Chapter 6
In the blink of an eye, time had arrived on July 4, 1991. Exactly one full year had passed since Aisen first began learning magic.
This year has been extremely fulfilling for Aisen. After living in the wizarding world for a whole year, no one would ever mistake him for a fake wizard.
As for learning spells, things had gone relatively smoothly for him. However, at the same time there were simply too many spells for him to learn. Leaving aside the commonly used ones, there were plenty of offensive and defensive spells alone.
Originally, Aisen had planned to specialise in just a few fixed spells. For attack, the Petrificus Totalus (Full Body-Bind Curse); for defense, the Shield Charm and for escape or mobility, the Apparition spell.
Though these three were not going to make any powerful, at least he could build a way of his survival.
However, as his magic power grew over time, he noticed something strange, for some reason his physical condition was also improving, albeit slowly. Not only were conventional attributes like physical strength and endurance increasing, but his neural reaction speed was continually rising as well.
Aisen noticing that thanked the system because of a wizard's combat strength, besides depending on the amount of magic power, also heavily relied on on-the-spot reaction ability. In other words, when dueling other wizards, if the opponent's wand had only just pointed at him, Aisen could already react and launch a swift counterattack. This would give him an overwhelming advantage.
So, after careful consideration, Aisen replaced the offensive Petrificus Totalus with the Expelliarmus. When facing an enemy, if his reactions were fast enough, Expelliarmus was more targeted—it could directly knock the opponent's wand away, rendering them combat-incapable.
With Petrificus Totalus, although it could also seize the initiative, what if the opponent had protective magical artifacts like he had read in the books? Thus, targeting the wand directly was more straightforward.
For defensive spells, Aisen still centered on Protego, practicing it extensively. This spell, if studied in depth, was very powerful. The confusing part was that in the original books, Protego couldn't block the Killing Curse, but in the movies, though not blocking perfectly, it could for some strange reason go against it for some time.
For Aisen, if his magic power continued to grow, the Protego he cast would become stronger and stronger, and in the future, it might even be possible to completely block the Killing Curse. However, to be safe, Aisen allocated some effort to Transfiguration. Because whether in the books or movies, the Killing Curse could actually be blocked by physical barriers.
Just like when Voldemort tried to kill Harry Potter with the Killing Curse, but a statue that had come to life blocked it—the statue was shattered, but Harry remained unharmed.
Of course, Dumbledore's immense power played a role, but at the very least, this method of blocking curses was effective. And the technique Dumbledore used was clearly advanced Transfiguration. From this, one could see just how powerful Transfiguration could be.
So, to ensure his own safety, besides deeply researching Shield charm, Aisen also delved into Transfiguration. Of course, beyond this reason, the main motivation for learning Transfiguration was simply that it was incredibly powerful.
For example, mastering advanced Transfiguration would allow one to freely transform stools, rocks, and other objects into living creatures for attack or defense. Aisen even suspected that the upper limit of Transfiguration could reach the level of freely manipulating elements.
If that were true, Transfiguration could absolutely serve as a wizard's core ability, but just thinking about it, he was sure it would give him brain cancer if he tried to delve in it with his current self which lacked many things.
As for Apparition, he really wanted to learn it. It was an escape and life-saving skill. Unfortunately, he currently had no place to learn it. And moreover, he was a little skeptical about the safety he would have to throw away for it.
Therefore, over this year, Aisen's main focus had been studying and practicing Expelliarmus, Protego, and Transfiguration. Even so, he hadn't completely abandoned learning and practicing other spells.
For instance, spells like summoning Charm, Repairing Charm, Wand-Lighting Charm, Unlocking Charm, Petrificus Totalus, Disillusionment Charm, and cleaning Charm—Aisen still set aside time to practice these common ones.
After getting up in the morning and freshening up, Aisen practiced spells as usual, then left his room and headed downstairs to the bar.
Compared to the comfort and cleanliness of the guest rooms, the downstairs bar remained dim and rudimentary.
"Aisen, still researching Muggle society lately?" Tom greeted him as he saw Aisen coming down.
"Yes, I've found an incredibly interesting topic recently. Give me a steak and a cup of tea, thanks!" Hearing the voice, Aisen wasn't surprised, simply replying before ordering his food.
Over the year, Aisen had spent most of his time at the Leaky Cauldron, so he had long since become familiar with the owner, Tom. Likewise, some regular patrons knew about Aisen's interest in studying Muggle society.
In fact, being an expert in Muggle Studies was the "persona" Aisen had long decided to craft for himself. He genuinely planned to apply to Hogwarts this way, becoming a professor of Muggle Studies. However, Aisen wasn't certain he'd be accepted, so he had also learned quite a bit about astronomy.
After all, whether as a Muggle Studies professor or an Astronomy professor, both roles had extremely low presence at Hogwarts—these classes were basically for students to earn easy credits. Thus, Aisen figured that if the Muggle Studies application failed, he could apply for the Astronomy position.
In reality, for Hogwarts students, these two courses were indeed for padding grades, but for Aisen, they were perfect jobs for keeping a low profile. With a thought, Aisen's system appeared before him. Compared to a year ago, his character panel remained simple.
Name: Aisen Turner
Talent: Mana (Activated)
Mana Value: 3650 (Increases by 10 points daily)
Extraordinary Trait: Fine-Level Casting Trait (Affinity 115%) (Fused)
Miracle Trait: 1 portion (Automatically gains 1 portion per year)
After a year, Aisen had become much more like a true wizard. Due to fusing the casting trait, the common spells he had learned were already approaching the level of silent and wandless casting. For Protego, he had long mastered advanced silent and wandless techniques.
Externally, this manifested as him being able to shape the armor formed by Protego into a full-body-covering.
Similarly, due to the growth in mana, Aisen's overall physical condition had now roughly doubled beyond that of an ordinary person, with his neural reaction speed following suit.
Therefore, after perfectly mastering Expelliarmus, Aisen could now attack at even greater speeds. As for Transfiguration, he could already freely transform between large and small objects, as well as between inanimate objects and living creatures. His next step was to research how to integrate Transfiguration into combat.
Overall, Aisen felt that his abilities with these three spells were no worse than those of Ministry Aurors. As for the other common spells, he had reached proficient use—capable of wandless casting, but not silent.
Looking back on his gains over the year, Aisen was quite satisfied. However, what surprised him was the slow improvement in physical condition accompanying the increase in magic power.
If this continued, Aisen wondered if he might develop some time ability. If so, that would be incredible. But clearly, this would need verification in the future.
For now, Aisen's apparent strength looked quite formidable. His core abilities had fully mastered silent and wandless techniques, and other spells could be used proficiently.
But obviously, this was all on-paper strength.
Over the past year, he had basically been self-studying and practicing, with no real combat experience. To become a true powerhouse, he needed to fight other wizards.
In that case, he would have to get slightly involved in the upcoming vortex at Hogwarts to gain sufficient combat opportunities. Of course, his primary reason for wanting to enter Hogwarts was still to learn high-difficulty spells like Apparition and the Undetectable Extension Charm.
So, taking advantage of the time before the new batch of young wizards enrolled in 1991, Aisen planned to pause his intense studying and prepare to write to Hogwarts, applying for the Muggle Studies professor position. And to be safe, he would also apply for the Astronomy professor role. After all, these subjects posed no difficulty for him..