Char's eyes filled with a passionate joy. The fields on Sprout Island had been sown. In just over a month, the Pute Fruit produced would be enough to feed more than fifteen trolls. During that month, he could also have the Kraken drive fish towards the island to serve as food. Therefore, discovering more trolls was of the utmost importance. He had originally planned to ask Hagrid to help him find more, but he never expected to get such a pleasant surprise from Cedric.
He stared at the injured captain. "Do you remember the approximate location of that place?"
Cedric's face was filled with confusion, clearly not understanding why Char was asking. But a moment later, a look of realization dawned on his face. "Char… you don't want to avenge me, do you?"
Char paused, a hint of weirdness on his face. "Er… right. I guess so," he said, playing along. "I'm going to make those trolls pay for what they did. I want them to work all day, isolated from the world, and never hurt anyone again—"
Cedric's face filled with emotion. "Good brother! If you win tomorrow's final, I'll definitely find you ten beautiful senior schoolmates to socialize with. Just wait!"
Char just nodded. Never mind, he thought. Cedric even calls me a good brother. I'm sure if he comes to Sprout Island in the future and sees the trolls eating and drinking well, he'll understand.
Cedric pointed in a specific direction. "I encountered those trolls in that part of the Forbidden Forest last time. But they seemed to be migrating, so they are probably no longer in the same place now."
A hint of thought and confusion entered Char's eyes. Trolls migrating usually only occurred in winter when food was scarce. But now, the weather had turned warmer, the ice and snow were melting, and the Forbidden Forest was lush with greenery. Food should have been more abundant. Why would a troll settlement still be migrating?
But he didn't dwell on it for too long. After all, he wasn't an expert on magical creatures. It was normal not to understand some of their strange behaviors. In any case, as long as he could find their tracks, it would be fine. A moment later, Char got on his broom and flew towards the Forbidden Forest. After his flying ability was upgraded to the Diamond level, he was full of confidence as he searched the forest from above. Not to mention there were no flying 5X-level magical beasts like fire dragons in the Forbidden Forest; even if there were, he was confident he could easily deal with them in the sky. Compared to cautiously walking through the forest, exploring from the air was far more efficient.
After searching for about twenty minutes in the direction Cedric had pointed, he finally saw them through a gap in the trees: huge footprints left on the ground. Char was delighted. "Sure enough, it's here!" He landed, completely ignoring the lingering stench in the air, and carefully distinguished the traces on the ground. "The number of trolls in this settlement… it's a little different from what Cedric estimated in his panic. There should be less than ten, maybe eight or nine. Five adults, and three or four juveniles. And they are migrating." He looked in the direction the footprints were spreading, deeper into the Forbidden Forest.
After determining the direction, he took off again on his Nimbus 2000, planning to follow the trail. Although this settlement wasn't as big as he had imagined, if he could bring them all to Sprout Island, it would be enough to nearly double the population there. But just as he was about to fly on, his eyes caught something else. Not far from here, he saw the tracks of another troll settlement.
This time, his brows furrowed slightly. "That doesn't make sense. Although trolls can form settlements, once a settlement is formed, different groups will spontaneously keep their distance. This is to avoid fighting with each other for food and territory. Why are the traces of two settlements so close? And heading in the exact same direction?"
He looked into the depths of the Forbidden Forest. He didn't rush in to explore. Instead, after pondering for a moment, he continued searching the surrounding area. He wanted to see if what he had just discovered was a small coincidence or part of a larger, abnormal phenomenon. Soon, a third, fourth, and fifth set of tracks were discovered in different locations. These all belonged to different troll settlements, but they all seemed to have the same destination.
Char narrowed his eyes. He took out a map and, starting from these directions, drew auxiliary lines in the direction the trolls had disappeared. The lines finally intersected at a single point. That was the destination. He was secretly shocked. According to this, there should be even more troll settlements that he hadn't discovered, all heading to the same place. To make a conservative estimate, there might be more than fifty trolls gathered there, and the number was likely still growing. It was very likely that all the trolls in the Forbidden Forest were converging on that spot.
"What on earth are they doing here?" he wondered. "What's attracting them?"
Faced with this abnormal phenomenon, he did not go there rashly. Instead, he decisively chose to leave temporarily. Anyway, the location had been determined. It would be much easier to find it again. It wasn't too late to come back after he figured out what was happening. "Let's go to the library first," he decided. "I'll see if there is any description of a similar phenomenon and find out the reason behind it. Otherwise, if I venture out rashly, what will I do if I encounter something beyond my capabilities?" He turned his broom around and left the Forbidden Forest.
He went to the library and began looking up documents related to trolls. The number of these documents was quite large. After all, trolls were one of the few humanoid magical creatures, and their low intelligence and weak language skills had made them a subject of great curiosity for many magizoologists. Every detail of the troll race had been studied in great detail. However, Char was still stunned when he saw the massive amount of documents. Trying to find a specific abnormal behavior from it all would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Even if he could enter a flow state, it might still take him two or three months.
So, he chose another approach. First, he excluded the documents that were too old and had limited reference value. Then, he started by looking for some of the most cited review articles from the last century and would find the corresponding references from there. In this way, the search scope would be much smaller. "At most half a month," he estimated. "I should be able to gain something."
He set an alarm for himself, then entered the flow state and began reading through the mountains of review papers without distraction. Time passed by, second by second. Char lost all track of it. It felt like the blink of an eye before the alarm clock pulled him out of his flow. He immediately bookmarked the article in front of him and put the documents away. That was all for today. His time was very precious, and setting aside this period every day was already his limit.
He shook his head. "It will take half a month. It would be great if I could find out the reason. If I really can't find anything, just like with Drya Island, I'll have to make every possible preparation and go explore. Although the Forbidden Forest is dangerous, it shouldn't be as dangerous as that island. With my current strength, it should be no problem for me to escape unscathed."
He diverted his attention from the troll documents and walked to a row of particularly old bookshelves. Even with Madam Pince diligently cleaning the library every day, the books on this row still exuded an ancient, outdated, and obscure feeling. It was obvious that few readers had visited these shelves in recent years. When Char's eyes fell on them, the reason was obvious. There was hardly a single normal English letter in sight. They were all dazzling, ancient magic runes. A normal person probably wouldn't even understand what was written on the covers. The books on this bookshelf were exclusively for top students; ordinary people should stay away.
Char was not a top student. His understanding of runes was limited to memorizing the appearance of the thirty-three symbols. He currently had no deep interest in them; he just wanted to see if he could find anything that would be helpful for his ancient weather magic. These academic books were not his goal. He searched the bookshelf patiently and finally found a suitable book. The cover was actually in English: Runes Even an Idiot Can Learn.
His cheek twitched slightly. The book title was a bit offensive. After he took it, he found that it was obviously the most popular one on the bookshelf, at least compared to the bulky tomes that had not been read for centuries. Just after opening the cover, a wave of sorrowful complaints from past students came over him.
"Just insult me, why insult a pig?"
"Is this book really written in English? Why do I recognize every word, but when I put them together, I don't recognize any of them?"
"It's obvious, easy to obtain, noticed—how did you deduce those bullshit rune theorems? Can't you use some thinking that normal people can understand?"
Looking at the comments, Char gave a wry smile. It seemed this subject was, at most, slightly better than alchemy. If you wanted to achieve something in this, you would spend a lot of time and energy. But he quickly adjusted his attitude. He didn't come here to master runes, just to learn how to apply them in the simplest way. Even just knowing three of the thirty-three was enough.
He opened the book that was said to be understandable even to a fool. What came to mind were long and extremely vulgar words. For a moment, he felt as if he was looking at the textbooks of advanced mathematics and linear algebra from his previous life. They seemed to have a built-in anti-self-learning mechanism. Just as he was about to give up, he rolled over to the back and saw the author's sharp sarcasm.
"If you can't understand these, then you are worse than a pig when it comes to runes. Don't even think about understanding something so profound. The fact that you can learn to use the power of a few runes sporadically is already a blessing from Merlin. Here is the simplest and most basic method. Once you learn it, congratulations! You can go work in an alchemy workshop."
The corners of Char's mouth twitched. But after seeing the methods of using runes that followed, his eyes lit up. This was what he wanted. It did not involve any profound principles; it simply told you how to use the power of magic runes. Perhaps this would help him get started with ancient weather magic and master that powerful killer skill.
Char immediately entered a flow state and read it carefully. A moment later, a look of realization appeared in his eyes. Runes possessed infinite magical power because there were countless magic nodes inside each symbol. That was their essence. If you didn't understand this, even if you directly copied the runes and they looked exactly the same, they were just dead symbols. But if you understood, even writing the magic text with the minimum number of nodes would grant you incredible power.
"So, my first step is to start with the basics," he determined. "The simplest structure of the magic rune mentioned in the book. Until the three magic runes I can remember each perform their most basic functions. Perhaps then, my mastery of ancient weather magic will be considered introductory."
He picked up his wand and gently drew a trajectory in the void in front of him, trying to replicate the basic structure of the first magic rune, Fehu. But a moment later, the originally light wand became as heavy as a mountain. A constant, strong resistance came from the staff. Tiny beads of sweat oozed from his forehead. The basic structure required at least seven nodes. But when he reached the second node, he was already feeling quite exhausted. At the third, he had to use the Bubble-Head Charm to trigger the water surge and increase his magical perception just to barely complete it. As for the next four nodes, he understood that this was beyond the range of his current abilities. "Perhaps I'll have to wait until I reach Platinum-level magical perception before I can complete the drawing of the basic structure of this magic rune," he exhaled softly.
But a moment later, his eyes fell on the system panel and lit up slightly. The originally blurry words of [Ancient Weather Magic] were actually clearer than before. This meant one thing. "The path I'm taking is the right one. This is indeed very helpful for getting started!"
His heart was eager to try again, but at that moment, he looked out the window. A commotion could be felt coming from Hogwarts. He looked at the time again. His eyes flickered, and he breathed a sigh of relief.
"It's time for the Quidditch final to arrive?!"
The next moment, Char stood up and began walking towards the Quidditch pitch.