Magic

It was strange to receive an ancient book from an ancient chest – upon opening which they tried to pierce Danil with arrows, but he simply teleported away – the paper should have rotted long ago, and the leather shell would have turned to jelly. The humidity in the catacomb was in perfect order; one could even say that it was too wet there, so it was not clear how exactly the book could survive to this day.

Of course, Danil understood that it was the magic of preservation or something similar, but how did it work? What exactly does magic do to maintain the integrity of the book? Keeps moisture away from the book? Stops the book's state from changing while the enchantment is active? Breaks down the surrounding danger to the tome at the molecular level?

He had enough questions, but no answers. You see, after he opened that chest with the repaired red key, something seemed to click in Danil's head. He spent all his time studying how spells should work, what they do, how to use them without harming himself or others.

He didn't ask the question "how," the explanation "it's magic, Danil," was enough for him, and there are no more questions. What logic can there be if it's magic? There was no logic, he thought.

It was a huge mistake on his part.

Just looking at the thin book with the text about some sharpness enchantment, untouched by time, Danil sharply felt the lack of a scientific approach in his study of magic. Well, in the entire magical world, it seemed that only a few wanted to know how exactly magic worked the way it did.

Take a look at the same Department of Secrets. No one knew exactly how many magicians worked in this department, but it was safe to say that there were few of them. If there were only twenty researchers in all of magical Britain, Danil began to theorize with horror about what this meant.

Was this the case all over the world, or just in Britain? Was this targeted sabotage or the consequence of a destructive policy of hiding Magic from the larger world and an isolating lifestyle?

And then Danil realized that he had heard too many conspiracy theories from Luna and decided not to think about it anymore until he became stronger himself.

"How many Advancements have I completed already?" He muttered to himself as he lay on the bed in his room.

Closing his eyes, Danil plunged into his consciousness. Over the past month, full of conversations with his classmates, he had learned a lot of new things, including a couple of pieces of information that otherwise he would have had to look for on his own and for a very long time.

He learned a couple of useful rituals from – oddly enough – Jamie. The girl gave him records of "universally used" rituals that every self-respecting wizard should know. It was there that Danil found the Ritual of Severance.

This ritual did exactly what the name said: it cut off all previously shed blood, nails, hair, pieces of skin and everything else from the essence of the person who undergoes such a ritual, but left these cut-off things with their magical characteristics.

If earlier someone could steal those reserves of Danil's blood that Snape kept as ingredients and use them to curse the monster boy, now it was impossible. The blood didn't belong to anyone.

This, by the way, added to Danil's dislike for Snape. The asshole definitely knew about the existence of that ritual, but apparently, he wasn't going to tell the monster boy about it.

Occlumency was another addition to Danil's arsenal. It was mental magic aimed at protecting the mind and increasing control over the thinking of any intelligent being. It was also used to protect the mind against Legilimensy, the branch of magic focused on reading a victim's mind through eye contact.

It all sounded dull to him. Back in the previous world, he read a couple of books that talked about the existence of psi energy – the energy of the mind that can be used for a variety of things. Starting from simple telekinesis and ending with mind control of another intelligent being using only psi energy.

Danil read about the mental magic that wix had developed, he wasn't impressed by its limitations and decided not to bind himself with the chains of the traditional path of mental protection. 

"Even the most powerful Legilimens can only broadcast their thoughts to groups of people at a distance, and not take control of them. This is just pathetic." He scoffed. Maybe this was impressive for the witches and wizards, but not for Danil, who had examples of truly powerful mental masters.

Take Charles Xavier, a mutant from the Marvel universe. That bastard was truly terrifyingly powerful, if he was evil, there would be almost nothing that could stop him. Danil chose not to think about Jean Gray, the avatar of the Phoenix Force. That was a can of worms that he didn't want to open.

Plunging into the depths of his mind, the boy stopped in front of a representation of the work he had completed. Huge maps with icons straight from the game took up space on the wall in the empty space that Danil had not yet managed to fill with protections. Even if he wanted to create something new, the progress was quite slow.

There were only five maps from the beginning. But seeing that in this way he could keep a representation of his own progress in his head, Danil himself made several more maps for magical disciplines. As a result, he had about two dozen of them, and he understood that in the future there would only be more of them.

"For some reason I don't want to become a jack of all trades, master of none." Danil muttered dissatisfiedly, seeing that the progress was almost minimal.

And again, the monster boy was faced with a task beyond the capabilities of the average person. He needed to select the disciplines he wanted to focus on. Again. There was simply too much to learn! Sighing quietly, Danil gathered his thoughts together and began to think.

Among all the cards, only the majority were at least partially filled, rather than hanging completely empty. He had only read about some branches of magic, or heard some incompletely reliable information, such as the magic of love or the magic of blood. They hung completely empty and were eliminated immediately.

The second were those disciplines in which Danil did not feel much interest or in which he did not consider himself talented enough. Herbology, for example. No, he did not deny that with its help it was possible to bring out really dangerous and combat-ready plants by breeding, if you wait, but only you will have to spend time on it and have a love for caring for everything green, which Danil simply did not have.

The last ones on his wall were the magical disciplines that could not be learned legally. Yes, ritualism as a whole was very a very useful branch of magic, but it was banned in Britain. And Danil didn't want to try to understand a branch of magic, which, at the slightest mistake, could kill or disfigure him even more than it was now.

But in the end, there are still too many disciplines left. 

Danil looked at the remaining few cards with not yet fully open paths of development and felt a vein bulging on his forehead in the real world from tension. Well, or out of irritation, he wasn't sure.

In the remaining disciplines, he has already reached his current limit. Even if he tried his best, the process of learning new spells was eerily slow. It's like he hit a glass ceiling that he couldn't break through.

No matter how much he lied to himself, the problem wasn't in him being stretched thin, trying to learn as much as he could. In almost every branch of magic he made good progress. Who else could learn three years' worth of material in just six months?

His talent for magic was incredible. That's why The Wanderer dragged his soul to another world and stuffed him into a new body. If he didn't have talent, he would have long ago rotted in a wooden box two meters underground.

The problem was something else.

Opening his eyes in the present tense, Danil felt how a wig was put on his head and now his braids were being braided. Little warm hands worked quickly and within a minute the entire wig was tied into one thick and long braid.

'Hmm, this is a flaw. If anyone can come up to me while I'm meditating and do whatever they want… need to fix it somehow.'

"Hey Luna. How was class?" He asked.

"Good enough, I learned a lot of new things. Did you know that human Legilimensy is radically different from that of Wampus Cats? It is the same branch of magic, but they develop and use it completely differently."

Danil blinked a couple of times, replaying her words in his head. And then he slapped himself on the forehead so hard that the clap could be heard even in the dungeons of the castle.

"Luna, you are the best in the world. And anyone who says otherwise is absolutely wrong. I could kiss you right now!" But he didn't have lips, instead, he jumped up from his seat and scooped the girl into his arms.

She laughed loudly, rising into the air. A long time ago, she saw that Danil had reached his limits in magic and couldn't understand what the problem was. But looking at his cursed form. the girl quickly found the answer - the magic of their species was too different to coexist together. 

For a couple of hours, she thought about how to present this information to him, and then decided, why not push him to find the answer? And it would be much more interesting this way, she wanted to know how many hints she would have to make before he understood them? Luna simply couldn't resist it, she loved to speak in riddles. And she did.

Meanwhile, Danil was ready to bite off his own head for not seeing the obvious. After all, why did he try to cast magic like wizards do, if he is now a representative of a completely different race?

Early in his training, he told Fawkes that he wanted to find the kind of magic his race excelled at. So why did he think that this magic would be found in wizards' books? Why was he trying to imitate them, with their Latin spoken in the Farlander's language?

Taking control of his emotions, Danil abruptly changed his plans.

He will still need a wand, at least as a tool for more subtle work with magic. There was a reason why Goblins and other intelligent magical creatures fight so zealously for the right to own a wand. But he was no longer going to learn to cast spells and control magic in the same ways as wizards did.

He wanted- no. He needed to learn the magic of his race. It was no longer a simple wish; it was a necessity.