Chapter 55: Black Dragon Emerges from the Cave

In the evening, Allen Finis still did not waste time; he pulled his curtains tightly shut and began trying to record the ancient runes of the Transfiguration spell.

But he encountered the same problem as before: there were too many key-value pairs for the Transfiguration spell. Although he tried to slow down the casting speed, he still could not see the ancient runes on the light screen clearly. This made him somewhat discouraged, but it also made him recognize the special nature of the Transfiguration spell again.

This made Allen Finis feel even more that the potential of the Transfiguration spell was vast and could be explored.

But since he had not yet found an effective observation method, he could only put it aside for now.

After getting up the next day, Allen Finis began organizing the transcription results from yesterday.

Yesterday, he recorded the keys for five spells whose values were empty: the Petrification Spell, the Leg-Locker Curse, the Repair Charm, the Qing Quan Zhou, and the Levitation Charm.

Among them, the value of the key-value pairs for the Repair Charm was actually completely full.

As for the keys of the remaining four spells, even with Allen Finis's current knowledge reserve of ancient runes, he still could not decipher their meanings.

This made Allen Finis a bit disappointed, but it also drove him to work even harder.

Allen Finis scheduled his time fully every day; during his spare time, he either researched ancient runes or practiced various spells. His level of effort made Harry Potter and Ron Weasley feel ashamed; perhaps only Hermione Granger could compete with him.

Harry Potter and Ron Weasley could only meet Allen Finis during three times: attending class, eating, and sleeping; at all other times, they could not see a trace of him.

This made them sigh at how great the gap between wizards could be.

Professor Quirrell also kept his promise, starting to teach Allen Finis dark magic and ancient runes every Saturday night.

He first taught Allen Finis a dark magic spell named "Black Dragon Emerges from the Cave," the specific effect of which was to summon a venomous snake, after which the wizard could establish a connection with the snake to control or guide it in real time to launch an attack.

Allen Finis was quite satisfied with the effect of this spell; the summoned snake had strong concealment, and if a surprise attack succeeded, the snake's venom could instantly render an adult wizard combat-ineffective.

The effect of this spell refreshed Allen Finis's understanding of dark magic and also gave him a bit more sense of security.

Although Allen Finis was afraid of snakes in both his past life and this life, he had to set that aside to save his life.

The appearance of this spell also gave Allen Finis many more tactical choices; he did not like the way wizards dueled. He felt it was too rigid, a bit like modern pistol duels, and more like beam clashes in comics and games, and in that way, the weak could hardly turn the tables on the strong.

As a transmigrator, Allen Finis felt no psychological or moral burden regarding surprise attacks; why engage in a frontal confrontation if one could launch a surprise attack?

So he really liked the "Black Dragon Emerges from the Cave" spell.

Wasn't it great to summon a few snakes to hide in the shadows and launch surprise attacks?

Even in an encounter battle, if he hid behind cover, summoned a bunch of snakes, and then launched a surprise attack when the enemy caught up, wasn't that great?

Allen Finis held the wizards' rigid tactics in contempt; previously, he had seriously considered whether to carry a bag of quicklime with him. If danger arose, he would throw a bag up first; the spell range would not be small, and it would be an area attack. As long as he paid attention to the wind direction, this would be much more useful than reciting spells and waving a wand in a rigid, mechanical manner.

Unfortunately, quicklime was simply impossible to find around Hogwarts, so Allen Finis had to abandon this tactic.

Although establishing a connection between the Transfiguration spell and the transformation target was essentially similar to establishing a connection between "Black Dragon Emerges from the Cave" and the summoned creature, which reduced Allen Finis's learning cost, he still needed extensive practice to master this spell proficiently.

When practicing, he had to avoid finding a deserted place and also avoid the ghosts that were everywhere in Hogwarts. He finally discovered that the Forbidden Forest was a suitable place to practice, but this also inadvertently increased the time cost of his practice.

This made Allen Finis even busier.

Time passed quickly; in the blink of an eye, it was December. Christmas was approaching, Hogwarts had already seen several snowfalls, and the weather had become even colder.

When Allen Finis went to work with Hagrid, he had to dress even more bulky so that he would not feel so cold while patrolling the Forbidden Forest.

Fortunately, Hermione Granger noticed Allen Finis's predicament and gave him a bottle containing blue magical fire, allowing him to keep it in his arms to warm up, which made Allen Finis feel much better.

It had been a month and a half since Harry Potter was attacked during the Quidditch match. During this time, Hogwarts had been calm; the black hand lurking within Hogwarts seemed to have disappeared, with no open actions. However, Allen Finis dared not relax his vigilance at all; he believed that the longer the black hand remained silent, the greater the trouble it would cause when it finally struck.

In this month and a half, Allen Finis had basically mastered the "Black Dragon Emerges from the Cave" spell. Professor Quirrell was quite satisfied with his progress and prepared to teach him the Fiendfyre spell next. This spell felt particularly powerful just by its name, so Allen Finis was very much looking forward to it.

However, he was somewhat disappointed by what Allen Finis told him about his experiences in the Forbidden Forest. Fortunately, Allen Finis's acting was still good, so Professor Quirrell did not suspect him.

Allen Finis also went to the library to check information on Newt Scamander and found he was a famous scholar who studied magical creatures. While reading about his experiences, Allen Finis felt a sense of familiarity, always feeling that he had seen this name before while scrolling through videos.

However, all of this was cast aside by Allen Finis because he felt that befriending a famous scholar who studied magical creatures would not help his current situation much and would instead waste his precious time, so he put the matter of contacting Newt Scamander out of his mind.

During this period, he also surprisingly discovered that the Harry Potter trio often used their break time to go to the library to look things up. It was not surprising that Hermione Granger came to the library, but Harry Potter and Ron Weasley coming to the library made him very surprised.

Later, he learned they were investigating the origin of the name "Nicolas Flamel" obtained from Hagrid, so he actively joined the search.

Hermione Granger took out a list from her pocket, on which she had listed the topics and book titles she decided to investigate, and divided half of them to Allen Finis.

Meanwhile, Ron Weasley was strolling in front of a row of books, aimlessly pulling some books off the shelves.

Finally, they checked all the books on the list but still found no clues regarding "Nicolas Flamel."

The Thunderbird Eye Transfiguration in December allowed him to record the ancient rune key-value pairs for the "Black Dragon Emerges from the Cave" spell, but Allen Finis still could not decipher any useful keys, making him feel that his ancient rune research had hit a bottleneck.

There were many things that gave him a headache, but the thing that gave Allen Finis the biggest headache now was that Christmas was approaching; he needed to prepare gifts for his friends, but as a poor ghost who had never even touched a Jin Jin Jialong, this stumped him.

The horn of the Graphorn in his trunk could not be sold for money because he had not yet found a buyer.

He had been thinking about this matter for several days and had gradually come up with some ideas.