CH 9 Devouring Mouth and Knowledge
After resting for a while in his rented room at the Leaky Cauldron, Alcor was ready to test his new skill. He removed the three large boxes, that he got from the Junk Shop, from his pouch. They made a heavy thud-like noise, indicating just how many items were in those boxes.
Alcor searched through the boxes, trying to find the perfect item to start the experiment with. Soon he found an old wizard chess set with malfunctioning chess pieces. Seeing that, Alcor decided that he will start with that.
'Alright. Let's see what you can do. Devouring Mouth!!' Alcor called in his mind, setting the target to be the chess set on his right hand.
The next moment, A silvery-grey goo-like substance bubbled from his right hand. Within a moment it transformed into a huge worm's head with no eyes or ears.
However, the head did have a giant round mouth with an enormous anaconda-like tongue, which reminded Alcor of the Mythical Creature - Charybdis. The rows upon rows of sharp jagged teeth rotated like chainsaws as the worm head swallowed the chess set in one gulp before disappearing.
Immediately a set of Notifications popped up before his eyes.
[Host used Devouring Mouth. Devouring Mouth has been fed with a Magical Object.]
[Devouring Mouth is analyzing the Object.]
[Devouring Mouth has unlocked a new category of skills ahead of time: Knowledge Skills.]
[Knowledge Skills are the Fourth type of Skills apart from Innate, Acquired, and Unique. They can be leveled, however, they don't provide any direct Active or Passive effect.]
[Knowledge Skills allow Host to comprehend all actions and information related to the Knowledge better. The higher the level of the Skill the better you can comprehend.]
[Knowledge Skills can be leveled up by three main methods. The first two are similar to Innate and Acquired skills: through practice or by using Skill Points. The Third Method is by letting Devouring Mouth eat magical objects related to the Knowledge Skill.]
[New Knowledge Skills gained: Transfiguration-LV1, Transmutation-LV1, Enchanting-LV1, and Crafting-LV1]
[New Acquired Skill gained: Inanimate Animation-LV1]
Alcor was floored by these new skills. Knowledge skills practically meant that as long as he leveled them up he could basically ace the relevant subject at Hogwarts. It was a cheat better than most of his other skills combined, except maybe Mana Manipulation.
Seeing the benefits Devouring Mouth brought it, Alcor nearly wanted to jump up and dance. He scoured through the boxes and brought out a weakly whistling Sneakoscope. Feeding it to the Devouring Mouth, Alcor was once again greeted with a bunch of new notifications.
[Host used Devouring Mouth. Devouring Mouth has been fed with a Magical Object.]
[Devouring Mouth is analyzing the Object.]
[New Knowledge Skills gained: Defense Against Dark Arts-LV1, Dark Arts-LV1]
[Proficiency of Transfiguration, Transmutation, Enchanting, and Crafting increased.]
[New Acquired Skill gained: Intention Sensing-LV1]
Alcor went into a frenzy after that, feeding the Devouring Mouth all the junk he had bought in big bulks. With a few minutes, the three large boxes were all empty and Alcor was looking at his newly grown knowledge and acquired skills in his status.
Acquired Skills: Vigilance(Passive)-LV50, Curse Resistance(Passive)-LV50, Inanimate Animation-LV8, Intention Sensing-LV4, Magic Pulse-LV2, Colored Light Emission-LV1, Scrying-LV4, Xylomancy-LV1, Myomancy-LV1, Numerology-LV6, Cartomancy-LV3, Pyromancy-LV2, Ornithomancy-LV5, Tessomancy-LV1, Heptomology-LV1, Bibliomancy-LV3, Palmistry-LV6, Physics Manipulation(Rare)-LV1, Matter Manipulation(Rare)-LV1, All Element Creation(Rare)-LV1, Thermal Manipulation-LV3, Causality Manipulation(Rare)-LV1, Biology Manipulation-LV15, Essence Extraction-LV21, Vitality Boost-LV2, Emotion Manipulation-LV5
Knowledge: Transfiguration-LV22, Transmutation-LV27, Enchanting-LV39, Crafting-LV51, Defense Against Dark Arts-LV10, Dark Arts-LV7, Arithmancy-LV14, Ancient Runes-LV9, Evocation-LV24, Healing-LV2, Charms-LV37, Astronomy-LV3, Herbology-LV4, Potions-LV2, Care of Magical Creatures-LV2, Alchemy-LV1, Magical Theory-LV41, Divination-LV29
Not only had he gained a bunch of Knowledge skills, many of which were at the level of a fourth or fifth-year student at Hogwarts, but he had also gained a whole lot of acquired skills, three of which were at Rare Grade.
The reason he had gained the rare skills was that he had gained just too many skills of similar type due to eating many enchanted objects at once, causing Devouring mouth to fuse and provide him with the higher rare grade form of the skills directly without having to spend skill points to evolve it.
However seeing that he had only got three rare skills after eating so many objects proved that it was not so easy to get skills of this grade, let alone ones at an even higher level.
But, what excited him the most was seeing the high level of Crafting, Enchanting, Transmutation, and Transfiguration Knowledge skills. After all, who didn't know of the wide variety of mystical and powerful objects that were present in the Potterverse.
None of them just appeared from thin air, each artifact was crafted by one person or the other. With his ideas from the previous life and his newfound knowledge of Crafting, Enchanting, Transmutation, and Transfiguration, there was a very good chance that he would be able to craft a few stuff that would shock the world.
However, he decided not to hurry with it. Instead of trying to fly and reach the sun in a single leap, he would build a Stairway to Heaven, one step at a time. After all, it was not even a decade in this world and he had already gained so much. With all these new abilities, his growth would only accelerate rather than slow down.
-x-x-x-x-x-x-
After acquiring the new abilities, Alcor decided that it was finally time to move on to the next Energy Dungeon. After a fulfilling meal, Alcor meditated in his room to get to his peak ability. When he felt he was ready, he asked System to open the Dungeon Menu.
[Command Accepted. Displaying List of Available Dungeons.]
[Wind Energy (Recommended Average Stats 10-15)(Time Dilation - 6x)]
[Heat Energy (Recommended Average Stats 15-20)(Time Dilation - 6x)]
[Lunar Energy (Recommended Average Stats 300-1000)(Time Dilation - 60x)]
[Darkness Energy (Recommended Average Stats 100-500)(Time Dilation - 30x)]
[Esoteric Energy (Recommended Average Stats 100-500)(Time Dilation - 30x)]
[Psychic Energy (Recommended Average Stats 50-250)(Time Dilation - 12x)]
'Hmm? There are new Dungeons?' Alcor thought with surprise. But after thinking for a few moments he understood the reason. He was now stronger, along with being in a wizarding location. It was natural for there to be traces of a variety of energies.
Alcor guessed that Lunar and Darkness energy was present because it being nighttime. He presumed that he would encounter Solar and Light energy in Day time.
Heat energy stumped him for a bit before his eyes found the large Magical fireplace in his room. Magic Energy and an Enchanted Fireplace, the resulting dungeon was obvious.
'I am in a dilemma now. Should I do like before and focus on a single dungeon? Or should I participate in as many dungeons as possible and gain respective cores, before grinding them to maturity simultaneously?' Alcor thought.
After a lot of thought, he decided to go with the second option. While it may take longer, it would give him the versatility to handle all kinds of situations.
With this thought in mind, he decided to explore the Heat Energy dungeon first. It was comparable to Wind Energy Dungeon and he would gain its related core within a run or two.
As soon as he selected the dungeon, his consciousness was transported to a world made of heat and Lava, with a few islands scattered in midst of the Lava.
The moment he stepped onto Land, a horde of Fire Elemental Wisps, Ashwinders, and Fire Crabs rushed to attack him. It seemed like he would directly begin here with the same level he had reached in the Wind Energy Dungeon.
'Well, let's go wild!!' Alcor's eyes gleamed as gathered a large amount of Mana and Wind energy. He created giant blade wheel-like constructs from mana and spun them at incredible speeds with an infusion of wind energy.
He sent half a dozen of these constructs to attack the incoming horde of fire element creatures. The result was even better than he expected, they were like grass before a lawn mover. Seeing the lack of challenge, Alcor decided to train his other skills.
He empowered himself with Power Boost, Fleet Foot, and Vitality Boost. He then rushed towards the spawning creatures even faster than them.
He danced around their attacks, attacking them with Magic Pulse, which sent a shock-wave created from Pure Mana to deliver both Internal and External attacks at the target. Although he still decimated the creatures, this was far less mind-numbing as compared to his previous method.
When he started getting too comfortable with this method too, he switched to long-range combat by using Thermal Manipulation to leech out all the heat in these creatures, taking away their source of power and killing them.
After a few runs of Heat Energy Dungeon, he gained the Heat Energy Core. Immediately he switched to Esoteric Energy Dungeon, and later Psychic Energy Dungeon. With dedicated training in these Dungeons for a few days, he managed to get Esoteric and Psychic Core too.
With the attribute points gained from these dungeons, he leveled Heat, Esoteric, and Psychic cores to first maturation too. As a result, he gained Pyrokinesis, Psychokinesis, and Spell Manipulation. With the skill points he had, he managed to upgrade Pyrokinesis and Psychokinesis to max level, and Spell Manipulation to level 50.
Pyrokinesis and Psychokinesis allowed him to manipulate Fire and Psychic energy respectively. Meanwhile, Spell Manipulation allowed him to turn his ideas into spells directly at the cost of an appropriate amount of Mana.
This allowed him to completely bypass the need to chant spells or do wand movements. He could use any and all spells as long as he understood the theory, cause, and effects of the spell.
With these new innate skills, Alcor found his combat strength advancing by leaps and bounds. Currently, he felt he was strong enough to defeat any seventh-year Hogwarts student and put an equal level fight to most Aurors.
After achieving this much progress, Alcor finally took a break from training. This was not because he was mentally tired, but because it was time for Harry to take his first steps in the wizarding world.