For the next few days, Ethan's life fell into a brutal, exhausting rhythm.
Mornings belonged to Master Mordo. And Mordo, as it turned out, was a sadist disguised as a monk.
"Your magic is heavy, but your fists are light," Mordo lectured one morning, easily dodging a clumsy right hook from Ethan before sweeping his legs out from under him. Ethan hit the stone floor with a loud thud.
"Have you ever considered taking up yoga, Master Mordo?" Ethan groaned, rubbing his bruised tailbone. "Or maybe getting a girlfriend? You have a lot of pent-up aggression. I know a nice girl back in New York. She likes strict guys with zero sense of humor."
Mordo's face didn't change, but he hit Ethan with a wooden training staff a little harder the next time. "Focus on your footwork. Magic will not save you if someone simply walks up and stabs you in the throat."
After two hours of getting his ass kicked in hand-to-hand combat, Ethan dragged his battered body to the library. This was his real battlefield.
He practically lived there now. He had a dedicated table piled high with heavy, dusty books about spatial manipulation, dimensional folding, and ancient Sanskrit runes. Wong usually sat at the desk across the room, keeping a watchful eye to make sure Ethan didn't drool on any priceless artifacts.
"Hey Wong," Ethan asked one afternoon, not looking up from a book titled The Geometry of Space. "Are you absolutely sure there are no centerfolds in these books? Like, maybe a sexy sorceress explaining the Mirror Dimension in a bikini? It would really help me learn faster. I am a visual learner."
"Keep talking, and I will banish you to a dimension made entirely of razor blades," Wong replied without missing a beat.
Ethan sighed and went back to his notes.
He was focused on the first spell for his system mission: adapting Harry Potter magic into MCU Eldritch magic. And the spell he wanted the most was Apparition. The ability to teleport instantly.
In the MCU, sorcerers used Sling Rings to open portals. They had to wave their arms around, draw a circle, and step through. It was cool, but it took too long. In a real fight, a bullet would hit you before you finished drawing the circle.
Harry Potter wizards, on the other hand, just popped from one place to another. No rings. No portals. Just pure teleportation.
But the mechanics are totally different, Ethan thought, chewing on the end of a wooden pencil he'd begged off another novice.
In the HP world, Apparition relied on the "Three D's": Destination, Determination, and Deliberation. It was all about mental intent and having magic in your blood. But MCU magic was like coding. It used runes, geometry, and specific hand signs to hack reality.
Ethan had the magic in his blood thanks to the Dumbledore template. But if he just tried to force an Apparition like a Harry Potter wizard, the MCU universe would probably tear his body in half. The laws of physics here were different. He needed to translate the intent of Apparition into the language of Eldritch magic.
"If I use a two-finger hand sign to act as an anchor," Ethan muttered to himself, scribbling furiously on his notepad, "I can use my internal magic to fold the space around my body, instead of punching a hole in space like a Sling Ring does."
For the next four days, Ethan was a madman. He barely slept. He read every book on spatial coordinates he could get his hands on. He drew hundreds of mandalas, trying to substitute the physical "swish and flick" of a wand with the precise finger movements of Kamar-Taj.
He spent three whole days just doing the math. He translated the feeling of Apparition into a string of Eldritch runes.
On the fifth day, he decided it was time for a practical test.
He stood in an empty corner of the training courtyard. The goal was simple: teleport ten feet forward.
He closed his eyes. Destination. Determination. Deliberation. He pictured the spot ten feet ahead. He tapped into his warm magical core. Then, instead of waving a wand, he snapped his fingers into a sharp Eldritch hand sign to stabilize the spatial math.
CRACK!
The sound was like a gunshot.
Ethan felt an instant, horrifying sensation of being squeezed through a very tight rubber tube. His vision went black, his lungs compressed, and a split second later, reality snapped back into place.
"I did it!" Ethan yelled.
And then he realized he wasn't standing on the ground.
He had miscalculated the Z-axis in his Eldritch math. He had teleported ten feet forward, but also fifteen feet straight up into the air.
"Oh, son of aβ"
He fell like a rock, crashing into the stone courtyard. His ankle twisted, and his face dragged against the ground.
Before he could even register the pain, his stomach revolted. The spatial displacement sickness hit him like a freight train. He rolled onto his hands and knees and violently puked his breakfast all over the ancient stones.
[System Note: Ten out of ten for the landing. Very graceful.]
"Shut up," Ethan groaned, wiping his mouth.
That was just the beginning. The next week was an absolute nightmare of trial and error.
Attempt 14: He tried to teleport from his desk to his bed. He got the distance right, but his spatial anchor was slightly off. He appeared right next to his bed, but his momentum was completely messed up. He stumbled forward and slammed his forehead directly into the stone wall. He walked around with a massive red lump on his head for two days. Kaecilius saw him in the hallway and actually laughed.
Attempt 27: He tried to teleport across the library while Wong wasn't looking. He made it, but the rubber-tube squeezing sensation was so intense that he reappeared completely dizzy. He crashed into a bookshelf, knocking over a stack of 400-year-old scrolls. Wong chased him around the room with a glowing orange whip for ten minutes.
Attempt 42: He got the coordinates right, but forgot to stabilize the exit portal with his hand sign. He appeared halfway stuck inside a wooden training dummy. He had to scream for Mordo to come chop the dummy in half to get him out.
Every single day, Ethan was bruised, nauseous, and exhausted. His internal organs felt like they had been put in a blender. The system occasionally dinged just to mock him.
But Ethan didn't quit. He had Dumbledore's magical talent and his own stubborn refusal to die to a random alien invasion. He kept adjusting the math. He changed the hand signs. He tweaked the runes.
Finally, on the eighth day of the torturous trial and error, he stood in the courtyard. It was late at night. The moon was high.
He looked at a stone pillar fifty feet away.
He didn't hesitate. He formed the Eldritch hand sign with his right hand, locking the coordinates in his mind. He pulled the magic from his core.
Crack!
No squeezing. No nausea. No falling from the sky.
Ethan just... appeared. One second he was standing in the middle of the courtyard, and the next second he was standing perfectly balanced right next to the stone pillar fifty feet away. It was smooth, instant, and flawless.
He looked down at his feet. He wasn't hovering. He wasn't stuck in a wall. He didn't feel the urge to throw up.
A massive grin spread across his face.
[Ding!] [Spell 1/5 Completed: Eldritch Apparition]
[Status: Mastered]
[System Note: Congratulations. You finally figured out how to walk over there without breaking your own neck. Four more spells to go.]
"Hell yes," Ethan whispered to the empty courtyard. He snapped his fingers again.
Crack! He appeared back where he started.
He didn't need a Sling Ring. He didn't need to wave his arms in a circle. He was basically a teleporting ghost now. Master Mordo's combat training was about to get a lot more interesting tomorrow morning.