LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 11: Aetherform (U)
A/N 1 : The U in the brackets stands for unedited. I will come back and some point and edit it properly. Till then just bear with errors.
A/N 2: The status screen is NOT a system. It merely documents her abilities and progress. That is all.
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The next day, when she woke up feeling absolutely wonderful. A surge of pure exhilaration coursed through her veins, bringing with it a profound sense of vitality and boundless energy. At that moment she felt like she could punch through walls, her body felt so light she had the illusion that she could fly.
Her mind felt refreshed, agile and razor-sharp. Every thought and idea seemed to flow effortlessly, weaving through the intricate pathways of her consciousness with unmatched swiftness and precision. It was as if her mental faculties had been infused with an electrifying energy, igniting a fire within her synapses. There was a clarity to it that she experienced only when using her innate ability: hyper-cognition.
A kaleidoscope of vibrant colours flooded her vision, infusing the world around her with an amplified vibrancy. The hues were more vivid, the contrasts sharper. Ginny's eyes widened in awe as she realised she possessed a tremendously enhanced visual acuity. With uncanny precision, she could discern even the tiniest dust particles floating several feet away.
The entire world seemed so much… more.
The biggest change however was her magic. It was vast, absolutely titanic. The boundaries that once contained her powers had expanded exponentially. Her magic easily spread throughout the room completely engulfing it.
She swung her legs over the side of the bed, her feet barely making a sound as she ran over to the mirror with a grace she did not expect. Her legs didn’t even feel like they were exerting strength.
As she gazed upon her reflection in the mirror, she realised that she looked different. Not much, just her skin had grown paler, her stature taller and the features of her face just a tiny bit sharper, and red of her hair brighter. The contours of her face had become minutely more defined. The plumpness caused by baby fat that had once characterised her visage had diminished, giving way to a gentle, oval shape.
Walking back to her bed, she sat on the edge and concentrated her mind to examine the deeper changes that had happened.
The very first thing that was obvious to her was that her body was now very, very strong. She was very sure that even bullets won’t do her much harm. Her entire body was so saturated with magic that she felt that she might be more of a magical creature than human. In fact, the magical activity of her body was only slightly lesser than the basilisk, meaning there were very few creatures that could even be on par with her, much less surpass. This did not really give her the most stupendous of advantages other than her physical capabilities, but her spell-resistance had increased dramatically to the point that the spells most students and Gilderoy Lockhart cast would just slide over her, doing absolutely no damage whatsoever. Even slightly more experienced wizards would have a hard time harming her.
As for why it was not as strong as the basilisk’s near immunity to spells? The basilisk’s spell immunity was mainly from its hide. The scaly hide was incredibly magic-resistant. To the point that even the more powerful wizards would not be able to do much to damage it. In fact, it would require a coordinated effort from multiple powerful wizards, casting the same spell simultaneously, to have any discernible impact on creatures such as basilisks, dragons, and manticores. However, these creatures, once stripped of their protective hide, their resistance to spells would drop sharply.
Unfortunately, it seemed that she did not gain the basilisk’s death gaze. But in return, her eyes had become very special. They now were much like Moody’s eyes, just that they did not have a mind of their own and did not look different from normal eyes.
There were also downsides though: most potions would no longer have any effect on her. As saturated as her body was with magic, any external magic will be broken down and assimilated before it could even reach her stomach.
Second was that her food intake would increase tremendously. Her Body, which was now firmly in the realms of the supernatural, needed much greater nutrition and a normal intake of food would be utterly insufficient. Her only solution was to brew powerful nutrition potions for herself, which would, thankfully not be neutralised by her body.
“Status”
{
Name: Ginevra Molly Weasley
Race: Witch (Magical Being)
Magic: 7.4
Body: 6.6
Spirit: 7.5
Innate Abilities:
- Assimilate 0/3 (regen: 1/year (Total: 7/decade))
- Ente Arcanum
Parseltongue (A)
Magic Perception (P)
Superior Logical Processing Unit (1/2) (A)
Aetherform Transformation (A)
Skills: Cooking Lv.3 (4/4000), Flying Lv.5 (121/16000)
Magicks:
Enchantment Lv.8 (6/128000),
Transfiguration Lv.8 (16/128000),
Dark Magic Lv.9 (1001067/1024000),
Mind Magic Lv.8(630/128000)
.
.
.
}
The first most obvious change that drew her eyes was {Race: Witch (Magical Being)}
‘Magical Being? So was I not considered a Magical Being despite being a witch? What is the requirement? Stats? Or is it Ente Arcanum? Or something else entirely? Interesting…’ she mused.
Then, the second most interesting thing, to her, was her Body stat of 6.6. Her actual physicality was greatly different from the stat shown on the status screen. While she probably surpassed every human being on the planet in terms of her physique, she felt her actual physicality was around 3.5, not the whopping 6 points the screen showed.
Then what was the reason for it showing such a number? Ginny guessed it had to do with the magical nature of her body. A higher stat does not necessarily have to mean more powerful, at least when it comes to the Body stat. She did not know enough about Magic and Spirit to draw a general conclusion about the Trifecta of Being.
That’s when Ginny had a startling realisation: despite magicals using magic all day, everyday, their knowledge of the true nature of magic was not practically non-existent. She’d devoured a lot of magical tomes throughout her few months of stay in Hogwarts, yet she had not come across a single book that talked or even alluded to the nature of magic. She really hoped that it was because of the dangerous nature of such knowledge that she had not chanced upon it, rather than magicals never bothering to find out, or perhaps something even weirder.
Her mind teemed with fantasies and conspiracy theories of mysterious secret organisations trying to keep such forbidden knowledge out of the hands of normal magicals, abducting or otherwise neutralising the witches and wizards who had stumbled upon it. She had read a fanfic where the Department of Mysteries was actually such an organisation. But in said fanfic, they also secretly controlled the Wizarding World and Voldemort was their puppet. The possibility of such a thing was questionable at best.
She really loved her conspiracy theories. Perhaps, that’s why she got along so well with Luna?
Clearing her mind of her intrusive thoughts, she examined the rest of her status screen, the 7.4 in Magic and 7.5 in Spirit bringing her great satisfaction.
‘Also, Aetherform Transformation? What is that?” she concentrated on it and immediately information appeared in her mind, like remembering something long forgotten.
‘Yo~, Isn’t this exactly like an Obscurus? But perfectly in control? Brilliant!’ she remarked with delight, as it implied a near physical indestructibility in her Aetherform. Aurelius Dumbledore could survive being ganged up on by numerous American Aurors and still emerge completely unharmed.
‘And unlike that Aurelius fella, who gained control over time, I naturally have full control over my Aetherform.’
Suppressing the impulse to immediately try out her newest ability, she instead went to get dressed.
-x-x-x-
In the Room of Requirement, which was now as big as the Great Hall, stood Ginny with her left arm outstretched. With an expectant look on her face, she activated her Aetherform Transformation.
Her arm exploded.
“F*ck!” She let out a cry of shock and stumbled backwards, almost falling over, but her heightened physicality also granted her an enhanced sense of balance, allowing her to right herself easily.
Regaining her wits, she realised that her arm had now entered an incorporeal and amorphous cloud-like state, radiant with a fiery red hue reminiscent of her own vibrant red hair.
The difference did not end there. While a conventional Obscurus could be described as a ‘violent torrent of darkness’, her own Aetherform that had a more serene, tranquil and rhythmic quality to it, ebbing and flowing much like omnipresent magic that permeated everything. Almost like a timelapse-video of clouds.
In that state, Ginny felt like she could shape her ‘arm’ to be anything she wanted. When she actually attempted to will it into the shape of a hammer, all she achieved was a strange misshapen glob-like thing that looked more like a giant lollipop than a hammer.
Her mouth twitched in frustrated amusement, “This will take a while to properly control. Hmm.. Perhaps I should use Hyper-cognition to help?”
For the next few hours, she tried every method she could think of to increase her mastery over the Aetherform, with varying degrees of success. The most success she had was when using Hyper-cognition along with her Aetherform, all while speaking in Parseltongue. Yes, that made no sense to her either. What’s parseltongue got to do with the Aetherform? One might think that it has something to do with the basilisk she assimilated, but she was very sure it was not.
The way her assimilation ability worked is by first extracting the basic stats of the target, while restructuring it to best fit her so that she could gain a similar level of the stats without compromising on her current abilities. To put it simply, she won’t experience bursts of uncontrollable strength like in the movies where the protagonist would accidentally twist off the doorknob instead of opening it.
Similarly, it analysed, extracted, pruned and restructured any special abilities that might be beneficial to her, before integrating it with her being in a form that best suited her.
This meant that despite assimilating a basilisk, she did not have anything to do with the basilisk other than her body becoming almost as magical as it was.
Needless to say, she was left utterly baffled.
She chalked it up to some sort of magical interference and/or resonance happening when the three abilities were used together. Her conclusion was that she didn’t know enough about magic to understand what the hell was going on.
So she made a mental note to figure it out when she did.
From a casual ‘Tempus’ she gathered that she’d spent almost 4 hours trying out her new ability, meaning it was time for lunch.
She pondered why exactly she had gained Aetherform as her special ability rather than anything else on her way to the Great Hall. It had absolutely nothing to do with a basilisk at all. Not a single account throughout history had ever mentioned a basilisk possessing such a remarkable ability. They might have to consider establishing a whole new rank of Magical Creatures if they did!
This made Ginny come to the tentative conclusion that, perhaps all witches and wizards have this ability latent in them. Just that no one ever met the requirement to activate it. And that perhaps the Obscurus was a malevolent mutation of this ability.
The doors of the Great Hall appearing in her sight ended her thoughts.
-x-x-x-
Upon spotting her roomies, she skipped over to them. “How’re you, m’girls? A bit nippy out today, innit?” She greeted them cheerfully.
“A bit nippy?! The snow outside’s reaching my knees and you call it ‘a bit nippy’?! Aileen glared at her in outrage. “And why are you not wearing your sweater? Fancy becoming a popsicle, do you?”
“Oh my, someone’s a hothouse lily.” she rolled her eyes as she pulled out her wand and cast a warming charm on the girl.
“Wow! You gotta teach me this, Ginny! Where has this charm been my entire life?!” Aileen’s mood went from down in the dumps to ‘living it up’ in about 1 second. Ginny flourished her wand haughtily before turning to Gwen who nodded like a chicken pecking at rice.
“It's an O.W.L. level charm and would take you anywhere between half a month to a month to get it right, y’know? The worst of winter would’ve passed by then.” She gave Aileen an amused look, “And if you get it wrong, you could end giving the Hogwarts Express a run for its money in blowing steam. Outta your ears.”
Aileen immediately deflated.
She poutily glared at Ginny, “And how the hell do you know such advanced magic?”
“I’ve been practising this spell since a week after Hallowe’en. I’d found a very interesting read by Roderick Chase, written during…”
She casually mentioned how she’d come across an interesting spell and learned it because it would be useful later on in the year.
Noticing that the both of them bought her story, Ginny sighed in relief, feeling happy that her Dao of Bullshit was still strong. The truth was that she’d simply forgotten to wear the sweater; her newly heightened physicality came with supernatural temperature resistance, negating her need for warmer clothing. She could totally go for a swim in the poles and still feel super cosy.
Helping herself to the absolutely delish sandwiches the house-elves made (minus the crust too, she loved the little bugger), she noticed that the conversation had turned to the topic of who would be the one presiding over the Dueling Club.
Aileen insisted that it must be Flitwick, as he was the most qualified and experienced as a Master Duelist. While Gwen was having unrealistic fantasies of it being Dumbledore himself who would teach them.
A strange smile appeared on her face as she prepared to cruelly burst the two little girls’ fantasy-filled bubbles…