From Hogwarts to Strixhaven.

Chapter 97: The Book of Controlling Monsters

"Please!" Tom's soul fell to the ground helplessly. He had been tortured by Ivy for eight hours. "I don't want to die yet..."

During these eight hours, Ivy tried to absorb his soul power, but found that there was nothing to absorb, perhaps because this piece of soul was too fragmented.

Ivy then reads Tom's memories as if they were a book, and even though this piece of soul only contains his memories before fifth grade, Ivy also goes through every memorable moment in Tom's memory and leaves vicious comments as he watches them.

Among them, Ivy was most concerned about the Parseltongue part. He tried to learn this power by absorbing Tom's experience, but encountered unimaginable resistance.

Some simple words are fine, but complex long sentences are far from being mastered in just a few hours of study.

However, Ivy had managed to store the teaching materials of Parseltongue through a memory spell, so all he needed to do was get a Pensieve to review the language in detail.

Eight hours was not a long time for Ivy, but it felt like a century to Tom's broken soul.

After several breakdowns, he even began to kneel down and beg for mercy, crying bitterly, until the 8-hour duration of the spell was completely over.

"The good times are coming to an end, Tom," Ivy said regretfully. "I am about to destroy your soul completely."

"No! No, no, no! I am still useful to you! Even if you treat me as a toy! Please spare my life, please spare my life!" Tom refused to accept his fate. He knelt in the corner of the silver cage and begged Ivy for mercy.

However, Ivy would never leave any chance for his enemies. He used the energy-draining technique to grab the last bit of magic power from Tom, but was surprised to find that although Tom's soul was extremely weak, it had no intention of disappearing.

In this short time, the spell effect of the soul cage ended. The small silver cage could no longer restrain Tom's fragile soul.

But he did not get freedom as Ivy imagined, but remained in the cage.

According to common sense, once a soul trapped in a soul cage is freed, it will quickly leave the material world under the influence of the spiritual plane. If the soul has faith in certain gods, it will go to the higher planes of goodness and order - Mount Heaven or Paradise, or to the hotbed of evil and chaos - Baator or the Abyss.

Now that Ivy is in Hogwarts, those outer planes in the kingdom's sky certainly will not have any gravitational pull on Tom's soul, but there is indeed a god of death in this world, and the dead souls also have their final destination.

But Tom's soul was an exception. He neither became a broken ghost nor went to the kingdom of the dead. Instead, he stayed there in an awkward posture. The magic of the Horcrux had been cracked by Ivy. Voldemort could not rely on this soul to revive, nor could he be considered truly dead. He would eventually be devoured by the endless emptiness and all his spirit and consciousness would be tragically stuck in the cracks.

"Hahaha, you really gave me a big surprise." Tom's helpless soul has not lost consciousness yet, but the diary that once served as the carrier of the Horcrux still exists, but it has lost the protection of magic and will soon no longer be Tom's carrier. "I will use your soul as ink and your Horcrux as pages to record your magical ability of Parseltongue!" Ivy suddenly had an idea and decided to use his expertise in making strange objects to squeeze out the last bit of Tom's usefulness.

The soul cage had become ineffective, and Tom's light silver mist-like body began to disintegrate, which meant that his self-consciousness was about to disappear completely. Ivy poured out the previously saved memories of Parseltongue, letting them mix with Tom's shattered soul, and took out his wizard's pen and reached in to stir it mercilessly.

The ink has been prepared, and the next step is to record the magic on Tom's former Horcrux.

Ivy's magic feather pen left a string of silver characters as thin as mist on the black notebook, which represented the last bit of essence of Tom's soul.

Ivy kept writing and writing until late at night, and finally completed the creation of the artifact before Tom's soul ink completely lost its effectiveness.

The Destruction Grimoire describes this artifact as follows:
Name: Tome of Controlling Monsters (variant of Tome of Controlling Influence)

Type: Variation of a Wonder

Rarity: Very rare

This book records the secrets of the descendants of Slytherin, and its text is full of magic. If you spend a total of 6 hours studying the contents of this book within 48 days or less and practice its instructions, your Charisma and Charisma cap will increase by 2 points, and you will fully learn Parseltongue, and you can manipulate snake creatures through this magical power from Slytherin. All snakes with an intelligence of no more than 12 points will obey you, and snakes with an intelligence of more than 12 points will also regard you as a friendly creature and will seriously consider your suggestions.

As you acquire these abilities, the manual will lose its magic and will regain its power after a century.

After gaining physical attributes by eating a corner of the Philosopher's Stone, Ivy once again gained attribute values that can directly affect his spellcasting ability. Charm is not only the spellcasting attribute of the Supreme Warlock, but also the spellcasting attribute of Ivy as a wizard and ancient wizard. As long as he spends 48 hours studying this strange thing, Ivy can get a two-point bonus to his charm value. Not only that, he will also directly gain a two-point charm value limit.

This will bring Ivy's Charm attribute to 19 points, which is just a little short of the upper limit for ordinary people. Normally, the attribute value obtained through expertise and attribute improvement can only reach a maximum of 20 points, because 20 is a magical number in the DND world, and breaking 20 points means entering the realm of monsters and gods.

As for the method of breaking through the attribute extremes, apart from the volume of commanding monsters in his hand, Ivy only knew one, that is the 9th-ring spell Wishes. By consuming 5000 experience points and a 5th-ring spell slot, it can make a certain attribute gain one point of intrinsic bonus, and it can be effective for a single attribute times in total.

From this point of view, the increase in the upper limit of these two attributes alone is equivalent to 10000 experience points and two 9th-level spell slots. Not to mention that it also gives Ivy the supernatural ability to control snakes, not to mention that there is a basilisk in Slytherin's chamber waiting for Ivy to receive it.

(End of this chapter)