Chapter 42: Can I Touch Your Bird (Edited)
The UP pool is a good thing. Tom, who had drawn Professor Trelawney twice, thought so. On the way to Dumbledore's office, he glanced at the messages appearing on the system.
The first was a notification that a mission had been activated and completed.
[Main Mission Activated: More Than Love Around the Corner - Defeat the Troll that has broken into Hogwarts (kill for a mysterious reward)]
[Mission completed, quest reward: feather evolution + mystery reward]
The look on Tom's face when he saw this message was complicated.
"Can that broken feather still evolve?" Tom, who had been screwed by the system many times, was a bit scared, or rather, he had committed PTSD evolution. He had a feeling that the evolution of the system might not be a good thing. As for the mysterious reward, he wanted to wait and see. Maybe the system could do something like a secondary wisdom tooth upgrade, which, by the way, he would have to claim himself.
Once the main mission was completed, Tom's system received an upgrade to System 1.0. Next up was a new title.
[Title System Unlocked: Hound of the Baskervilles]
[Title Effect: Wearing the title greatly improves your sense of smell and allows you to transfer damage from the head to the shoulders (limited to twice before the shoulders are fully healed)].
"It's interesting," said Tom, feeling that the title seemed quite reliable and planned to try it another day. The system had just been updated, and the character screen had a new title bar, while the draw screen had opened something called pool UP. Tom noticed the description of pool UP.
[Dear traveler, the event "Fire and Phoenix" is open, and the odds of "Fire and Phoenix - Dumbledore (Fire)" is now on the rise].
[During this period, travelers can obtain more skills and treasures to improve their power]
[Draw time]
[After version 1.0 update - 1991/11/01 0:00 start]
[Description of the Raffle]
[During this event, the chance to obtain the limited 5-star character "Dumbledore (Fire)" will be increased!]
[During the event period, the chance of obtaining the 5-star ability shards "Apparition", "Wandless Spell" and "Silent Spell" in the draws will be greatly increased]
[*Limited characters will not enter the permanent "Running for the World" sweepstakes]
[After the update, the "Title" section will be unlocked, which will allow the traveler to carry specific titles for bonuses]
[For more information on the sweepstakes, click on the [Details] button in the lower left corner of the sweepstakes screen]
In a nutshell, Dumbledore is in the draw! I'll be able to get spells from Dumbledore tonight at 00:00!
I don't know what Dumbledore is going to give, but it's going to be something good, and Tom was looking forward to it. However, there were some words in it that bothered him, such as that the probability of getting it was not a sure thing, but a "significant increase", and that the spell (Apparition) was not a complete scroll, but a "fragment", which gave him a bad feeling.
So he clicked on [Details] and looked it up - there's something seriously wrong!
The words in the system details, between the lines, said: I'm going too far, so bear with me.
The UP draw is the same as the resident draw, 90 rounds guaranteed, but the first 5 star that comes out only has a 50% chance of being a current UP character, only the first time, the second time is guaranteed to be a current UP. The 5-star skill fragment rate is the same as 4-star, but it takes 7 fragments to make a full skill....
Tom: Tired, destroy, hurry up!
These are the most important parts, and there are some other bits of magic rewards that Tom can just pick up. But in addition to these things, he also got a few new quests, and what lifted his spirits was that they were advancement quests.
He had already reached a bottleneck in most of his magic spells.
Now he could finally break through! But before he could investigate these breakthroughs, he arrived in Dumbledore's office.
"Chocolate Frog." Dumbledore said the password calmly, without a hint of embarrassment. For Tom, it really wasn't easy, his password was quite humiliating, like a child being asked his name in Genshin Impact and ending up giving a name like "Alina".
The huge stone gargoyle jumped aside, and the wall behind it split in half, revealing a revolving staircase which Dumbledore and Tom entered and slowly climbed up, finally reaching Dumbledore's office.
The Hogwarts headmaster's office was large.
The walls of the office were covered with portraits of previous Hogwarts Headmasters, with their names and dates of service underneath. However, Tom considered that the office walls were running out of space...and he didn't know what to do with them when they were full, Perhaps move the unpopular portraits outside? Or maybe use an undetectable extension charm to expand the space?
It was already dark, and most of the portraits were dozing.
"If I ever become director, I'm going to paint a bed in my portrait." A strange thought popped into Tom's mind.
In addition to the portraits, there were several tables and cabinets with all sorts of strange silverware, much of which was smoking, and the Sorting Hat rested on a shelf. At the door of the office was a sycamore branch with a large, bright red bird on it, with the Phoenix, Fawkes, crouched on it.
Tom looked at Fawkes. He wanted very much to touch the bird. He noticed that Dumbledore didn't seem to be paying attention to him, so....
He held out his hand.
Fawkes immediately opened his eyes, looked at him furiously and swung his sharp claws.
Fawkes: Come! With one swipe, you human puppy, you could die!
Tom withdrew his hand shamefully, but he had a second thought.
"Sit down," Dumbledore said as he moved Tom to a chair, then cast a Restoration spell on him, "Recovery!". Sure enough, he helped him clean the stains from his body.
Tom's shoulder wound healed immediately and completely, Professor McGonagall's Restoration spell had only partially repaired it, but with this move by Dumbledore, Tom was immediately healed and all the dirt was removed from his body.
"Well, are you still uncomfortable? Would you like something to drink?" Dumbledore put down his wand and sat down on his stool.
"Professor, I've had a major psychological trauma!" Tom immediately looked sad.
Professor Dumbledore: -_-|||
"I need to hug that phoenix to heal my psychological wounds! So, Professor Dumbledore, can I touch your bird?" said Tom.
Fawkes: "?????"
Dumbledore, you have to stand by your principles! If Fawkes could talk, he would grunt like this.
Dumbledore: "Yes."
Fawkes: (ΩДΩ)!
Tom: (づ??????)づ
And so Tom managed to touch a Phoenix, a living Phoenix.