Chapter 186: Traces, Runes, and Progress

Ciel's eyes showed intense heat and joy. The fields on Sprout Island had already been planted. In at most a month, the Puking Pastilles produced on the island would be enough to feed over fifteen trolls. Moreover, this month could also allow the North Sea Kraken to drive fish schools as food for the trolls. Therefore, obtaining traces of more trolls was quite important to him. He had originally planned to continue commissioning Hagrid to search for trolls. But he never expected to get such a pleasant surprise from Cedric! He stared intently at Cedric. "Do you still remember the approximate location of that place?" Cedric's face was full of confusion. Obviously not knowing why he was asking this. But moments later, Cedric apparently thought of something. "Ciel. You're not planning to get revenge for me, are you?" He paused, his face showing some awkwardness. "Uh... Yes. Sort of. I want to make those trolls pay for their actions. I want to make them labour all day, isolated from the world, never able to harm anyone again..." Cedric's face was full of emotion. "Good brother! After winning tomorrow's finals, I'll definitely arrange for you to meet ten beautiful upperclassmen, just wait!" He nodded awkwardly. Fine. Since Cedric was calling him a good brother, he believed that if Cedric ever came to Sprout Island in the future and saw the trolls living comfortably there, he should be able to understand. Then Cedric pointed in a direction. "Last time I encountered that group of trolls in that area of the Forbidden Forest. But they seemed to be migrating at the time, so they're probably not in the original location now." His eyes showed some thought and confusion. Migration? This phenomenon usually only occurred in winter when food was scarce. Trolls had to migrate and wander everywhere to find food. But now the weather had warmed up. Ice and snow were melting. The Forbidden Forest was showing lush greenery. Food should be relatively abundant at this time of year. Why were troll settlements still migrating? However, he didn't dwell too much on this matter. After all, he wasn't a magical creature expert. Not understanding some of the trolls' strange behaviours was quite normal. As long as he could find traces of the trolls, that was enough. Moments later, he mounted his broomstick and flew toward the Forbidden Forest. After his flight ability had improved to Diamond tier, he was now confident in riding his broomstick to search the Forbidden Forest. Not to mention there were no flying XXXXX-tier magical creatures like dragons in the Forbidden Forest. Even if there were, he could easily manoeuvre around them in the sky. Compared to carefully walking into the Forbidden Forest, aerial exploration was much more efficient. After he searched in the direction Cedric had indicated for about twenty minutes, he finally saw huge footprints left on the ground through gaps in the forest. His heart leapt with joy. "Indeed here!" He landed, completely ignoring the stench that hadn't completely dissipated in the air. Carefully examining the traces on the ground. "The number of trolls in this settlement... There's some discrepancy from Cedric's panicked estimate. Should be less than ten, about eight or nine. Five adult trolls, plus three or four juvenile trolls. But they are indeed migrating." He looked in the direction the footprints extended. The prints continued deeper into the Forbidden Forest. After determining the direction, he mounted his Nimbus 2000 again and took off, planning to follow this direction for further investigation. Although this troll settlement wasn't as large as he'd imagined, if he brought them all to Sprout Island, it would nearly double the number of trolls on the island! But just as he was about to fly in that direction, his eyes sharpened. He suddenly saw traces of another troll settlement not far from here. Now his brow furrowed slightly. "This doesn't make sense. Although trolls can form settlements. Once settlements are formed, different troll settlements naturally keep their distance. This is to avoid fighting each other over food and territory. How could traces of two troll settlements be so close? And this direction is completely identical?" His gaze looked toward the depths of the Forbidden Forest. At this moment, he didn't rush to fly in and investigate. Instead, after pondering for a moment, he continued searching around in this direction. He wanted to see whether his discovery was a low-probability coincidence or some abnormal phenomenon. Soon, the third, fourth, and fifth traces were discovered by him in different locations. These all belonged to different troll settlements. But they all seemed to have the same destination. He narrowed his eyes. Taking out a map, he drew auxiliary lines from these locations in the direction the trolls had disappeared. Several auxiliary lines all intersected at one point. That was the destination of the troll settlements' migration. He was secretly alarmed. Based on this situation, there should be more troll settlement traces he hadn't discovered elsewhere, all heading in this direction. So conservatively estimating, this place might have already gathered over fifty trolls. This number was still growing. Very likely, eventually all the trolls in the Forbidden Forest would come here! "What are they doing here? What is attracting them?" Faced with this abnormal phenomenon, he didn't rashly proceed. Instead, he decisively chose to leave temporarily. Since he'd already determined the trolls' location, it would be easy to find them again. It wouldn't be too late to come back after figuring out what was happening in the Forbidden Forest. "First, go to the library. See if there are descriptions of similar phenomena, and figure out the reason behind this. Otherwise, if I explore rashly and encounter something beyond my ability to handle, what then?" He rode his broomstick and immediately left the Forbidden Forest. He came to the library and began researching literature related to trolls. The amount of this literature was considerable. After all, trolls were one of the few humanoid magical creatures, and they possessed low intelligence and rudimentary language abilities. This made many magical creature researchers quite curious about trolls and conduct extensive research. It could be said that every detailed characteristic of the troll species had been thoroughly studied by the magical world. However, looking at the massive amount of literature, he was still taken aback. Finding a specific abnormal behaviour from within would be like finding a needle in a haystack if he started from the beginning. Even if he could enter a flow state using Occlumency, this might consume two or three months of his time. Therefore, he chose another method. First, he excluded literature that was too old and had limited reference value. Then he started with the most cited comprehensive review literature from the past century. Then found their corresponding references. This way, the search scope was undoubtedly much smaller. "At most half a month. Should yield some results." His eyes flickered slightly. He set an alarm for himself, then entered a flow state and began flipping through the mountain of review literature with complete focus. Time passed minute by minute. He almost forgot the passage of time, feeling like the alarm woke him from the flow state in the blink of an eye. He made a bookmark on the review literature before him. Then, even though there was still some remaining time, he still closed these documents. That was enough for today. His time every day was precious... spending this much time researching was already the limit. He couldn't spend all this time doing nothing but focusing on troll matters. He shook his head. "Half a month as the deadline. If I can find the reason for the abnormal troll gathering, that would be best. If I really can't find it, then, like exploring Drear Island, I'll make thorough preparations and explore it. Although the Forbidden Forest is dangerous, it shouldn't have places comparable to Drear Island. With my current strength, retreating safely shouldn't be a problem." Then he withdrew his attention from the troll literature and walked to a particularly ancient bookshelf. Even though librarian Madam Pince diligently cleaned the library every day, the books on this shelf still emanated an ancient, aged, and obscure feeling. Obviously, very few readers had visited this shelf over the years. When his gaze fell on this shelf, the reason was obvious. What met his eyes were almost no normal English letters. All were dizzying ancient magical scripts. Normal people coming here probably couldn't even understand what was written on the covers and would immediately understand. The books on this shelf... academic elite exclusive, ordinary people stay away! He wasn't exactly an academic elite either. His understanding of runic script was limited to memorising the appearance of the thirty-three runic symbols. Looking at these books, he could barely make out their cover meanings with difficulty. "Origins of Runic Script Research" and "Linguistic Structure of Runic Script" He looked at these books and shook his head repeatedly. He currently had no deep interest in runic script. The reason he came to this shelf was just to see if he could find content helpful for his Ancient Weather Magic. These academic books weren't his target. He patiently searched the shelf and finally found a suitable book. The cover was actually written in English. "Runic Script That Even Pigs Can Learn" His cheek twitched slightly. This title was quite aggressive. After taking down this book, he also discovered it was obviously the most popular book on this shelf. At least more popular than those tomes that hadn't been touched in centuries. But after opening the cover, he was still hit by waves of complaints. "Insult me all you want, but why insult pigs?" "Is this book really written in English? Why do I recognise every word but understand nothing when they're put together?" "Obviously, clearly, note that... damn those runic theorem derivations, can't you use logic normal people can understand!" Looking at these complaint notes left by previous students, he smiled bitterly. It seemed runic script was at best only slightly better than alchemy. And even that might be limited. To achieve anything in this field would require considerable time and energy. However, he quickly adjusted his mindset. He wasn't here to master runic script. Just for the simple purpose of learning how to apply magical script. He even only needed to understand three of the thirty-three runes, and that would be enough. Surely this would make his reading somewhat smoother. Then he opened this runic script book that supposedly even pigs could understand. What greeted him were large paragraphs of extremely verbose text. At this moment, he felt like he was looking at calculus and linear algebra textbooks from his previous life. As if they had built-in anti-self-study mechanisms! But just as his heart sank, feeling he might gain nothing from this book either, he flipped to the back. There he saw the author's sharp mockery. "If you can't understand any of this, it means you're not even as good as a pig when it comes to runic script. Don't think about understanding profound subjects like runic script. If you can learn to use the power of a few scattered runes, that's already Merlin's blessing. Here are the simplest, most superficial methods. After learning them, congratulations... you can work in an alchemy workshop." His mouth twitched. But after seeing the methods for using runic script that followed, his eyes brightened. This was exactly what he needed. No profound principles involved, just simple and crude instructions on how to apply the power of runes. What he needed now was exactly this. Perhaps this could help him master Ancient Weather Magic and control this powerful killer technique. As for the deeper principles of runic script, when his magical mastery improved further, he would naturally study them again. Each stage had its own tasks. Just like in his previous life during middle school, he only learnt simple conclusions, while the more complex principles came at the university level. He immediately entered a flow state and began reading seriously. Moments later, his eyes showed understanding. The reason runic script was considered to possess infinite magical power was that each rune contained countless magical nodes internally. That was the essence of runes. Without understanding this essence, even directly copying runes that looked identical would just be dead symbols. But if one understood this essence, even writing runes with the minimum number of nodes would possess incredible power. "So my first step is to start with copying. Copy the simplest structure of runes mentioned in the book. Until the three runes I remember can each demonstrate their most basic functions. Perhaps then, my mastery of Ancient Weather Magic can be considered entry-level." After taking a deep breath, he picked up his wand. Gently tracing trajectories in the void before him, trying to replicate the basic structure of the first rune, ᚦ. But moments later, the originally light wand felt as heavy as a mountain in his perception. Constant strong resistance came through the wand. Fine beads of sweat also appeared on his forehead. The basic structure of rune ᚦ required at least seven nodes. But he already felt quite strained when copying to the second node. By the third node, he had to use the Bubble-Head Charm to trigger underwater enhancement to increase magical perception. This way he barely managed to complete it. But for the remaining four nodes, he understood this was already beyond his magical perception range. "Perhaps I'll need Platinum-tier magical perception to complete drawing this rune's basic structure." He exhaled softly. But moments later, his gaze fell on the system panel, and his eyes brightened slightly. On the system panel, the originally quite blurry Ancient Weather Magic text had become somewhat clearer than before. This represented one thing. "The path I'm taking is correct. It's indeed very beneficial for mastering Ancient Weather Magic!" His heart was eager to try, wanting to continue drawing. But at this moment, he looked outside the window. He could immediately sense commotion spreading throughout Hogwarts. Looking at the time again, his eyes flashed as he exhaled softly. "The Quidditch finals. Time's up?!" The next moment, he stood up and walked toward the Quidditch pitch.