Beast Blood Baptism +100000

Looking at the half cake in the box and imagining what the complete three-tiered cake must have looked like, Severus nodded fiercely:

"What a waste!"

"Right?"

As the two talked, Mr. Snape's shouting came from inside the house:

"Who is it?"

His voice was slurred, sticky, and swallowed its words. Though he was clearly far away, it felt as if they could smell the alcohol in his voice.

"It's Manus, Dad. Manus came to see me."

After turning to answer the house, Severus turned back, the excitement on his face noticeably dimmer.

Fortunately, Manus had not just learned about Severus's family situation. After all these years, he no longer found it embarrassing, only disappointing.

"It's fine. Take the cake inside first and eat it with Aunt Eileen."

Manus glanced at the sky in the distance. The sun had already completely sunk below the horizon, and only a faint afterglow remained amid the clouds.

"It's too late today, and I'm tired too. I'll come play with you tomorrow."

"Okay..."

Severus sighed in disappointment, but quickly perked up again.

"Then wait here for a moment~"

"Hm? Okay."

Manus watched expectantly as Severus hurried back into the house with the cake in his arms.

Before long, Severus returned holding a gift box—the stereotypical kind wrapped in colorful paper with a bow tied on top.

Precisely because of that, there was no way to tell what was inside. This was probably Severus's "revenge" for Manus seeing at a glance last year that his gift had been a prepared lacewing.

"Happy birthday, Manus. See you tomorrow~"

Severus smiled as he handed the gift box to Manus, who carefully accepted it.

"Thank you, Severus. See you tomorrow!"

They continued home by carriage. Griffin went to deal with the carriage, while Aivina helped Manus carry the books he had packed down from it.

"Alright, you can sort these out yourself from here. Mom won't help you."

After placing the two stacks of books on the dining table, Aivina dusted off her hands.

"By the way, Manu, does your bookshelf still have room for all these books?"

Ever since he had awakened his magic at the age of five, Manus had cleaned his own room. As a result, Aivina entered his room only a few times a year.

"They'll fit, Mom. I've always kept things organized."

He might once have needed all kinds of storage tricks to fit his spellbooks away, but now Manus had many more methods available to him. Still, perhaps he could use this world's magic to get some practice.

For example... the Undetectable Extension Charm recorded in The Standard Book of Spells?

While considering how to arrange his room afterward, Manus ran back and forth between the first and second floors several times before placing everything that needed to be moved into his room in the corner just inside the door.

"Whew~ Looks like it's time to put physical training on the agenda."

He stretched his slightly sore arms. For the time being, Manus did not plan to reveal that he knew the Levitation Charm, much less use Mage Hand in front of his mother, so he could only work himself hard.

This particularly strenuous bout of labor also rekindled Manus's desire to exercise. At his current age, moderate exercise would no longer affect his growth; on the contrary, it would benefit it.

"Being a mage doesn't mean you don't need to train your body. As long as you still need your body to survive—and besides, plenty of spells need to be cast at close range." —Manus's senior fellow disciple

Even a grand mage of Necromancy School said so, and he practiced what he preached, training his body despite the erosion of negative energy and even becoming an excellent swordsman. There could be no more convincing example than that.

Back then, to tempt Manus into joining him in training, his senior fellow disciple had even brought out several Necromancy School spells of his own invention. All of them needed to be cast at close range, and they were highly practical.

That had instantly filled the younger Manus with enthusiasm.

Snapping out of his memories, Manus leaned back in his chair and thought:

"Come to think of it, if I want to strengthen my body, perhaps exercise isn't the only way..."

Although many spells only enhanced the body temporarily, and Manus had never learned any magic capable of permanently strengthening or altering the body before he crossed over, he had learned such magic after arriving here.

Of course, he was not talking about Dark Magic recorded in books such as Bone · Blood · Flesh, but rather the magic of a new system he had learned from the panel.

These spells were generally very low level, but after being upgraded, they had considerable potential—especially when Manus chose upgrade paths by following their underlying logic.

Manus summoned the panel and looked at an old friend.

[Beast Blood Baptism +100000]

Once upon a time, Fireball—the first spell Manus had used to test the magic enhancement function—had a maximum enhancement level of +100. But that had only been an experiment.

Manus had not needed that experiment to produce any actual result. He had merely wanted to use a spell he knew well to test the function's possibilities and limitations.

Fireball had only been able to reach +100 because, when choosing enhancement directions, Manus had deliberately selected several paths completely incompatible with Fireball.

The result was that the panel could still produce an outcome, but it was extremely forced and drastically reduced Fireball's enhancement cap—but Manus had already gotten the answer he wanted.

When enhancing [Beast Blood Baptism], however, Manus had not chosen those experimental directions.

Instead, he had steadily upgraded it along the developmental path from low-circle to high-circle that had caught his eye when he first chose [Beast Blood Baptism] as his first learned skill.

Sure enough, upgrade directions suited to the spell's own development greatly increased its maximum enhancement level.

[Beast Blood Baptism +100000]: Using part of a creature's tissue as material and aided by an incantation, it allows the target to gain corresponding enhancements. The tissue's energy, function, preservation time, integrity, and other factors all affect the enhancement's effect. At any given time, only one baptism from each type of creature may be retained.

Judging from the description alone, this spell's effect was already almost no different from the pinnacle of this developmental path—[Myriad Beasts Totem].

Even if there were differences, they were nothing more than numerical disparities in utilization rate, conversion rate, and the like. At least in terms of mechanism, they were largely the same. Some flaws that might have caused those numerical differences were actually beneficial in Manus's eyes.

For instance, the description of [Myriad Beasts Totem] stated that the spell would cause tattoos of the corresponding creatures to appear on the target's body, and might even directly produce certain corresponding biological traits...

That might have been one factor that increased conversion efficiency, and in the spell's original world, such traits might even have been something worth showing off. But to Manus, they were purely a downgrade.