The Eyes of Truth

Gavin made his way over to his lab, which was along the corridor past the door on the left side of the living room. The lab was state of the art for the 1990's; it was stocked with standard lab apparatus and even had an advanced light and electron microscope. Gavin was told by Evan that his entire room worked similar to the Room of Requirement; it furnished the room however you envisioned.

Gavin took a seat on the nearest lab bench and placed his compendium on the table. He took out the inquisitor and muttered, "Accio Gloves"; a pair of latex lab gloves flew to him, and he wore them. He opened his compendium and de-briefed himself on the experiment he was about to carry out while using occlumency to clear his head.

The crux of all of Gavin's theories depended on one thing and one thing alone: the ability to accurately understand how exactly numbers could affect magical energy. Without understanding that, he wouldn't be able to do anything, and all his speculations would be left inconclusive.

One of the first things that Gavin did as soon as he reincarnated into the wizarding world was to sense the existence of magical energy and because of his physique, he was able to sense it the first time he tried almost immediately; they felt like dust particles and were invisible, making them extremely difficult to detect. It explained why most wizards couldn't accurately feel the mystical energy and Gavin hailed himself for thinking of his third wish; it was a godsend.

After he could accurately sense the existence of magical energy, he then tried to see how exactly numbers affected them. He decided to use the most magical number for the experiment, musing that it would be the easiest to observe.

So, he wrote the number '7' on parchment and tried to observe any magical energy fluctuations around it but to no avail. Unfazed by the immediate failure, he didn't give up and wrote the number '7' multiple times daily on any surface he could find, be it the wall or ground.

He even tried saying the number out loud and used some of the magical objects in his house to write the number in the air. Alas, everything he tried was futile; he simply could not detect any magical energy fluctuations.

Initially, he thought that maybe it was because he was not sensitive enough to magical energy so he tried increasing his sensitivity to the energy by constantly trying to feel its presence and interact with the energy. It was very slow, but Gavin was patient and persisted at increasing his sensitivity but even after doing that for 10 years, he could not detect anything.

As doubts began to knock on the gates to his mind, he eventually gave up that approach and decided to try it one last time when he got his wand and luckily for him, that would prove to be successful.

The griffin feather he used as a wand core was a divine object so its affinity to magical energy was at the ceiling of what was possible in the wizarding world. Because of this, the density of magical energy around the inquisitor at any given point in time was extremely high. Magical energy flocked to it the way people flock to electronic stores on Black Friday.

Thus, when Gavin tried using his wand to write the number '7', he finally sensed an extremely subtle reaction from the particles. It was so subtle, that it would have been simply impossible to detect if it wasn't Gavin who was the one investigating. It was like trying to spot a single shrimp swimming in the ocean.

Elated at the discovery, Gavin repeated the action several times and recorded the behavior of the particles. Because it was extremely subtle, he could only vaguely make out their behavior. The magical energy particles felt like they rearranged themselves and flickered out of existence, which was confusing to Gavin.

With that discovery, Gavin tried using the inquisitor to write the other numbers and arithmetic operators to sense their magical energy fluctuations. Unfortunately, Gavin sensed absolutely nothing…not even the slightest change.

This was a serious issue. Were the other numbers not capable of triggering magical energy fluctuations?

Honestly, Gavin felt that it was not the case and simply thought the he couldn't just sense it.

Regardless, Gavin was invigorated that he discovered something at least. So, with renewed vigor, he sought books and research papers on magical creatures for other ways to sense the existence of magical energy.

Gavin thought that in this wizarding world, there should be some creature that has a specialized organ for sensing it. Alas, he found nothing on it, not even from Newt Scamander's research papers on magical beasts. Just as he was about to give up and look for another way, he realized something.

Why didn't he just ask Aelia?

After all, she was a living divine beast…the very apex of magical creatures. If anyone could sense the energy, surely it would be her.

Gavin was right on the money with his guess because Aelia confirmed that she could see magical energy particles…literally. Gavin immediately got her to observe the magical energy fluctuations of numbers for him and she was able to do it with relative ease, confirming his conjecture that other numbers were capable of triggering magical energy fluctuations.

However, Gavin immediately realized a problem. If he himself could not see the particles or sense them whenever numbers were written, how was he going to experiment? Sure, he could ask Aelia to follow his instructions but the range of what she could do was limited because she was…simply a noob at Mathematics and Arithmancy.

It was way better for him to be the one observing and experimenting. So, he started thinking of a way to acquire Aelia's ability, bringing him to the present.

Now that he had a proper lab, was away from prying eyes, and had access to extra knowledge on magical creature anatomy from the Everhart grand library he could finally begin his quest to obtain those supernatural eyes.

Eyes he deemed as 'The Eyes of Truth'....