Chapter 118: Low-Key Vacation

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Allen Finis returned to the wand shop with a blank expression. Thinking of the great disaster he had caused, he decided to devote himself entirely to his research before the term began, never to engage in unrelated matters again...

It was August 12th, twenty days before the term started. During these twenty days, Allen Finis basically never left the house; even his daily walks were cancelled. He would only go out if Mr. Ollivander needed him to run an errand.

During these 20 days, he read all of Gilderoy Lockhart's works, and surprisingly, he felt quite good about them after finishing.

Allen Finis liked the descriptions of battles in the books the most; the combination of many spells used therein was very imaginative.

However, what puzzled Allen Finis was that Lockhart's battle style was extremely versatile.

For instance, in the book "Voyage with a Vampire," Lockhart's pre-battle preparations were extremely meticulous; the information gathering before the battle started was very detailed; he made corresponding contingency plans for any possible accidents that might occur during the battle; every battle took place at the planned location and at the planned time; one could say that the victory of every battle was decided before the battle even began.

For instance, in the book "With a Troll," Lockhart's meticulous mind from the previous book was completely gone; it highlighted just one word: "reckless." He rushed recklessly to the end, breaking cleverness with brute force everywhere, decisive in killing and cutting, and whenever something happened, he would cast a spell first. Reading this book made Allen Finis feel very satisfied, giving him the feeling of reading a gratifying novel in his past life, and every battle description was quite reasonable.

There were quite a few similar examples; for instance, when encountering similar dangers, the spells Lockhart chose to use immediately were all kinds of different things. Allen Finis couldn't quite figure this out, and in the end could only understand it as showing off his skills...

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However, the battle parts that Allen Finis liked the most accounted for less than a quarter; the remaining eighth describing the customs and cultures of various places was also very interesting.

Finally, there was the part that Allen Finis didn't like much: Lockhart always liked to use large portions to describe how his charming smile made witches in a place obsessed with him.

This part wasn't even the most annoying; what annoyed Allen Finis the most was that Lockhart always loved to describe how he took care of his hair. The book even said that even the Yetis learned how to care for their hair from him. Reading this made Allen Finis's face full of black lines; he really couldn't imagine what a Yeti taking care of its hair would look like.

However, after reading the whole thing, Allen Finis surprisingly had a very good impression of Lockhart. After all, since the Wizarding War, fewer and fewer wizards were willing to research combat spells and tactics; the content in this book regarding this aspect truly opened Allen Finis's eyes.

Although there was a lot of boring content in the book, the core battle descriptions were really solid. With Allen Finis's current perspective, he could find no faults. Allen Finis also understood why Lockhart's books sold so well; this was the reason. Surely no one would buy his books just to see Lockhart's charming smile and hair care techniques!

In short, Lockhart's image in Allen Finis's mind now was that of a hexagonal wizard who could tank and deal damage, heal and support. If placed in the League of Legends game of his past life, he would be a player proficient in all positions, with all positions at Challenger level and an infinitely deep champion pool.

As for why the battle style was so versatile, Allen Finis could only think it was still showing off his skills...

Thinking that Lockhart was going to become the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor at Hogwarts, Allen Finis felt extremely excited in his heart. If he could learn even thirty percent of the knowledge related to battles in the book, he would benefit from it endlessly...

Professor Dumbledore really picked an excellent Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher! Allen Finis sighed in his heart.

Then Allen Finis checked Lockhart's background. It was no surprise that he was a graduate of Ravenclaw House. Achieving such great accomplishments at such a young age was truly promising!

However, Allen Finis then thought of someone who seemed very similar to Lockhart; also a graduate of Ravenclaw, staying at the school to teach immediately after graduation could also be called promising,

and also served as a Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher...

That's right, this person was Quirrell!

There were quite a few similarities between Lockhart and Quirrell!

Thinking of this, Allen Finis suddenly realized he shouldn't judge a person so early, let alone when he hadn't really interacted with them much...

After finishing the book, Allen Finis felt that his 28 Jin Jin Jialong was spent rather poorly. Although there was a lot of solid content inside, there was more of it that he wasn't interested in. According to this ratio, Lockhart selling a book for 1 Jin Jin Jialong would be more appropriate. However, since Lockhart was going to become his teacher, he would learn a few more tricks from Lockhart later. Thinking of this, Allen Finis suddenly didn't feel so pained about the cost...

During this period, Allen Finis also saw those five Muggle families he had scared away come to buy wands again. They visited the wand shop collectively accompanied by Hagrid. They were still terrified of what happened that day, but this time Allen Finis didn't show up at all. Mr. Ollivander received them enthusiastically, and in the end, they all bought wands they were satisfied with...

Besides this, Allen Finis also found a way to analyze ancient runes. He extracted all the various memories about ancient runes that he saw with his Thunderbird eyes and put them into his diary.

Then he set the value of an unknown parameter in a spell to empty, then cast the spell, and then observed the effect of the cast spell.

For instance, Allen Finis had a memory of casting a Transfiguration spell to turn a wooden stick into a knife. He set the value of an unknown ancient rune parameter in this memory to empty. As a result, after he used this modified memory to cast the Transfiguration spell, the transfigured object was a knife without a handle. Then Allen Finis could consider that the meaning of this parameter's key was "whether there is a handle." Of course, the final meaning of this key still needed multi-party verification to be confirmed.

Although this method was clever, its efficiency was very low because often when a parameter was changed, the effect of the Transfiguration spell didn't change at all. In such cases, there would be no gain.

Moreover, changing parameters like this made casting spells very prone to failure, and spell failure would bring all kinds of strange effects, and there could even be danger. Recently, Allen Finis also suffered various minor and major injuries because of this; fortunately, none were serious...

Although this method had all kinds of problems, as long as he spent energy trying it, he would gain something, so his research on ancient runes was thus slowly progressing...

And Yodel had been quietly watching him process various memories on the side, which made Allen Finis feel somewhat uneasy. Afterwards, he tested Yodel multiple times and discovered that Yodel indeed didn't understand ancient runes, which made Allen Finis feel a bit relieved...

And Allen Finis gradually discovered that Yodel's role was even greater than imagined; he was completely a weakened version of a personal old grandpa!

Yodel's memories contained memories of many magic books. He had read most of the books in the Restricted Section of the Hogwarts Library 50 years ago; he had even read some magic books secretly stored by pure-blood families.

For instance, in one of Yodel's memories, Allen Finis saw him reading a magic book with the Malfoy family crest printed on the cover...

Then Yodel also had unique insights into many spells, which wouldn't be outdated even today; mainly because compared to fifty years ago, the progress of modern magic was also limited.

This made Allen Finis start to wonder who exactly Yodel was...

Time flew quickly amidst Allen Finis's busyness, and soon it was time for the term to start...