Kyle, no longer interested in the conversation between Albus Dumbledore and Harry, politely bade them farewell and turned to leave the classroom without hesitation.
On the way over, Harry had already explained the origin of the Invisibility Cloak—an heirloom from his father, sent to him as an anonymous Christmas gift.
What a series of coincidences: the Headmaster just happened to place the Mirror of Erised in the school, Harry just happened to receive his father’s heirloom Invisibility Cloak, and the Headmaster just happened to stand nearby watching Harry indulge in false illusions.
If Kyle hadn’t meddled and sent Severus Snape a signal, there was no telling how long Harry’s test would have dragged on.
Uninterested in playing along with this “raise the Savior” routine, Kyle hadn’t contacted Harry once for the rest of the holiday, preferring to carry out his research step by step.
The income from the toy puppets ensured his research was no longer constrained by Galleons, and the giant silver dog provided ample theoretical support while helping advance the progress bar of his golden finger.
Almost every day brought new breakthroughs.
Immersed completely in his research, Kyle resumed a routine centered entirely around three places: the library, the abandoned classroom, and his dormitory.
It wasn’t until Malfoy’s platinum hair reappeared in the common room that he realized the holiday had ended.
A single holiday was short, but Kyle had still achieved periodic breakthroughs.
Wizards had spent thousands of years researching how to optimize and miniaturize energy storage chambers, yet with little success.
The primary obstacle was the precision required to draw magic arrays, a mountain blocking countless wizards in their tracks.
Imagine the difficulty of copying an article across the walls of an entire classroom versus trying to copy that exact same article onto the walls of a tiny model room—it was enough to drive anyone mad.
Yet if this problem could be solved, the efficiency of energy storage chambers would skyrocket.
Fortunately, when magic met technology, many problems resolved themselves.
Muggles were actually far ahead of the magical world when it came to micro-etching patterns.
The magical world still relied on traditional methods.
Every runic master and alchemy master knew that the more runes packed per unit area, the stronger the magic array’s effect.
However, visual resolution limits and magic stability constraints bound what human hands could accomplish.
Muggles, on the other hand, had long surpassed human physical limits.
Using photolithography and etching equipment, even back in the nineties, they achieved precisions measured in hundreds of nanometers—to say nothing of the twenty-first century in his previous life, which pushed down to just a few nanometers.
Kyle’s objective was to create a portable Energy Core that could be carried everywhere, without suffering a major drop in performance.
His preliminary idea was to set aside the difficulty of hand-drawing for now and design a sufficiently powerful magic array.
Then, using Muggle industrial methods, he would etch the array onto plates made primarily of anti-magic metal, hollowing out the channels of the array.
When used, the template could be placed over the surface where the magic array was needed; mental power would flow through the hollowed-out channels of the mold, leaving behind a complete magic array.
The benefits were obvious.
The artist no longer needed to worry about keeping the structural proportions of the magic array intact—they could focus entirely on tracing along the channels of the mold.
At the same time, the hollowed channels of anti-magic metal would confine the magic within the paths, preventing magic dissipation.
The presence of these hollowed channels not only solved the precision issue, but also greatly lowered the skill needed for fine magic control, effectively solving the problem of magical stability.
It was like comparing a slide to ice skating.
On a slide, one could only slide along a designated track—less free, but safe and steady.
On ice, one could move unrestricted anywhere across the surface, but trying to follow a precise, predefined track on ice made the difficulty skyrocket.
With the conceptual approach resolved, all that remained was designing a sufficiently potent magic array.
Because shrinking the array’s size inevitably meant using fewer magical materials during creation.
Furthermore, during operation, overly narrow rune channels would cap the maximum allowable magic throughput at a lower level.
This demanded that the newly designed array produce even stronger effects despite lower specifications.
The ink used for drawing the array also needed improvement to enhance magic conductivity, offsetting some of the bottlenecking caused by thin channels.
Kyle spent his entire Christmas holiday drafting, tweaking, and revising magic arrays.
Thanks to a thousand years of wizarding research into energy storage chambers, Kyle had a vast amount of reference material at his disposal.
What he valued most wasn’t the successful historical examples, but the wildly imaginative, bizarre designs created by wizards over the centuries.
Hidden among those deemed impractical were numerous ideas discarded simply because drawing them was too difficult.
These plans, once dismissed as unrealistic, were casually noted down in personal essays or autobiographies and largely ignored by others, but Kyle treated them as priceless treasures.
The centuries of wild ideas generated by wizards were more than enough for Kyle to design an exceptionally powerful magic array.
Compared to the massive workload required for the array, the Christmas break was far too short.
So much so that on the very first day of the new term, under the gazes of classmates who looked at him like he was a total freak, Kyle bolted straight to the library as soon as class ended.
Outside distractions never bothered Kyle, but fate had a funny way of working.
Right before the first Quidditch match after Christmas, Kyle actually ran into Harry and his two companions in the library, crossing paths once again with the main plot.
Kyle often saw the young girl, Hermione Granger, in the library—she was an absolute top student.
For a first-year to endure the solitude and spend her time buried in thick, heavy magic books spoke volumes about her brilliance.
The other two brats, on the other hand, were rare visitors to the library.
The three kids huddled together, whispering in low voices while glancing nervously at Madam Pince from time to time, clearly aware that talking in the library did not sit well with her.
From the snippets of conversation that occasionally drifted over, the girl was clearly berating the other two for not working hard enough.
It seemed their little trio was searching for information, but after working at it for a long time, they still hadn’t found anything.
It appeared the girl had tasked Harry and the little redhead with spending the Christmas break in the library looking for information, but the two had ended up having a blast playing Wizard’s Chess, completely forgetting her instructions.
“What’s the point of playing Wizard’s Chess?
Does playing Wizard’s Chess improve your grades?
Does playing Wizard’s Chess help you avoid danger?
Does playing Wizard’s Chess help us solve our problem?” The girl’s voice wavered with a hint of tears.
“All you know how to do is play!
I was the only one looking up information, while you two didn’t care about a thing.” Harry and the little redhead both hung their heads without a word, though the little redhead still had an indignant look written across his face.
Frankly, it had the distinct feel of an anxious mother scolding her sons.