Hogwarts: From Selling White Peppers to Becoming a God

Chapter 303 Manifestation of the Primal Essence

Hogwarts, Headmaster's Office.

This place has completely changed its appearance.

All of Dumbledore's collection of exquisite trinkets had disappeared, along with the Pensieve, Fawkes, and almost all of Dumbledore's personal belongings.

Clearly, the former principal returned here before disappearing completely and packed up all his belongings.

After all, both the Pensieve and those private letters contained a great deal of information and secrets, and he didn't seem to be so generous as to leave them to Murphy.

In fact, because he left suddenly without handing over to the current headmaster, Snape was even unable to enter the room for a time.

Upon hearing this, Murphy immediately dispatched a team of Aurors to act as a demolition crew. First, they blew up the Griffin spiral staircase, then they continued blasting all the way up to the eighth floor, tearing the portrait blocking the door to pieces. They completely blasted open the principal's office door with sheer force.

Everyone's already gone, why are you locking up the public facilities?

You've gotten used to it.

This move not only won Snape a lot of favor, but also gave the other professors a profound Murphy-like shock, revealing to them a fact: the master of this school was no longer the white-bearded old man who always left room for maneuver, but had become a madman who would do anything to achieve his goals and would not hesitate to destroy the house in order to get in.

At this moment, Snape was experimenting in a room that had been half-converted into a potions room.

Murphy gave him a copy of the alchemical information he had obtained from Flamel. As part of the deal, he was required to research the Philosopher's Stone and the Elixir of Immortality for Murphy.

Of course, Murphy didn't rely entirely on himself; the Magic Research Institute also had some Muggle scientists conducting this research.

Suddenly, a crow flew to his windowsill, pecked at the window with its beak, and attracted Snape's attention.

The latter frowned and opened the window, and the crow flew into the room without any hesitation.

The next instant, several bolts of lightning flashed, and Murphy's figure suddenly appeared in the headmaster's office with a huge thunderclap. The overflowing electric fire burned a pile of drafts around him to ashes and also dried up a pot of potions that Snape had placed on the cauldron.

Snape quickly steadied several test tube racks and potions that were nearly knocked over by the shockwave. Once the light emanating from Murphy subsided, he couldn't help but grumble, "Did you really have to make such a big entrance?!"

"Sorry," Murphy stamped his foot, extinguishing a small flame on the sole of his shoe, "I've only just learned this way of moving, so I'm not very good at it yet."

Having witnessed Dumbledore use the phoenix to teleport, Murphy had always been envious of this method of movement that could penetrate spatial barriers.

After several attempts, he found that this teleportation was not difficult for him to achieve. The main condition was that he needed a creature with a special connection to the wizard as a coordinate, and this creature should preferably have strong elemental properties.

Fortunately, the Lightning Raven perfectly meets both of these conditions.

Dumbledore can teleport in flames with the help of the phoenix, and he can naturally Apparate in lightning form through the Lightning Raven.

"Then what brings you here, Your Excellency, what brings you here?" Snape asked irritably. "Because of your interruption, the potion I was brewing has been ruined."

Murphy ignored him. "Any progress on the research?"

Snape grumbled on and on until Murphy impatiently tapped the table. "Alright, alright, I'll pay double for the ruined potions. Just make a list of the damages and I'll reimburse you."

Snape finally quieted down. "There's been some progress, but not much."

"Tell me about it." Murphy walked to the largest chair in the principal's office and sat down casually, as if he were the master of the place.

Snape frowned, looking rather displeased, but ultimately didn't show it. "The elixir of immortality has been tested and confirmed to be non-toxic. Side effects... seem to be a few. I tested it on two magical creatures, and it seems to reduce their magical abilities. I don't know why yet."

The Magic Research Institute, which is also conducting tests on the elixir of immortality, has given a similar report.

With both sides corroborating each other, it seems that the elixir of immortality does indeed have the side effect of suppressing magic power levels.

This reminded Murphy of what Lady Jaga said: "You can't have both magic and life," which also explains why Flamel, who has lived for six hundred years, doesn't seem to be that strong.

He chose life—and thus sacrificed his magic.

Flamel's notes also discuss this, suggesting that the elixir of immortality uses magic to replace some of the body's biological mechanisms, thus maintaining the body's survival through magic.

Its magic was increasingly used to maintain its body, leaving less for free use.

This effect led Murphy to postpone his plans to use the elixir of immortality once again, deciding to hold off on it until he could no longer endure it.

"Where's the Philosopher's Stone?"

Snape shook his head. "I already have a basic understanding of the process of crafting the Philosopher's Stone. Most of it isn't particularly difficult. But there's one crucial point: crafting the Philosopher's Stone requires a material with an extremely high concentration of magic. Nicolas Flamel calls it the 'Fifth Element,' 'Golden Blood Salt,' or 'Primal Essence.' It's the source of the Philosopher's Stone's power. The other ingredients are merely to ensure that this 'Primal Essence' isn't lost during use."

"Therefore, unless we find this 'primordial substance,' it is impossible to craft the Philosopher's Stone."

"Niccolò Flamel said in his notes that he was able to forge the Philosopher's Stone, but that was just a coincidence, because he happened to discover the existence of a primordial substance."

Murphy frowned, recalling his one and only conversation with Flamel. "I see. That's why he said it was an unrepeatable miracle, a divine opportunity."

"During his six hundred years of immortality, Nicolas Flamel was trying to find the existence of another primordial substance. He had a deep understanding of the primordial substance, describing it as having extremely powerful magical energy. He even invented a spell that could detect the existence of the primordial substance within a range of nearly a hundred meters. He traveled to many places in the world throughout his life, but he was never able to find another primordial substance again," Snape said.

Nicolas Flamel searched for six hundred years without success, demonstrating the rarity of the so-called "primordial substance".

However, just because Nicolas Flamel couldn't find it doesn't mean I can't find it myself.

"Bring me that spell so I can see it."

Snape searched the table for a moment, then handed Murphy a photocopy. "This spell isn't complicated; any third-year student at Hogwarts can learn and master it. However, its search range is related to the level of magic. An ordinary student can only search an area of ​​about forty feet, while a skilled wizard can reach about three or four hundred feet."

"However, this area is still too small compared to the entire planet. To find the original substance, we would have to use all the wizards in the world to turn over every inch of this planet."

Murphy read the spell on the page several times, and indeed, as Snape had said, the spell was very simple, and he learned it quickly.

He drew his wand and chanted the spell, "Manifest!"

Immediately, a wave similar to that used when "Real Form" spread out, but it rapidly decayed after leaving the body. Although the decay rate of the wave was much better than that of "Real Form" because its target was more singular, it was still extremely thin at a distance of 100 meters. Beyond 200 meters, it was almost impossible to get effective feedback.

Moreover, this spell consumes a great deal of magic power. To perform a search within the maximum range, Murphy would need to exert all his strength, making it difficult to continue.

Murphy calculated that a single search could cover an area of ​​three to four hectares at most, while London alone is over 16,000 hectares. To search the entire city of London using this spell, under ideal circumstances, it would require casting the spell four to five thousand times. Based on Murphy's current experience with the spell, it would take at least half a year.

Searching the whole of Britain would take hundreds of years, and as for the whole world... well, you'd have to live for tens of thousands of years.

However, this is a spell for omnidirectional searching.

In other words, the range of its spell search is a three-dimensional sphere, which is why its magical fluctuations decay so rapidly.

What if we compressed the search scope of the spell into a two-dimensional plane?

Or, how about compressing it into a single scan line?

With the addition of a magic-amplified array antenna, scanning over a distance of several thousand kilometers using a magic-scanning radar isn't unreasonable, is it?

(End of this chapter)