To twist an object, one must first understand it.
First comes understanding, then comes distortion.
For example, take a dog. Louis must understand whether it's real or fake, alive or dead, before he can twist it.
The more he knows, the stronger the distortion becomes.
If Louis fully understands a person, he could even twist their fate, allowing another person to become them.
This kind of fate-level replacement is far stronger than the Faceless Phantom's "Horror Mirror Ghost," though it is far more troublesome to execute. After all, distortion is not rewriting.
The Horror Mirror Ghost imitates and replaces, carrying the risk of being exposed—since the Faceless Phantom cannot obtain the target's intelligence or memories.
But fate substitution is different. The substitute doesn't need to do anything. Others will naturally treat the substitute as the original—without the slightest suspicion. Even the target's closest family would be fooled.
Of course, Louis mentioned this not because he wanted to replace anyone, but because he was reminded of the system notifications.
Nothing is more direct and intuitive than text. When modifying something, all he has to do is change the characters.
And in certain cases, altering text could produce extraordinary effects.
For example, if Louis disliked a certain book—once he altered a single character, every copy of that book in the entire world would instantly update to the version he wanted.
From a certain perspective, since the system displays notifications in text, shouldn't Louis be able to twist the system notifications as well?
"If this works, wouldn't that basically mean I've unlocked cheats? Unlimited points, here I come."
Louis pulled up the system notifications and located the most recent batch of Trick Points.
His right eye shimmered—countless distorted lines writhing inside his pupil.
Suddenly, he noticed the characters in the system window twitch slightly.
There's hope!
Louis' eyes lit up. He could feel resistance, but as long as there was any effect, that was a good sign.
Just as he was about to modify the numbers, his vision suddenly went black.
Thick black smoke poured from his right eye, completely covering his sight.
His eye… caught fire. Without any warning. It just ignited—black smoke billowing, sparks popping.
Louis felt the scorching heat. Clearly, the eyeball had overloaded.
It seemed the system was not something he could distort. A system capable of granting root-level rewards clearly existed at the level of the root—or even above it.
In that case, items exchanged with Fate Points, such as the miraculous "Fate Splice", might actually outrank the distortion rule in priority.
Thinking about it, that made sense. The Fate Splice, priced at 100 points, required no prerequisites, no understanding, no complicated process. It could directly transplant a segment of fate from one person to another.
Meanwhile, using distortion to transplant fate required individually twisting every perception others had of that person… as well as every thread of fate attached to them.
"But even if the system itself is at the root—or above the root—its products shouldn't be, right?"
Louis wasn't worried at all about his eyeball combusting. He rubbed his eye, and the scorched eyeball regenerated good as new.
With a "might as well try" attitude, Louis took out a few items from his storage space.
First was his very first tool—the item that had granted him qualification to enter the magical world: Magic Hand.
Magic Hand: An invisible hand controlled by thought. Can grasp objects or attack enemies. Strength equals three times the user's mental power.
It was a common-grade item. Now that Louis' mental power far exceeded its enhancement limit, both mental output and strength had balanced out.
When it came to text influencing reality, nothing mattered more than history—and system item descriptions.
If he could modify those, then his distortion ability would have limitless potential.
"Let's start with an upgrade…"
Louis looked at Magic Hand and attempted to twist its "Common-grade" prefix.
His goal: Legendary-grade.
His power distorted—it did not rewrite.
This difference was especially visible in the system's item descriptions.
He couldn't delete and rewrite the description of Magic Hand—he could only twist the text to change it.
In the end, Louis failed.
But this time, the failure wasn't because he couldn't modify it—it was because it couldn't withstand the modification.
The gap between Common-grade and Legendary-grade was simply too vast. Magic Hand couldn't handle it.
Or rather, directly altering the grade—whether upgrading or downgrading—was not feasible at all.
So Louis switched to another method: he changed one character in the description.
He changed the character for "hand" into "sword".
This time, Louis succeeded.
The original pair of invisible hands became a pair of invisible short swords.
It was still practically useless to him, but the meaning behind the result made Louis ecstatic.
As expected—root-level distortion did work on system-generated items!
Then Louis took out something so terrifying that even he felt a little afraid of it.
The Spring of Drowned Maiden — Wizarding World Special Edition!
This horrifying item could turn a person alternately male or female.
Although the description said it only worked if the entire bottle was consumed, Louis still didn't dare touch it.
He was a perfectly fine man—he absolutely didn't want to turn into a girl.
But turning others into girls?
That was worth considering.
It was just a pity the thing only had one use…
Louis stared at the crystal vial for a while, then took out another item from his storage.
The Bottomless Little Red Bottle.
Originally used by Voldemort himself for healing, he'd abandoned it when fleeing, and Louis had taken it.
But the little red bottle was useless to Louis—he himself was basically a walking fountain of healing and never needed endless supply potions.
Louis had planned to leave it for the Wilson couple, but unlike Black Jade Medicinal Paste and other medicines, it wasn't exactly convenient to carry around.
So he simply left it in his storage.
Now, however, Louis had a wicked idea—one that required the sacrifice of the little red bottle.
"Well… this counts as recycling waste."
Louis sneered and prepared to use distortion in a new way.
He would attach the bottomless attribute of the red bottle to the Spring of Drowned Maiden!
Even Louis felt a chill at such an evil idea.
But it was fun… and dramatic!
At his command, the two items began to fuse.
The external fusion was merely the system's visual representation—what truly merged were the descriptions of the Endless Little Red Bottle and the Spring of Drowned Maiden.
Louis intended to take the "Endless" trait and paste it in front of the Spring of Drowned Maiden as a prefix.
(T/N: Well done, Louis.)
But this method was much harder than modifying a single character.
Louis felt his right eye nearing overload again, though fortunately nowhere near as severe as when he tried to modify the system notification.
Finally, the two items fully merged, and their final description changed.
It wasn't the "Endless Spring of Drowned Maiden" he had imagined.
Instead, it simply gained a limited number of uses.
Three times…
The little red bottle had only added its own maximum storage limit to the spring.
Louis wasn't sure whether this was because of his lack of skill, system interference, or because three uses were simply the limit of the spring itself.
"This works too. Three uses is plenty. Now I can boldly turn anyone into a hermaphrodite without worrying about wasting it."
Louis grinned wickedly, holding the newly enhanced Spring of Drowned Maiden.
He could still modify the spring further—like making the transformation multiplier even more absurd—but since he wasn't the one who would use it, there was no need to go overboard.
A simple enhancement to the number of uses was enough.
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