Alex let out a small chuckle. "Well, if you think it's too pricey, you're welcome to ask another alchemist to do the repairs. Maybe they've got better techniques and can get it done using less."
He wasn't worried in the slightest that they'd go looking for someone else. Alex was well-acquainted with the domestic alchemy community, and truth be told, the rune circuit in this room was incredibly complex.
As far as he knew, only Dumbledore and himself were capable of fully understanding it, let alone diagnosing its problems.
Sure, they could try to bring in someone from abroad, maybe Egypt. Cairo's alchemists were reputable, but their prices would probably be even higher. Plus, in the alchemy world, it was pretty common to overstate the material requirements a bit, it was practically tradition.
"It's not that we don't trust you, Alex," Bagnold said, clearly trying to smooth things over as he sighed. "It's just… three ounces of Ulim steel and one ounce of refined mithril is no small matter. Is there really no other option?"
Alex paused to think for a moment, then nodded slowly. "Well… I could substitute with standard mithril and an Agrippa alloy. It would be cheaper, for sure. But using second-tier materials would lower the overall efficiency of the array. And because of the quality difference, I can't promise there won't be emergency failures down the line."
Alex spoke with the tone of someone looking out for the Ministry of Magic's best interests, but deep down, he was certain that Minister Bagnold wouldn't accept the alternative plan.
After all, for a well-funded institution like the Ministry, the materials he requested, while expensive, weren't exactly out of reach. Just the inventory hoarded by the Travers family alone contained several times more than what he was asking for.
The Ministry's hesitation wasn't about practicality, it was clearly about money. They had the resources. They just didn't want to spend them.
As expected, Minister Bagnold shook her head after thinking it over for a moment, rejecting the idea of using lower-grade materials. She didn't want to compromise the quality of the rune array in the alchemy room.
"We'll stick with the materials you mentioned," she said firmly. "The maintenance of the alchemy room will be in your hands, but we'll need someone from the Ministry to oversee the repairs. And when you're done, you'll need to train our staff on how to maintain the system properly."
"No problem at all," Alex replied without hesitation.
Frankly, he didn't care if someone was assigned to supervise him. When he was doing serious alchemy, any second-rate Ministry employee watching would be lucky to even understand a tenth of what he was doing.
Once the deal was finalized, Alex began working at the Ministry almost every day over the following week.
In truth, the detection array inside the alchemy room was extremely well-made, and if he wanted, he could've restored its function in just a few minutes using a handful of well-placed spells. But given how dramatically he'd talked up the damage, he couldn't afford to rush through it, especially not with two Ministry staff members assigned to observe everything.
So, to make the job seem as difficult and impressive as he'd claimed, Alex brought in a whole bunch of mysterious-looking instruments and magical devices. Most of them were just for show, blinking lights, humming enchantments, floating diagrams, things that dazzled the eyes but didn't necessarily do much. While he "worked," he performed elaborate, flashy spellwork using the Ministry's own supply of rare materials, leaving his observers thoroughly confused and awestruck.
But Alex wasn't wasting his time on theatrics alone. His real reason for staying in the alchemy room so long was to study the intricate monitoring array built into the room.
To his surprise and delight, the array was far more advanced than he'd expected. It was practically a goldmine of magical engineering. Embedded within it were dozens of alchemy spells and rune patterns he had never encountered before, many of them related to remote communication, long-distance detection, identity verification, energy absorption and conservation, and magical storage systems.
In just one week, Alex absorbed a wealth of knowledge, expanding his understanding of these advanced magical concepts. But the biggest breakthrough came when he started studying the central framework of the array. That's when he discovered something truly valuable, spells related to space-locking and tracking.
It felt like stumbling upon treasure.
Right now, Alex's biggest concern was the threat posed by Portkeys. He had no intention of letting that mysterious figure, 'Thunderbird', slip away again. He wanted to confront him directly. But the problem was, even if he showed up prepared, the man could simply vanish using a Portkey, making it impossible to pin him down.
And from Azalea, he had already confirmed that the Silver Spear organization did indeed possess Portus-based technology, meaning they could create Portkeys themselves. That complicated everything.
But now, after studying the spellwork embedded in the Ministry's Portkey detection array, Alex had a new idea. The space-locking and tracking enchantments offered a possible solution.
He was confident that he could develop a magical jammer that would restrict Portkey travel. Maybe even more than that, he could potentially create a device that could trace the direction and movement pattern of someone using Apparition or a Portkey, allowing him to follow their spatial trail wherever it led.
Time passed on. He practically lived in it, spending his days and nights there, either sprawled out on the floor or leaning against the wall, eyes glued to every inch of the rune array, carefully studying the magical lines carved into it.
The two Ministry of Magic employees assigned to supervise him were completely worn out. From their perspective, Alex was ridiculously dedicated, he didn't seem to rest at all. He'd work until midnight before finally stopping, only to start again the next morning without missing a beat.
Because of their reports, however, Minister Bagnold and the other high-ranking officials grew to trust Alex even more. They saw his relentless work ethic as proof of his commitment to improving the Ministry's systems.
On the fifth day of his deep dive into the alchemy room's systems, Alex finally managed to get the Portkey detection array working again. With it activated, the Ministry could now track the use of Portkeys anywhere in the UK through the magic circle.
But once he'd restored the function, Alex also realized why the Ministry had chosen to keep it disabled all these years, the magical energy it consumed was massive. Just keeping the Portkey detection active drained as much energy as the entire magic monitoring system by itself.
In other words, the energy cost of running both would instantly double.
And as Alex continued digging into the rune array, he made another discovery: the alchemy room could also be used to detect Apparition. The function had never been mentioned before, but it was there, hidden deep within the magic circle's structure.
However, activating both Portkey and Apparition detection would cause the energy usage to spike even further, to several times the normal rate. With the Ministry's current magic reserves, it simply wasn't sustainable.
Using the opportunity, Alex requested permission to enter the Ministry's Power Room, claiming he needed to inspect the array connected to it. His real goal was just to observe and study it.