Chapter 43 .

  Soren first wandered around for a while befoing to the Leaky Cauldron to buy the textbooks needed for this semester.

  Soren took two copies of all the textbooks, including Draco's.

  Seeing that his parents and brother had not yet arrived, he leisurely browsed through some books in the shop.

  During this time, he helped the bookstore manager deal with the rampaging "Monster Book of Monsters," and earned a dist voucher for his book purchases, saving him 10 Galleons.

  This 10 Galleons was just enough to offset the amount he had bribed Draco with that m to keep his secret.

  After a while, his parents and brother arrived te, and the family took the knight Bus baalfoy Manor.

  On the way, Narcissa asked Soren about his experiences in Diagon Alley today. Naturally, Soren didn't mention sneaking into Knockturn Alley but instead ged the subject: "I visited Ollivander's Wand Shop again today and had him do some maintenany wand..."

  Soren anized his thoughts and voiced his fusion: "I found that his business isn't really that great—his wands sell for only 7 Galleons each. You have to know that wands are not ables; there are at most 80 udents enrolling each year. Even if you add itle wizards ing from abroad, it's at most 100..."

  "If lucky, about 50 adult wizards might o buy a new wand each year due to damage—wands are a wizard's sed life. Fifty such fools is already a lot. All things sidered, that's only about 150 people, which amounts to 1,050 Galleons. Assuming half of that goes to the cost of making the wands, he only s 525 Galleons for the whole year, not to mention the rent and maintenance costs of running the shop. It seems a bit unbelievable to me..."

  Lucius nodded in satisfa, "Soren, you have indeed ied the family's excellent business a to think of this so quickly. In fact, there are many unwritten rules in the wizarding business world. Taking Ollivander as an example, the greatest significe of this wand shop's existence is merely a sign for him to maintain the family's reputatioher the wand shop is profitable or not is not that important to him. He has many colborative research projects with the Ministry of Magic, most of which are about wand studies; that research funding is the real profit. Of course, if it weren't for this historical wand shop giving him fame, those colboration opportunities might not have e his way..." He finished with a cold snort.

  So that's how it is; Ollivander is using the low prices of his wand shop to monopolize the market and then leveraging his position as a market leader to seek other bes, Soren thought.

  Lucius tinued, "Don't be fooled by this old man's seemingly righteous demeanor. Over the past thousand years, there have been many talented new wandmakers wanting to open shops in Britain, but they have all failed to obtain the Ministry of Magic's certification lise—I'm willing to bet that Ollivander's old tricks are behind this. This tactic is known in the business world as 'petitive moats,' which meaablishing a barrier that prevents new petitors from entering, thus allowing oo maintain a monopoly over the entire industry. As long as he maintains that monopoly, the Ministry of Magic will have to colborate with him if they want to study wand lore. How about that? Isn't it eye-opening to see the dark side of the business world?" He cluded with a cold ugh.

  Soren fell into deep thought; so there are these intricacies in the wizarding business world. It seems that his earlier success iering the broomstick market and making a profit was due to the bes of foreseeing the plot and a good amount of luck!

  Hmm? Didn't other transmigrators easily monopolize the entire wizarding business world with just a wave of their arms and a show of strength? Did they all naturally have that kind of aura? Or was there some halo that made other wizard merts and pure-blood families automatically less intelligent? Soren was engulfed in envy and jealousy.

  That night during the family dinner, Lucius sternly reminded his two sons to remember the family's honor and expressed his expectations for the brothers' academic performance. He said, "Especially you, Draco, focus on your studies and don't provoke Potter and his gang anymore. You should know that this semester at Hogwarts won't be peaceful. Now I'll tell you some insider information that the neers haven't reported—Sirius Bck's true purpose for esg from prison is to kill Harry Potter!"

  "What?" Soren, who already khe plot, remained calm, while Draco, who had a plicated retionship with Harry Potter, excimed in surprise.

  Lucius coldly gred at Drad said, "Bck was my junior in school. He was very close friends with Harry Potter's father, James Potter, but in the end, he betrayed his friend to the Dark Lord, leading to James Potter's tragic death. His escape this time is clearly to elimihe threat—kill Harry Potter. I don't waher of you to get caught up in some foolish reason and end up in trouble because of him."

  Lucius paused for a moment and tinued, "Although everyone says Bck has gone mad, he might be mad, but he is smart enough to escape from Azkaban—something that ordinary people ot do. If Bck could escape from Azkaban, I believe he could infiltrate Hogwarts. Bce brutally killed a dozen i bystanders oreet; if you unfortunately enter him, I don't believe he will show you any mercy. There is a greater ce that he will kill you to silence you and prevent you from revealing his whereabouts. Do you uand?"

  Soren and Draco hurriedly o show they uood.

  That night, Soren took out the pain mask he had bought earlier from his dormitory, slowly put it on his face, activated its effects with magic, then took it off and looked at it. The mask seemed to transform into a bck hole in Soren's eyes, like a vortex, slowly pulling his gaze in.

  A sense of inexplicable fear arose in Soren's heart, but ihan a few seds, he broke free from this straate.

  "Is this all it do? Or is it only effective on those with low magical power?" Soren muttered dissatisfiedly, feeling a sense of absurdity in his heart, not expeg that the first target of this mask would actually be himself.

  Soren activated his magical eye, trating on sensing the magical fluctuations ing from the mask. Uhe magic used to cast ordinary spells, it seemed to be guided by another invisible force.

  It was a mysterious power that was difficult to describe; it surrouhe magi the mask, formless aless, yet seemed to directly affect the soul. "If this is what soul magic is, it means temporarily stripping part of sciouso attaother person's soul?" Sore as if he had grasped the essence of soul magic.

  He tried to use a mental sealing teique to clear all his thoughts, then attempted to split off a small piece of his sciousness and merge it into the magic. He could feel his own magic suddenly bursting with vitality after merging with the split-off sciousness.

  He focused entirely on densing his magito a needle shape and slowly pierced towards the mask, as if colliding powerfully with a solid wall. Sore a wave of dizziness, and when he came to his senses, he found his forehead drenched i, while the pain mask had already cracked into two pieces.

  After deep ption, Soren suddenly uood the principle of soul attacks. What just happened was a simple and rough test between him and the sciousness within the pain mask. The soul power of the pain mask was not strong, so it was easily shattered by him.

  If he were to repce the mask with the S Hat from Hogwarts, which taihe sciousness of the four fouhat had been maintained for over a thousand years, with Soren's meager soul power that he had rained, he would certainly end up in a disastrous defeat, being an idiot.

  Soren suddenly thought of the essenagic. The so-called magic should be determined by the strength of the soul, which dictates the amount of magic stored in the reservoir, while the strength of mental power determines a wizard's trol id the output rate of magical flow.

  From this, Soren could ascertain that magic does not increase naturally over time at a fixed growth rate, as most wizards think. After all, Grindelwald and Dumbledore domihe European magical world in their forties, and those older wizards were far from being their match.

  Grindelwald and Dumbledore did not transform themselves into grotesque forms using dark magic like Voldemort, so their magic could grow at a speed that surpassed others, indig that there must be some unknown reason behind it.

  The inal story did not mention this point, perhaps because her of them was aware of the underlying principles. The two of them simply possessed an innate soul strength far beyond that of ordinary people, along with powerful mental strength, resulting in an astonishing increase in their magical prowth rate due to the enha of these two factors.

  Various thoughts fshed through Soren's mind, and a subtle glimmer appeared in his eyes, as if he had discovered the most astonishi in the magical world: the secret to enhang magical power.

  The strength of the soul determihe capacity for st magical power, while mental strength determihe usage rate of magical power. The human body is adaptable; stroal strength greatly improves the usage rate of magical power, leading to an increased demand fical power, whi turn stimutes its growth.

  In other words, strong soul aal strength ot suddenly boost one's magical power like a magical enha potion, but they increase the growth rate of magical power. If he wao catch up to Voldemort and Dumbledore's strength before chaos desded, he would iably o find ways to enhance his soul strength aal strength.

  Even disc su astonishi, Sore over the destru of the Pain Mask worth 29 Galleons. He checked the fragments of the Pain Mask again but found that the magical fluctuations attached to it had dissipated along with the colpse of the sciousness, and the mask had turned into two ordinary pieces. Thus, he uatingly threw the fragments into the trash .

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