The weeks went by slowly.

It was three and something.

Actually, as it found out, a month was a time unit (units were for...measuring?) but also an actual time.

It had already been part way into a month so a month had already passed by early on, after the first week or so, but then the next few weeks were with the first week, four weeks (pretty sure) and that was a month by a bit.

So. It felt more intelligent, that was for sure.

And it did try to talk more.

It could make loud (like the sounds a wolf makes when scared kind of loud) sounds now. No way to make it sound like anything yet, but sounds were sounds. Better than nothing.

Two quick ones for no, one for yes, which made it easier to talk to others. Though it was one way, really. It couldn't talk properly, just answer when someone else asked it something.

Classes had been fun.

First class - or first period as it was called, had given it much new knowledge.

It had, to say what professor Aghur said, touched on history and geography in very brief amounts, like the last period, but also learned more for politics.

Bribery was one. Which was illegal.

Also what monarchy was and what it meant - though it wondered whether the people trying to take the throne could actually do anything if the other guy was strong enough to just kill them all or at least the one the people were most in favor of. Which was a thing apparently, even if they say not to kill each other publicly, privately assassinating each other was allowed.

It was something hard for it to understand.

Still. Politics were interesting, if hard to understand at times. People were weird was all it had to say there. Emotions; were weird. It felt them and all but...understanding them was too much.

Like blackmail or investments that payed back more in social ways than in money; making an orphanage that costs money but getting people to see you as 'good.' Those made much more sense.

History was...interesting, but it didn't find it as fun to learn. Where would it use that? What would knowing the name of some dead guy who ruled over some now destroyed city thousands of years ago do for it? Well knowing how the place was named after Razgar (some now dead demon) was more interesting. Razgar's End was where he was executed but he was defeated and captured at Razgar Point.

Geography was still good, both the last period and first period (less so in first period) as it could at least tell now that the air became 'thinner' and harder breathe for things that needed air at high altitudes, and also how the shape of mountains affected rain. And snow. And wind in general.

Oh right. Knowing what wind and air was was new, and helpful. Wind was moving air. Done. Though not something it knew a month ago.

The second period was the same as it had been in the first week. Interesting and helpful for knowing weaknesses to look for, like cores, or chinks in armor, or the regular head and heart. And that fire and ice and magic didn't always work. Fire spirits (it knew enough to guess - correctly as the professor talked about them - that spirits that made their attribute fire were fire spirits) didn't just not take much damage from fire or fire magic, but it could even heal them instead. And interesting things. Like brownies, which were weak among the Fae but very good at housework - though how that could be something in their race instead of just something they did and what the real difference there was was beyond it.

Third period...no more needed to be said. Void was...really annoying. Not something it could change either as it was still pseudo-void and with how things were going would probably lose at least half its mana before it was done. Not that it seemed to use it for much and while it was interesting to know about body strengthening magic and how it was used in forging or sea travel, it was a painful idea that it couldn't seem to use any other magic. Even though the affinities said it should.

Fourth period was also very good. It now remembered many types of throws for many different situations and how to 'escape' a hold (escape had different meanings sometimes. Why even say 'escape' for a telekinetic hold being broken by killing the user? That was just a win then, right?) or take less damage when hit (dispersing, something it didn't know how to do at all, only that it could be done). Some normal unarmed fighting. Oh, right. It had also evened out its body to look right and gotten two more dexterity for that. More had made it lose a point instead, so it had put back those changes and kept it as it was.

Fifth period was both useful and not so. It did some in first period, which, it thought was good enough but knowing how volcanic eruptions worked was very interesting indeed. It was apparently not the first to have thought about how it could be used to kill and in earth (just make a way for lava to come up and hope there's pressure) or lava magic (a mixed form and make the lava) that was a thing. Using lava from volcanoes as a weapon. Truly, there were many possible weapons in the world.

And 'I.' It didn't like using I even though it knew what it was from much earlier, because it always felt like it was weird. It was...it. It wasn't a person really. Then, now, it had seen weirder things that called themselves with 'I,' and it wasn't the same useless thing that it had been when the other ones died.

So. From now, it would use I, even if I would never forget my uselessness from then.

A strange feeling though, to be...I.

I had started to really dislike math though.

One plus one was two. That was easy, and I could do that much with counting.

Subtracting was also easy.

But then with big numbers it was much harder (As I found out, there was a number system so I only needed to know certain numbers, up to 100, before I could just use their names and a...large unit like one thousand and whatever to name a number). How would I do 1236 subtract 337?

I could remember what the answer for a question was. Five minus three was two. I just knew that, because that was what St-un said.

Doing it on my own though?

That was...very hard.

There was a 'trick' as Styx called it, where the numbers were written and then some weird stuff happened, but I could do it in my head after the first few times.

Multiplication and division was impossible for now though.

What was seven divided by three? It wasn't two. It was two and something. That didn't...it was too...out there.

How did that even work? Why? If it wasn't two then why did Styx say to just accept it as two when he also agreed that it was wrong.

Why was that not weird to him?

Well when they told me how to do math, they couldn't really see whether I was right or not until I write, and they made me do the writing trick too, even though it was faster to only do it in my head...they were apparently surprised that I learned 'fast' (even though it was so slow and stupid since it couldn't even do multiplication like Styx could) and then accepted it - but were still surprised - when I finally managed to find out what 74 was.

I wasn't sure about how high that was, and the health and mana that it told them made them look at it weird too, but it was at least happy since it could read properly now.

Today was the day we would have a long break (well, St-un would) from all the catching up and talk properly. I did of course look forward to it, because I would be able to talk much better through sun even if it wasn't directly yet.

A fun little thing. Mostly because it wanted to ask for a better explanation about math. Styx didn't seem to understand why I was bad at multiplication and division if I learned adding and subtracting so easily (I still didn't believe it was hard) and sun would be able to answer the weirdness there with numbers better.

Multiplication didn't actually have those weird numbers like division but it felt like backwards division and that always made me think about the weirdness of weird numbers, which made me confuse (a very good word since it would be used a lot) it and somehow get it wrong. Very weird.

Ah but that should be cleared up today!

We were walking out of the area we were usually in and going for the gates instead of the another area though, so I was thinking that we were maybe heading for a meeting outside instead?

I was right. We found sun outside.

He was eating something while leaning against a tree (I still hadn't found out how they got food here, but I was thinking it was probably that time in between periods where they went somewhere that I hadn't seen yet).

We went through the forest without a word for a short distance before sun spoke up.

"You know. It's freaky how much smarter it is now. You wouldn't really understand since you can't hear what its thinking right now, but the difference is like...a rock and an intellectual but still kid, kid. Its...actually kinda creepy."

Styx walked silently for a while before actually responding, "It wrote out a 74 when I asked for its intelligence."

Sun coughed on whatever he was eating and then looked me over before clearing his throat.

"That's...actually a lot. Like. Super smart smart. Like. Giant brain smart."

Styx nodded.

"It probably developed easily since it doesn't have to worry about its skull or having its brain become too big or overloaded or...damn that's a lot of advantages."

Sun nodded too.

"Wouldn't be surprising. Giants start with a lot of strength after all...so unfair."

Styx started laughing when he heard that and jumped over a tree...(probably) root.

"Yeah, says the human to the demon, hahaha. At least you have less lifespan disadvantages."

I watched this all silently (not that I could talk, but I could make a random sound), and considered the differences from now and before.

Certainly. I would call what I was before far inferior to this.

Even if I was still inferior to many things. My stats had yet to change much, and only my intelligence (not the stat) had increased.

Wisdom had gone up by three while it tried to do whatever they did in third period though. So that was nice.

Even if I didn't know what it did.

Intelligence seemed to just make things easier to learn though, and the physical stats were obvious.

All said and done, I was thinking strongly about the math and hoping sun would talk about it.

As I hoped he did indeed. But not in the way I wanted...

"That's just how it works. I dunno about the decimal value for that, but unless you want to calculate that, which I highly doubt you can, seven divided by three is two with a leftover one. Ok? Ok."

But that wasn't...right.

I was quite annoyed to find out that sun was also useless -

"Hey!"

- but it was what it was. I would simply need to look into this in more detail somehow.

With books - an item it had come to really like with how helpful they were - it should be doable.

Regardless, there were other things to look into now. One of the biggest being that we had stopped but were still in the forest and were heading to a direction I was sure wasn't towards the city.

Instead, somehow, we were heading...down? It felt like we were heading down.

And soon we were out into a small area that led down into the ground. There were demons here too.

Many.

But they were going down into a weird hole in the ground.

Kinjut's, the sign read.

Inside, it was dark, and the stairs were of brownish rock. Closer to dark brown, and the walls were of molded stone, smooth and light brown.

There were several tables and chairs, as well as a single counter on the far left, with drinks and food being served.

The right side had another pair of stairs that led down into the dark.

Styx went over to the counter while sun pulled out a chair and sat down at an empty table.

I sat down as seemed appropriate to do and then placed my hands on top of the table like I had been instructed to do by Styx if I did not know where to put my hands when sitting somewhere.

Sun moved and then straightened in his chair. Slowly, he started.

"So...how's...school?"

Good.

"Er...you're uh...pretty smart now, huh?"

It would seem so.

"Uh. So. What did you learn?"

Ah, first on the day I came here, Styx took me to the library where he picked out three easy books. The first was titled, 'Letters for kids,' by Kijnul Pongut and, if the writing on the inside of the cover is to believed, likes to -

"Ok. Yes. Moving on. I mean. Uhhhhh. Actually nevermind."

That was a...strange sentence.

"Oh, look! Styx is here! Ha, ha, ha, let's eat!"

I do not need to eat though.

Sun was already biting into the leg of some animal that was on the plate, while Styx took a...thing from the table and lightly shook out some...salt? I had seen pictures of salt before. Teghik used it to get rich in that story, but the pictures looked different...they all did. Styx called it drawings, which I had so far learned meant that they were not completely accurate.

Then Styx also bit into his food.

I waited, picking up on the quiet chatter behind me. Voices that were loud or quiet, or clear and...not-so-clear in the case of that strange one talking through some water on its head.

Casual conversation from what I knew now of conversations. 'How are you,' 'how's the weather today,' or 'so how did you lose that arm?'

There were many that I could recognize now.

Alopin bloodline demons, with the standard proportions for their size, but comparatively smaller, ebony horns and lighter skin colors for the same elements than Azaraath bloodline demons, which had longer arms and darker colors, with larger skin-covered horns.

Azaraath bloodline demons were rarer, but generally superior to Alopin bloodline demons, which were originally of a subordinate line to those from Azaraath's line.

Styx was Alopin, but sun was an Azaraath.

Here, I saw one other of Azaraath's line in the whole...place, but plenty of Alopin's line.

There were two merpeople in a corner seat, and some dark dwarves too. They kept their faces obscured with full helmets, removing them only when they had to. It was a cultural thing.

As I focused in on the water-head one and tried to figure out if it matched anything I had learned, I heard noise (other than chewing) from my table and turned my attention back to it.

Styx casually pushed back his plate and then wiped his face with a...cloth looking thing from his pocket.

"Well, now that we've eaten, where do you want to go? We have a free weekend for once and I plan to relax a bit."

Sun swallowed the last piece in his mouth and then pushed back his plate before leaning back in his chair.

"Eh, I don't care too much so long as we're not working."

"How about the city then? We could walk around and see if there's anything interesting in one of the stores."

Sun sat up and pushed in his chair, "Sounds good to me."

Styx also got up and so I also pushed in my chair and followed.

The city was still just as fun the second time as it was the first.

I could see the stone walls that loomed far above me, and the guards in full plate that manned each entrance checking the documents for every traveller.

Just like before, we showed our documents (Styx had deemed me responsible enough now, so I kept them inside my torso) and went in.

As soon as we were in, the feeling seemed to change.

Large crowds of people moved around in the streets and crowded...plaza? Plaza.

I looked at the buildings made of light grey stone and strangely colorful roofs, from red to blue to checkers and speckled.

Many houses were built different from each other. I could see one obvious example, with a fallen angel's house that had a flat landing spot instead of the triangular roof that its neighbours did.

There was the loud voice of some demon who was showing off his magic and some people dropped some coins in a pile for him.

St-un were starting to leave me behind again, and the streets to the gates were all larger main streets, but here, I could see them moving off into a side street.

I lost sight of them for a bit, but then spotted sun again from behind and pushed my way through the crowd to quickly catch up (I had learned later that this was normal so long as you weren't kicking people down or something) and was somewhat confused when he went down a side street.

Then another. This one looking less...clean than the others.

Then again.

And again.

Until suddenly, he turned around and I realized...that somebody stole sun's body!

Spoiler: Status Unnamed Pseudo-void Spirit Level: 4/10 Species: Pseudo-void Armor Avatar of Soul Bewitching Shadow Domain Spirit (C-) Affinities: Darkness, Death, Pseudo-void, Pseudo-Space Age: 664 years

Titles:

Body Status:

Normal

Status Points: 48 Health Points (HP): 443/443 Mana Points (MP): 443/443 Intelligence 74 Wisdom 19 Strength 10 Dexterity 9 Endurance 15