Chapter 131: A Holiday missed

“Chirp.”

For some reason, there was a strange itch in his ears right now.

“Chirp?”

He wondered if someone was talking about him right now. He thought about his master and if he were the one thinking about him.

Nyx considered the possibility that his master had gotten in another trouble right now, but he could tell he was having fun somewhere through the shared emotions.

Their connection was strong enough for him to feel the happiness, sadness, pain, and grief that his master felt. He could tell everything that was going on in his heart, but he did not make it obvious to him.

To Nyx, his master was the only thing he had in this world right now and even though he did not like that his master was a small, weak, dumb human, there was nothing that he could hate about him.

He wanted to, but spending the last few months with him had made him realise just how dumb his master actually was.

“Chirp. Chirp chirp chirp.”

He would jump into trouble to save others, he would do stupid things for others, he would make the beasts and creatures fall in love with him and then break their hearts by not bringing them along, and he would do so without hurting them.

He was strangely skilled at handling beasts. He was a strange human, and that strange human was, thankfully, having fun wherever he was right now.

“Him? Oh, he’s in the whimsical inn right now.”

“Chirp?”

“Ah, hahaha. It’s a pretty and fun place. You should go there someday as well.”

“Chirp.”

While his master was having fun somewhere outside the academy, the little Phoenyx was with the headmaster, inside the deepest part of the academy, doing something that had not happened in a long, long, looooooooong time: a system upgrade.

They were working right now.

“Chirp chirp chirp. Chirp? Chirp chirp.”

“Ptfff? You’re saying he’s a dumb one? Haha, sure, sure. He’s dumb~.”

The entire academy, its different schools of taming and arts, the different facilities that were present here, and essentially everything that fell into the vicinity of Stanox was operated by a highly adaptive, almost sentient system.

It watched, recorded, learned, and maintained the different elements of the academy. It looked after the creatures that were present on the epic mountain, and the system can be compared with a Dragon’s brain.

In fact… It technically was a dragon’s brain.

“Chirp.”

“Oh, you have to access the internal spatio-temporal interface before you… ah, you figured that out?”

At the very core of the academy in a place that was not available to anyone but the headmaster of the academy and the people who they allow directly, existed the conscious will of a perished dragon.

It was structured in a complex manner that most beings of current times would not be able to understand.

The headmasters themselves have to spend at least a few decades before they actually understand this thing, so it is impossible for normal people to get the hang of its functionality.

The whole place looked like an empty lot with a single blob of light present in the middle of it to normal eyes, but to people who do understand this thing, the entire neurological structure stretching out from this glowing ball of light was the true brain.

Their different functions connecting this place to the rest of the mountain was something that only entities like these two can fathom.

“Chirp.”

“What do you mean you’re done analysing?”

“Chirp. Chirp chirp.”

“Wow… are you sure you’re a phoenix and not a god?”

“…chirp chirp?”

“I’M NOT DUMB!”

The academy headmaster was shocked when something actually managed to hack a system that had been the same for thousands of years.

She knew it could happen again with that experience, so she hired the expertise of this little fellow and made a secret deal with him.

They were working independently in secret so neither his master or the people of the academy that she had to deal with knew about any of this.

They wouldn’t understand a thing about this even if she explained the details so, while the master and the party were having fun in the whimsical inn with the fairies, the little bird was here, having his own kind of fun.

“Chirp chirp.”

“I think so as well. I wanted to develop a proto-defensive barrier around the outer layer firewall. I had this idea about copying the fairy magic structure for it.”

“Chirp?”

“Oh, you’re interested? Hehe, alright. So…”

The headmaster explained to him how the fairy magic worked and what her plans were and the bird learned a great deal from her.

He may be smarter than anyone else and more adept at these things than most beings of this world, but he was still too young.

He had not seen enough of this world to have as many ideas as she did.

Hacking into a stagnant structure like this one was one thing but to improve it in a way that would save it even against an attack like his the next time was a different thing altogether.

He also wasn’t helping her for free. The reward that he had been promised was too big to refuse.

And while he was missing out on a fun vacation, he was learning more than he would have expected and doing more practical work than what he would have if he had stayed with his master.

“Chirp…”

“See? I’m useful as well~.”

“Chirp.”

“Awww… thanks for saying that~. I’m so happy~!”

The bird had a smirk that said that the headmaster was an easy to play child.

He was the one getting more out of this deal anyways. Earning a little more of her trust was another plus for him.

“Chirp.”

-Oooooooooooooooong!

She liked her ideas so he did not waste any time and started working on them immediately.

Time flowed differently in this place concentrated with an atom-disintegrating energy anyways.

By the time it is time for the test in the outside world, he would have spent nearly a decade in this place by the headmaster’s side.

He would still be the same physically as he was right now because of his innate limitations, but he would be much smarter.

It would help his dumb master more.

At the very least, Nyx believed he would have a better chance of saving that dumb human from his own dumb foolish selflessness.