HP: The Root of Everything - The Magician

Teach Carl groggily woke up from Hermione's lap pillow and then took a slow, deep breath.

"Teacher, your hair..."

Hearing Hermione's hesitant question, Teach calmly replied, "It's just a single white hair. It's probably from working too hard on magic research these past year or two."

Hermione was very unhappy with this answer, but she couldn't say anything.

That white hair was completely white, devoid of any vitality, just like the gray hair that appears when a person enters old age. This was clearly the result of overusing one's life force.

Teach was prepared for this outcome after the magic circuits were implanted; how could the magical power naturally accumulated in the body be sufficient?

Almost every time he fights a wizard, Teach Carl is using his magic circuits to exhaust his own life force, that is, his lifespan.

At this stage of lifespan overdraft, Teach can still afford it, so he doesn't care too much. He will only think of ways to replenish his life force when the overdraft reaches the limit of his life.

Anyway, there are many magical items in the magical world that can replenish lifespan, so Teach Carl wasn't worried about that.

But Hermione wouldn't think that way: "My Life Analysis Alchemy Formation is on the Life side. If my teacher doesn't care about his own body, then let me, his beloved disciple, worry about it!"

"Hermione, use your witch's natural magic to warm that test tube containing the basilisk's eyes."

"Then, teacher, I will begin to refine the Demon Eye."

After saying that, Teach walked to a medical instrument in the closed room experiment, set the machine's operating program, took off his shirt, and lay down on the medical table.

The machine then inserted a needle into Teach's back, reaching his spine, and extracted 100 milliliters of bone marrow.

Hermione watched this scene, her teeth clenched, as if she were taking Teach's pain upon herself.

Teach put on his clothes, poured the bone marrow into a test tube containing snake eyes, and then cut his wrist to inject hot blood.

The basilisk's eyes were soaked in its own bone marrow fluid, its own warm blood, and the natural magical nutrient solution formed by Hermione's nurturing. Then, under the effect of the alchemy array, the basilisk's eyes were fully absorbed.

Hermione stood behind Teach, watching as her teacher endured the excruciating pain of her body as she poured life magic into the transmutation circle. Seeing another white hair visibly appear in that noble, long, brownish-red hair, Hermione felt a sharp pain in her heart.

Half an hourglass later, the basilisk's eyes had completely absorbed the liquid in the test tube.

At this moment, Teach picked up the snake eye test tube and could feel a strange connection between himself and the two snake eyes. This meant that Teach's magical affinity had become compatible with the snake eyes.

But that's not enough. In the forging of this Demon Eye, Teach still needs to pay one last price.

Setting down the snake-eyed test tube, Teach erased and altered the transmutation circle in front of him. After thinking for a moment, he said to Hermione, "Hermione, would you like to see the next step in the transmutation process of the Mystic Eyes?"

"If you want to see it, you'd better be prepared to look at it closely without even blinking."

Under Teach's calm yet unusually serious words, Hermione nodded.

Next, under Hermione's terrified, tearful gaze, Teach Carr began to dissect his own left eye.

Then they dug out the entire left eyeball, along with the nerves connecting it to the brain.

Teach, panting heavily in pain, pressed a healing gem onto the hollow wound of his left eye to stop the bleeding. Then, looking at Hermione with his remaining right eye, he grinned and said, "Hermione~, this is the price to pay for developing the Mystic Eyes."

"An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth"

"As I told you, in magical alchemy, there is the principle of 'equivalent exchange,' meaning that no item can be obtained without effort."

After explaining his teachings to his disciple Hermione, Teach placed her left eyeball into the snake eye test tube, putting the two left eyes, one human and one snake, together.

The next step in the refining process is to place the two test tubes containing the eyes on the alchemy array, allowing them to naturally merge and fuse into one eyeball.

Thus, the forging of a magic eye is complete; all that's needed is for it to finish on its own.

Having done all this, exhaustion washed over Teach Carl again, causing him to stumble back to the sofa to rest. While resting, he watched his disciple Hermione, who was slumped on the floor in fear, but Teach didn't offer any words of comfort.

As he said, magic follows the gradual accumulation of knowledge, the transformation and change of matter, and the exchange of equivalent costs.

Although Hermione now understands these words under Teach Carl's tutelage, she does not grasp their true meaning.

This requires Hermione to experience it firsthand.

......

The quiet atmosphere in the sealed laboratory lingered between the master and apprentice.

After sitting for a while, Teach began to work with the basilisk's spine and fangs, two materials that were perfect for forging weapons.

He is now quite well-known in the British government and the Ministry of Magic. As these two forces become increasingly wary of him, they will certainly try to understand the power that Teach possesses.

[By using magic circuits to squeeze out more of my lifespan in order to maintain my dominance over them, my body's lifespan will eventually come to an end.]

I need another way to fight, to reduce the number of times I use my magic circuits and to squeeze and drain the life force from my body.

After thinking it over, Teach Carr glanced out of the corner of his eye at his disciple Hermione, who was still standing on the ground looking somewhat withdrawn, and called out, "Hermione, don't sit on the cold floor like a duck, you'll catch a cold."

"Go and bring me that basilisk venom sac you've stored away. Let's study it together."

Hermione looked up from her slumber, glanced at her teacher Teach, and managed a weak smile before getting up, picking up the poison sac, and sitting down next to Teach.

Teach took it, untied the preservation array, and then separated the snake venom from the venom sac, leaving only the sac skin.

Teach wanted to see how the basilisk's venom was produced and preserved, and why this skin could provide immunity to the venom.

During the study, Teach diverted his attention to Hermione and asked, "After watching the process of making the Mystic Eyes, which I paid a price for, were you scared?"

Hermione lowered her head and nodded gently.

"...Do you find magic scary now?"

Hermione remained silent.

"...So now...do you regret learning magic from me?"

Hermione shook her head vigorously.

"Hmm~ good, but in the future, there will be many things you'll gain by self-harming your body as a price to pay, so you should be mentally prepared for that."

"Of course, you can also stop and stand still while I, the teacher, move forward alone."

Hearing Teach Carl's words about abandoning her, Hermione looked up and saw her clutching Teach's clothes tightly, crying, "No, I won't!"

"I will not stop because of momentary fear. I am a magician, and I am your disciple."

"I will always stand by your side on your magical journey!"