After returning to the Harry Potter world, Skyl went back to Gringotts.
The same goblin clerk who had served him last time greeted him with a squinty smile and even asked whether he'd been satisfied with their services.
What could Skyl say? The fees were on the steep side, sure, but goblin work was reliable. No short weights, nothing shoddy palmed off as premium—just as they liked to say themselves: "All of our staff are backed by the bank's sterling reputation."
"I'd like to acquire one or more house-elves," Skyl said. "Put out a notice for me. Any wizard willing to transfer ownership of a house-elf can send in an asking price. I'm not short of money. I'm appointing your fine institution as intermediary. I'll pay ten percent of the final sale price as your brokerage fee, and if you can locate a seller before September first, I'll add another five hundred Galleons on top."
He spoke lightly, radiating the lazy confidence of a freshly-minted upstart.
Gold glinted in the goblin's eyes. He agreed with a broad, fawning smile.
This wasn't the sort of thing that could be settled quickly. House-elves weren't workers you picked up at the wizarding equivalent of a job market. They were monopolized by wealthy, powerful pure-blood families. Only when those families chose to part with one did anyone else have a chance to buy.
With that matter temporarily arranged, Skyl turned his attention elsewhere.
He now lived full-time in the Tower of Tomes; he'd even moved his bed in.
When he was inside the Tower, his study sessions became frighteningly efficient. Textbooks that had seemed dense and opaque before now flowed smoothly from cover to cover, as if the knowledge itself were opening up to him. He could catch the author's train of thought between the lines; reading felt like holding a conversation with an old friend.
Through these "friends", he learned that magic was an ancient craft. He heard wizards complain about how deep and stingy truth could be, and he heard their cries of delight when they uncovered some new mystery. Skyl could feel the breath of every sentence as if it were his own. Before he knew it, all that knowledge had etched itself into his mind.
Studying like this was genuinely joyful. Addictive, even.
Theory wasn't the only thing that amazed him. The Tower of Tomes also gave his spellcasting a massive boost. If casting magic in the outside world had felt like begging the universe for a response, then here, in the Tower, it felt like giving orders.
He swept his cypress wand through the air; from the simplest Lumos to the demanding, abstruse Vanishing Spells, each one worked on the first try. If he ever learned the Unforgivable Curses, he had no doubt he'd be able to cast them instantly in here.
Because he held absolute authority in this place, every spell he knew was vastly amplified while he was inside the Tower.
Take Transfiguration, for example—arguably the most complex subject in the wizarding curriculum. To get even basic Transfiguration under control, students needed hundreds of hours of theory, followed by endless repetition at their wands. Failure was inevitable along the way.
Skyl knew he wasn't a natural talent at Transfiguration. When he first learned the spell, he had used the ruined wilderness shack as his practice target. Back then, it took him more than a dozen attempts to turn a broken plank into a stool. When even simple changes of form were that hard, there was no point dreaming about changing an object's inherent properties. Every tiny bit of progress he'd made had been paid for in sweat.
But inside the Tower of Tomes, everything was different. His Transfiguration Charms became absolute law. As long as he had enough magic to fuel a spell, and his theoretical understanding covered all the relevant details, he could turn a rock into a missile—one that would actually launch.
Within the Tower, Skyl could let his magic off the leash. The skills he honed here didn't vanish the moment he stepped outside either; a good portion of that sharpness stayed with him.
It was like speedrunning proficiency.
The Tower of Tomes gave Skyl a lofty vantage point. After personally experiencing high-level applications of dozens of spells, his progress shot ahead by leaps and bounds.
He mastered nonverbal magic in short order, then pushed on still further—into wandless casting.
The Tower of Tomes knew no day or night, and Skyl had no idea how long he'd been buried in his studies. He only knew he was insatiable, constantly reaching for more knowledge, more power.
Once he'd stamped the last of the textbooks into his memory, Skyl began resonating with his own magic. It was a kind of psychic reflex: casting spells felt as natural as lifting an arm or flexing a finger, something he could do without even thinking.
Only after he reached that level did he finally allow himself to slow down and think about the road ahead.
The first thing that came to mind was how to upgrade the Tower of Tomes.
As an Oblivion-style realm, the Tower wasn't exactly complete. It lacked a "heart". Just as a car needed an engine, a divine realm needed a power core—something that was both its sun and the source of its master's strength. At the moment, the Tower's operation relied entirely on Skyl's own magic. It was like a seed that needed rain; his magic wasn't even enough to count as a drizzle—more like a bank of fog.
Constructing an energy core would be his main long-term project going forward. He already had his eye on a target. The Elder Scrolls world was practically littered with artifacts—especially Daedric ones—and an absurd number of them were crammed into Skyrim, like magical turnips in a wholesale market. Once he'd grown a bit stronger, he could start making plans to go after them. For now, there was no need to rush.
Skyl also took some time to study the items that had travelled with him between worlds: primarily the fork, his pajamas, and his mobile phone. The noodles he'd dropped on the floor that first night had clearly disappeared forever.
His research did pay off. Every item that had crossed with him had picked up some kind of magical property. The instant-noodle fork could conduct magic, which was why it worked so well as a wand. His pajamas had a self-repair function; even if they were burned to ashes, they would slowly restore themselves.
The phone was the weird one. Any app that needed a network connection was dead, and the phone itself couldn't connect to any real telephone system. But Skyl could use a Copying Charm on the phone; the copies were perfect duplicates of the original, and they could call each other. Even with no signal and no SIM card, they still worked—and could place calls across worlds.
Skyl's expression turned strange. The image that popped into his head was a behind-the-scenes gag from Journey to the West: the White Elephant spirit phoning up actor Zhang Fengyi to say he was down by the Yongding River, snacking on Tang Sanzang's flesh…
Magic. Pretty incredible, isn't it?
Back in The Elder Scrolls world, once the feast was over, Skyl bought up all the poultry raised in Riverwood. Only living creatures with souls could carry a Daedric Prince's imprint; the weaker the soul, the weaker the remaining taint. Tiny creatures—bugs and the like—couldn't bear Mora's presence at all.
He gathered the last traces of Mora's corruption. The energies condensed on their own into a murky yellow-green eyeball, about the size of a marble, veined with blood and looking both feeble and agonized.
Researching Mora's residue did a great deal to push Skyl's magic forward—but it was far too abstruse. Even with the Tower's all-seeing perspective, his current level of learning wasn't enough to dissect the essence of a Daedric Prince. He had no choice but to seal it away for now.
The stir and the windfall that Mora had brought him finally came to an end. Skyl began to enjoy the rest of his holiday. He stayed mostly in the Harry Potter world now, occasionally practising spells so his hands wouldn't get "rusty".
By day he wandered around London, heading to Diagon Alley to buy books and magical supplies, then on to Muggle libraries for ordinary books. Mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, agriculture—he didn't turn anything down. There might be a gap between magic and science, but there were plenty of ways to draw parallels between them.
If he was free in the afternoon, he'd take a bag of bread to Trafalgar Square—jokingly called "Big Dog Square"—to feed the pigeons. One of his old roommates had proposed to his girlfriend there. The doves had taken wing in a flurry of white; it had looked almost dreamlike, apart from all the bird droppings.
Later, that same roommate and his fiancée had divorced while they were still working on their PhDs. The roommate had been a wreck, sobbing like a two-hundred-pound kid. Skyl had dragged him out every day to feed the pigeons.
The pigeons of the late twentieth century were still as greedy as ever, and London's weather was still as fickle as ever. A light rain suddenly began to fall. Skyl hesitated, wondering whether to use a spell to keep the rain off.
A brown-haired girl walked past, umbrella in hand. "You don't have an umbrella?" she asked, passing him a spare long-handled one.
"Thank you," Skyl said with a smile. "There aren't many girls as kind as you these days."
The girl gave a flustered little laugh, her cheeks going pink, and ran back to her parents. The middle-class couple gave Skyl a polite wave.
He stuffed the leftover bread into his coat, tightened the short trench coat around himself, and left "Big Dog Square" at a brisk pace.
There weren't many days left before term started.