A Favorable Situation, Returning to the Original Plan

After listening to Griffin's explanation, Manus digested it while forming a few more conjectures.

Such a divide was indeed likely born of conflicting ideals, but it was also a tactic that any long-established family had mastered: placing bets on both sides to ensure the family's survival.

At the same time, it was the result of interests at work. Pure-blood or not, that was merely a slogan; every family's true goal was profit.

As far as Manus knew, among the King Family's holdings, the faction controlled by Griffin was primarily involved in business.

Therefore, their faction's choice might not have had much to do with how much they liked non-pure-blood wizards, but it certainly had something to do with liking non-pure-blood wizards' money.

And that was indeed the case. The King Family's businesses even made money from Muggles.

When the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy had been established, the King Family had taken part in it as well. They understood perfectly well that not exposing magic before Muggles did not mean they could not interact with Muggles. Conducting ordinary business with them did not violate the Statute.

During the period of Prohibition imposed by Muggles a century ago, the money the King Family's wineries earned from Muggles still had not been spent to this day.

Returning to Manus's train of thought, now that he understood his family's current position, he also knew who their potential friends and enemies were.

More precisely, his family's current stance was still neutral.

In the early stages of the conflict, neutrality would bring them a stable life. No one wanted to push other neutral parties into the opposing camp.

But as the struggle entered its later stages and the victor gradually became clear, the position of neutral parties would become awkward.

If they defected to the stronger side, they would be seen as fence-sitters. Not only would they be unwelcome, they might even face a reckoning and be bled dry.

And if they continued to remain neutral, they would have to face coercion from the weaker side. They had once feared pushing other neutral parties to the other side, but now, if they did not make a desperate gamble, there might not even be a future. How could they still worry about so much?

After all, strength and weakness were relative. Any faction was stronger than a single household. Even the currently weaker Death Eaters were far more powerful than his family.

So...

"The situation isn't too bad."

Manus smiled. At the very least, he would not have to directly join the conflict between the two sides during his weakest period.

He had a clear understanding of his current condition. Even without relying on the system and simply recovering his original strength step by step, he was confident that he could gain enough power to protect himself within ten years.

Unfortunately, Griffin and Aivina still refused to let him come into contact with this world's magic. Clearly, he could already control his magic power and had even demonstrated Mage Hand.

But the good news was that their attitude had begun to soften. Perhaps he could at least learn some simple magic?

With that in mind, Manus returned to his room after finishing the conversation and used Mage Hand to take a thick, notebook-sized book from the shelf.

As long as one possessed magic power, meeting the minimum requirements to create a spellbook was not difficult.

Without any additional requirements, it could even be said that all one needed was paper.

The truly difficult part was engraving a spell model onto the pages, turning a magically infused book into a genuine spellbook.

To do that, one had to flatten a layered, three-dimensional spell model onto a two-dimensional page without affecting the structure of the spell model.

That was why, without using reading magic, almost no one could recognize what they were looking at when they saw an unfamiliar pattern in an unfamiliar spellbook.

Was it a spell model?

Or a malicious trap?

The lesson here was: do not casually use reading magic on any spellbook you did not understand.

As the final stroke fell, the spell model for [Fireball +100] was completed.

Manus looked at the plus sign that no longer appeared after Fireball. It meant that after more than a month of research, the skill panel's enhancement of Fireball had reached its limit.

Manus had originally had two guesses about the limitations of enhancement. One was that enhancement had an upper limit; the other was that enhancement would bring special changes. At present, it seemed both existed.

Every ten enhancements, a skill underwent a qualitative transformation. He could choose an enhancement direction, while all previous enhancements would be integrated.

However, the upper limit was not fixed. The reason Fireball could only be enhanced to +100 was mainly because it was constrained by its original spell model.

Fireball's spell model was only so large. Its overall framework could not be altered, and no amount of enhancement could expand it indefinitely.

Unless he changed the framework itself, but then the spell would no longer be Fireball.

By that logic, among First Circle through Ninth Circle spells, the higher the circle, the higher the enhancement limit would surely be.

Then Manus could not help but wonder—did Zero-Ring Magic have an enhancement limit?

After all, Zero-Ring Magic did not have such a thing as a spell model.

Looking at the "+" after [Mage Hand], Manus's eyes gleamed.

But after a brief moment of thought, Manus still shifted his gaze to [Beast Blood Baptism], the spell he had initially learned by spending Skill Points.

Having completed his research into Fireball, he had already learned the leveling mechanism through the magic system he understood. What he needed most right now was not immediate combat power.

Then he should not continue spending time enhancing those low-circle spells—although those enhancements had given him some new ideas, unfortunately, they had not brought him any surprises.

This Fireball, enhanced a hundred times, was like seeing a question he had encountered more than two hundred years ago and discovering that knowledge he had learned decades ago offered a solution he had never considered.

"Oh, so it could be solved like this."

That was Manus's reaction to this Fireball.

Therefore, he should return to his original plan and focus his research on broadening his magical knowledge.

With inexhaustible Skill Points, although he still could not learn the powerful magic of new systems, the quantitative accumulation of basic magic could still allow him to rapidly build sufficient understanding of the new system's magic.

And through enhancing Fireball, he had learned that the model changes produced by those enhancement directions were actually partial structural characteristics of powerful spells.

Based on that, perhaps he could derive for himself the spells he could not learn because his level was too low.

After returning the spellbook containing a hundred Fireball models to the shelf, Manus pulled out a new spellbook and began engraving the spell model of Beast Blood Baptism onto its first page.

"Let me see the mysteries of the Nature Magic system..."