Chapter 26: The Anatomy of an Incantation
Headmaster Flender stood in the center of the dusty plaza, his sharp, predatory eyes locked onto the newly assembled students. He pointed a finger at the bearded fourteen-year-old.
"Oscar, demonstrate your spirit ability for the new class," Flender commanded, a wicked, highly amused glint in his eyes behind his square glasses. "And speak up. Let them hear exactly how a Food-System Spirit Master operates."
Oscar's face instantly flushed a brilliant, tomato red beneath his thick lumberjack beard. He fidgeted, looking incredibly embarrassed as Ning Rongrong, Xiao Wu, and Zhu Zhuqing stared at him expectantly.
"Headmaster, do I have to?" Oscar whined, rubbing the back of his neck. "There are ladies present..."
"Do it!" Flender barked.
Oscar took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and stretched out his right hand. A faint, silver spirit power began to gather in his palm.
"I, your father, have a big fresh sausage!" Oscar chanted loudly.
With a flash of light, a plump, perfectly grilled, incredibly fragrant sausage materialized in his hand.
The reaction was instantaneous. Ning Rongrong's jaw dropped in absolute, aristocratic horror. Xiao Wu's rabbit ears pinned flat against her head in disgust, and Zhu Zhuqing's cold expression twisted into a glare of sheer revulsion. Even Ma Hongjun snickered quietly from the sidelines.
"Disgusting!" Rongrong shrieked, taking three steps back. "I am not eating anything that comes from a chant like that!"
Flender was about to launch into his standard, pre-planned lecture about overcoming prejudice on the battlefield when a smooth, remarkably calm voice cut through the plaza.
"What a profoundly unfortunate ability," Mame mused.
Everyone turned. Mame hadn't taken a single step back. He was looking at the sausage in Oscar's hand, and then up at Oscar's face, with a look of intense, clinical calculation. There was no disgust on Young Master Bai's face—only the sharp, dissecting gaze of a battle-hardened tactician evaluating a weapon.
"Unfortunate?" Flender repeated, adjusting his glasses, intrigued. "You think his ability is trash because of the words, Bai?"
"The phrasing is entirely irrelevant, Headmaster. Vulgarity does not dictate utility," Mame dismissed smoothly, stepping closer to Oscar. He completely ignored the crude joke, focusing entirely on the mechanics. "The tragedy lies in the absolute requirement of vocalization."
Mame locked his pitch-black eyes onto the bewildered Oscar.
"Tell me, gramps," Mame began, his tone slipping from aristocratic boredom into sharp, multiversal pragmatism. "Have you ever attempted to alter the incantation? To change the words to something shorter?"
"Uh... no?" Oscar stammered, holding the sausage awkwardly. "It just... comes out that way. It's tied to my spirit."
"Have you attempted to whisper it? To mumble it under your breath so the enemy cannot hear your cadence?" Mame pressed, pacing a slow, predatory circle around the bearded boy. "Have you tried to simply push raw spirit power into your palm and force the construct to manifest without the trigger phrase?"
Oscar blinked, his mind completely blank. "Force it? You can't just bypass a spirit chant..."
"Have you actually tried?" Mame interrupted, his voice ringing with absolute authority. "Or did you just accept the first set of rules your Martial Soul gave you and stop thinking?"
The plaza went dead silent. Ning Rongrong and the girls had stopped looking disgusted and were now staring at Mame in sheer bewilderment.
"In a real battle, a verbal incantation is a massive, glowing vulnerability," Mame lectured coldly, his words hitting the students like physical weights. "Every syllable you speak is a warning. Every second it takes to finish that ridiculous sentence is a second the enemy will use to take you down. If an agility-system assassin is sprinting at you, and you need a healing item, a three-second incantation is a death sentence. Your throat will be slit before you reach the word 'fresh'."
Flender's jaw tightened. The shrewd, greedy Headmaster stared at the twelve-year-old silver-robed noble in absolute shock.
What kind of noble thinks like this? Flender thought, his heart pounding. He completely bypassed the embarrassment of the ability and instantly identified its fatal tactical flaw. He doesn't think like a pampered aristocrat... he thinks like a veteran mercenary who has survived a hundred life-or-death bloodbaths.
Mame stopped pacing and stopped directly in front of Oscar.
"If you cannot shorten it or remove it," Mame analyzed, his eyes narrowing slightly as he pondered the rigid, archaic rules of Douluo Dalu spirit mechanics, "then you must weaponize it. What if you deliberately made the incantation more complex? Could you overlap the syllables? Could you chant the first half of the phrase to prep the spirit power, hold it in your meridians, and only speak the final word to instantly trigger the manifestation when required?"
Oscar was staring at Mame as if the boy had just rewritten the laws of physics. His mouth opened and closed silently. In all his years of having a Food-System spirit, all he had ever done was feel embarrassed about the chant. He had never once, not for a single second, thought to experiment, dissect, or hack his own ability for combat efficiency.
"I... I don't know," Oscar breathed, staring at his own hands with a sudden, intense hunger for discovery. "I've never thought of holding the chant..."
Mame let out a soft, aristocratic sigh, though a genuine smile of approval touched his lips. He reached out and smoothly took the freshly summoned sausage from Oscar's hand.
"Then I suggest you start experimenting, gramps," Mame said, taking a casual, unbothered bite of the sausage right in front of the horrified girls. "Because if you are going to be my roommate, I will not tolerate a support system that gets himself killed because he talks too slowly."
Mame swallowed, offering Flender a polite nod. "Excellent flavor profile, by the way. The Headmaster was right. If you can't eat this, you have no business calling yourselves monsters."
Zhu Zhuqing's cold eyes gleamed with sudden, profound realization. She stepped forward, gritted her teeth, and looked at Oscar. "Give me one."
Chapter 26: The Anatomy of an Incantation (Continued)
"Give me one," Zhu Zhuqing demanded, her cold eyes locked onto the bearded food-system Spirit Master.
Oscar blinked, thoroughly caught off guard by the Hell Civet's sudden intensity. He scrambled to gather his spirit power again. Keeping Mame's brutal critique in mind, Oscar didn't shout it this time. He took a breath, compressed the syllables, and rushed through the chant as fast as his tongue would allow.
"I-your-father-have-a-big-fresh-sausage!"
It was a garbled, hyper-speed mess of a sentence, but the silver light flared, and a second plump sausage materialized in his hand. He offered it to Zhu Zhuqing with a nervous, hopeful smile.
Zhu Zhuqing didn't hesitate. She took it and bit into it.
Instantly, her cold, stoic expression fractured. Her dark eyes widened in genuine, unfiltered shock.
The lingering fatigue in her muscles from yesterday's brutal fight with Zhao Wuji vanished as if it had never existed. A wave of warm, pure spirit power flooded her meridians, rapidly replenishing her drained reserves. Even the faint, dull ache in her chest where the Vice Dean's shockwave had struck her completely dissolved.
"The recovery rate is... substantial," Zhu Zhuqing whispered, looking at the half-eaten food in her hand as if it were a high-tier alchemical pill. She looked up at Oscar, her tone completely devoid of its usual icy edge. "It restores stamina, replenishes spirit power, and even provides minor physical mending. This is a flawless battlefield restorative."
Oscar beamed, his chest puffing out with pride. He had spent years being mocked for his vulgar chant, but having the terrifyingly fast agility-system girl call his ability 'flawless' was the greatest compliment he had ever received.
Mame, having already swallowed his own bite, casually wiped his fingers with a silk handkerchief.
"It is commendable," Mame agreed smoothly, though his pitch-black eyes remained highly analytical. "However, let us not overstate its current utility."
Zhu Zhuqing frowned slightly, turning to look at him. "You don't feel the surge in spirit power?"
"I feel a drop of water falling into an ocean," Mame replied with an aristocratic shrug.
It was the absolute truth. To Zhu Zhuqing—a Rank 27 Spirit Grandmaster—Oscar's Rank 29 restorative was a massive, immediate boost. But to Mame? The Saiyan King Beast possessed a bottomless metabolism and a Cosmic Origin Core that held the compressed density of a dying star.
"The caloric density is adequate, and the taste is surprisingly refined," Mame analyzed, pacing a few steps away. "But the spiritual yield is completely bottlenecked by your current cultivation, gramps. It replenished my physical stamina for approximately... three seconds. And the spirit power infusion was negligible against my total capacity."
Oscar's proud smile faltered slightly. "Well... I am only Rank 29, Bai. I can't heal a Spirit Sage or anything."
"Exactly," Mame pointed out, tapping his temple. "Which is why you cannot afford to waste time on a three-second incantation. Your restorative scales with your rank. As we grow stronger, the relative impact of this specific sausage will diminish unless you break through. Right now, it is a potent heal for a Spirit Grandmaster. For me, it is merely a pleasant mid-morning snack."
Ning Rongrong, who was still standing a few paces back, looked between Zhu Zhuqing's shocked face and Mame's completely unbothered, clinical review. Her aristocratic pride warred violently with her curiosity.
"Is it... really that effective?" Rongrong asked hesitantly, eyeing the remaining sausages.
"Eat it and find out, Princess," Flender interrupted, his sharp voice cutting through the plaza.
The Headmaster pushed his square glasses up the bridge of his nose, a rare, genuine smile of approval on his face. He looked at Mame and Zhu Zhuqing.
"You two," Flender said, pointing at the silver-robed aristocrat and the leather-clad assassin, "understand the fundamental reality of the Spirit Master world. Monsters do not care about vulgarity, appearances, or minor embarrassments. On the battlefield, if eating a sausage born from a crude joke saves your life, you eat the damn sausage."
Flender turned his piercing gaze to Ning Rongrong and the other students who were hanging back.
"The rest of you have a lot to learn," Flender barked. "Oscar's sausages are mandatory for this training exercise. Every single one of you will eat one right now, or you will pack your bags and leave my academy. Shrek does not nurture delicate flowers. We forge monsters."
Ning Rongrong paled, her hands clenching into fists at her sides. She was the jewel of the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Clan. She had never been spoken to like this, nor had she ever been forced to consume something she deemed "peasant trash."
Mame leaned against a wooden post, crossing his arms over his pristine silk chest. A dark, highly entertained smirk crossed his face as he watched the spoiled princess face her ultimate trial.
"Better start chewing, Princess," Mame teased smoothly, his voice a lethal, mocking whisper. "Unless you want to explain to your father that you were defeated by a breakfast meat."