The next morning.
After finishing breakfast, Kyle stood up and slapped two gift boxes down in front of Dumbledore and Grindelwald with a snap.
"Pops, here are your Christmas presents."
Of course, he didn't leave out the hardworking 'Butler Man.' "Alfred, this is for you, too."
Without waiting for the three of them to give him gifts in return, Kyle bolted, diving headfirst into the library.
After all, if he didn't run now, they might not give him his Christmas presents later.
Dumbledore opened his package with a face full of smiles, only to find a set of hand-crafted figurines of their family of three inside. This gift, personally made by Kyle, made the smile on Dumbledore's face widen even further.
Grindelwald swept a glance of utter disdain over Dumbledore. "You really are regressing the older you get, Albus. To think such a childish gift could make you this happy."
Subsequently, he opened the gift box in front of him. Grindelwald froze for a moment, discovering that his box contained the exact same gift as Dumbledore's.
As a Dark Lord, having a thick skin was a basic requirement.
Grindelwald repacked the gift without changing his expression, preparing to take it back to his study to use as a display piece.
Watching Grindelwald carefully put the figurine set away, Dumbledore let out a cold snort.
"Since you think it's childish, then put it down!"
"I am merely afraid Kyle would be heartbroken if he saw me treating his carefully prepared gift casually. It is a child's heartfelt gesture, after all." Grindelwald retorted without hesitation.
Alfred watched his duplicitous master with great amusement; for such an old man, he was still so tsundere.
While the two tsundere old men bickered with each other, Kyle was in the library, scouring the boundless sea of books for the magical tomes he desired.
Ever since he learned that Catherine's name before being adopted by Alfred—the old Butler Man—was Konan, Kyle had been determined to develop the Dance of the Shikigami.
He had even suggested that Konan cut her hair short, dye it blue-purple, and tie it into a bun.
Kyle swore he definitely wasn't lusting after the body of the Angel of Amegakure.
He simply wanted to recreate the glory of the Akatsuki organization in this world.
With the four "Father-Worriers" of Hogwarts, plus one Konan, their magical version of the Akatsuki would have enough members to make up half the headcount required for the Eye of the Moon Plan.
Of course, Kyle had no plan to collect the three Deathly Hallows, nor did he intend to seal nine Obscurials into his own body.
He purely wanted to establish a faction that belonged to him.
Although the news of Grindelwald's prison break hadn't spread widely yet, circulating only among a small number of sufficiently loyal Saints, that was still a significant force.
As long as Grindelwald stepped forward and raised his arm in a call to action, this faction could expand dramatically again in a short period...
But in the end, that was not a force that belonged to Kyle himself.
It wasn't unheard for a Retired Emperor to abdicate, only for the new Emperor to be sidelined and made a figurehead by the ministers.
So, he still needed to raise his own team.
This was the reason Kyle was vigorously supporting the Weasley twins and Cedric.
However, there is specialization in every field. Cedric and the twins were fine with inventing things or fighting and killing, but when it came to faction management, they were basically blind.
Who was more suitable to become the professional management for this future Dark Lord's inner circle than the future butler of the Grindelwald family?
It could only be Konan.
Asking Konan to dye her hair blue-purple and tie it in a bun was actually just Kyle's bad habit acting up—he wanted to satisfy his wicked taste of assembling the Ten Members of the Akatsuki in this world.
However, developing Paper Release magic was no mere whim.
In his spare time while researching the Eight Gates recently, Kyle had developed a new Ninjutsu with massive potential based on the Summoning Charm—the Mutually Multiplying Explosive Tags.
As long as a single Explosive Tag could be attached to an enemy, this single tag could summon trillions of Explosive Tags in an infinite loop, triggering a limitless chain of explosions.
Of course, the premise was that you had to actually have that many Explosive Tags.
What nature transformation was more suitable to pair with the Mutually Multiplying Explosive Tags than the Paper Release, which could create six hundred billion Explosive Tags?
So, Kyle felt it was very necessary to put the research of Paper Release on the agenda.
It just so happened that he had finished his research on the Eight Gates recently, so he was relatively free.
Developing the Dance of the Shikigami wasn't difficult. The effect of the Dance of the Shikigami was to turn one's body into countless paper-like fragments, allowing for free movement and transformation.
In addition, while turning the body into paper, the Dance of the Shikigami also granted immunity to damage from physical attacks and gave the caster the ability to fly, among other things.
There were quite a few spells in the wizarding world that could achieve such effects.
The difficult part was how to mass-produce Explosive Tags.
For a low-difficulty alchemy product like the Explosive Tag, production wasn't exactly hard; Kyle could draw one every two or three minutes on average.
If he set up a magical factory for assembly-line production, the time to craft an Explosive Tag could be shortened even further.
But that wasn't what Kyle wanted.
Even with a factory, if he wanted to gather six hundred billion tears of Kakuzu...
Ah, no, if he wanted to gather six hundred billion Explosive Tags, he'd be waiting until the end of time.
Leaving time aside, the cost of alchemy materials was also a huge pain.
A few Galleons' worth of alchemy materials was enough to make a few hundred Explosive Tags, but if Kyle said he wanted the family factory to run at full horsepower to manufacture six hundred billion of them, Grindelwald would definitely beat this prodigal son to death.
Therefore, he had to change the production method—as long as he expended some magic power, which was negligible compared to his "chakra tonnage," he should be able to hand-craft a huge handful of Explosive Tags anytime, anywhere.
Only in this way could the Mutually Multiplying Explosive Tags he developed achieve their maximum effect.
Once the method for mass-producing Explosive Tags was researched, the task of production could be handed over to Konan.
Of course, he certainly wouldn't make Konan create the Explosive Tags personally; that bunch of wizards under Alfred weren't just there for decoration.
Forget six hundred billion Explosive Tags—even with just one hundred million, Kyle felt that blowing Voldemort to death didn't seem entirely impossible?
Considering that the wizarding world also had various space-transportation methods similar to Space-Time Ninjutsu, the project of researching an anti-space transportation barrier also needed to be put on the schedule.
Thinking of this, Kyle fished a notebook out of his pocket and wrote the words "Four Violet Flames Formation" on a blank page.
The world of Harry Potter also possessed barrier magic.
But whether in Naruto or HP, barrier techniques were existence that consumed a significant amount of mana.
Better wait until he returned to Hogwarts to develop this stuff with the other three "Father-Worriers"; they would have exactly four people to complete the set.
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