Regulus of Hogwarts: Lord of the Stars

Chapter 333 Chain, Chain

Regulus returned to the stone hut, sat down on the bed, and leaned against the wall.

The scene was still replaying in my mind: a yellowish-brown beam of light pierced through the sea, pulses of vibration pushed the air apart, the island split in the middle, and seawater poured in.

Then I started thinking about serious matters.

He attacked the island as a whole, maximizing his magic output and maintaining full power continuously. As a result, the entire island was shattered and sunk into the sea.

Could this be considered a miracle achieved through sheer force? Is it a case of making up for a lack of understanding with magic?

He certainly has both knowledge and charisma; both are almost maxed out.

The magical world has quite a few methods to destroy something this big, but there are definitely not many; you could count them on one hand.

Fiendfire can burn everything, but Fiendfire is a cursed creation that burns away everything it touches on an existential level, leaving not even ashes.

The Disintegration Curse caused a tremor; the island still exists, but it shattered into countless pieces and sank to the bottom of the sea.

Its destructive method is different from any other spell; it does not exert force from the outside, but rather penetrates inside and lets the target shatter on its own.

But he only fired one shot, one point.

It outputs full power continuously, but ultimately it only penetrates from one point.

The interior of a granite island cannot be completely continuous. Over hundreds of millions of years of geological changes, the rock layers have been compressed, stretched, cooled, and reheated.

There must be cavities, fissures, and interfaces between rock layers of different densities inside.

The grooves carved out by the sea were filled with seawater, forming partitions between the granite rocks.

Logically, the oscillation should break when it reaches the cavity.

The air is too loose, and the efficiency of conducting vibrations is extremely poor. The air in the crack will create faults in the conduction path.

But the cracks ran from one end to the other across the entire island, and they didn't stop no matter what gaps they encountered.

Regulus stood up and walked to the window.

The sky outside was still overcast, and the sea breeze squeezed in through the cracks in the glass, making a mournful sound.

He stood there thinking for a long time, then pushed open the door and walked back to the beach, the pebbles crunching under his feet.

He walked to the very edge of the mudflats, squatted down, and put his hand into the seawater.

Seawater flowed through my fingers, cool and salty.

He looked down at the granite that had been eroded by the sea for hundreds of years. Water was flowing in the cracks, and every fissure was filled with seawater; there was not a single empty spot.

He stood up and looked at the rocky beach covered by seawater at his feet.

That island had been submerged in the sea for countless millennia, with seawater seeping into every crack, every joint, and every tiny gap between mineral crystals.

The granite is not dry inside; it has been permeated by salt water, and the cavities are not empty either; they are all filled with seawater.

Seawater is present in the fissures, and there are thin films formed by seawater being squeezed into the rock layer interfaces by pressure. Saltwater even seeps into the micro-fissures of granite.

The vibrations propagated through the granite and encountered fissures filled with seawater.

Water is the medium, much denser than air. The vibrations are attenuated as they pass through the water layer, but they don't break through. When they hit the granite on the other side, they continue to drill in.

A single fissure may seem insignificant, but the entire island is filled with countless fissures, each one a bridge.

The tremor didn't bypass it; it was transmitted through itself.

Different media have different conduction efficiencies, but oscillations can overcome them.

Regulus squatted on the edge of the mudflat, the seawater washing over his feet and then receding.

This phenomenon was not in his development plan; he simply wanted to destroy an island.

But the phenomenon itself is much more interesting than the destruction of an island.

He stood up and started walking back. After taking two steps, he suddenly remembered something and stopped.

The seawater filling the fissures provided a conductive bridge, which is a physical explanation and makes sense.

But that's only enough to explain the island in the sea.

What if that island isn't in the sea?

If it is a dry mountain, the cracks and cavities inside are filled with air, without seawater or any other medium.

The vibration traveled through the granite, encountered a dry cavity, bounced a few times on the wall, and some of the energy re-entered the rock mass from the opposite wall.

If the hole is small, that makes sense; after a few tries, some of the bullets will eventually pass through.

What if the cavity is large?

After firing a few times, the energy dissipated, and the opponent couldn't receive anything.

His mind took a turn in a different direction from the physical explanation.

When he cast the spell, he locked the entire island into a single entity; this perception encompassed the entire island, including its hollow parts.

In his understanding, the voids were no longer discontinuities, but rather part of the island.

If the caster's perception can influence the behavior of magic within the target, the vibrations will not stop when they encounter a void.

The spellcaster says it's a whole, so the magic is treated as a whole; the void is a physical discontinuity, but not a cognitive one.

He couldn't tell which of the two explanations was in effect.

Perhaps both are true: the fissures filled with seawater provide the bridge for physical conduction, while the cognitive coverage provides the logic for magical conduction.

The two were stacked together, so the oscillation ran from beginning to end.

Regardless of which one it is, the conclusion is the same: the transmission of the Disintegration Curse has passed through the interruption.

Regulus put his hands in his pockets, enjoying the sea breeze, and paced back and forth.

If conduction can pass through the interruption, what will happen next?

He shattered an island, breaking it into large chunks of granite that crashed into the sea.

Those fragments have physically separated from the original island, separated by seawater, air, and distance.

But what if the caster still perceives them as a whole?

If in his mind those fragments are still part of that island, will the tremors jump from one piece to another and continue running?

A shatters and becomes B and C. In our perception, B and C are still part of A. The shock travels from B to C. C then shatters and becomes D and E. D and E are still part of A, and so on.

Two words popped into Regulus's mind.

ChainReaction, a chain-like transmission mechanism.

He stood by the sea, the sea breeze blowing his robe, and only these two words were in his mind.

He took a deep breath, the sea breeze filling his lungs, cold and salty.

Then he Apparated back into the house, sat down cross-legged in front of the fireplace, and ignored Baruch jumping onto his shoulder.

The firelight warmed his face, but he couldn't feel it; his mind was racing with thoughts.

If it is indeed a chain reaction, then what is the next step?

An island shattered, and the fragments continue to shatter, and the fragments of those fragments continue to shatter.

Can this process continue indefinitely?

No.

With each layer of transmission, the oscillation decreases.

When he attacked that island, the cracks spread from the center to the farthest point. The cracks at the farthest point were significantly weaker than those at the center, and after passing through four or five layers, they weakened to almost nothing.

The chain was running, but it eventually lost its strength.

What if the chain doesn't decay?

What if the energy increases instead of decreasing with each layer it's transferred to?

nuclear fission.

These two words also came to me on their own.

When a neutron strikes the nucleus of uranium-235, the nucleus splits open, releasing two or three new neutrons and a large amount of energy.

A new neutron enters a new uranium nucleus, which then splits, ejects another neutron, and releases energy.

Chain reaction.

The key lies in the critical condition: each fission releases a sufficient number of neutrons to penetrate the next uranium nucleus for the chain to sustain itself.

If the uranium is not pure enough or its mass is insufficient, the neutron will not be able to find another uranium nucleus after it flies out, the chain will break, and the reaction will stop.

Once the purity and quality are sufficient, and the critical point is crossed, the chain becomes self-sustaining and can no longer be stopped.

The Hiroshima bomb, from detonation to the mushroom cloud rising into the sky, took less than a second.

He applied this model to the Disintegration Curse.

He took the first step and fired a shot that shattered the target.

The second step was also accomplished; the oscillations penetrated the discontinuity and traveled to even more distant places.

If the third step is not done, the chain will not be self-sustaining.

After he finished, the shockwave rippled through the island for another ten seconds, dismantling the entire island before stopping. The fragments fell into the sea and did not continue to break apart.

One critical condition is missing.

The critical condition for the Disintegration Curse is that the energy released with each shattering must be greater than the energy lost when the vibration is transmitted to the next layer.

The breaking process itself releases energy.

During the formation of granite, the bonding forces between mineral grains lock stress within the crystal lattice. When it breaks apart, this stress is released and transformed into heat, sound waves, and the kinetic energy of the fragments.

If the oscillation can trigger the release of these stresses together, then the energy carried by the fragments will not only be the energy injected by the Disintegration Curse, but also the energy stored in the target structure itself.

The amount released is greater than the amount lost, and the chain is self-sustaining.

The amount released is less than the amount lost, causing the chain to weaken and stop after running through a few layers.

He attacked that island; it belonged to the latter.

The initial oscillation was strong enough to sustain the journey across the entire island, but it weakened with each subsequent layer.

What if the initial oscillation were several times stronger? Tens of times stronger? Hundreds of times stronger?

The stress energy released with each fracture, plus the residual oscillations, is greater than the conduction loss.

Once that critical point is passed, the chain will run on its own, without requiring continuous power from the caster.

Once it went in, it shattered, and the fragments continued to shatter, and the fragments of those fragments continued to shatter.

A Disintegration Spell struck a mountain, shattering it upon impact. The energy released from the shattering caused a shockwave to spread outwards, shattering wherever it reached, and releasing new energy wherever it shattered.

The chain moved forward on its own, from the top of the mountain to the bottom, from one side to the other.

The entire mountain disintegrated from the inside; there was no need for him to stand there and continuously output power, nor was there a need for his magic to fill the volume of the entire mountain.

He only provides the first shot; the rest is up to the target to complete.

This is the same thing as nuclear fission.

A uranium bomb only requires one detonation device to push two pieces of subcritical uranium together to achieve supercritical mass. Neutrons then run on their own, the chain reaction begins on its own, and the explosion is completed on its own.

The detonation device does not need to provide all the energy for the explosion; the binding energy of the uranium nucleus itself is the real energy source.

The Disintegration Spell doesn't need to provide all the magic to disintegrate the entire mountain; the stress stored in the target structure itself is the real source of energy.

The caster only needs to provide the first shot.

Regulus's lips twitched slightly.

To reach that critical condition, the initial oscillation must be strong enough to trigger stress release in the self-standard structure, allowing the released energy to outweigh the conduction losses.

He just attacked a small island at full power, consuming two-thirds of his magic reserves.

To conquer a mountain and reach a critical condition, the initial magic power required might be dozens or even hundreds of times greater than before.

He can't do it now.

After a year and a half of Star Orbit meditation, Regulus's total magical power far surpasses that of his peers, and most adult wizards cannot compare to him.

But adult wizards are not the standard.

Reaching the critical condition for a self-sustaining chain requires a magical power level that may exceed the limit of any single wizard.

Dumbledore couldn't do it, Grindelwald couldn't do it, Voldemort couldn't do it.

That has nothing to do with technology; it's purely a matter of physiological limits.