"And... Done," I said, looking at the silvery necklace that was shaped like a small dreamcatcher in my hand.

  It's been three years since I left Mrs. Gray's house, and in this time I've had three main objectives, the second most important of which just reached initial completion.

  Roughly three years ago, I used a combination of different methods and charms to create a fake identity, whom I named after my previous life, Eliza Blank.

  Then "Eliza" adopted me and we briefly moved to Sheffield. There was no particular reason—I simply threw a dart at a map. I just needed a place I could stay for a month or so to get the welfare agents off my back, and if I was still in London, Mrs. Gray would definitely come visit. And although I would've loved to see her, I really didn't want her to notice anything off. She's surprisingly sharp despite her age, and I didn't want to have to use magic on her more than was necessary.

  After the month was done, with a combination of bribes and mild compulsion here and there, I completely got rid of any sort of government oversight.

  During this month I wasn't idle, of course. Aside from working on new things to patent and make money from, I also kept up my charms practice, using Arithmancy to make specific charms for any and all situations. Towards the end of the month, though, having spent a lot of time making nearly two hundred new charms, I realized something: I'm doing this all wrong.

  The current Arithmancy system is in fact pretty good. It's nearly completely optimized and there's little room for progress in the underlying systems. It was, however, optimized for usage with foci. That was the purpose of it in the first place, since just imagining how complicated a spell would be otherwise is mind-boggling... Well, not really, but it would be for a normal person. That, in turn, would make magic way harder for the average wizard, so I could see the benefits of the current system.

  On the other hand, for me it would be pretty useless, and sort of defeated the purpose of making situational custom spells due to efficiency. This all meant that I had to find—or rather make—a new system. It wasn't something I could do in the short term, though, and especially not then.

  After the month was up and I got the local agents off my back, I bought myself a legitimate ticket to a random part of the southern US. Hogwarts had immense political weight in Europe, and Morgana is with them. If that wasn't bad enough, she's also the head of House Pendragon, which now that I think about it, is kind of understandable since she and Arthur never technically got divorced.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  So if I want to avoid her, I'll have to leave Europe entirely. After arriving in the US, I didn't stay for long—only about a week of sightseeing—and I was on my way to Canada, this time with magic.

  Apparition wasn't that challenging to learn, but I don't use it unless I have to. For how varied and precise other types of space magic were, Apparition was a huge disappointment in comparison.

  It was useful, though, as I hadn't had the time to come up with something better. In the end, it took four jumps over the span of a couple of hours until I reached the place I had chosen as my residence for the foreseeable future.

  Anticosti Island in southeastern Quebec. It was a rather large island, though it only had about 300 people. It was pretty much isolated, and it had ample land for me to mess around in.

  I looked around my lab. Four other women were moving around doing stuff. All four looked the same, and if one looked closely, they could see similarities between me and them.

  The four were a new invention of mine. Actually, I'm not sure if others have found this, but I basically used the same principle of copying memories into living paintings with minor tweaks and made them actual bodies to work with.

  They're not truly intelligent, incapable of imagination and having ideas or true growth. They could, however, do anything non-magical that I could, like running my mundane, completely online, one-woman company, and after about a week of messing around with their physical bodies, even use minor telekinesis.

  They were basically my take on simulacrums. I actually got the idea from D&D. I'd only recently started combing through fantasy media in search of inspiration. And honestly? If simulacrums were the only thing to ever come out of my fantasy media binge, it would have been worth it. They're not only keeping my company going, saving me a ton of time, they're also the ones taking care of chores and even acting as my lab assistants.

  Back to my new silver necklace. I put it on, waiting to see if something happens... Nothing did, and well, nothing should have, so that's good news.

  I started observing the Mana-field. Over the past three years I've gotten much better—I can now observe much further, or rather a bigger picture would be more appropriate, as I've found distance doesn't really translate well to the Mana-field. It's not that there's no space or distance; I don't think even my mind could comprehend something like that yet... Though maybe that's the problem.

  There were vibrations in the Mana-field everywhere, which is understandable as I was in the middle of my lab, but a curious thing was happening now that didn't used to before wearing the dreamcatcher.

  My personal gravity well had almost disappeared, and the vibrations that hit me just passed through without much disturbance except for minute fractions. But for those, I'll just have to upgrade my astral ward further in the future.