret-filled magic continuously surged from the White Knight toward the severed section of the dummy that Sectumsempra had beheaded. The dark magical aura wrapped around the break receded like a tide.

"Time: three seconds."

He cast Sectumsempra again, beheading the dummy once more.

"Second time!"

"Lily Evans!" He recreated Lily's appearance from her primary school days in his mind.

"Two seconds."

Ryan suddenly thought of something and couldn't stop the corners of his mouth from rising.

He aimed at the dummy, which had once again been beheaded with equal force.

"Lily Prince!" This time, it was Lily marrying an adult Snape.

Magic surged toward the dummy's severed section like a mountain flood, a power of regret mixed with joy. The separated head and body of the dummy automatically fused together as though they had come alive.

"So fast. Not even one second."

Although Sectumsempra's countercurse inherently possessed the ability to heal wounds completely—just like the full, song-like incantation Snape had used, which not only dispelled the "venom" of Sectumsempra from Draco's body but also stopped the bleeding and healed the wound as if Dittany had been applied—

Making the two severed halves fuse back together was already a complete restoration. The effect of this spell was truly astonishing.

For the magic of this world, emotion was the greatest accelerant.

Perhaps Voldemort, incapable of sensing love, had chosen the path of pain, fear, and death to harvest those negative emotions for the advancement of magic.

Or perhaps he was the embodiment of those dark aspects.

Through these three experiments, Ryan discovered that the less Lily was connected to James, the more effectively she could trigger Sectumsempra's countercurse. Lily Prince, which Ryan had thought of on a whim, was especially absurdly effective.

At the same time, Ryan's panel displayed:

Race: Wizard

Strength: 18 (the limit for an ordinary person is 10)

Constitution: 31 (the limit for an ordinary person is 10)

Magic Power: 26 (the limit for an ordinary person is 10)

Skills: Thinking lv.4 (3%) Body Modification lv.3 (93%) Alchemy lv.3 (17%) Charmcraft lv.4 (32%) Potion-Making lv.2 (15%) Transfiguration lv.3 (7%) Gun Kata lv.3 (5%) Martial Arts lv.2 (25%) Detection lv.2 (63%)

Phoenix Metamorphosis lv.1 (79%) Telepathic Communication lv.1 (89%)

Opening Charmcraft, he saw: Sectumsempra lv.5-lv.6 ↑

He had never expected Sectumsempra to be the first skill he raised to lv.6. Its inventor himself had probably never reached such a realm.

After all, Sectumsempra was a painful memory for Snape as well. No wonder he had accidentally missed with it in the seventh book and struck George's ear instead.

Even the Killing Curse, Avada Kedavra—which Ryan preferred to call the Death Curse—was only lv.4.

These two spells could be called the sharpest bullets. If Ryan used the Black Knight, was there truly any wizard in the wizarding world who could stop him?

Still, Ryan was too specialized. Yet combined with his high mobility, it was already a perfect setup.

"Today, I'll indulge myself."

Ryan took a deep draw from a pipe lit with Phoenix Feather, feeling the proficiency of Phoenix Metamorphosis slowly rise. He was immensely pleased with himself.

This was a method Ryan had recently discovered in another of Herpo the Foul's unnamed notebooks. It was expensive and consumed a great deal of material, but it could increase Phoenix Metamorphosis proficiency.

Ryan could also improve through practice himself, but if it were an ordinary wizard rather than Ryan, they would have to spend a large handful of Phoenix Feathers every time to summon an avatar for training.

Compared to that method, smoking it was more economical. A single feather could be cut into small pieces and used multiple times.

For Ryan, this saved a great deal of time. Usually, he placed it in a newly made incense burner, inhaling it while summoning the avatar, grinding two skills at once.

Of course, this was not smoking, nor could it simply be lit with ordinary fire.

Simply lighting it was far too harsh, and it would also cause considerable waste.

It required Gubraithian Fire, also known as Eternal Fire—a magically enchanted flame capable of burning forever.

This was an exceptionally advanced form of magic, because only a very small number of wizards could accomplish it.

Only with this eternal flame could one best absorb the Phoenix's magic. To be honest, it felt more like inhaling warm, non-irritating hard liquor through the nose, which then fiercely burned straight to the heart once it entered the body.

Unlike Fiendfyre, which was easy to create but difficult to control—

The magic required to create Gubraithian Fire was extremely difficult to master from the outset. Especially with Ryan's lv.4 Charmcraft, one normally had to reach lv.5 before attempting to learn it. Because this magic was so difficult, even Hogwarts did not teach students how to cast it.

The notebook mentioned that after using Phoenix Metamorphosis, one naturally possessed a small portion of a Phoenix's traits, making Gubraithian Fire much easier to create than it was for other wizards.

Furthermore, Ryan himself possessed the Phoenix's eternal nature, greatly reducing the difficulty of casting it. Even so, it had taken him nearly a month to barely create a tiny cluster of Gubraithian Fire.

At Hogwarts, although its incantation was long and awkward rather than secret, only Dumbledore could create it.

Perhaps that had something to do with his family's connection to Phoenixes, as well as his possession of the Elder Wand.

In the fifth book, he had specifically asked Rubeus Hagrid to bring a piece of Gubraithian Fire as a gift for the giants.

In the end, that flame alone had nearly won over the giants. If not for Voldemort's forceful methods and the giants' naturally violent temperaments, Hagrid would have succeeded.

The flame itself would never go out. Food prepared with it could strengthen the body and keep one healthy, and it could supply a wizarding family or magical race forever. No wonder the giants had nearly been tempted.

Smith's family had originally possessed this kind of magical flame as well. But a certain generation's patriarch had traded it to the Goblin Dynasty in exchange for the goblins' secret method of crafting silverware. Although that method could not be passed down freely, only one Smith from each generation could view it.

After all, it was a goblin-exclusive craft as important as wandmaking. Just as only wizards in the magical world possessed the craft of making wands, other magical races had no right to use them. The greatest reason House-elf Winky had been expelled by Crouch in the original story was that she had been discovered holding a wizard's wand.

The later Smiths, however, never produced anyone whose magical skill reached the level required to create Gubraithian Fire. It was not that they did not want to work toward it; mainly, no one was interested, or their talent was insufficient.

One had to know that food made with Gubraithian Fire could allow the next generation to grow better, free from illness and disaster. It also had great uses in alchemy.

The goblins must have traded away their silverware techniques only after much reluctance in pursuit of breakthroughs in alchemy. Perhaps, in their view, once they possessed Gubraithian Fire and their techniques advanced, their old techniques would no longer matter.

Perhaps one might ask why they had not kept a spark beforehand. That was because, unlike Fiendfyre, it could not grow by burning. From the moment it was created, its total amount neither increased nor decreased, so there was one and only one flame.

Furthermore, a wizard could not create too much of this fire in their lifetime. First, it would waste time. Second, the flame was more like some sort of taboo: after creating one, one had to wait a very long time before creating another.

In the era before magic was studied and discussed collectively, many wizards even believed that a wizard could create only one Gubraithian Fire in their entire life.

Only later, as magical knowledge developed, did wizards discover that the creation of Gubraithian Fire was cyclical. But because so few wizards could create it, books did not record the specific interval of that cycle.

Most strangely, after creating Gubraithian Fire, one's magical level, body, and mind suffered no decline or change. Yet if one did not wait a period of time, it was impossible to create it again, no matter how correct the incantation or gestures were.

But Ryan discovered that he still could. After all, Ryan had the panel. The skills recorded on it would never fail for any reason; they inherently contained the power to point toward what was correct.

Through his exceptional talent, Ryan discovered that being unable to create it again was not some taboo. Rather, after successfully creating one, the incantation and gestures for creating another could not be identical to the first; they had to be altered. If they were not changed, one could only wait a very long time.

Because this magic was not created through one's own efforts alone. It was born by resonating with heaven, earth, and the surrounding environment. To give birth to another identical child, one could only wait for the mother to forget that child—or give birth to it again in a different form.