Chapter 43 - 41

Circus Organization, meeting room.

The six heads which called the Head Seats of the Circus were on their designated seat as they waited for the report of the young man who was the operator of the main computer which monitored the mother system.

The First seat was Degris, infront of him which was the Second seat was Scarlet, next to the elegant woman was the smiling child who was Blu and he was the Third seat. A red haired man with bulky and huge build was Driven, the Fourth seat. The Fifth seat was Viola who had poker face as she waited and the Sixth seat was Ryder and also got a lame job of operating the main computer.

The truth was no one wanted to have that monitoring job as it would consumed their relaxation time and the lame job was left to the 'righteous' Ryder who reluctantly accepted it.

Ryder coughed to catch their attention, "This emergency meeting was to inform you about the crazy bug who kept pestering us for the past years. It appeared again!"

"Are you sure about that? I've known that Master had already took care of it," Blu argued to the sixth seat while Ryder wanted to hit this kid, he was the one who forced him to monitor day and night with no sleep on the systems and now that he had something to report, he just debated on it.

"My conjecture is that the bug must be Master," Degris stated as he crossed his arms.

Ryder frowned and argued, "How could you say that? Master is the one who really hates system bugs and viruses so he wanted one of us to regularly monitor the mother system and I took that work."

'If it was truly Master. I would be dead,' the sixth seat sighed inwardly, knowing that he just tried to attack their master.

"If Master is a bug or with the bug, what would Master first do?"

The silent fifth seat suddenly spoke up, "He would first do something that is related to him."

"What do you mean?" Ryder asked her.

"Oh! I got it! Master would infiltrate some files that were related to him and as we had gathered a while back, Master lost his memories so he did not contacted us. So it must be the memory files that he saved in the mother system," Blu proudly deduced that made Ryder pale.

'Ops. He did something bad.'

With his life to risk, he pretended to calm himself as he agreed with the kid's statement with gritted teeth.

As if the kid knew his thoughts, the smiling Blu asked, "So what did you do to the system bug, Sixth seat?"

Ryder went silent. He didn't want to answer this evil child. Since meeting this kid, he felt that his lifespan was slowly consumed by Blu's wickedness.

"Oh. You did something bad? That's alright, Ryder. Everyone does mistakes," Ryder smiled at the comforting words of Scarlet but he was very gullible as the elegant woman continued.

"But not something so stupid like you."

Driven, the musclehead cleared his throat and stated, "Well, if the idiot had nothing to say anymore, let's just dispose of him so that when Master go back, we're out of trouble."

"Right, right, Fourth seat! You're so smart," Blu agreed.

"Hey! You kid! I'm truly done with you. Let's fight! Let's see who's gonna dispose who!" Ryder stated as he stood up from his chair.

"Bring it on! I'm not scared to old uncle like you!"

"Wh-what?! Old uncle?--"

Degris stood up in between of the two as he looked at them with cold eyes in order to shut them up.

"Alright, as the manager of the Circus. Please abide to the rules both of you. No fighting inside the jurisdiction of the organization," the first seat calmly said with hint of coldness on his voice.

They went back to their seats and behaved.

Observing that it was now settled, Degris started, "I believed that Master has plans so we must wait here. Remember that our last meeting with him, he said that we should wait for him."

Realization dawned upon their faces as they remembered the last meeting with their master. It was seven years ago.

----

Finally the young man decided to go out after his two hours of cultivation. He tried extending his cultivation more than two hours but the system would warned him being banned for a month if he broke the rules inside the system space.

["System, can I go out now?"]

[Host is advised to stop being lazy and start to do your tasks.]

["What task?"]

The system did not reply as it suddenly sent the youth out of the system space without saying a word. Zero appeared in the unfamiliar hallway leading to the military barracks. As voices of the soldier was heard outside while they're on a training.

'What am I doing here?'

[System Tasks:

Main task

- Prevent the war between the Greatworld continent and the Phoenix continent

- Burn the Sphinx formula of Izi

- Solve the mystery behind the Xiu Royal family

Note: if failed to complete within two years time, punishment awaits.]

"A war between Phoenix continent and Greatworld continent? What happened?"

["System, how much time did I spent in the system space?"]

[Host, you had wasted one month in the system space.]

["How?"]

[The system space is suspended between time and space, it means that it does not adhere to the natural world's time but it had its own time moving within. Five hours in the system space is equivalent to one month in the natural world. The System advised that Host needs to be attentive to his use of time inside the system space.]

'Why does this system was so defected? It did not even warned him that he wasted precious time there and most of all, why is it spending just five hours was equalled to one month?'

[Host selected manual mode so host needed to do things on his own as the mother system was not in control anymore. And without the mother system the system space was not aligned to the mother system's time.]

["What?!"]

So he was the one who was at wrong at this situation? And who was it who asked him about activating the manual mode?

["System, are you playing with me?"]

[Command prompt activating play mode.]

[The Host could now do the Performer's play.]

["What performer's play?"]

[Refer to the Glossary and Definitions of the system.]

Zero cursed the broken system and ignored it. He needed first to gather information on what happened during the one month of not being present in the kingdom.

'I should now use that charmer skill of mine. Let me check it first.'

[Performer: 0

Title: ?????? (Locked)

Task completed: 0

Intelligence: 10

Strength: 1

Stamina: 5

Skills:

Charmer: 10

(No further skills) ]

He clicked the charmer on the skills as to see its definition.

[Charmer - you can use your looks to charm anyone.]

Zero facepalmed at the simple explanation as he sighed and activated the charmer skills.

"Lucky for me, its effectivity is 10."

He did not proceeded to the barracks as he first looked for servants around to accumulate news or information.

"Excuse me?" Zero asked the two maids who blushed at his presence as he asked for the happenings of the past weeks.

"Young master Zero, you didn't know what happened?" The maid asked with surprise as the news about the happening during the past weeks was very talked inside and outside the palace.

"I was on indoor cultivation for one month."

"Then it would be sad to hear this news as the third princess was very close to you."

"What do you mean?" Zero felt something bad about this information.

"The third princess was found dead while she was with the first prince of the Phoenix continent. So His Majesty declared war to the Phoenix continent that made the Phoenix King easily agreed as to prove that his nephew was innocent."

And the other maid added, "And the Xiu Royal Household is under the suspicion of doing forbidden magic as they discovered a witch was under the care of the royal family."

"Witch are hideous being, they practiced forbidden spells!"

After Zero heard the servants' words, he wanted to see the third princess or may be the royal family in order to confirm that it didn't really happened.

Even though, he had no mutual feelings to Xiu Ying, he still treated her as a close friend as she would usually took care of him and they got along very well but not in a romantic way.

He was about to pass through the hallway leading outside in order to go to the main palace when a barrier prevented him.

[System warning: the host is prohibited to leave the location unless he started the first task.]

He tried breaking the barrier using his fire magic when the system warned again.

[If host continued to ignore the warning, punishment awaits.]