[Hydrargyrum] Chapter 6

“Here we are, kid. Whittington, the Blockbuster store.”

“Thank you,” Kayneth replied tonelessly as he climbed out of the taxi, paying the fare. Since ordinary people were virtually unaware of the “Leaky Cauldron,” he had given the address of some film rental across the road. The magus remembered it from nearly a month ago, when he’d wandered the area in circles trying to locate the barrier entrance, precisely because of its utterly banal and obvious name.

Focusing and activating his magic circuits, Archibald spotted the desired sign across the street, dispelling the misdirection charm intended for what people here called “Muggles.” Scanning for anything suspicious and seeing none, he walked toward an ancient, blackened door.

Inside, he crossed the grimy, half-lit tavern without minding the stares from the patrons, heading straight for a back room. Perhaps they were gawking because he looked so young, or maybe because of his “Muggle” outfit—a dark-blue suit that resembled the uniform of one of many private schools found in London. In any case, Kayneth couldn’t care less about anyone’s opinion so long as it didn’t cause him trouble.

He extended his palm toward the wall, unleashing several weak magical pulses, much like Tonks had done with her wand. The gateway in the barrier opened obligingly, after all, the spell was intended only to keep out ordinary people with no magic, and the method of casting or tools used were secondary details.

Nothing had changed on the other side in the past month: the same buildings, a thin crowd in old-fashioned clothes. If they each cast illusions or transformed their attire every time they stepped through from mundane London, Kayneth dreaded to think how much power was wasted daily on such pointless ostentation. The amount of magical energy they likely squandered here in a week would have been enough for him to summon a couple of decent phantoms, with surplus left over.

From his previous tour with Tonks, Archibald remembered where the places of greatest interest to him lay. But his first stop, in any case, had to be the bank—since these locals apparently couldn’t keep things simple and insisted on their own, entirely unnecessary, currency system.

On the way, he paused in front of one shop, frowning at the display window: there were a dozen brooms of varying shapes and colors. The sign above the door read “Everything for Quidditch,” which clarified nothing—this final word was entirely unknown to him. It seemed unlikely that a store of this grandiose appearance sold cleaning supplies, and the presence of saddles, handles, and what looked like stirrups on some of the wooden shafts indicated one was meant to sit on them. But… it all looked absurd.

In the Clock Tower, the mystery of broom flight was known in principle. It had been created—or more likely reconstructed—some twenty years earlier by one of the Grands, i.e., a top-tier magus (Kayneth was registered in the Association one rank below that but had intended to climb higher in time). The result, however, was extremely specialized: the flight basically served only to travel to a predetermined spot or to return to a set anchor, requiring a lengthy setup and, furthermore, was only available to women. It appeared that in this world someone had managed not only to refine a similar ritual but even to commercialize it. Still, Kayneth couldn’t fathom why or who would buy such a thing. Shaking his head skeptically, he turned away and continued on his way.

He emerged from the bank half an hour later almost in shock, stopping at the entrance, gripping one of the columns, and breathing in the damp air laced with smoke and alchemical fumes. The experience simply defied belief. The procedure itself was nothing unusual, just your regular bureaucratic hassle — lots of quill scratching, ledger signing and the usual currency exchange. What was unusual, however, was the blunt and rather rude staff. They weren’t helpful in a conventional sense but their clipped and somehow menacing questions made a quick work out of all that tedious paper pushing. But the ‘icy courtesy’ of the staff wasn't the reason behind his dismay.

He hadn’t taken Tonks’s mention of goblins seriously back then, which turned out to be a grave oversight. The entire customer hall, every post behind the counters, was manned by squat, grotesque humanoid creatures with disproportionately long claws and fangs. Real life living representatives of a Phantasmal Species in 20th-century England, and several wizard customers chatting with them as though it were the most normal thing on earth! Moreover, the building itself looked ancient, as if it had stood there for centuries. Something was definitely off about this world.

In Kayneth’s original reality, mythical beings—griffins and wyverns, or non-human races like elves and centaurs—had either gone extinct or been hunted down, while others retreated to Reverse Side of the World two thousand years earlier, when the Age of Gods ended and the Age of Humans began. There simply wasn’t enough magic left for their survival, and humans, proliferating rapidly, had actively destroyed those that were too different. Here, however, it seemed a portion of these creatures and races had chosen to remain on Earth, hiding from ordinary folk alongside the wizards. 

Archibald felt a powerful urge to rush to a bookstore and buy up every text available on this world’s magical history. He had successfully exchanged his pounds for gold despite the shock, so at least he had the funds to do so. However, he needed one particular item first. If he recalled, the right store was ahead on the corner…

Twenty minutes later, he was approaching the largest bookstore in the district, “Flourish and Blotts,” holding a newly purchased suitcase with a brown leather covering. It was “new” only in the sense of recent manufacture—the style was stuck around the 1880s, with metal corner guards, an archaic lock, and an overall coffin-like heft. 

Of course, what mattered was not the look but the expansion enchantment and real-weight compensation. Nevertheless, it didn’t remotely compare to the similar case Archibald had owned in his previous life, left under the ruins of that hotel along with all his belongings. This mass-produced item would suffice for now, though. It had cost nearly thirty Galleons, out of the roughly six hundred he had on him—the pound-to-Galleon rate was about five-to-one, but the bank also charged a percentage for service.

Upon entering the nearly empty shop, Kayneth paused for a couple of seconds, barely acknowledging the mild greeting from a tall wizard behind the counter, who looked to be over forty. Books—books of every possible size—hundreds and thousands of them, thick grimoires and slender pamphlets, handwritten or printed, spanning various schools and branches of magecraft unknown to anyone in the Clock Tower (except maybe that old bloodsucker). Even if the mysteries and techniques they described turned out useless, as a magus and a scholar he couldn’t help but feel the sacredness of this moment.

“Young man? Young man!” A voice reached him as though from a distance.

“Ah, my apologies…” Archibald forced himself back to reality, tearing his gaze from the rows of books—those lining the shelves, laid out on windowsills and tables, or simply stacked in piles on the floor. He turned to the shopkeeper. “I’m here for the first time. I… got a bit overwhelmed,” he added honestly.

“That happens,” the vendor said with a condescending yet good-natured smirk, then asked, “Are you looking for anything in particular?”

“More like I’m interested in everything,” he said, gesturing broadly at the bookshelves. “I’m… what you call ‘Muggle-born,’ I believe. I only found out about magic about a month ago. I’m curious about it all. But if there’s some special type of book or guide for people like me, I’d like to take a look.”

“What about school textbooks?”

“I won’t be going until next year, so I don’t need them yet.”

“All right, I understand. There’s something, but not much—mostly Ministry pamphlets,” the shopkeeper added with a faint sneer, suggesting a low opinion of their content. “Just wait here, I’ll see what I can find. And remember, all the books are enchanted—don’t take anything out of the shop before you buy it.”

The magus merely shrugged in silence, indicating he wasn’t going anywhere. That final warning might have sounded insulting, but one had to allow that they believed him to be a novice who knew nothing about magic. He himself could sense weak, uniform spells placed on the books around them, which seemed an appalling waste of magical energy in his view—although perhaps there was something fundamental about the local school of magic he had yet to grasp.

“Here’s what I managed to dig up,” said the returning shopkeeper, setting a modest stack of four drab, grayish pamphlets—painfully bureaucratic in appearance—on the counter. As Kayneth spread them out, he saw a large stamp on each, reading “Approved by the British Ministry of Magic.”

“‘Welcome to the Wizarding World.’ ‘Now I’m a Wizard.’ ‘Magical Britain in Questions and Answers.’ ‘Quidditch Basics for Muggle-born’… And what is ‘Quidditch’? I’ve seen that word just recently.”

“The greatest wizarding sport,” the shopkeeper replied, proudly jabbing his finger at a black-and-white framed photograph on the wall… which moved, looking more like a short piece of video footage. It showed a massive stadium with about ten people zipping around in midair, evidently on brooms. “Here in Britain, we have one of the strongest teams in the world. And Hogwarts has a very good school team. I’d swear there’s nothing like it among Muggles.”

“Probably,” Kayneth shrugged; he had never been interested in sports. Merely the thought of expending precious magical energy on something like that… it bordered on sacrilege against the art of magecraft. He set aside the last pamphlet, gathered the other three into a pile, and asked, “How much for these?”

“One and a half Galleons for the three,” the wizard responded, shaking his head in disapproval. Perhaps he was a devoted fan of that broomstick mayhem. “Anything else?”

“Oh, I’m just getting started. I want to learn so much more… but I’m not sure I can find what I need by myself,” the magus admitted, surveying the floor-to-ceiling shelves in this two-story shop, plus the heaps of mismatched tomes scattered everywhere. There seemed to be no system at all to their arrangement. “Do you have a catalog or some alphabetical listing? For instance, how would I locate books on magical history?”

“That’s simple.” The wizard gave a bit of a showy flourish of his hand and said, not even touching his wand, “Accio ‘A History of Magic, Volume One.’”

Kayneth sensed a mild surge of power. Almost instantly, a thick volume slid from somewhere behind the shelves and flew into the shopkeeper’s grasp. He placed it on the counter and explained, “Until you’ve learned such spells, you can just tell me what you need. I’ll pick out the right volumes.”

“Excellent.” Taking the book and flipping through a few pages, the magus glanced around, inhaled, and began: “Right, let’s get started. All histories of magic—everything you have, plus the international situation of the magical community, magical theory from general to specific, a list and descriptions of the most important magical families, the code of magical laws—English and international, a reference to branches of magic, mythical creatures and races, summoning magic, healing magic, alchemy, nec… nectar uses in alchemy, wizard duels, combat magic, rituals, artifact creation, runic magic…”

“Hold on, hold on!” The shopkeeper, clearly overwhelmed, waved his hands. “What’s your name, young man?”

“James Murphy, sir.”

“Cornelius Hallowabbis,” the wizard introduced himself, scrutinizing the boy’s face. “James, do you happen to have a sister, maybe a year older, even a cousin?”

“Not that I’m aware of, sir,” Archibald answered honestly, masking his surprise. “Might I ask why…?”

“Because last summer, we had a Muggle-born girl come through here trying to buy out the entire shop in one go. Her professor from the school ended up threatening to hit her with a Body-Bind and drag her out levitating. She came back alone the next day, but ran out of money long before we ran out of books. You’re not very alike, but I thought maybe you were relatives.”

“No, but it’d be interesting to meet her,” the magus said with a half-smile. Such enthusiasm for knowledge deserved encouragement, especially in first-generation magi—greater the chance they’d establish a family line that wouldn’t vanish in fifty years without leaving a trace in the Association’s records. Otherwise, they enroll all sorts of incompetents, and you end up stuck teaching them six generations later, and they still can’t tell the Root from the Origin or think the Reality Marble is one of the Sorcery Traits… Archibald grimaced, recalling some of his former students.

“And since we’re already talking money—sorry to pry, but how much are you willing to spend here? This one, for instance,” he tapped the cover of A History of Magic, “costs two Galleons.”

Kayneth pulled from his jacket pocket the coin pouch the goblins had sold him at the bank (with a “discount,” they’d claimed) after he exchanged his money, calling it a necessary first item. Loosening the drawstrings, the magus whispered a password and tilted it over the counter, clearly articulating the sum: “Five hundred Galleons.”

A few seconds later, a modest pile of heavy gold coins lay there. The voice-recognition instead of blood or magic circuits was rudimentary, and its design probably hadn’t changed since the Hundred Years’ War, but it did have a small internal barrier that distorted volume and reduced weight—its main selling point. Without this little bag, six hundred gold coins would weigh a very real forty pounds or nearly so; who would willingly lug that much around in their pockets?

“Spending everything?” Cornelius asked with a chuckle, casting a satisfied look at the coins. He whistled, turned toward the back of the shop, then called out, “Hey, Robert, forget your ledgers—there’s a good order here, I need a hand.”

“I’ll leave a little spare change for potions,” Kayneth answered frankly. He pushed aside several piles of books on a nearby table, set down his new suitcase, and opened it, activating the barrier within. “So, let’s start with the history of magic…”

“You are discovering a new and wondrous world, full of thrilling adventures, great mysteries, and fantastic revelations. All your life, you were told that magic doesn’t exist, that dragons and wizards survive only in ancient tales. But these people, in their naïveté, cannot see how the world truly works. They were wrong! A world brimming with magic, a world you have now become a part of…”

“Thank Akasha the Clock Tower had no middle school! If I had to write this drivel for a bunch of adolescents who’ve just learned how to light candles with a glance, I’d hang myself,” exclaimed the former Lord El-Melloi in despair, slamming shut the Ministry of Magic pamphlet on the first page and fighting the urge to turn it to ash. Even though fire had never been his favorite element, he had more than enough theoretical knowledge to pull off such a feat—and he found himself dangerously tempted to do so, secrecy be damned.

After finishing his purchases and spending almost all his “magical” money (keeping only about a dozen coins for study), Archibald left the barrier-shielded district. Yet his curiosity—both scientific and practical—proved too strong to ignore, and rather than searching for a taxi, he returned to the same park where he had first met Tonks. Finding an empty bench, he sat down. This time, the weather was far warmer; the last traces of snow had melted long ago, and the trees and grass had turned green, but the magus paid it no mind. He only noted the absence of nearby people.

Rummaging in his suitcase, he pulled out one of the local Ministry’s pamphlets that he had set aside earlier. Then he wrapped it in an opaque cover—purchased on the way in an ordinary bookstore for a few pence—and began to read. He didn’t even make it through the introduction before he lost patience.

Still, such information wasn’t entirely useless. At the very least, it illustrated the patronizing—if not downright overprotective—approach of the local authorities toward children with first-generation magic. But even the small details, like the relationships among various factions in this society, were worth knowing. So, gritting his teeth and resisting the urge to curse the author with some incurable affliction, Kayneth forced himself to continue reading—or more precisely, skimming the text and skipping large swaths of the endless praises for magical Britain in general and its all-problem-solving Ministry in particular.

In short, stripping away the flowery language, there was a worldwide Magical Confederation that united wizard communities of different countries. It was led by a “Supreme Mugwump”, apparently a Brit at the moment, though from the list of his other titles, the position seemed purely ceremonial with no real power. The main international issues were handled by a Council of delegates from various nations, though the pamphlet said little about how that actually worked.

In Britain, the magical community was governed by this very Ministry, which—aside from printing such nonsense—handled the affairs of wizards, phantasmal races, and creatures living in the country. Beneath them were countless officials along with a law enforcement branch that included, but was not limited to, Aurors—something like an elite guard, powerful but small in number, while minor and less threatening cases were handled by ordinary Ministry patrol wizards. These patrollers also cleaned up traces of magic in the normal world and erased witnesses’ memories if needed. Tonks had mentioned something to that effect, but without details.

Memory needed to be erased because, since the late 17th century, an international decree known as the Statute of Secrecy had officially obligated everyone to hide the existence of magic from “Muggles,” with the exception of certain top-level officials in a few nations. How strictly it was enforced varied widely: in Britain, it was very strict, but in Africa or India it depended on luck—this pamphlet harshly condemned such “lax interpretations of the law by irresponsible communities.”

Crucial to the magical world were schools teaching wizards the basics of their craft and the statutes of the Magical Confederation. There were eleven oldest, universally recognized schools: one each in North America, South America, Africa, and Australia; then one each in the “island” nations of Great Britain and Japan; the remaining five in Eurasia—Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Russia, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. There were also smaller institutions from primary schools to colleges, but typically they were only a century or two old and lacked the prestige and authority of the older schools.

“That’ll do for a general picture,” Archibald concluded, stuffing the irritating pamphlets back into his suitcase. He had hoped for something more… academic, more details on research and major achievements or theoretical branches, but it was foolish to expect that from a novice-friendly propaganda piece. He would still have to study the material thoroughly instead of skimming it two paragraphs at a time, but that could wait.

Right now, he needed to understand how it had all come to pass, why this world diverged so greatly from the reality he knew. Next, he pulled “A History of Magic” from the depths of his suitcase. Naturally, it was just a school textbook, not a scholarly monograph, yet it would suffice to grasp the basics—particularly since he was still unacquainted with much of the local specialized terminology.

So it started with the Age of Gods—“Legendary times when deities walked the earth, magical creatures lived openly among humans, and fantastical beasts filled the forests, seas, and steppes…,” to quote the book. Here, it was called the “Era of Magic,” but it amounted to the same thing—just like in Archibald’s home world, from the rise of the earliest human tribes until the start of the modern age, magic on Earth had been far stronger and an everyday part of people’s lives. The magi of that era supposedly drew power directly from the Root and could effortlessly accomplish feats unimaginable by present standards.

Likewise, in this world, around the eighth century BCE, the might of gods and demigods began to wane along with the overall magical stream, and the planet’s leylines, once like rivers in full flood, diminished to narrow trickles. In his own world, that led to magi—having lost direct connection to the Root—clinging to every last scrap of power that appeared in their magic circuits, refining and training those circuits to the utmost, and later partially passing them down by inheritance or exchanging them in the form of family crests. By doing so, they siphoned off most of the already weakened magical flow, and those beasts and races with a magical nature either died out or withdrew to the Reverse Side, a sort of magical ‘mirror’ of Earth where humans did not exist.

In the legends of ordinary folk, that memory remained as Avalon, the Land of Cockaigne, the Valley of the Dead, Kitezh-Grad, the Realm of Yan Wang, Asgard, and many other fabled places where heroes went, where elves, kobolds, and demons supposedly hid, and where miracles occurred. What the legends got wrong was any story of a hero or wise man accidentally stumbling into such a realm or forcing his way there in search of treasure—humans, even magi, had no path to that realm. Though a few “windows” still existed on Earth, and summoning rituals could temporarily forge a connection.

But in this world, events had followed a different course.

“Skipping school, young man?” came a stern voice nearby.

Kayneth, who had just reached the most intriguing part, actually jumped, snapping the book shut and spinning around. Standing beside the bench was a policeman. Judging by his relaxed posture and the fact that he was bothering a child quietly reading in a park, the officer was simply bored with nothing better to do. The magus quickly regained his composure and answered calmly:

“I’m homeschooled, sir. My mother submitted all the permits to Social Services. I don’t need to attend a regular school.”

“Social Services?” The policeman looked surprised that a nine-year-old (by his reckoning) was using such terms.

“She’s not my biological mother. I’m from an orphanage. When she decided it would be better for me to study at home, she had to file documentation proving I was really getting an education instead of just wandering about. I assumed that’s something police officers learn about, sir?”

“Oh, we learn a lot of things… Only, aren’t you a bit young to be reading that?” He smirked, nodding at the closed book.

At first, the magus didn’t understand the question. Then it dawned on him: a child, on his own, reading something in an opaque cover and shutting it hurriedly the moment an adult appears. The policeman evidently suspected the book was some indecent material. Smirking faintly, Kayneth held the volume up for the officer to see, even flipping a few pages as he said:

“I agree, sir, organic chemistry is a bit tough right now—lots of formulas, especially isomers and polymers are a real challenge. But I’m sure I’ll manage by the end of the year.”

“R-right… Sorry to bother you,” the policeman replied, visibly rattled by the tables and equations he barely recognized. Tipping his hat politely, he added, “Study hard, lad, so you can find yourself a decent job. But you’d be better off reading at home or at least in a cafe. Being alone in a park isn’t always wise—there are all sorts of people about.”

“Thank you for the concern, sir. Indeed, I should probably head home,” the magus agreed, quickly stowing his textbook in the suitcase. “Otherwise, my parents might worry. Have a good day, officer.”

“Take care on your way, young man.”

Absurd as the situation was, the policeman was right—such books should be read at home. It was fortunate it was just a mundane officer. If a more vigilant patrol wizard from the Ministry had decided to check on him, it could’ve been a breach of secrecy leading to special scrutiny. That wasn’t worth the risk. Even so, once Kayneth got into a taxi and settled the suitcase beside him, he took out the book again. There was no one else in the car aside from the driver, and the man certainly couldn’t see the text from his mirror.

Archibald entered the apartment without taking out his keys. Without stopping, he used magic to unlock and push open the door. His hands were full—one held the suitcase, the other held the second volume of A History of Magic. He walked straight to the library door, ignoring the somewhat startled housekeeper who had witnessed his dramatic entrance. Then he paused, as if recalling something, and said:

“Miss Stone, would you kindly close the door? Also, I need coffee,” the magus hefted his suitcase and added, “A great deal of strong coffee. And after that, please do not disturb me, even if reds try to storm London.”

“Uh… The Soviet Union broke up last year…”

“Really? Who would have thought. Well, you understand the point, Miss Stone. And don’t forget the coffee…”

He managed to tear himself away from the books only around three in the morning, and only because his vision was blurring and doubling. This body’s stamina was sorely lacking, and he had no time at all to train it, even minimally. 

Rubbing his eyes, the magus walked around the room, once again reminding himself to order a proper chair—and forgetting immediately as he tried to consolidate everything he had read. Over the evening, he’d already scolded himself multiple times for his naivete and, he was ashamed to admit, his narrow-minded approach. Despite the overall similarity between the two worlds—down to the map of leylines and the specific effects of certain spells—the dominant system of magecraft here had several extremely significant differences that he, in his complacency, had failed to notice until he came across them in the books. It appeared he was losing his edge after all he had been through.

Still, the number of discrepancies was perfectly understandable once he realized the key point of divergence happened, give or take, 2,400 years earlier. As in his old world, the Age of Gods here gradually approached its end, and magi—deprived of most of their former power—searched desperately for some way out. Finally, in the fourth century BCE, they succeeded. That was when the world’s first wizard wand was created—or rather, the principle underlying that artifact came into being. 

Various magic schools embodied it in wooden staves, metal rings, bone rods, and even enchanted swords—countless forms were tried, but the core mystery remained the same. No one knew who discovered it: the book offered a multitude of theories, naming the elven king Oberon, Odin renouncing his divinity, Iblis the greatest of all djinn, every major magus of that era by name, or even Death itself in person. The author, showing her characteristic British patriotism, mentioned Merlin or Morgana, but that made little chronological sense. Regardless, the mystery was created and woven into the fabric of the world. Artificers then replicated it, produced it in different forms, and experimented, with many focusing exclusively on wands, forgetting everything else.

When Kayneth assumed that what Tonks held was merely a standard auxiliary type mystic code, he was technically correct. Just as, technically, a lizard is a dragon—only a very small one. The crux lay in how it worked. Everyone knew that magecraft meant creating miracles powered by magical energy.

In the Clock Tower’s first-year curriculum (something any self-respecting magus learned in childhood), they taught that magical energy comes in two forms—external and internal, or Mana and Od. Od accumulates over time in a magus’s magic circuits or in the magical core of a mythical beast, like a dragon or a phoenix. Mana flows along leylines and is present in the world around them. 

Most spells rely on Od, the internal reserve, but with skill, a particularly expensive ritual can be supported by external power—Kayneth himself had done so recently with the summoning circle for that spirit of greed. Yet only higher demons or a few ancient artifacts of Holy Grail caliber can directly absorb and use Mana.

Nevertheless, a wizard wand (or ring, sword, staff built on the same principle) can, through movement, accumulate a small reserve of ambient Mana and apply it instantly to cast a spell. Simultaneously, it forcibly stimulates the user’s magic circuits, requiring them to expend only a small portion of their own Od in the process. It was truly ingenious. Archibald found himself inclined to bow to the brilliance of whoever had designed this mystery—and lament that it never occurred in his home world.

Therefore, since magi here did not turn themselves into metaphorical drilling rigs or wells, extracting every last drop of magical power through their magic circuits, the overall flow of energy remained richer—by a factor of three or four. Many magical creatures and beasts stayed on Earth. Although some also withdrew to the Reverse Side here, including elves (the book, for some reason, referred to them as True Elves, as if there were others?). Possibly there were other contributing factors—some alliances with mythic peoples or a different attitude among magi toward various monsters—but in the end, far more of them survived in this world, generally in remote or magic-shielded regions of the planet.

The text then moved on to less compelling topics: the story of Cú Chulainn, for instance, or the rise and fall of Camelot, some ancient goblin uprisings, and battles against giants. Essentially, the closer it approached the modern era, the more the textbook focused on Britain alone, mentioning fewer and fewer events in the magical world beyond its borders. He found nothing else so… fundamental as the creation of the universal mana conductor made to look like a simple stick. So far, Kayneth had reached only the seventeenth century, precisely the time of the Statute of Secrecy’s adoption and the magical community’s official retreat underground—perhaps more interesting details would come once he read further.

Instead of continuing into modern history, he turned his attention to textbooks on magical theory and skimmed a reference guide on wands and their use. This device intrigued him the most, given that the dominant magical tradition here was built entirely around employing this mystic code. 

A rough estimation yielded the following: if we treat the energy for the simplest Reinforcement of an object as a single unit, then performing an “Gradation Air”—creating, from “nothing,” an object familiar to the magus for a couple of minutes—would cost five units. A wizard with a wand, however, would spend only one-quarter of a unit of their internal reserves for the same strengthening spell, and a single unit for the Gradation Air, compensating the rest with ambient mana. 

Of course, that’s the broad scenario, ignoring the magus’s condition, compatibility with the mystic code, and a couple dozen other factors. It’s as they say: all this is under standard sea-level conditions. Even so, one can guess the approximate numbers.

Did that mean Tonks, for example, might surpass Sola four- or fivefold in terms of her magical reserves? Apparently not. While a wand is an immensely powerful magical tool in capable hands, it also… makes the user complacent. 

Children here don’t begin training until about ten, not five or six. While that’s humane, it’s also unwise. Since awakening and training magic circuits without external help from a mystic code is exceptionally painful, wizards never devote proper time to it. At best, they achieve the bare minimum, still leaning on their wand. By seventeen, the most gifted of them can perform simple mysteries with only their internal reserve. Yet in a real battle or complex ritual, their capabilities without the mystic code remain severely limited. But for the majority, that’s enough. Hence…

When Kayneth realized that yesterday, he simply dropped the book, choked on his coffee, and spent quite some time coughing and catching his breath. It must have looked both pathetic and laughable. Had anyone walked in on him then, the magus might well have killed them, no matter who they were. Yet after he’d composed himself, he tried again to calmly come to terms with what he’d discovered—this world’s wizards never developed magic crests, not even the ancient families whose lineage spanned over a thousand years. 

Despite how absurd it sounded, an explanation was possible. Wizards here had no need to burn themselves out in constant training for years before launching into research that might only bear fruit for their grandchildren or great-grandchildren. Hence, they never faced a compelling reason to devise a hazardous and frequently painful method for boosting the next generation’s magical reserves and transmitting certain family secrets directly with a fragment of one’s own soul.

Instead, they focused on marriage strategies, genealogical records, and counting how many generations of wizards a family contained—while preserving the crafts in the form of enchanted books in family libraries. Perhaps, too, over the course of more than two thousand years, the wizards themselves had changed in some small way, adapting to the persistent use of “crutches” like wands. Their magic circuits may have “mutated” across countless generations. 

In his previous life, Archibald had encountered a theory suggesting that modern magi differ from those who lived three or four millennia ago and thus no one’s body can again access the Root—called the Swirl of the Root, the Akashic Records, the Great Void, or by some, simply God. 

Frankly, Kayneth had always regarded the pursuit of the Root—so widespread in the Association—excessive, bordering on religious fetishism, something a true researcher should avoid. He was pleased to learn that here, no one wasted centuries of struggle and mountains of resources chasing such folly. Compared to that, the local British wizards’ fascination with so-called Deathly Hallows was almost endearing.

Feeling that his endless pacing back and forth was making his legs ache and grow numb, Archibald sat on a stool and cast a glance at several half-finished trinkets he’d been putting together on the side, just to keep MacDougal off his back for a while and balance his negative account up to zero. But now, with these fresh insights, he realized he had only more expenses ahead. Which meant he’d have to postpone his research once again and focus on junk for sale to ordinary folk. 

Based on his new knowledge from the books, he could at least refine some of the formulas and constants—particularly regarding the density of the magical flow—and speed up his calculations. It was an awful pity that even a talented magus without money was stuck pouring precious time into such nonsense. Then again, not wanting to do anything half-heartedly, Archibald had ended up creating a couple of interesting things from a theoretical standpoint, which might be refined further someday—if he could find the time.

He glanced at the clock: it was already half past six in the morning. Technically, that was an acceptable time for business. Swaying with exhaustion, Kayneth went into the “living room,” lifted the phone receiver, and dialed a number. He waited a long while for someone to pick up, but he had patience.

“Mister MacDougal? Glad to see you’re not asleep yet. About your reminders: I think I’ve assembled a few interesting items to put on the market. But it’d be best if you examined them in person to see if there’s any demand. Let’s meet at the workshop in two days and sort it out. Also, I’d like to ask a favor—but I’ll tell you then. Wonderful. Good day.”

Setting down the receiver, the magus stood motionless for half a minute, weighing whether to finish the “merchandise” first or push onward in The History of Magic up to the twentieth century. Realizing that just standing still was putting him on the brink of dozing off, Kayneth shook his head and trudged back to his laboratory. First, he’d invest some energy in those trinkets and a couple of mystic codes for his own use, and then he’d return to the books. It was unlikely anything truly important had occurred in magical Britain after the Statute of Secrecy came into force.