System Status

While Severus was still processing everything, Manus reexamined the system he had pieced together.

As expected, the entire system was severely damaged. Manus had no idea how many submodules it originally had, but after all the repairs, only two modules remained.

One was the part Manus had only managed to seize in his panic—the source of the endless stream of magic in the transmigrator's hands, magic from a system entirely different from that of their world.

Now Manus knew that source was called the Skill Module.

Because it was the only part Manus had deliberately targeted, it had been nearly half complete from the start. Including the torn-off portions, its overall completeness after repairs might have reached... seventy percent?

It contained countless Skill Trees. Every tree was an independent magical system, with countless magical skills branching off from it.

The other module was the Character Panel. This module was the foundation of every other module's functions. In other words, even using the Skill Module required the Character Panel, something Manus had not anticipated before.

But precisely because of that, nearly all the fragments from the other modules contained parts that could be used for the Character Panel.

Looking at those other modules, shattered beyond recognition and utterly beyond repair, Manus ultimately gave up on them and used all their fragments to restore the Character Panel.

Even so, that module remained pitifully incomplete... True Name, Level, and Skill Points. Only those three data entries still functioned, and even they were incomplete.

The True Name field was almost entirely garbled text and missing sections. Manus did not even know how to pronounce it, but from the few intact symbols, he recognized that it was indeed his True Name from before he transmigrated.

Manus had some ideas about that field, but they would have to wait until he possessed magical power. Right now, he could not see his own True Name.

The Level field should also have come from his pre-transmigration self. According to what that transmigrator had said, Manus should have been above level ninety, but after the damage, the level cap was only level 10.

The Skill Points field was the most important of all, because Manus had discovered that it was the key supporting the Skill Module.

He needed to spend Skill Points to light up magic in the Skill Module before he could obtain the corresponding magical knowledge.

Thus, it was the most complete of the three entries. During the repairs, Manus had done everything he could to restore the function of Skill Points without losing even a single part. Restricted by the level rules, level 10 only corresponded to 100 Skill Points.

That meant he could use those Skill Points to acquire the knowledge corresponding to at most one hundred spells.

But Manus had no intention of robbing Peter to pay Paul just to raise his level. If he wanted to preserve the function of Skill Points, then 100 had to remain 100.

If Skill Points could not serve their original purpose, then no matter how high his level was—whether 100 became 9000 or more—the magical knowledge they could ultimately bring him would still be zero.

One level meant one hundred Skill Points, one hundred spells. According to that guy, he had been a level-100, nine-times-advanced God of Magic. Did that mean he had mastered ten thousand spells?

And that was without learning even a single spell on his own!

No wonder the magic he wielded had seemed endless, as though there were no limit to it.

Yet fortunately—and regrettably—that guy had been an idiot. He had utterly failed to bring out the value of those ten thousand spells, not even one hundred-millionth of one hundred-millionth of it.

Were these merely ten thousand spells?

If used sparingly, they were ten thousand different magical systems!

Manus swept his gaze over the countless magical Skill Trees on the Skill Module. With one glance, he knew there were not ten thousand trees here. He just did not know whether the original version in the transmigrator's hands had contained ten thousand magical Skill Trees.

What use was the sheer number of spells? What was the point of spending Skill Points on multiple spells with highly overlapping roles, concepts, and systems?

Take fireball alone. Pick any magic academy or floating city of mages, and the branch variants recorded within would number no fewer than three million.

Do not ask. Manus had padded—no, developed—eight new variants in his thesis back then. He had needed to check for duplication, after all.

After so many years of development, spells from the evocation school alone had become so numerous that their catalogues, piled together, would be larger than a planet. Even one hundred million Skill Points would only let him learn the tip of the iceberg, while the truly valuable knowledge could fit into a thin little booklet.

Yet every additional spell name in that booklet would bring enormous changes to the entire system. That was what truly held value.

Among those truly honored as great mages, which one simply hurled hundreds or thousands of spells down at once? And which one did not use a version of magic they had refined themselves to suit them best?

Knowledge and ideas—those were the true foundations of a caster's strength.

One's own tactics, one's own magic, one's own school—those were what fundamentally distinguished mages, at every stage, from lifeless things like constructs, mage towers, and floating cities.

Still... it was fortunate that guy had been an idiot. Fortunate that Manus had found that fool first. Now this thing was in his hands. There might not be ten thousand, but even one thousand was already excellent. He was not about to complain.

One thousand magical systems. Even if he could only study each system through a single spell, as long as he chose a representative one, one was actually enough.

Gods, forget his teachers. Did even those lords of magical planes have conditions like his?

Manus's heartbeat began to race uncontrollably, but he immediately used assisted breathing and shallow meditation to calm himself, clearing away emotional interference.

This was not the time to celebrate. The crucial question was whether the Skill Points he had painstakingly amassed could truly be used.

Even the Skill Points, the most complete entry, were merely the tallest among dwarfs. The entry itself had indeed been repaired, but the entire Character Panel was still badly incomplete.

With the trunk damaged to this extent, even if the branches were intact, whether the tree could survive remained unknown.

"First, carefully select the first spell to learn. Tonight, when I'm alone, I'll try it. Before then, I need to calm myself and keep my emotions from interfering with my judgment."

Since he was only selecting the first magical system to choose, Manus merely browsed through them roughly. Once he had a general idea, he turned back to Severus.

Severus was still staring blankly ahead, but it was clearly no longer the stunned shock of having been struck by the revelation. It was uncertainty about the future.

"Don't think too much about it. These are all..."

Perhaps because of his earlier thoughts, Manus noticed that his tone had become cold, with too much emotion stripped away.

That tone could have come from a great mage who had grown up an orphan and built his own private mage tower before the age of three hundred, but it should not have come from a four-year-old child from a happy, loving family.

He quickly adjusted himself and blinked.

"They're all things you have no ability to change right now."