Ivan, holding his wand aloft, walked through the sea of books. He had no intention of lingering in the general section and headed straight for the Restricted Section.
Advanced Guide to Transfiguration... Ancient Runes... Legilimency—A Glimpse into Your Mind...
Ivan's eyes swept over the rows of bookshelves. The sheer number of forbidden books with incredibly advanced-sounding names made him drool with desire. He even saw books on Legilimency and Occlumency, which he had been craving.
If he could, Ivan would have loved to use a few hundred Scholar's Experience Cards and spend ten days to half a month here, watching his power level soar...
But in the end, Ivan resisted the temptation. He didn't have that many Academic Points to redeem, and he hadn't forgotten why he was here tonight.
Following the numbers in the Restricted Section, Ivan quickly found the seventh row, twelfth column bookshelf. However, there seemed to be nothing different about it. A large number of magic books were neatly arranged, filling the shelf to the brim without a single gap.
Unwilling to give up, Ivan tried to find some kind of hidden mechanism or secret passage but found nothing. Instead, he accidentally knocked a dark magic book onto the floor.
The book opened on its own, as if with a will of its own, its pages flipping automatically. After a few pages, a rolling black mist billowed out from within. Vaguely, he could see a man's head with its mouth wide open, seemingly letting out a high-pitched scream!
What terrified Ivan was that although he heard no sound, his eardrums began to throb, and his head grew dizzy, as if someone were really shouting right in front of him.
The black mist grew denser and denser, and for a moment, the head looked as if it was about to burst out of the book...
SLAM!
Ivan slammed the book shut, squashing the black head flat between its pages. As the book closed, the black mist vanished.
"It's just a book. You really think you can cause a scene?" Ivan said through gritted teeth, rubbing his ears.
It took a long moment before Ivan dared to pick it up. The cover read Secrets of the Darkest Art. The feel of the cover was distinctly different from the other books; it felt a bit like touching skin.
It couldn't be human skin, could it?
The thought flashed through Ivan's mind, and a chill ran down his spine. Thinking of the man's pained expression just now, it was a real possibility.
Ivan glanced at the reward quest in his system. There was no change, which meant this had nothing to do with the reward. He really had just knocked it down by accident.
Frustrated, Ivan could only shove Secrets of the Darkest Art back onto the shelf. Just as he was about to look for any missed mechanisms again, he suddenly noticed that the bookshelf in front of him seemed slightly different than before.
One... two... three... four... five... six?
Every bookshelf in the Restricted Section was identical. The books were arranged by category, with six rows and seven columns each. But Ivan keenly noticed that the twelfth column bookshelf was clearly missing one compartment.
What felt strange to Ivan was that even though a compartment was missing, the entire row of shelves was still perfectly neat and aligned, as if the space here had been distorted.
"Someone used a Confundus Charm here? And hid one of the compartments."
Ivan narrowed his eyes. He had carefully inspected this bookshelf many times just now. The only possibility was that someone had once placed a Confundus Charm here, affecting his perception, and the scream just now had coincidentally broken the charm.
Even knowing where the anomaly was, Ivan was at a loss. Having read A Detailed Explanation of Basic Spell Principles, he could roughly determine that this was a type of concealment spell, but he knew too few spells, and none of them were useful here.
Ivan had to wrack his brain, trying to recall the books he had read. He randomly remembered a spell Snape had once used in the original story.
"{Aparecium}!" Ivan tried, pressing his wand against the bookshelf and softly uttering the incantation for the Revealing Charm.
The entire bookshelf began to tremble slightly. A crack appeared in the middle of the twelfth column shelf, and after a moment, it suddenly expanded. a new bookcase appeared before Ivan's eyes.
The hidden bookcase looked no different from the others, filled with thick books. Ivan ran his hand over them one by one. When he touched the last one, the system's notification sounded as expected.
[Ding! The reward has been delivered.]
The corner of Ivan's mouth twitched, but he was already complaining wildly in his mind.
This is how the reward is delivered? If it weren't for my good luck and my wit, who knows how long it would have taken to find this!
This useless system isn't user-friendly at all!
Thinking of the helpful, wish-granting systems other people got, Ivan was struck with a wave of self-pity. Being a host was just too hard...
Despite these thoughts, Ivan excitedly pulled the book from the shelf. The cover was slightly rough, with the words The Origin of Bloodlines printed on it. The pages were slightly yellowed. For a magic book made for long-term preservation, its age was apparent.
Ivan found that this was another magic book not mentioned in the original story. Given that it was a reward from the system, Ivan immediately started flipping through it.
After a few pages, Ivan was somewhat disappointed to find that The Origin of Bloodlines was not the grimoire of powerful spells he had imagined. Instead, it was more like a history book, recording the history before the wizarding wars.
In those days, wizards did not dominate the magical world as they do now, nor could they enslave magical creatures like house-elves, which possess powerful magical abilities as adults.
On the contrary, compared to these magical creatures born with great power, human wizards were pitifully weak, only managing to occupy a place in the magical world through sheer numbers.
Fortunately, humans have always been a species that refuses to admit defeat.
Some wizards chose to specialize in magic, creating more powerful spells to enhance their strength. Others turned their attention to quicker methods... such as seizing the power of those mighty magical creatures!
A portion of these wizards succeeded, and their power increased astonishingly. Even more terrifying was that this bloodline power could be passed down, allowing the descendants of these wizards to also gain power.
Although the power of the bloodline might gradually weaken with each generation, this discovery was enough to drive more wizards into a frenzy!
However, bloodline fusion was extremely risky. Apart from a few successes, most wizards died miserably during the experiments. Some lucky failures survived, but as a price, they were twisted into monsters, cursed for generations, such as werewolves and vampires.
Some wizards even chose to breed more powerful magical creatures that were more compatible with themselves to conduct bloodline fusion experiments to enhance their own power.
This made Ivan think of the Basilisk sleeping in the Chamber of Secrets and the Acromantulas in the Forbidden Forest...
The most insane thing was that some wizards found ways to establish "super-friendly relationships" with magical creatures that weren't too difficult to look at, in the hope that their offspring could inherit the other's bloodline...