Chapter 63: Reflections on the World Will

The conversation in the office continued.

Professor McGonagall went on sharing her views.

“For example, if you turned one of your leg bones into steel, could you still walk normally?”

Allen shook his head and said, “No, because the legs would be uneven in weight, but after some time adapting, you’d definitely get used to it.”

“The animals you create through transfiguration have no intelligence—how are they supposed to adapt?” Professor McGonagall found this amusing.

“I can modify the behavioral logic to suit this new body structure,” Allen stubbornly insisted.

“You’re oversimplifying how hard it is to alter the target’s behavioral logic—it’s far more difficult than you imagine!” Professor McGonagall laughed harder.

“Moreover, the human brain has limited precision in perceiving all the data of a transfigured result—how can you guarantee this time’s steel bone won’t be slightly longer than last time’s?” Professor McGonagall delivered the final blow.

Allen fell silent; he felt everything she said was correct.

After a long while, he whispered, “Why didn’t we need such precision when we used transfiguration spells before?”

“Because your transfigured result was something that already exists in the world, so you only needed to visualize its characteristics—you just had to get the key data accurate enough. That’s the magic of it,” Professor McGonagall added.

Allen fell silent again; he felt her logic was flawless.

“So now, do you still have doubts about the difficulty difference between transfiguring two different U... U... what was it again?” Professor McGonagall clearly couldn’t recall Ultraman’s name.

“Ultraman!” Allen said, deflated.

“Right. So now, do you still question why transfiguring two different Ultramen has different difficulty levels?”

“No more doubts. Thank you, Professor,” Allen mustered his composure, stood up, and prepared to leave.

Professor McGonagall stepped forward and patted Allen’s shoulder, advising, “Having creative ideas is good, but learning magic still requires diligence—don’t reach too far beyond your grasp. You’re a clever child—I have high hopes for your future.”

“Understood, Professor. I’ll remember that. I’ll be going now,” Allen politely took his leave.

Outside Professor McGonagall’s office, Allen realized he had nowhere to go, so, guided by habit, he headed to the library.

He discovered the library was closed today, then remembered it was still Christmas break.

So he sat on the library steps, lost in thought.

Professor McGonagall’s words echoed repeatedly in his mind.

He vaguely sensed a flicker of inspiration drifting through his thoughts, but couldn’t grasp it.

A long-standing question resurfaced in his mind.

What exactly is the World Will that enables all magical effects?

Then Allen realized he had caught that spark of inspiration.

Professor McGonagall said that if the transfigured result is something already existing in the world, you only need to visualize its characteristics to achieve it.

That felt exactly like a computer searching a database based on features!

Could the World Will be something similar to artificial intelligence, explaining why its behavior resembles a computer so much?

First, the way all spells are invoked resembles function calls in programming.

Transfiguration especially demonstrates this clearly—if the World Will has a vast database containing data on every known object in the world,

then when casting a transfiguration spell, you send information about the desired result. If the result is known, you only need to send a few key characteristics, and the World Will matches them to the corresponding entry,

then manifests that result onto the target, making the spell easier.

But if the target is something unknown, the World Will’s database has no data on it, so you must mentally describe every single detail of the desired result, so the World Will knows how to manifest it—otherwise, the spell fails, or the World Will matches a similar object instead.

For example, transfiguration is like ordering food at a restaurant: casting the spell is placing the order, the chef is the World Will, and the final transfigured result is the cooked dish.

If the dish is on the menu, the chef prepares it quickly.

If the dish isn’t on the menu, you must describe the entire cooking process in detail—if you’re detailed enough, the chef can make exactly what you want.

If your description is unclear, the chef might fail to make the dish entirely—that’s spell failure. Or the chef might use his own understanding and experience to create a strange dish—that’s a transfiguration accident.

Allen buried his chin in his arms, and for some reason, he thought again of the parameters and class-like programs on the screen.

Professor McGonagall was right—so many parameters, such complex logic—no human brain could modify or process them unless you had a computer to let you debug endlessly, Allen thought silently.

Debugging!

Allen suddenly realized the word felt both unfamiliar and familiar.

Unfamiliar because he hadn’t done it in so long; familiar because it was something he did every day before he was transported here.

He suddenly remembered that the second parameter of the transfiguration spell was a class-like program composed of ancient magical runes—he had once speculated that ancient magical runes were a programming language.

If ancient magical runes were indeed a programming language, couldn’t he use them to debug?

If he could use ancient magical runes as code to repeatedly debug, wouldn’t he be able to transfigure objects that don’t exist in this world?

Though the entire process would be extremely difficult.

Thinking of this, Allen realized another question: if this task is so hard, what’s the point of doing it?

Allen quickly found the answer in his heart.

For preparation!

Since arriving at Hogwarts, he had grown increasingly certain he would be drawn into this wizarding war—if he couldn’t avoid it, he must begin preparing for battle now.

So he was deeply interested in anything that could be used in combat.

Previously, the Summoning Charm had given him a great surprise and opened his mind—he gradually felt summoning just a snake was boring; it would be better if he could summon customizable entities.

The infinite potential of transfiguration showed him the direction of his future combat style.