Lord of Charm

"You've been summoned to the Square Building in three days, room 1501."

'Sure enough, Valentina was right. Floor 15 is the top floor, and only one person occupies it.'

"Alessa, please get me orbs to measure my affinities with the four basic elements. Just deduct the costs from my account."

He waited around 10 minutes until the delivery arrived. Since it was all automatically operated by Alessa, there wasn't much need for waiting, thanks to his rank on the top list. He was now ranked third since Ronda was removed from it.

He planned to strengthen himself with any element that had an affinity of above S-50, since it should be enough to improve those affinities to SS rank. Lidia's main affinity was Earth Mana, while Ronda's was Wind Mana, so Water Mana should be his weakest affinity.

He chose to start with the Fire and Earth orbs and placed his two palms on them. He channeled his mana into the orbs and waited for the results to appear.

'Fire didn't change and stayed at SS-30 as expected. Earth improved from A-52 to S-79, which means it's worth using Earth-mana to strengthen myself. Now it's time to check my best improvement and my worst one'.

He took the Wind and Water orbs and channeled his mana into them. He looked at the results and smiled in contentment.

'Great, the Wind affinity is SS-73, making it even better than my affinity with Fire. Water is only S-32, so I can't use it to strengthen myself yet unless I get the chance to improve it.'

He cleaned the orbs from the mana they contained to reset them and thought about his next move.

'I could either trust Alice and ask her to use her personal training room or use my personal training room in my new apartment.'

He already got a notice from his Alessa Watch that he could move to Ronda's apartment whenever he wanted. He chose to move in first and check the MDU in the training room of the top 3 students.

"Alessa, please move all my belongings to my new room."

"Confirmed."

He left his apartment and followed Alessa's instructions to get to his new apartment. He entered the new one and found it to be similar to his previous lodging but grander. He didn't care much about it; the main improvement was that his new bed was large enough to support foursomes, but he barely experienced one threesome anyway.

He stepped into the training room and found out it had 15 MDU, half as good as Alice's. Since he was just going through the strengthening process and the high MDU was only helpful to cut down the time, he chose to go through the process in his training room.

He removed his clothes and sat down crossed-legged, revealing his abs and muscular body. He took a deep breath in and started calling for mana to strengthen his body. He chose to start with the Earth Mana.

He was already considered a beast by the world, so unlike when he strengthened himself in the True Mage Stage, he was now getting the boost of a ruler beast right off the bat with his first element.

He felt the mana gets into his body, strengthening his organs, muscles, skin, bones, brain, and blood vessels. Everything was strengthened, and he could feel it was different from the time he was strengthened by the Fire Mana.

The Fire Mana made them stronger and added an explosive aspect that helped his speed, but the Earth Mana made his body stronger and mainly added to its endurance. He felt his body break down and reconstruct itself, and the result was better each time.

The process continued for 9 hours straight without a break until it finally ended. Gale got up from his sitting position and stretched himself. Now, after the addition of the earth mana, his body was much more rigid.

Water would add a lot to his power with the flexibility boost, but unfortunately, he would have to do with the sub-par boost of wind affinity.

He was all sweaty from the process, so he decided to go and take a bath before continuing to the next affinity.

"Alessa, please prepare a hot tub for me, and order randomly 4 fourth-rank dishes after the bath. I also want a cream cake to eat during the bath."

"Confirmed."

He enjoyed the sensation of being able to walk around naked at his house and chose to just go like that to the bath.

"Alessa, if someone has permission to get into my apartment without asking first, remove all those permissions."

"Confirmed."

He dipped into the bathtub and a cake levitated toward him, supported by wind magic cast by Alessa. He found out that his apartment had a budget of 100 IMG per month, and those small spells would consume the magic from those IMG slowly. He didn't worry about it; he didn't even consume 50 IMG last month.

'It feels nice to walk around naked, let's just stay this way until I'm done with the strengthening process.'

He didn't bother dressing up and had his meal. He suddenly had an idea but chose to delay it for later.

'I could tell Alessa I'm an advanced mage and break one more record now, but it's better to wait with it and surprise everyone at the interrogation. I'm sure it will have a great impact on their decisions.'

After the meal, he went back to his training room and focused on requesting the mana to initiate the process to strengthen his body with Fire-Mana. He closed his eyes and felt the now familiar sensation of the mana break his body into small parts and heal it back.

This time, the whole process took 11 hours since his base affinity with Fire was higher than his affinity with Earth, and by the end of the process, he felt an explosive strength in his body. He felt like he could thrash any true mage using only his body, and it would probably be much easier after he uses Wind to strengthen himself.

He took another break to bathe, eat, and sleep, and returned to his training room. It was time for the main dish, the Wind Mana. He made sure to get a long rest before since he knew he needed to be strengthened all the way from the Magician Phase to his current stage, as he was never strengthened with Wind Mana before.

He closed his eyes and concentrated once again, letting the mana sip into his skin and strengthen him. He chose to strengthen himself only until the True Mage Stage, just to check the differences and improvements and take a break to be at his peak form before he continues.

15 hours later, he opened his eyes and ran around the room. His speed doubled compared to before, and he knew he was far faster than Ronda. She was faster than him when they both were boosted once as true mages, but now that he was boosted by Fire Mana to the fifth stage and by Wind Mana to the fourth stage, he surpassed her by far.

He also noticed that his strengthening wasn't that much better than Ronda's in the fourth stage. He could deduce that the real leverage of being a ruler beast was mainly displayed when he would become a magus.

After another round of bathing, eating, and sleeping, he returned to his personal training room. He was tight on time and had only one last day before having to go to the meeting regarding Ronda's death.

He wasn't as naïve as before; he knew that nobody cared about Lidia's death, and she would be lucky if her name would be even mentioned offhand.

'Let's check my new affinities first.'

He took out the orbs and poured his mana into the Earth Orb and the Fire Orb.

'Hmm, not bad. My affinity with Fire rose to SS-56, and my affinity with Earth rose to SS-35. I guess that because it was my first raise in affinity with Earth the boost was much larger, while my Fire affinity was boosted before.'

He then took out the Wind Orb and looked at it excitedly. On one hand, his affinity with Wind wasn't boosted before. On the other hand, he stole it from Ronda who had her affinity boosted as a lower elite beast. So, the remaining question was whether it'd get a full boost or just the difference between a lower elite beast and a higher ruler beast.

He filled the orb with mana and waited impatiently for the results.

'Argh, I guess I was too greedy.'

He sighed but was still contended with what he got, nonetheless. His new affinity was SS-92, a small rise of 19 points only. However, he didn't do the final strengthening to the Advanced Mage Stage yet.

After cleaning the mana from the orbs, he sat down again and started strengthening himself one last time for that session. He felt the Wind Mana wash over his body and strengthen it. This time it boosted his speed considerably as well as his flexibility, which finally rose to an acceptable level.

The Fire Mana took 11 hours to finish strengthening him with a base affinity of SS-30, so he was expectant to see how long the Wind Mana would require. The hours passed, and the process was still ongoing.

12.5 hours later, mana stopped rebuilding his body and he got up. He moved his body around and tried getting used to it; he went through too many changes in a short time without an opportunity to get used to it.