{Edited} The Chaotic Traveler - Chapter 11 (Patreon)

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

Chapter 11: Let There Be Light

The school year started with a bang as Dumbledore announced the incoming Tri-Wizard Tournament, canceling the Quidditch season for an event not seen in over a century.

Not that it affected Jin much, as he watched from a distance, enjoying the free time to keep his studies up, even if Hagrid pulled him aside each day for an odd job.

House Elves were skilled at cleaning and organizing, but not so adept at repairs or building.

Hagrid had Jin tag along for whatever maintenance simple Charms couldn't fix. Still, Jin couldn't be upset as the half-giant kept sharing his bushcraft knowledge along the way.

Sadly, his progress in the Room of Requirement was hindered by his slow memorization rate. Without the Wit-Sharpening potions, Jin’s memorization speed required hours per book to copy content fully, depending on the size of said book.

Thankfully, Charms textbooks only had one or two books per year, with the formula for each spell clearly listed. It took a bit longer than other books, as Jin made sure he recorded each one correctly in his mind.

Still, by the end of the first week of September, he was already casting all 4th-year Charms by wand without an issue.

However, the school offered more than textbooks to expand his knowledge base.

'On one hand, my respect for magical researchers has risen, seeing how much has been documented.’ Jin mused. ‘While on the other, I want to stab them repeatedly.’

When requesting books specifically about Charm-related knowledge, the Room of Requirement provided Jin with hundreds of shelves of books.

Most of them were based on theory and references, rather than actually providing new Charms.

Since they were still valuable to Jin's growing knowledge base, he knew he couldn't ignore them without good reason.

The problem with these theory texts was that they contained heavily conflicting knowledge. Most of it was written by egotistical individuals who wasted pages inflating their egos, and none of them properly cited their sources, even when their work was entirely plagiarized from someone else.

The worst part was that even in a book that was 90% useless drivel, Jin still found tokens of thoughts and theories he could use, meaning he had to force himself to read it anyway.

‘If I read one more line about how amazing some fucking bloodline is instead of getting to the fucking point, I’m going to restart the Viking raids on the British Isles.’ He growled.

Thankfully, even with his slowed memorization speed, he still had a 1:4 time ratio in his mind to read through and tear off anything useful he could set aside in his central memory bank, while collecting the useless drivel to use as mental landmines and distractions for would-be invaders.

But the practical work was more fun than the theoretical.

000

Sweat dripped from Jin’s brow as he finished his final lap around the Black Lake to the backdrop of the sunset.

The way the changing skies reflected in the calm waters did wonders for one's mental health, combining sky and earth into a golden canvas that entranced anyone who saw it.

‘Life is a gift.’ Jin couldn’t help but feel the truth in those words as he wiped his face with the towel around his shoulders. ‘Physical workout done for the day, time for magic.'

Stepping off the shoreline, Jin waved to a gaggle of giggling students who started showing up during his evening runs. ‘Just smile and wave, Jin. Smile and wave.’

He had little interest in getting held up answering questions about himself. In the first few days, he had made that mistake and practically drowned in a sea of hormonal estrogen.

It wasn't as if he was the only one out there; it was September, and students were out and about enjoying the warm weather in the Scottish Highlands while they could. Still, Jin was the only one working out in a tank top and built like a brick shit house.

As his Animagus changes continued and Jin pushed himself physically, he grew at a phenomenal pace.

A group of sixth-year girls waved at him from a distance to get his attention, but Jin pulled the [Smile and Wave] card as he kept walking in the opposite direction.

It wasn’t like he didn’t like the attention; he did, but he had things to do, and being polite was a pain in the ass.

'Especially when I can't get any ass.' Jin internally groused while side-eyeing the school. 'I swear McGonagall has a hidden magical ability. She appears every time I spend too much time talking with a seventh-year student.’

Making it around a corner of the path, Jin called for Gol to take him to the Room and immediately regretted it.

“Why does that never get easier?” Jin held a hand over his mouth to keep from emptying his stomach in the hallway. “If anything, I think it’s getting worse.”

“My apologies, Sir.” Gol went to bow his head, but Jin waved it off as he took deep breaths.

“I told you not to apologize for that.” Jin quickly reassured. “House Elf Apparation is not ideal for wizards, but it's perfectly safe. Besides, you're only motivating me to get better so I can learn Apparation myself."

Jin still refused to magically teleport until he was more secure in his magical abilities.

“Of course, Sir.” The extra drawl put into the word told Jin how Gol felt about his motivations.

Jin rolled his eyes at the posh elf. "Whatever. I'm going to be doing practical work today, so don't come in unless I call for you."

“Very well, Sir.” Gol vanished with a quiet pop, something Sil and Bron had yet to manage, leaving Jin shaking his head as he walked back and forth to set up the Room.

‘I wonder if this is how Batman felt with Alfred.’ The thought appeared, and he sniggered.

The door appeared, and Jin walked in to see a standard dueling ring equipped with numerous dummies and obstacles.

‘Right then, let’s not wait for my muscles to go cold.’

Jin stepped up to the center and took a steadying breath as his wand flicked into his hand from a hidden leg holster.

‘Starting from the top.’

A flick was all it took for light to ignite on the tip of the wand, shining brighter as Jin put more power into it.

He focused on the light. ‘The spoken incantation is nothing more than a mental focus for a wizard's internal mana.'

By saying the word [Lumos], the caster gained a clear mental image while the mana flowing into the wand was focused toward the correct spell matrix. Combined with wand movement, it told the world what he was trying to do without mental calculations.

A scoff left his lips. ‘A ridiculous concept.’

Jin waved the wand around like a torch, feeling disgusted. 'Such a waste of potential. They created light and stopped there. If they had bothered to try and understand the math behind it, they would have seen so much more.’

He knew he was being hypocritical; he'd poured all his learning capability into a narrow path, gaining the benefit of an Arithmancy perk to boost his understanding further, but the viewpoint those benefits gave him made the idea of not innovating repulsive.

Jin holstered his wand and stretched out his hands, feeling the mana flow from his core like boiling liquid into his palms, accumulating with the potential to turn to his desires.

Calculations flew behind glowing amber eyes as Jin pulled up mental hotkeys for dozens of self-made light-spell variations, inserted what he wanted, and let it flow.

He held out his hand.

‘Let there be light.’

Jin snapped, and the magic blossomed.

Golden light erupted and danced in the air as threads made of light spread, twisting and turning through the room in a dance for his eyes alone.

Roots ran along the ground, branches stretching wide, all connected to a thick trunk.

Within moments, Jin stood at the center of a tree made entirely of golden light, sparks and fireflies dancing around him.

A laugh bubbled up as he beheld the sight.

‘This is magic.’

With another moment of concentration, Jin swapped his mental hotkey and snapped once more as the tree vanished into particles, replaced by a seemingly solid golden wall.

Another change and snap turned the wall into a lion, its mouth opening in a silent roar.

A fourth snap had the lion falling apart into dozens of fluttering birds.

'Light. They created a spell to generate light and made a goddamn flashlight.' Jin's disgust was genuine.

Each Charm on the list held the potential for so much more. 'Sadly, I don't have the mana to play forever.’

Even with his expanded reserves, Jin’s control of that mana was still a work in progress. ‘As long as I continue to grow each day, I consider it a job well done.’

Bringing his hands together, Jin clapped loudly, and each bird exploded into mini fireworks, falling onto his standing form without any sensation of physical contact, fading as the mana was pulled back.

A hot breath left Jin’s lungs as he felt the internal burn along his Mana Channels that came with spending mana too fast. ‘I still need to work on efficiency.’

Mana exhaustion and burnout were a real risk, as Jin learned.

A witch or wizard could literally burn up from within through overuse, but that typically never happened because of magical foci.

‘Wands help regulate mana usage, as well as pull mana from the core faster and increase the output of the spell.’ Jin twirled his wand in thought. ‘Wandless burns through more, takes longer to pull mana from within, and lacks the power boost, but what it loses there it makes up for in versatility.’

Jin swapped the hotkey and snapped once more as coin-sized balls of multi-colored light danced around his palm. ‘One step at a time.’

With time, Jin’s core would grow larger, his mana would respond faster, and he would learn the control needed to efficiently cast without wasting mana.

‘I just need more time.’ He grabbed the light coin and crushed it within his fist. ‘There’s only so much I can push before breaking each day, and I have to keep my cover as well if I want to stay at the school.’

His job with Hagrid was important, but on top of that, he still had to find time to sleep, eat, work out, memorize reading material, study it in his mental plane, heal his mental plane, work on Spell Deconstruction and Alteration, and do everything else.

There was so much to do and only so many hours to do it.

‘As useful as Occlumency is for the time ratio, it still puts a tremendous strain on my mind to use it.’ Each session left him with a punch-drunk headache that he had to recover from. ‘But my progress is worth it.’

Jin didn't know who he once was, but the almost literal progress he felt with each completed task gave him momentum and confidence that kept building on itself. 'If I could do all this in five weeks of real time, what could I accomplish with a year?'

He would hit a breaking point; Jin knew that logically, but until then, he would push and strive to be his best.

And then he would adapt.

Jin's eyes shone as he flicked out his wand; the mental calculations were no longer required, and the focus on pulling on his mana eased. 'Now then, let's have some brain-dead stress-relieving spell-casting time.'

Practice was practice, and using a Charm with a wand would only help him understand it better when it came time to alter it to wandless.

With the first four years of Charms under his belt, the Room of Requirement became a storm of flying dummies, debris, and colorful lights as Jin let himself go, a smile on his face and a manic laugh bellowing out of his lungs.

‘I love magic!’

0000

Sadly for Jin’s schedule, if he thought he would have the month of September to study to his heart's content outside of working hours before the tournament started, he was proven wrong when, on the eighth day of school, Hagrid came knocking with a request.

“Ya think ya can help me with my classes, Jin?” Hagrid grinned and held up a covered bird cage. “I caught a pair of Fwoopers.”

Jin’s head met the hard surface of his door with a groan. ‘For fuck’s sake, Hagrid.’

Chapter End.

AN: Short 2.2K piece, hope you enjoyed! Further updates will follow the same 3 day routine as Merchant.