The multicolored beams of light cast by the library's high windows slowly drifted, sliding off the ancient parchment pages and settling on the back of Eric's hand.
The curve at the corner of his lips, bathed in that warm golden glow, carried a meaning all its own.
Dumbledore.
The greatest white wizard of this century.
And yet his anxiety and self-doubt had now become a weighty fruit, firmly grasped in Eric's hand.
This sensation—far more tangible, far more intoxicating than any stimulation brought by potions—felt unmistakably real.
Eric did not move.
He did not even alter his breathing.
He simply filtered out the faint rustling of turning pages around him, ignored the occasional whisper of wind from beyond the windows, and allowed his consciousness to sink completely into that cold, boundless system space that only he could perceive.
At the far edge of his vision, a treasure chest hovered silently.
It was not physical, yet it outshone any gold. Molten-gold light flowed across its surface, engraved with intricate, abstract patterns. With every pulse of light, it seemed to proclaim the vast power it carried—power born of S-rank emotion.
Dumbledore's Anxiety Chest.
Eric issued the command within his mind.
"Open."
There were no dramatic sound effects, no extravagant bursts of light.
The golden chest melted away in silence, breaking into countless points of light before instantly reassembling.
A line of icy system text branded itself directly into his thoughts.
[Congratulations, Host. You have obtained a special space—Causality Warehouse!]
Eric's heart contracted sharply.
A powerful beat sent scorching blood surging through his limbs.
This reward…
Its timing was flawless—almost eerily so.
He did not rush to examine it. Instead, he calmly absorbed the system's follow-up explanation.
[Space Description: Causality Warehouse. A causality-rule space bound to the host's soul. Any item stored within will have its causal connection to the real world temporarily severed.]
Causal connection… severed.
Those words caused Eric's pupils to dilate slightly.
[Note: No magic and no divination can detect any item stored inside the warehouse.]
That single note was like a key, instantly throwing open the floodgates of his thoughts.
Countless possibilities—plans once deemed impossible—found their missing link at this very moment.
Divination cannot detect it.
What did that mean?
It meant that once an item entered this warehouse, it temporarily vanished from the river of fate itself.
Crystal balls could not see its past.
Tarot cards could not calculate its future.
Even the most profound and ancient detection spells would come up empty-handed.
Because both its "cause" and its "effect" had been forcibly severed by this absolutely independent space.
At last, Eric understood its true value.
This was far more than a simple vault.
This was the ultimate bulwark for all his secrets.
The perfect foundation for every plan he would execute in the future.
The Alchemical Pocket Watch he had obtained from the Malfoy family's chest.
The future "spoils" that were destined to shake the entire wizarding world.
Everything—every single thing—now had an absolutely safe destination.
A realm of "nothingness" that even Dumbledore could not窥探, that even magic itself could not touch.
For a brief moment, Eric's breathing grew hot.
He needed to test it immediately.
A thought flickered.
His consciousness locked onto the pocket of his robes, where that metal pocket watch—always faintly cool to the touch—rested.
[Store: Alchemical Pocket Watch]
In the very next instant—
The solid weight in his pocket vanished.
Eric could even feel the fabric rebound slightly.
His hand had not moved. The pocket was intact. There was no magical fluctuation, no trace of spatial distortion.
The pocket watch had simply ceased to exist.
And deep within his consciousness, inside that void known as the Causality Warehouse, the ancient alchemical pocket watch floated silently.
Its hands had stopped turning, as if time itself no longer had anything to do with it.
The smile at the corner of Eric's lips deepened soundlessly.
He felt the emptiness of his pocket—then "saw" the watch resting in absolute safety within the warehouse.
A sense of control unlike anything he had ever known welled up within him.
But this was not the end of it.
His mind—his Perfect Logic—was already running at astonishing speed, excavating the deeper potential of the Causality Warehouse.
A perfect alibi.
That was its most terrifying aspect.
He could "store" an item in any corner of Hogwarts.
Then retrieve it at a completely different time, in a completely different place.
The entire process would leave no magical traces, require no spatial passage.
As if the item had never been moved at all.
He could make something disappear from his person in full view of others.
Submit to any level of inspection.
And then cause it to reappear somewhere no one would ever expect.
This was no longer sleight of hand.
No longer magic.
It was the complete subversion of physical law and causal logic.
An ultimate weapon—custom-made for the plans he was about to enact.
Eric's thoughts spread outward like an invisible web.
Soul Grafting.
This ability allowed him to graft the "cause" of his actions onto another being, concealing his own tracks at the level of fate itself, evading prophecy and divination.
This was the perfect concealment of the person.
Causality Warehouse.
This space allowed him to erase the object involved in an action from the real world entirely, cutting off all external connections.
This was the perfect concealment of physical evidence.
A hidden "culprit."
A hidden "weapon."
When combined, they formed an airtight, flawless loop.
Everything was in place.
Eric finally lifted his gaze from the open book before him.
Through the stained-glass window, past the cloudless blue sky, his eyes fixed precisely on the direction of the castle's main structure.
It was as though his vision pierced straight through the thick stone walls.
To that heavily warded, forbidden corridor on the fourth floor.
He knew it.
There slept the first—and most crucial—"large-scale investment project" he had chosen since arriving in this world.
The pinnacle of alchemy.
The Philosopher's Stone.
Nicolas Flamel's sole masterpiece for extending life—the Sorcerer's Stone.
It was time.
Time to pay a visit to that "pitiful" professor—Quirinus Quirrell—who was possessed by Voldemort.