Kasen sensed the newly acquired crafting recipe in his mind. It was not as though he had never tried this recipe before, but unfortunately, saying it had been useless would still have been giving it too much credit.
This time, however, things were different.
He could tell that this crafting recipe was finally the real thing!
Kasen quickly crafted a workbench by hand and placed it beside his desk. Then he arranged glowstone, redstone, and diamonds on it in the correct order.
With a bang, a smooth red gemstone glowing with energy appeared in his hand.
That was right!
Exactly right!
The mysterious pocket watch had taken him back six years, to the day when he and Dumbledore had been researching replicas because of Nicolas Flamel's Philosopher's Stone.
From this alone, it was clear that even in occultism, the Philosopher's Stone held an extraordinarily high status.
Both occultism and the magical worldview shared one fixed concept: once history had existed, it shattered and disappeared into nothingness the very next second.
That was why ordinary time travel could not change the past.
The mysterious pocket watch was clearly an ordinary method of travelling through time. After all, Kasen could only observe history, and even then, it was merely a shabby black-and-white version.
Or, to put it more directly, he had not travelled through time at all.
He had only seen the past.
Had that particular moment in the past not contained the Philosopher's Stone, the pinnacle of alchemy and an object of exceptionally high status, which happened to tear a gap through the void and allow him to glimpse a trace of reality within the illusion, he probably would have remained trapped in that false history and witnessed the entire six years from beginning to end.
The system's strange notification from earlier was also much easier to explain.
According to the system, whenever he touched a Philosopher's Stone, regardless of its form, the corresponding mod to be unlocked was Thaumcraft.
However, Kasen had already unlocked Thaumcraft. Even so, he had genuinely touched the true concept of the Philosopher's Stone, so the system had to give him something in return.
Thus, it unlocked the Equivalent Exchange mod for him.
"The Philosopher's Stone..."
Kasen lightly tapped the desk beside him with the blood-red gemstone. In an instant, the entire desk transformed from mahogany into oak.
Unfortunately, the colour looked far too dull, so Kasen simply changed it back.
"If that's all it can do, I could already do that myself."
After saying this, Kasen tossed the Philosopher's Stone onto the crafting table. Before long, he had created a Transmutation Table.
Kasen looked at the Transmutation Table before him, sat down, and crossed one leg over the other.
In a sense, he was fairly familiar with the Transmutation Table. It allowed energy and matter to be converted into each other with ease.
That explanation might sound rather confusing, so to put it more broadly, the Transmutation Table was an incredibly badass, bottomless shop.
Anything thrown into the shop could be converted into energy, known simply as EMC.
EMC could then be used to obtain anything that had previously been thrown into the shop, as long as you had once sold that item to it.
That was how unreasonable the Transmutation Table was.
He casually threw a quill into it. The Transmutation Table converted it into 1 EMC, which somehow appeared within his body.
Then he simply fed that 1 EMC back into the table, and the quill was converted back out.
"In that case, couldn't I... Harry!"
The first thing Kasen thought of was the Totem of Undying hanging around Harry's neck.
Of all the things he wanted to mass-produce, everything else could wait.
The Totem of Undying was unquestionably first.
After all, people died when they were killed. He was not Voldemort, and he had no intention of slicing himself into mutton rolls.
Therefore, it was extremely important to avoid death in a normal and healthy way.
Before long, Kasen had someone summon Harry to his office.
"What is it, Professor?" Harry asked.
"Could you lend me your necklace for a moment?" Kasen asked with a grin.
"Of course. Actually, ever since I learned Occlumency, the necklace has become much less effective on me. Though it isn't completely useless."
Harry hurriedly removed the beacon necklace from around his neck and placed it on Kasen's desk.
"You can just say it. When I made this necklace, it really did not provide much of a boost in combat. At most, it makes you more agile when running for your life."
As Kasen spoke, he dismantled the necklace and took out the Totem of Undying inside.
"Professor, what is that?" Harry asked instinctively, staring at the object he had never seen before.
"A Totem of Undying."
Kasen instinctively told him the truth, but quickly realised that he had done something incredibly stupid.
"A Totem of Undying... It sounds like it was meant to protect me," Harry said quietly.
"That's right."
Kasen simply went along with Harry's words, then tried to throw the Totem of Undying into the Transmutation Table. However, the totem merely spun around inside before bouncing back out.
The Transmutation Table thoughtfully displayed a line of text by way of explanation.
Items bound to an individual cannot be placed into the Transmutation Table.
Kasen looked at the words slowly appearing within the table and shrugged helplessly.
Back when he had only possessed a single Totem of Undying, he had given it to Harry. It had not been a decision made on impulse, but the result of careful consideration.
He had not regretted it then, and he certainly would not regret it now.
Besides, he had only called Harry here to try his luck. If he could mass-produce Totems of Undying, that would naturally be excellent news. If he could not...
Then so be it.
Kasen placed the Totem of Undying back inside the beacon pendant and returned it to Harry.
Harry lifted the beacon necklace and slowly asked, "Professor, what does this thing do? I mean the object inside, the one called the Totem of Undying."
"It can save your life at a critical moment," Kasen answered honestly.
"So you don't have a second one?" Harry continued.
"I will eventually," Kasen said.
"Which means you don't have one right now, correct?" Harry pressed sharply.
"If you put the energy you use to corner me like this into your studies, then even if Severus is your Defence Against the Dark Arts professor this year, he won't be able to hold you back," Kasen said with a helpless laugh.
"Professor, I'm not trying to corner you. I just don't understand," Harry said, pursing his lips.
...
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