Regulus of Hogwarts: Lord of the Stars

Chapter 481 Regulus's Little Inventions

Three hundred years ago, the Muggle world did something: they created an instrument.

With a microscope, the lens is ground to a certain curvature and the focus is adjusted to the appropriate position, so that everyone can see the same cellular structure, regardless of whether their eyes are nearsighted or farsighted.

The telescope, with two lenses embedded in a copper tube, allows everyone to see the same moons of Jupiter, whether standing on a plain or a mountaintop.

A thermometer, with mercury in a glass tube, allows everyone to read the same boiling point, regardless of how sensitive their fingers are to heat.

A slide rule, with two sets of logarithmic scales sliding relative to each other, allows everyone to arrive at the same multiplication and division results, regardless of how fast they can do mental calculations.

Measurements were standardized, individual talents were replaced by tools, and then science exploded.

Before that, every field of study was based on personal experience.

Blacksmiths judge the temperature of iron billets by touch; a cherry red color indicates one type of hardness, while a bright orange color indicates another.

Winemakers rely on their tongues to judge the degree of fermentation, whether it's too sour or too bitter; a slight difference can mean two different batches.

Doctors rely on their fingers to determine the strength and rhythm of the pulse, entirely based on the subtle tactile sensation at the fingertips.

Talented people do it well, and untalented people do it poorly. That's not science, that's craft.

The advent of instruments changed everything. People no longer needed the feel of a blacksmith, only a thermometer; they no longer needed the tongue of a brewer, only an alcohol meter.

The measurement results are objective and repeatable; anyone can obtain the same reading by operating the equipment.

Regulus didn't know if the magical world had ever done this; at least he hadn't seen it.

Alchemy textbooks focus entirely on how to use one's magical perception to detect the textures of materials, without mentioning any auxiliary tools.

The same applies to Potions class. You judge the temperature of the cauldron by touch, the degree of stirring by experience, the concentration of the potion by smell and sight, and the reaction point of the potion by magical perception.

Herbalism class judges the health of plants by observing the color and texture of their leaves, while Charms class adjusts the precision of spellcasting by the feel of the wand and the effect of the spell.

All of these have one thing in common: they rely on personal perception and lack any standardized measurement tools.

In at least his thirteen years of life, in the classrooms of Hogwarts, in the Black family’s library, and in the public knowledge system of the British magical community, he had never seen any instrument that could replace a wizard’s personal perception.

Perhaps someone else has made a similar attempt in a place he is unaware of.

Six hundred years of Flamel's history, several hundred years of Beauxbatons' history—the history of the magical world is long enough that anything is possible, but at least in the open knowledge market, he had never seen it.

The magical patterns perceived by two alchemists may differ from the same piece of metal. The patterns themselves are fixed, but the resolution they perceive is different.

Those with high precision can see more, while those with low precision can only see a rough outline. Then, based on what they see, they design circuits, and the products they produce are naturally of a lower quality.

The entire art of alchemy is built upon personal perception. Flamel did not need tools; his six-hundred-year career in alchemy had made his perception the best instrument.

Those professors at Beauxbatons, renowned alchemists across Europe, don't need them. Those who reach that position have already been honed to a level that others can't reach through talent and training.

However, for the vast majority of learners, perceptual accuracy is a natural barrier.

Furthermore, the precision of manipulating magic, the spatial imagination for circuit design, and the intuitive judgment of material properties all depend on personal qualities, and there are no external tools to assist in this.

This isn't a monopoly. No one deliberately shuts the door to alchemy. Beauxbatons started teaching it from the third grade, and the textbooks are publicly available for any wizard to buy and read.

But the effect is similar to a monopoly; only a very few people with sufficiently high talent can truly reach the depths of alchemy.

Others are stuck at the ceiling of their talent, and can only do basic operations, material sorting, circuit drawing, and quality control inspection for their entire lives.

The technological barriers are a natural consequence; no one is stopping them, it's just that the threshold is too high.

The core of the threshold, or at least one of its core aspects, is the lack of instruments.

The Muggle world has spent three hundred years proving one thing: when measurement is standardized and individual talent is removed from the equation, knowledge flows from the hands of a very few to everyone who has access to it.

When ordinary people can use tools to do what only geniuses can do, the progress of the scientific revolution will no longer be determined by the number of geniuses.

What if alchemy could take this step as well?

Regulus's eyes lit up as he looked at the copper plates on the table.

He decided to create something, drawing inspiration from the Disintegration Curse.

The core of the Disintegration Curse is oscillation. The oscillation is transmitted and superimposed within the target, causing resonance. When the resonance is amplified to a critical point, the structure collapses.

Oscillations vary in speed, and different materials have different natural frequencies. The frequency required to break a piece of granite is different from that required to break a piece of limestone.

His understanding of oscillation and resonance comes from the entire process of extracting the Disintegration Curse from the magic loop of the Willow Tree, which he has long since thoroughly grasped.

Now, let's reverse the principle: instead of actively outputting oscillations to destroy the target, we'll receive the magical vibrations emitted by the target itself.

A piece of metal, with a chain of metal engraved on its surface, is designed to change its function from altering the material structure to passively receiving and capturing magical vibrational signals emitted by substances that come near it.

Different magic patterns produce different vibration modes. The receiving circuit converts the vibrations into magic pulses and transmits them to the display layer.

The display layer uses moonstone, a common potion material. It is naturally translucent, has a faint fluorescent property, and is also a material used in alchemy.

He had read "Principles of Optics" and learned the correspondence between the wavelength of light and the vibration frequency, and that vibrations of different frequencies could be mapped onto different colors of light.

The ranges of magical vibration and visible light vibration do not overlap, but the principles are the same. He has already worked with light source magic and is very familiar with it. All he needs to do is create a conversion loop.

The principle is not complicated. The Disintegration Spell outputs magic power as vibrations to destroy the target. What he needs to do is input the target's magic power vibrations as signals to display patterns.

The same principle, but in reverse: one is used to dissect, the other to analyze.

Get started.

Take a copper coin, cut it into a palm-sized disc, polish it smooth, and engrave a receiving-type metal circuit on the surface.

This loop wasn't in the textbook, so he designed it himself, referencing the oscillation model of the Disintegration Curse for the location of the key nodes.

By reversing the output, the output becomes the input, the capture range of the oscillation rhythm is widened to the maximum, and the power is reduced to the minimum. There is no need for destructive magical output; only a sufficiently fine receiving resolution is required.

The node spacing of the receiving loop, the path direction, and the compensation structure for magic attenuation were all drawn from scratch. If any mistakes were made, they were scraped off and started over. The copper plate was polished three times before the fourth version was stable.

A thin layer of moonstone was placed on the surface of the copper plate. The moonstone had a display circuit pre-engraved inside to convert the received magic signals into light patterns.

The thickness, brightness, and color of the lines correspond to the density, intensity, and properties of the magic pattern, respectively.

The copper disk receives the signal, the moonstone displays the signal, and the interface loop between the two layers is responsible for signal conversion.

The attenuation rate of the interface loop took the longest to debug. Transmitting too much light resulted in distorted light patterns, while transmitting too little light resulted in loss of detail. Finally, a seven-level attenuation was determined, which was just enough.

Once finished, a palm-sized round plate was placed on the table, with a copper base and silver surface, and the moonstone surface shimmered with a faint white halo under the light.

Next came the test. He took a piece of Moroccan dark grey ore he had bought in Marseille from the pile of materials and placed it on the plate.

Linear, pale golden light patterns emerged within the moonstone layer, arranged cleanly and orderly along the crystal lattice, just as those detected directly by sensory perception.

Place a section of grapevine on it, and the light patterns change from pale gold to yellowish-green, forming a net-like pattern with messy branches that are still slowly flowing. As a living plant, the magic is dynamic, and the light patterns move along with it.

Then he placed the bistable copper plate on it, and the disk simultaneously displayed the structure of two circuits, one on and one off. He input magic to switch the state, and the on and off states were reversed, and the circuit direction changed accordingly.

Baruch propped himself up from the corner of the table. He had been lying quietly, but now, seeing the glowing patterns on the plate, he slowly raised his head.

Eight amber eyes moved closer to the pale gold and green light, then stopped, staring at Regulus.

Regulus looked at its large head as it approached and tapped the edge of the plate: "Stretch your legs up."

Baruch looked down at his thick forelegs, then at the bronze plate, which was smaller than when he was smaller, and hesitated for a moment.

Then, he carefully placed his front leg on it, only putting the tip of his claw on it, while supporting the weight of the entire leg himself.

The light patterns on the plate suddenly exploded.

Three completely different magical structures emerged simultaneously, intertwining so densely that the surface of the disc was almost entirely filled with light.

The bottom layer is a rough, dark gray mesh structure with a clear orientation.

The magic system of the eight-eyed giant spider, its silk glands, venom glands, and the sensory circuits of its eight eyes are all connected into a web, extending from the tips of its legs all the way to the center of its body.

This is something inherent in Baruch, its foundation.

The middle layer is a cluster of orange-red veins, concentrated in the middle of the carapace, radiating outwards with fine branches. The location where the fire lizard's fire affinity module and magic seed are implanted is clearly visible.

The magical pathways that grew outward from that point had merged with the spider's gray-black web, their boundaries blurred, and they had grown together.

The top layer is a fine, pale blue-white silk thread that covers the surface of the first two layers. Its direction is parallel to, but does not overlap with, the spider's sensory pathways.

The plant sensing module of the tree-protecting humps is much thinner and denser than the other two layers, and it is slowly flowing.

Three sets of patterns overlap, gray-black, orange-red, and pale blue-white, weaving together on the surface of the moonstone to form an extremely complex magical pattern.

Baruch stared at the light for a long time, then gently opened and closed his chelicerae twice, making a clicking sound.

It lifted its toes to look again, probably to confirm whether the light it had just seen was emitted by its own legs.

Then, when the front leg was retracted, the light patterns on the plate immediately disappeared. When it was put back on, the light patterns exploded once more.

Baruch's chelicerae opened to their maximum extent, making a long series of clicking sounds, and the spider's head was held high.

"Alright," Regulus reached out and removed its legs from the plate. "Go back to lying down."

Baruch clenched his claws and rubbed his large head against him, reluctantly, but still withdrew his legs, retreated to the corner of the table, and lay down.

Regulus looked at the vanished light patterns on the plate and a slight smile appeared on his lips.

The precision of the resonant disk is still very rough, the light pattern is blurry, and many details are lost.

The Moonstone's display loop is not dense enough, and the attenuation rate of the interface loop also needs to be adjusted. Compared with his own magic perception for direct detection, it is far inferior.

But that's not important. What's left are technical details. By using better materials, carving more precise patterns, and optimizing the attenuation compensation structure, the accuracy can always be improved.

Importantly, it does not depend on the user's talent.

Anyone with eyes can see it, and if you put something on it, the light patterns you see will be the same. It is objective, repeatable, and standardized.

In the world of alchemy, he created the first microscope he could imagine.

He stared at the resonant disk for a while, then removed everything around him, stretched out his right hand, palm down, and hovered it above the disk, without touching it, about a fist's distance away.

In theory, every wizard has a magical overflow, and there are slight fluctuations even when at rest. His magical control level is high enough that the amount of overflow in his daily state is extremely small, but not zero.

A blurry light appeared on the screen.

Cool tones, bluish-gray, flowed slowly and regularly, with no discernible structure, except for a vague patch of light floating in the translucent layer of moonstone.

It's nothing compared to the clear light patterns when a solid material is placed on it, and it's also nothing compared to when a living material like Baruch is placed directly on it.

But there was a reaction, so the principle is clear.

This disc can not only show materials, but also magic, specifically the magic of wizards.

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