Chapter 182: Chap.179 - Theory

The fact is that the Dragon’s Dream is very useful, if it doesn’t actively transform externally, but instead performs the transformation within the dream, theoretically, it’s possible.

Furthermore, this could answer some questions, such as: is the Animagus form random or determined by the wizard?

As soon as he wakes up, any changes in the dream would be reversed, so he can simply go back to sleep and try again. At that point, if it turns out to be the same thing, the second option is more likely.

Of course, it’s only ‘more likely’, because there may be other factors influencing the transformation besides simply drinking it when the ritual is almost over.

For example, the spell must be pronounced at sunrise and sunset, but what if that double heartbeat was set precisely at that moment? What if the potion is merely the final catalyst, and the chosen animal itself is selected as soon as the first spell is pronounced?

Therefore, even if he drank the potion thousands of times to see if there would be any change, it might not make any difference, so the correct thing to do would be to simply restart the ritual from the beginning and see the result.

Another possibility was the Wizard’s consciousness.

If he were to transform, for example, into a cat, he could become accustomed to the transformation into a cat, even subconsciously believing that his Animagus transformation should be that of a cat from beginning to end.

Thus, there was a possibility that his transformation would be defined from then on by his belief that the animal most compatible with him was a cat.

At this point, Rigel also had a solution for this: to temporarily erase his memory. He could extract his memories of transforming into a cat and store them. Then, with his mind ‘clear,’ he could simply restart the process and see the result. In the end, he only needed to recover his memory and find out if he would still be a cat or not.

Magic was extremely volatile, which was true, after all it was based on the energy of Chaos, but even within Chaos there was a certain order and the same was true for Order, while maintaining a certain Chaos.

Order may dictate that a bird flies, but it cannot dictate the direction in which it will fly, Chaos may dictate that a snake may eat a bird or a squirrel, but it cannot alter the fact that the snake still needs to eat something.

In summary, your consciousness could influence magic, as spells do, bringing chaos to life in order to achieve the desired effect.

Rigel became thoughtful, setting his book aside in his chair and beginning to analyze the apparent possibilities of his transformation. The ritual, which could reach its intermediate stages in a few days, had completely changed. Now Rigel hoped to reach the final stage within the dragon’s dream, and then restart the entire process, perhaps not even twice, perhaps dozens of times.

This could take years to complete, but Rigel was in no hurry, after all, he could still continue performing the ritual within the next adventure. The only problem was that this ritual required constant attention.

In fact, he might even try changing other factors to find out if it alters the outcome, for example, the environment around him, the month of the year, the year itself, the level of energy around him, and even the type of energy.

To be honest, Animagus magic was frankly a bit disposable, but he believed that doing it wasn’t useless at all, after all, each change would allow him to discover a little more about magic itself.

Chaos is clearly represented by external factors and Rigel’s own internal conditions, repeating the experiment thousands of times would not only give him extensive data on bodily transfiguration, but also on the effects of the environment and consciousness on magic.

In the future, when he works with more advanced rituals, he will have a very broad experience in this area.

The only problem was that, due to the very chaos of the world, it would be extremely difficult to document the effect of all the factors on the ritual itself.

For example, what if the full moon of transformation fell on Halloween? That wasn’t something his Dragon Dream could copy, he could copy the environment and the weather, but even special dates had their influence on ritualistic magic.

Rigel, who was working with Transfiguration, began to think deeply about rituals because of this simple ‘Animagus ritual,’ his eyes becoming thoughtful as he considered shifting his focus for a while.

Although he hardly wanted to actually go through any ritual for the time being, after all he still had a lot of faith in the rewards, while the rituals could have side effects, and while most of them could simply be cured by the effect of the coffin, perhaps some things that weren’t really considered ‘harmful’ would appear.

For example, would an Animagus spirit itself be considered a parasite? In that case, would sleeping in the coffin after transforming into an Animagus cause it to lose that spirit?

Wait, why is he already considering that it might be a spirit in the first place? This was all just theory!

Perhaps it was something else, Rigel scratched his hair, exasperated, as he felt like a scientist creating a theory, perhaps he was right, but in the end, overthinking could lead him down a path completely opposite to the truth.

Thinking about this, Rigel sighed and decided to leave it aside for now. In any case, rituals aren’t a well-regarded type of magic in this world, at least not for British wizards, most of what’s visible to them are simply good luck rituals for special celebrations, and in most cases, they don’t even explain the steps, simply summarizing the content.

Rigel has several books on rituals at home, but most of them involve Dark magic, and Rigel didn’t want to touch those things easily before, but now with the Coffin, he’s not so afraid of it, he can simply study them in the Dragon’s Dream.

He would ask Kreacher to bring the books later, in any case, he could simply leave them in the king’s treasury.

He also didn’t mind shifting his focus to Rituals, his transfiguration was progressing by leaps and bounds, although he must admit that he still died several times a night trying to transform into magical creatures.

Perhaps the Animagus transformation would help with that.

If his theory about the spirit was correct, it could explain why his failure to fully transform was happening, probably magical creatures weren’t simply a matter of physique, and without a compatible spirit, he would be stuck at that point.

He finally understood why the luck potion made him begin the Animagus ritual, although for now he has far more questions than answers, perhaps he has finally started asking the right questions.