Chapter 305: Manifestation of the Prime Matter

Hogwarts, Headmaster's office.

This place had completely changed its appearance.

Those various exquisite little gadgets that Dumbledore used to collect were all gone; also missing were the Pensieve, Fawkes, and almost all of Dumbledore's personal belongings.

Clearly, before the former Headmaster disappeared completely, he had returned here and packed up all his things.

After all, whether it was the Pensieve or those personal letters, they contained a massive amount of intelligence and secrets; the old man didn't seem generous enough to leave them for Murphy.

In fact, because he left so suddenly without handing over duties to the current Headmaster, Snape couldn't even enter this room for a time.

Upon hearing this, Murphy immediately sent a team of Aurors to act as a demolition crew. They first blew up the gargoyle spiral staircase, then blasted their way all the way to the eighth floor, sent a *Reducto* to the portrait blocking the door, and completely used brute force to blast open the Headmaster's office door.

The person is already gone, and you're still locking the public facilities?

You've been spoiled.

This move not only won Snape quite a bit of favor but also gave the other professors a profound "Murphy-style" shock, revealing a fact to them: the master of this school was no longer that white-bearded old man who always left a margin of twenty percent in everything, but had become a madman who would stop at nothing to achieve his goals and would tear down the house just to get through a door.

At this moment, Snape was making some attempts in the room, half of which had been converted into a potions lab.

Murphy had copied the alchemy materials he obtained from Flamel for him; as part of the deal, he needed to research the Sorcerer's Stone and the Elixir of Life for Murphy.

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

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

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

The next instant, several bolts of electricity erupted, and Murphy's figure suddenly appeared in the Headmaster's office along with a huge thunderclap. The overflowing electric sparks burned a pile of drafts nearby into ash and, incidentally, steamed dry a pot of potion Snape had set on the cauldron.

Snape hurriedly used his hands to steady several test tube racks and potions that were almost knocked over by the shockwave. When the light on Murphy subsided, he couldn't help but complain, "Do you really have to make such a big scene every time you show up?!"

"Sorry," Murphy stomped his feet, stepping out a wisp of flame on his sole, "Just learned this method of movement, not proficient yet."

After seeing Dumbledore use a phoenix to teleport, Murphy had always been very envious of this method of movement that could penetrate spatial barriers.

After trying a few times, he found that this teleportation was not difficult for him to achieve. The main condition was that it required a creature with a special connection to the wizard to act as a coordinate, and it was best if this creature had strong elemental properties.

As it happened, the Lightning Crow perfectly met these two conditions.

Dumbledore could transform into fire to teleport with the help of a phoenix, so he could naturally use the Lightning Crow to Apparate in the form of lightning.

"So, respected School Governor, what is the matter that brings you here?" Snape said with no good grace, "Because of your interruption just now, the pot of potion I was brewing has gone down the drain."

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

Snape grumbled for a long while until Murphy impatiently tapped the table, "Alright, alright, I'll compensate you double for the ruined potion. You make a list of the losses later, and I'll reimburse you."

Snape finally calmed down, "There is some progress, but not much."

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

Snape frowned, quite unhappy, but ultimately didn't flare up, "The Elixir of Life has been tested and confirmed to be non-toxic. The side effects... seem to be some. I used two magical creatures for verification; it seems to have lowered the magical ability of the magical creatures. I don't know why yet."

On this point, the Magic Research Institute, which was also conducting tests on the Elixir of Life, had provided a similar report.

With two-way confirmation, the Elixir of Life indeed seemed to have the side effect of suppressing magic power levels.

This couldn't help but remind Murphy of what Madam Yaga said: "Magic and life cannot be had both." This also explained why Flamel, who had lived for six hundred years, didn't seem that strong.

He chose life—and thus sacrificed magic power.

Flamel's notes also had some discussion on this; he believed that the Elixir of Life used magic power to replace part of the body's biological mechanisms, using magic to maintain the survival of the organism.

More and more of his magic power was used to maintain his body, so naturally, there was less left that could be used freely.

This effect made Murphy postpone his plan to use the Elixir of Life again. Unless he was at his wit's end, he would hold off for now.

"What about the Sorcerer's Stone?"

Snape shook his head, "I have basically understood the refining process of the Sorcerer's Stone; most of it is not particularly difficult. But there is one point that is the most critical: refining the Sorcerer's Stone requires a material extremely enriched with magic power. Nicolas Flamel calls it the 'Fifth Element,' 'Gold Blood Salt,' or 'Prime Matter.' It is the source of the Sorcerer's Stone's power. The other ingredients are just to ensure that this 'Prime Matter' does not dissipate during use."

"Therefore, unless we find this 'Prime Matter,' it is impossible to refine a Sorcerer's Stone."

"Nicolas Flamel said in his notes that he was able to refine the Sorcerer's Stone, but it was actually just a coincidence, because he happened to discover the existence of a Prime Matter."

Murphy frowned, thinking of that one conversation with Flamel, "So that's it. That's why he said it was a miracle that was hard to replicate, a heaven-sent opportunity."

"In the six hundred years of his immortality, Nicolas Flamel has been trying to find the existence of another Prime Matter. He has a very deep understanding of Prime Matter. He described that substance as having extremely powerful magic energy. He even invented a spell that could detect whether there is Prime Matter within a range of nearly a hundred meters. He has been to many places in the world in his life, yet he has never been able to find another Prime Matter again," Snape said.

Nicolas Flamel searched for six hundred years and found nothing, which shows the rarity of the so-called "Prime Matter."

However, just because Nicolas Flamel couldn't find it didn't mean he couldn't.

"Bring me that spell to look at."

Snape searched on the table for a while and handed a photocopy to Murphy, "This spell is not complicated; a third-year student at Hogwarts could learn to master it. But its search range is related to the level of magic power. Ordinary students can probably only search a range of forty feet, while brilliant wizards can reach about three or four hundred feet."

"But this range is still too small compared to the entire planet. To find the Prime Matter, unless you mobilize all the wizards in the world and turn over every inch of land on this planet."

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

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

Immediately, a fluctuation similar to using *Revelio* spread out, but it decayed rapidly after leaving his body. Although the decay rate of the fluctuation was much better than *Revelio* because the target of its search was more singular, it was still extremely thin at a distance of a hundred meters, and it was almost impossible to get effective feedback beyond two hundred meters.

Moreover, this spell consumed a great deal of magic power. To conduct a search at the limit of its range, Murphy basically needed to exert his full effort, making it difficult to sustain.

Murphy calculated that one search could cover a range of at most three or four hectares, while London alone had over sixteen thousand hectares. To rely on this spell to search all of London, in the most ideal situation, would require casting the spell four or five thousand times. Based on his current feeling of using the spell, it would take at least half a year.

To search the entire UK would take over a hundred years, and as for the whole world... unless one could live for ten thousand years.

However, this was an omnidirectional search spell.

That is to say, the range of the spell's search was a three-dimensional sphere, which was why the decay rate of its magic fluctuations was so rapid.

What if the search range of the spell were compressed into a two-dimensional plane?

Or what if it were compressed into a scanning line?

And then equipped with a magic-amplifying array antenna, conducting a scan of several thousand kilometers via magic scanning radar—that wouldn't be too much to ask, would it?

(End of chapter)