{Edited} The Chaotic Traveler - Chapter 6 (Patreon)

AN: Edited chapters do not count toward monthly quota's

Do you guys see what happens when I have free time and get into a mood? I can't stop! I also blame Plum on principle.

Not beta read yet.

Chapter 6: Reinventing The Wheel

The second week had one focus. 

Charms.

Jin sped through Charm books like they were going out of style. His specialized learning curve boosted his ability to comprehend Charms, but at the cost of every other subject.

It wasn't that he didn't want to try each subject, but that with only a year to optimize 6 working spells to take with him, Jin chose to specialize in one major and minor area to maximize his chances of not dying a gruesome death if he got dropped into a death world next time.

All things considered, the world of Harry Potter was a phenomenal starting point on his journey.

With his learning curve, the knowledge was fuel for the fire, and he absorbed it as if he were born for it, understanding Charm theory like it was second nature.

Jin even had to send his House Elves out to buy more specialized books to fill the gaps the introductory books left.

The first thing Jin realized as he absorbed the books was that they all relied on wand movements. Something that bothered him instinctively. 'A wand is useful, but why should the way you move it matter?'

Jin wasn't sure whether it was his talent curve, his meta knowledge, a sixth sense, or a combination of the three, but he strongly felt that using a magical focus shouldn't cripple his ability to cast without one.

‘Will I even be able to use a wand when I leave this world?’ Jin wasn't averse to using a wand, even if the movements were silly to him, but he wanted to know how it worked. 'It’s better to figure this out from the start rather than learn bad habits I have to unlearn later on.'

Using his wand as a training focus, Jin felt his Mana pull from his chest, down his arm, and into the wand in his palm.

It wasn’t as fast as he first thought, taking a good few seconds to reach the wand. ‘If a foreign object can pull on my Mana, I should be able to direct it myself, shouldn’t I?’

Jin stared at his hand with a frown, trying and failing to pull on his Mana without the wand.

In a book labeled 'Mana Channels and You', Jin learned that metaphysical channels ran throughout the physical body, flowing Mana from the core to designated areas.

Damaging these channels was no different from crippling one’s ability to cast magic, so Jin took things slow and steady.

He spent hours in the exercise, trying to mimic the pull without success, stopping to memorize more books to review in his mind whenever he got burned out, and at the end of the second week, Jin got something.

After feeling his Mana flow along a specific path enough times, Jin began to picture a pipeline stretching from his core in the center of his chest, through his shoulder, down his arm, and into his palm.

The Mana was the water, and after mentally picturing it heating up like boiling water, he finally felt it begin to flow. ‘Come on.’

It crawled far slower than when he used a wand, but as he held strong to his mental image and willed it to heat up, the Mana slowly made its way along the pathway, eventually reaching his hand, where it stopped short. 'Now what?'

The Mana accumulated in his palm, stretching along each finger with a tingling sensation, yet it did nothing more.

'Are you just going to sit there?' Sweat dripped from his brow as Jin growled and kept pushing. 'Do something!'

Almost as if it had been waiting for his command, a single spark escaped his fingertip, glinting in Jin's amazed eyes, before an eruption of uncontrolled heat burst outward in sparks, the recoil knocking his chair back like a shotgun blast and throwing him ass over end to the ground. 'Holy shit!'"

The air was forced from his lungs as he wheezed on the ground, idly noticing his House Elves running around his room, stamping out sparks where they caught on the fabric. 'Reliable little buggers.'

Sending them a thumbs up in thanks, Jin coughed and got to his knees, looking down at his singed palm. ‘Well, that was progress.’

His eyes shone with interest, utterly unconcerned with the danger. 'And what is progress without explosions?'

It was that singular moment that lit the fuse behind Jin’s enthusiasm for wandless magic, now knowing for a fact that it was possible. ‘It should be a muscle like everything else; the more I manage it, the easier it will become. Especially since I have the extra Mana to spare.’

Jin's week flowed from there as he made a conscious effort to pull and push his Mana, making it a daily routine that fit into his existing schedule of reading, followed by mental dives to study what he read under the increased time flow of his mental plane.

By the end of the second week, Jin felt confident he had enough of a handle on his Mana, and a strong enough grasp of theoretical Charms, to push forward with casting his first spell.

‘The movement for the basic Light Charm is a simple flick.’ Jin read from the textbook, even though he had memorized it.

With the wand in hand, Mana flowed from his core without conscious effort, followed by visualization, a spoken word, and a flick of the wand to produce a gentle light at the tip.

‘It really is that simple.’ Jin shook his head in exasperation as he waved the lit wand tip around his room. ‘Just follow instructions a child could understand, and it just… works.’

It was as bafflingly insulting as it was intellectually intriguing.

Jin wanted to know why.

Why was it that simple?

Moving on to wandless application, Jin managed to get the Mana to his hand with a great deal of focus, visualized what he wanted, spoke the word, and flicked his hand in the way the wand did to produce another shotgun of sparks from his palm.

Only this time, Jin was sure he hit his head too hard as he saw his House Elves exchange shiny coins.

It took five attempts and the judgmental glares of his elves before Jin realized he was doing it wrong. 'I'm repeating everything else normally, so why isn’t this working?'

One could say wandless magic was an advanced, highly difficult, and complex art form that only masters of magic could perform, but Jin refused to believe that.

The concept was simple; the application was what raised the question.

He didn't know why he was so adamant, but the very idea of not following the path to its fruition felt like giving up halfway.

And Jin refused to give up.

'I only have two weeks left.' Jin frowned at the calendar he put up on the wall, seeing his declining timeline. 'I should play to my strengths; what other tools do I have?'

He had seven perks at his disposal, but after thinking through them, Jin realized only one might help him.  

Changing direction, Jin pulled out an Arithmancy book.

0000

Week three was one of numbers as Jin’s Arithmancer perk blossomed.

‘I never knew I could love and hate math this much at the same time.’ He scrunched up his face.

Arithmancy itself had several branches, focusing on spell creation, Divination, Rune combination, and much more.

Yet many of those branches required knowledge beyond Arithmancy alone, so they fell outside his perk’s learning bonus.

That's why Jin chose branches that played to his strengths.

[Spell Deconstruction] and [Spell Alteration].

‘With these two branches, I should be able to both understand how Charms work and be able to alter them, making the 6 spell slots far more valuable than before.’

Jin wouldn't rest until he optimized his ultimate arsenal.

'Fear me, math.' Jin cackled in the safety of his mind, unsure why he felt so spiteful toward the subject. 'Must be a holdover from my last life.'

Throughout the third week, Jin dedicated his all to the subject, and his mind absorbed the Arithmancy books like an all-consuming flame, only slower than the speed at which he comprehended Charm books.

In total, Jin spent almost three hundred hours of mental time poring over the books, tearing things apart and putting them back together like a deranged surgeon with a chainsaw.

Each Charm, as Jin came to find, had a formula.

A series of geometric shapes filled with equations that specified and guided magic to produce a consistent result.

‘It’s amazing how many technical details exist behind a single flick of a wand and a spoken word. Wizardry magic is as much a science as it is magical bullshit.’ Jin mused.

Arithmancy had its own language, set apart from Runes, that was expressed in mathematical terms rather than words, and to understand it, one had to comprehend the meaning and function of each equation.

Thankfully for Jin, his improved talent helped him understand; his potion-induced focus helped him memorize; and his Occlumens perk helped him use the memorized equation meanings to create a dictionary boulder with the sole purpose of containing a folder to process, recall, and utilize what he was learning.

'It's not even like this is secret knowledge. The equations are right there in the textbooks.' Jin held up a first-year Hogwarts Charm textbook and marveled that the spell formula was right there on the page. 'Am I crazy? Or are these people crazy? Maybe we're all crazy.'

By the end of the third week, Jin gained a unique viewpoint that finally solved his wandless casting issue.

‘Wand movements are nothing more than programming.’ An irate and bedraggled Jin ran a hand through his bird's nest of hair as he understood the problem. 'Spells have their own formulas, mathematically speaking, and wand movements are hotkeys for magicals to cast magic with a fraction of the effort usually required, without truly understanding what they are doing.’

A wand was a crutch and a key to a culturally created lock.

Jin sent his elves to get books on magical history to follow his train of thought. 'After the introduction of the wand during Roman times, it became the primary magical focus. Due to the quick spell-casting speed it provided, and the ease for delicate forms of magic, it won out over the more powerful, yet slower to cast staves.'

Turning a page in a book while floating through the air of his central boulder, which had now grown to the size of a small island, Jin hummed in thought. 'There are mentions of wandless magic in the African school and the use of bracelets and rings in the Japanese school, but even they use gestures, words, and symbols to facilitate casting.’

He mentally underlined a line of text to bring it up faster next time.

‘Magicals in this world rely on foci, and their spells are tailored to their use. Which also cripples them without a casting focus.' Jin let the history book fade and scratched his growing stubble. ‘My instinct to not build bad habits was well founded.'

There was likely a downside to his obsessive behavior, but Jin would rather have it than not.

‘I doubt a few books can describe an entire civilization. There should be more detailed knowledge that is not easily accessible to the public.’ Jin shook his head at the thought that he could figure out the mystery in a single month. ‘Maybe this is all the result of some crazy ritual or something? Romans made the wand, so maybe they did something?’

He ultimately shrugged. ‘I got no idea.’

Still, that left Jin at an impasse that he was determined to overcome.

‘If I want to cast these spells without a wand, I need to alter the formula for these Charms and improve my ability to call on my Mana.' The first proved challenging, but the second provided an answer that almost literally slapped Jin across the face.

On the final day of the third week, during his daily exercise to improve his Mana flow, Jin felt a tingling sensation in his offhand.

Jin’s brow furrowed as he focused on the feeling.

He stopped pulling on his Mana, and in its absence, something else emerged.

A subtle tingling that guided his mind to a thin strand of Mana in his forearm. But the more he focused on it, the more Jin felt.

Like ink spreading rapidly through water, that single strand of Mana pulled Jin's perception toward dozens, hundreds, thousands of tiny strands of Mana flowing through his body. 'What the hell?'

As Jin continued to sense it, his perception picked up on a steady warmth spreading from his core, a bare degree warmer than his body temperature, easily missed compared to the heat of manually pulling on his Mana.

‘Giant’s Skin!’ The perk he chose smashed Jin over the head like the most obvious sledgehammer, having been waiting for him to finally open his eyes. ‘I’m such a dumb ass.’

Jin rubbed his forehead. ‘I’ve had Mana flowing through me this entire time. I was trying to reinvent the wheel.’

It was an obvious detail, if easily missed.

Jin had been running full tilt for weeks, and he was far from the brightest mind to ever walk the Earth. ‘I need a break.’

“Row.”

Thankfully, a worthy distraction presented itself as Shadow demanded his attention.

"Hey, girl." Jin happily set aside his annoyance to play with his kitten, an action that gave him a soulful kind of pleasure for hours before he returned to his work.

Jin stared down at his arm. 'I have Mana naturally moving to my skin. It's passively there, flowing from my core. I just need to follow the existing path.'

Once he sensed it, he couldn’t ignore it.

It was always there.

'Instead of the pipeline I was imagining, this is more like following a naturally formed river network.' Focusing on the flows, Jin experimentally tried to push more Mana through it, instantly rewarded with the warm sensation he had grown used to from his previous exercises.

'My right hand.' He tried to direct it mentally, and the Mana followed.

It still wasn't as fast as using a wand, but it wasn't as glacially slow as his previous pipeline method. 'If using a wand was running, and imagining a pipeline was crawling, then using these natural pathways is similar to walking.'

The Mana reached Jin's palm almost gently, as if it were a natural action, and it took only a few extra moments to accumulate enough in his palm to cast. 'Should I attempt it?'

Jin cast a risky glance around his room, and almost as if she sensed it, Shadow woke up and glared at him, daring him to try. 'Alright, maybe not.'

The way the Mana reached his palm didn’t change the fact that the spell wasn’t working for him. ‘With the Mana issue solved, I just need to alter the formula for a Charm. I’ve already narrowed down my focus to the Light Charm.’

The formula was among the simplest, yet a fundamental component was the wand movement.

Jin checked three different Charms and saw that same wand movement in each one. ‘Was it intentional?’

He recalled his own issues and furrowed his brow. ‘The lack of common sense likely said that if something worked, there was no reason to fix it. But someone, somewhere, at some point in time, must have done something to make this possible.'

How can the movement of a wand indicate the intention of casting a spell without knowing how the casting actually works? 'Just because someone doesn't know how a gun works doesn't mean they can't use an existing gun as is. Even if that's a very simplified example, it seems to fit.'

Jin tore apart the Light Charm and put it back together without the wand component.

It took around thirty hours of mental time, with Jin poring through Arithmancy references.

He had to replace the wand hotkey with specific calculations, but when he finally had something he felt was right, Jin returned to his body, took a deep breath, and snapped his fingers.

“Lumos.”

Light blossomed, a floating ball of light sparking to life in his hands, leaving Jin marveling at his first successful casting of wandless magic like a child seeing the sun for the first time. ‘If I can do it once, I can do it again.’

Jin played with the light for hours before thinking things through. ‘There are downsides to this casting method.’

He snuffed out the ball of light and recast the spell, only this time without snapping his fingers, and the result was a failure. ‘I need to mathematically alter the spell formula to have a specific result.’

His last attempt required the snap of his fingers to actualize.

It would be a challenge, but with Occlumency on his side, Jin didn't fear what was required. 'I'll need to make a dozen variations of each spell and memorize them. Create my own hotkeys.'

One benefit of this method was that if Jin wanted a spell to last longer, he just needed to push more Mana; if he wanted to cut it off, he pulled Mana.

A wand offered no such takebacks; once a caster fed it Mana, the spell kept it.

While wand casting allowed some intent to alter the spell being cast, it couldn't cross the limits of the spell formula. ‘Instead of altering a simple Light Charm into a deadly application, wizards are keen to look for the simple method of using a more powerfully made spell. There’s so much wasted potential.’

By the end of the third week of August, Jin had spent over two months in his mental plane, organizing, studying, hypothesizing, testing, and pushing his perks to their limits.

Without Jin’s will to succeed, the mental fatigue and mind-warping pain would have made him procrastinate.

Without his expanded Mana reserves, the sheer magical fatigue of using Occlumency to such a degree would have crippled him.

Without his growing body, courtesy of his Animagus perk, his potion use would have permanently damaged his physical shell.

Without his House Elves and Shadow to make sure he ate and rested, he would have burnt out after the first week.

Everything he was capable of was the result of his choices, actions, and effort.

'I wouldn't change it for the world.' Jin smiled widely as he reclined on his bed, playing with a ball of light much like a cat with a ball of yarn, doing things with it that would have Charm masters staring with wide eyes.

“Can you get it?” Jin teased his feline, controlling the ball like a conductor as the fluffy dark specter of death chased it around his bed. A fun game that worked on his Mana control while entertaining them both.

“You got it!” Shadow pounced on the ball, and Jin made it evaporate in a shower of congratulatory sparks.

Shadow panted and puffed out her little chest in pride, making Jin unable to resist praising her. “You’ll be a mighty hunter, one day.”

Shadow purred in agreement, rubbing her head on his chin and making Jin laugh.

One week remained.

Chapter End.

AN: Only one more chapter, and then we're off to Hogwarts.