“I’ve lost count of how many experiments it’s taken, but seeing that mutilated Thestral—nothing left but a head and mangled flesh—I know how long and hard I’ve worked.”

“Of course!”

“Cassie’s done incredibly well!”

“He survived the transplants of skin, flesh, heart, bones—all of it—and made it this far.”

“Looking at this young man, now shriveled, with bluish-black skin and limbs ending in hooves, I thought he looked far more beautiful than the first time I met him!”

“But—”

“The only flaw is—”

“I can’t yet confirm whether Cassie can still perform wizard magic.”

“The intense pain flooding his brain makes even my Imperius Curse ineffective at controlling him.”

“I have no choice but to begin the transformation attempt directly.”

“I raised my wand, serious, focused, and utterly devoted, and pronounced the word: Deformation.”

“…”

“Perhaps you’ll never understand what I felt in that moment. I was more euphoric than the first time I forced the girl I liked to have sex with me.”

“Because I saw, as my wand flashed with light, Cassie began to transform!”

“His distinctly human head began to elongate, bones along his back extended into wings, and even the once-obvious seams in his flesh vanished, becoming flawless!”

“I—”

“I think I really succeeded?”

“Wizards’ inability to transform into magical creatures really is due to magical differences between species!”

Dawn frowned as he read this, tapping his finger on the table.

After some thought, he still didn’t believe the final success had much to do with types of magic.

But it did give him an important revelation. Dawn realized he had overlooked something—magic wasn’t the only way to change an entity’s attribute patterns.

Those patterns reflect the inherent traits of an object.

Take humans for example.

Aside from being affected by spells, their patterns can also change as they grow, fall ill, or consume certain non-magical substances.

Let alone Celeste, who practically stuffed an entire Thestral into another person’s body…

Had Dawn been there in person, he believed he would’ve seen that Cassie’s inner attribute pattern had become almost identical to a Thestral’s before the spell was cast.

In his view, it was this insane degree of organ transplantation that lowered the difficulty of transformation, allowing Celeste to succeed.

Just as that thought crossed his mind, a few lines suddenly caught Dawn’s eye—scrawled in larger, messier handwriting than the previous pages.

[Impossible!]

[This is absolutely impossible!]

[When I couldn’t wait to announce my magnificent achievement to the world…]

[Those damned, stupid, ugly wizards—driven by jealousy—actually claimed that the thestral I presented was nothing more than an ordinary donkey!]

[Ha! It’s laughable! Utterly laughable!]

[Look at those powerful limbs, that body full of mystique!]

[This masterpiece I created with my own hands—how could it possibly be… just a donkey?]

[…]

[…]

[No!]

[No!]

[What’s happening?!]

[Why…]

[Why does it look more and more like a donkey the longer I look at it?]

[There must be some mistake! Did someone cast a Confundus Charm on me?]

[I… I have to conduct the experiment all over again!]

The manuscript ended there.

To be honest, Dawn couldn’t make much sense of it. So this so-called inexplicable change… was that the test subject turned from a thestral into a donkey?

But whether it was a thestral or a donkey, if it had been created through Transfiguration, wouldn’t the spell eventually wear off?

And when that happened, couldn’t they just cast the transformation spell on Sika again?

Why redo the entire experiment?

Something about the final part of the manuscript struck Dawn as odd.

He flipped the page and continued reading the notes left behind by the one who had compiled this manuscript.

“In 1571, Celeste died in his home. When I heard the news, I hesitated for a moment but decided to go to his residence.”

“By the time I arrived, his body had already been buried. In his home, I saw only a familiar-looking donkey and a strange snake.”

“They say Celeste was killed by these two ordinary animals.”

“It was absurd.”

“In the basement of Celeste’s room, we found scattered manuscript pages.”

“When the others with me learned I was collecting the thoughts of once-great wizards, they didn’t even glance at the pages and generously left them all to me.”

“And I suppose that’s understandable. No one believes a madman’s writings are worth reading.”

“Yes…”

“A madman.”

“Because unlike the previous two manuscripts, I had personally been involved in part of Celeste’s story.”

“Of course, I had no knowledge of those inhumane experiments.”

“I was simply there when he announced that he had solved the problem of magical creature transfiguration, and I saw, with my own eyes, the moment he led out a donkey.”

“After reading the manuscript, my first thought was that there must be more to the story.”

“But after a thorough investigation, I came to understand that Celeste truly was nothing more than a pure madman.”

“Through a friend who teaches runes at Hogwarts, I managed to track down Cassie Carter, who had graduated twenty years prior.”

“The boy was completely fine.”

“In fact, after graduation, he didn’t even stay in Britain—he went straight to Egypt to work in curse-breaking.”

“When I found him, he told me that he did indeed run into Celeste at a bar the year he graduated.”

“Cassie said that man kept pestering him for his name, which is why he remembered it so clearly.”

“However, Celeste didn’t attack him. After finishing their drinks, Sika simply returned home. With that, I was fairly certain Celeste’s manuscript was filled with lies.”

“But to be fair, I still followed the manuscript’s records and searched for the so-called thestral smuggler.”

“However, the incident had taken place twenty years earlier, and it’s possible the man had already died during one of his smuggling runs. I never found him.”

“…”

“That should have been the end of it.”

“However, one thing in this manuscript kept bothering me, and it’s the reason I chose to include it in this book.”

“The Resonance Suppression Charm.”

“I couldn’t find its origin. In Celeste’s home, there was no sign of the so-called witch’s notebook mentioned in the manuscript.”

“When I asked my companions from that day, none of them had seen such a thing either.”

“Later, I paid a price to visit the ancient libraries of several old pureblood families. Even there, I found no trace of such a spell.”

“It was as if it had no source—as if it appeared out of thin air, solely within the pages of this manuscript.”

“…”

“Of course.”

“I understand that after so many years, not every spell will have survived.”

“But this one doubt—it dug into my mind like a thorn. And after much thought, I chose to include this manuscript in the compilation of this book.”

________________

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