Chapter 25: The Wind Spirit Ring's First Cry, The First Pot of Gold Is Credited (Patreon)

Sunday morning. The first thin frost of early winter had turned the Quidditch pitch into a sheet of silver.

The sky was only just paling to fish-belly white. Most of the castle was still sunk in warm velvet blankets, but in a corner of the pitch near the edge of the Forbidden Forest, two figures bundled in thick red scarves were sneaking about on the grass, their breath puffing white.

"Fred, thirty feet, crosswind level three. Ready?" George shouted at his twin up in the air, a specially made brass pocket watch clamped in his hand.

Overhead, Fred sat astride a battered old Cleansweep Five.

Three inches below the balance point of its badly chipped handle, a dull blue-green metal ring clung tightly. It was the first-generation test version of the [Wind Spirit Shock-Absorbing Ring], designed by Raven himself.

"The wind's perfect! Watch this, George!"

Fred grinned, clamped his legs against the broom handle, and shot forward like an arrow leaving the string!

The broom hit its top speed and was about to slam into the crown of a thick beech at the forest's edge. Fred didn't slow down. Instead he heaved with both arms and wrenched the handle hard to the left, almost sideways!

A ninety-degree, right-angle hairpin turn at full speed!

On an ordinary old Cleansweep, a brutal turn like that at such speed would fling the rider clean off with the sheer centrifugal force. It might even snap the broom's spine.

But the instant Fred hauled the handle over, the three micro-engraved runes on the ring's surface flared with a pure, pale blue-green glow!

"Hmmm…"

A visible ring of translucent air whirled around the metal band, spinning like a top. The wind resistance and savage inertia tearing at the broom were wound clockwise into one steady centripetal vortex.

The whole broom traced an impossibly graceful angle through the sky, gliding as smoothly as if it were skating on ice, without a single jolt!

"Woooooo-hoooo!!"

Fred let out a roar of near-delirious joy, did two somersaults, landed steadily, and stood there flushed with excitement. "Unbelievable! George! I swear I didn't feel a single tug in my spine on that turn! It was like being carried on a cushion of feathers!"

"Hey! What was that move just now?!"

A frantic bellow, like a man with his tail on fire, suddenly exploded from the pitch entrance.

Gryffindor Quidditch captain Oliver Wood came pounding in from his morning jogging route, soaked in sweat and wearing only a thin training top. His bloodshot eyes were glued to the old broom in Fred's hands as though he were staring at some prehistoric monster.

"Fred Weasley! Did you just pull a Wronski Feint on a Cleansweep Five?! And the broom didn't fall apart? What in the world is that glowing ring on it?!"

George and Fred exchanged a glance. Both of them broke into the same dazzling, wicked grin, the kind that smelled of business.

*

Ten o'clock that morning. An abandoned classroom on the fifth floor of the castle.

Clink-clatter!

With a heavy, ringing crash of metal, a bulging black deerskin pouch slammed down on the long wooden table. Gold glittered and gleamed as it spilled from the mouth.

"Forty-five Galleons and eight Sickles, Major Shareholder!"

Fred plopped down on the edge of the table, glowing. "Wood took one test flight, half a circle, and went completely mad. He emptied out all his pocket money for the term on the spot and ordered three custom versions for Gryffindor's three Chasers! Then Cedric Diggory from Hufflepuff wandered past on his morning practice, took one look, and put down half the deposit without another word!"

Beside him, George was flicking the beads of an abacus at high speed. He looked with awe at Raven, who stood by the window leafing through a sheet of parchment. "Under our seventy-thirty split, once we take out the basic material costs for good red copper, cooling oil and obsidian powder… this is your first net profit. A full twenty-eight Galleons."

Twenty-eight Galleons.

That was enough to buy a complete set of top-grade crystal potion equipment in Diagon Alley, or to keep an ordinary wizarding family going for two months.

And this was only the take from a small, secret trial run inside Hogwarts that hadn't even lasted half a day.

Raven closed the parchment portfolio in his hands and turned around. Without a flicker of emotion, he scooped half the gold off the table and pushed a small pile back to the twins. "These eight Galleons go into the reserve fund for the second stage of expansion. When you place orders in Knockturn Alley or Diagon Alley, have the owls deliver the high-purity silver-copper alloy in separate batches. Don't attract Filch's attention, or Snape's."

"Don't worry, boss!"

"When it comes to smuggling contraband around the castle, the two of us are the best in the whole school!" the twins promised, waggling their eyebrows.

*

Back in his suite in Goshawk Pavilion on the second underground level, Raven closed the doors and windows and snapped the brass lock on the stone door.

Pale green flames flickered quietly in the fireplace. Raven sat down at his agarwood desk, let his mind sink, and summoned the golden screen from deep within his consciousness.

[Current Causality Reversal Points: 2,700.]

[Mid-tier Shop access unlock requirements met.]

Looking at the rich balance of nearly three thousand points, Raven didn't hesitate for a moment.

Plain physical enhancement and basic spells had long since stopped giving him any meaningful return. Only by widening the scope of his magical knowledge could he build an unshakable scholar's bulwark.

His gaze settled steadily on the golden scroll in the second column of the list:

[Ancient Alchemy Diagram · Torn Page (Advanced Micro-Engraved Rune Arrays)] — Price: 1,500 points. (Description: A miniature matrix-encapsulation technique from the height of medieval alchemy. It breaks the surface-area limits of physical materials and teaches the ultimate method of folding multiple compound magical circuits into a space the size of an inch.)

"Exchange."

The instant he confirmed the command, a golden thunderclap seemed to explode deep inside his mind!

A vast, intricate flood of information poured into his consciousness like mercury spilling across a floor: magical conduction through metal crystal lattices at the molecular level, the topology of layered spatial micro-engraving, and the closely guarded principles for condensing defensive and nurturing spell structures into a single tiny ornament…

When Raven opened his eyes again, a clarity he had never known before showed in the depths of his dark gaze.

In the past, carving runes into metal rings had still depended on his eyes and the precision of his hands. Now that he had mastered micro-engraved arrays, he could inscribe a triple-layered adaptive defensive ward, strong enough to withstand high-level dark curses, directly onto a gold or silver trinket smaller than a fingernail!

Raven pulled open a drawer and took out the set of Abyssal Obsidian Rune Knives that Lucius had given him earlier, along with a blank teardrop-shaped sliver of pure silver he had meant to make into a pendant.

Knife in his right hand, he let his wrist drift across the surface of the silver as effortlessly as flowing clouds.

As the blade passed, the naked eye could catch only a faint wisp of silver mist drifting almost imperceptibly across the metal's skin. Yet under the microscopic detail of his [Magic Circuit Analysis Vision], no fewer than seventy-two miniature defensive rune nodes had already been nested together inside the silver in one closed loop!

[Wind Spirit Nurturing · Miniature Repulsion Amulet (Semi-finished)].

Feeling the gentle, warm resistance against his fingertips, Raven's lips curved in a satisfied smile.

This amulet would come in very handy, in the bitter cold of December, not long from now.

He put away the knives and the silver piece with care, walked to the window, and watched schools of silver fish drift through the depths of the Black Lake.

The first pot of gold was in the bag, and his alchemy had undergone a transformation that left his old methods on a lower plane.

And somewhere deep down that dim corridor, the clues about Nicolas Flamel and the Philosopher's Stone… it was about time they surfaced, in a perfectly natural way.