With his mom back for the night, because she didn't want to just leave without having a proper, long talk with Ryan about everything, Ryan was laying on the couch again. He looked up at the ceiling. The wooden boards up there were old, most certainly older than Ryan. They might be even older than his mom.

  There was so much history in this place. So much has happened here. But Ryan just can't help himself but wonder... why is Runar here? Why is he running a café, though it's only open half the time it should be, and why is he actively involved in a haven? From the others' reactions, it didn't seem like people really knew about this, nor was it expected or particularly normal for Runar to be directly involved like this.

  Was there something special about this haven? Was there a reason for him to be here? Frankly, Runar wasn't really doing a lot of the work that he would expect the family's patriarch to need to do. But maybe some of the other sections of the family were in charge of the things that Runar didn't want to do.

  "Ahh..." Ryan placed his hand in front of his eyes, trying to shut out as much of what was going on around him as he could. He had been laying on this couch for about an hour, and didn't feel even a slight pull into sleep. He was exhausted, but apparently that wasn't enough to send him to bed quite so easily. Whether it was all the new developments of the day, or the conversation he just had with his mother, but it didn't seem like Ryan would be able to fall asleep anytime soon.

  With a groan, he got up from the couch and grabbed his shorts and his t-shirt, quickly getting dressed again. Rubbing the tiredness out of his eyes, which was very annoying to do since he would rather just not be tired if he wasn't able to go to sleep, Ryan got up. There was a 24/7 convenience store down the road, so maybe he could just jog down there, get something to eat, and use up some energy in the process.

  He pushed his feet into his sneakers, pulled his headphones over his head, and started playing some music. Already jogging down the stairs, Ryan just got started. Instead of heading straight down the road to the convenience store, he decided to take a bit of a detour. With his awakened stamina, it was a lot harder for him to actually 'use up' his energy and exhaust himself. At this point, to tire himself out, Ryan had to almost sprint for a good while to make a real dent.

  Though, as he was running, Ryan noticed Jester trying to get his attention.

  'What's up?' he thought, speaking directly to the spirit. He jumped up from his seat and started jogging in place. Though, the way he was moving was a little... well, weird was a good way to say it. It was like he was long-jumping with every step, '... You don't want me to run like that, do you?'

  Immediately, Jester pressed his legs together and nodded hurriedly. With a sigh, Ryan shook his head, 'Sorry, I don't think that's going to happen. I don't even know how I would run like that.'

  Jester held his hand in front of his chin for a moment, trying to think. A few moments later, he held up his finger, as if he got an idea. He turned around and walked toward one of his pillows. After fiddling with it a little, Jester soon pulled out a long thread out of the pillow. Jester held one hand against his chest, and threw the other into the air.

  'Hm... That could work, I guess?' he replied. Though Ryan had directly 'remote controlled' the spirits' movements through the Spirit Link skill, the other way seemed a bit more concerning. The idea of letting go of his own physical control felt a bit weird, but if the spirits could do it so easily, then why couldn't Ryan?

  He quickly activated the Spirit Link skill, and immediately felt a deep connection to the harlequin. More specifically, he was seeing what Jester's domain was like from the spirit's perspective. Ryan had checked it out briefly, but seeing it through Jester's eyes still just felt different.

  Stopping for a moment, Ryan let out a deep breath. So, he just had to let go, then? Just stop controlling his body himself, as if his muscles were giving out. Ryan simply-

  As the thought crossed his mind, Ryan's legs buckled for just a moment. He caught himself immediately, of course. Or, at least he tried. Ryan tripped slightly and fell forward, stomping onto the ground and holding out his arms for balance. Just the sensation of not having full control over his own body was nerve-racking and something pretty uncomfortable. It was worse than being drunk. There, he had at least some control, it was just... worse. And when drunk, Ryan didn't really care that much.

  But this? It was way different. It was like someone was grabbing his limbs and forcefully pushing them into other positions. Either way, this was probably an important sensation for Ryan to learn, beyond just what Jester was trying to teach him. If he could learn this, maybe it would improve his understanding of the Spirit Link skill a bit.

  "Come on! Give it another shot!" Ryan said, pumping up his shoulders and slightly stretching his neck. Jester nodded excitedly a few times, and then started running in place again. Or rather... it seemed like he really was trying to run and push forward, but his body was constantly being pulled back into the centre of the room where he was standing right now.

  This time, instead of letting go control of his own body immediately, Ryan tried to imitate how Jester was moving as well as he could. Though, of course, he didn't have the same level of bodily control of flexibility that Jester did, so it didn't really quite work out. But it was a good start; step by step, Ryan was letting go of his control a bit more, and Jester was slowly taking over.

  Ryan's speed picked up considerably, and he was soon able to feel his body move in a way he had never moved before. Of course, he looked absolutely ridiculous, and he would be embarrassed if anyone he knew ended up seeing him, but at the same time, moving like this was not only much more effective and fast, but was clearly draining his stamina quite a bit more. Maybe if he ran like this, he could increase his stamina and maybe even awaken his physicality a bit sooner.

  There were some extra-large treadmills in the gym at university that he should be able to use to run like this for a while, so he might as well give that a shot. But for now, he had to practice like this in the first place. Actually, if he was able to do this... wouldn't it be a good way to learn other things that the spirits could do?

  Of course, that was only in regard to physical matters. For one, if he could fully let go of control, he might finally be able to do those extreme stretches that Jester wanted him to do to help him awaken and train his physicality, or it could be a good way to learn some of Maximus' techniques. Ryan had good instincts for fighting, but he had never learned proper forms or techniques, which did lead to him injuring himself a lot. When he first started getting into proper fist-fights, the amount of times he broke or sprained some fingers while punching someone was embarrassingly high. Plus, the only thing he had experience really fighting with was something like a baseball bat. Things like knives that or similar weapons that could lead to serious, long-term damage or even death even if Ryan was careful with them was something he always stepped away from. If he hit someone's leg with a bat, they could maybe break a bone. If he stabbed someone's leg in that same spot... they might bleed out.

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  But it was different now. In a dungeon, blunt weapons were simply less effective a lot of the time when it came to finishing off a monster. Sure, there were times when blunt weapons were more useful, like in the dungeon where Ryan found Gaia's core. Those stone monsters wouldn't care about being stabbed. But the mascots in the amusement park dungeon? It was much easier to cut them and make them bleed out than it was to hit them and break their bodies. So, Ryan had to get used to different weapons a lot more if he wanted to take part in a serious fight in dungeons.

  Luckily, with the 'Horn of Shapeless Water', he was able to test out a ton of different weapons that Maximus was proficient in, and could learn a style that fit him well.

  While Ryan was thinking about all this, he had still been running, and without even realizing, had let Jester completely take over. In that time, he ran far, far past the grocery store he wanted to get to.

  "I got... this far... in five minutes..?" Ryan was basically gasping for air as he stopped, looking down at his phone. He didn't even know where he was right now. Some kind of weird alleyway. Oldtown wasn't exactly the most lit-up place, so finding anything to orient himself wasn't easy either. Because of how old so many buildings in this part of town were, tons of protections were placed on them to stop them from being altered too heavily. That should actually be the case for Café Runic's building as well, but of course, with Runar's contacts, power, and money, adding something like a rooftop garden was probably the easiest thing in the world.

  Either way, Ryan quickly checked his phone, trying to figure out where he was on his map. But he was completely shocked by what he saw, "Wait, what? I'm almost... 2 kilometres away? That was literally... just five minutes," he let out confused, still trying to catch his breath. That was a professional marathon runner's pace, "Jester... what the hell? You got... any more tricks... like that?"

  The harlequin laughed slightly, doing an exaggerated laughing pose that Ryan involuntarily copied. He had gotten a bit too used to giving up control this quickly, but he was able to take over again pretty soon. However, next, Jester did a handstand and started to move around the room, climbing onto furniture, jumping around, before returning to the centre of the room. Ryan's smile quickly dropped.

  "There's no way you want me to do that," Ryan smiled wryly, but Jester, still on his hands, nodded excitedly. And though Ryan was hesitant, he knew that this was probably going to help him quite a bit, "... Alright. But Jester, if you make me run into any glass shards or you totally fuck up my hands otherwise, this is the last time I'm letting you take over like this."

  Jester jumped back up onto his legs with a quick nod and an accompanying salute, and then waited for Ryan to relinquish control again. Soon, he let his body go limp on his own, but Jester practically grabbed it and slipped right in. Immediately, Ryan could see the world twist upside down as he jumped onto his hands with a confidence he wouldn't have been able to produce on his own.

  Ryan was panicking slightly and wanted to instinctively pull back to try and balance himself, but he knew that doing so would probably just mess things up even more. He had to just trust Jester. And it seemed like instead of trying to pull his body and legs back to balance himself, Jester was trying to just move underneath those legs as fast as he could to balance himself instead, minimizing how much he had to move the rest of Ryan's body. And, to Ryan's surprise, it really just... worked. He was moving ridiculously fast as well. Not quite at a regular running pace, obviously, but ridiculously fast considering he was running on his hands. The few people that he ran past were looking over at him with puzzled expressions, but Ryan could luckily try to concentrate on literally anything else, since he wasn't even the one in charge of what he was doing right now.

  It was another 5 or so minutes later that Ryan could feel his arms really start to hurt. His strength was enough to carry his weight like this, but running normally was already a high-impact sport. This had to be so, so, so much worse. But at the same time, with Tiar, these sorts of injuries quickly recovered... so maybe it would be worth it to just continue and-

  Before Ryan could finish that thought, he could feel himself lose his balance. He fell down onto the ground, only barely able to stop himself from hitting his head on the cobblestone road.

  "Oh, fuck-" he let out, laying on the ground for a moment to catch his breath. Ryan had completely forgotten to keep track of the skill's active time, "Urgh..."

  As he pushed himself off the ground, Ryan looked up, seeing a system window in front of him. The skill had been stagnant for a while, so this was great.

  [The -Spirit Link- Skill has levelled up]

  [Spirit Link]

  [Level - 10] [Proficiency - 0%]

  [Allows for the user to mentally link with the target Spirit, guiding their actions. During the activation period, the user has an extremely strong understanding of the target Spirit's body and the effect of their skills]

  [Effect - Spirit Link for 15 Minutes per Spirit]

  [Cost - 15 MP] [Cooldown - 45 Minutes per Spirit]

  Per spirit? Per Spirit? Did this mean what Ryan thought it meant?

  He looked into his mind, trying to sense each of the spirits with the filter of the 'Spirit Link' skill hovering in front of his eye. It was like Jester was 'greyed out', and the other three were still available to him.

  This was amazing. This was perfect!

  Every ten levels, a skill would slightly 'evolve'. For the most part, this was very predictable, and would usually just result in a slightly larger boost in the effect compared to regular level-ups, but the way that you used a skill changed it as well.

  For example, if you used a strength-boosting skill exclusively for combat, it might end up providing slightly different bonus effects than when it was used exclusively for hauling things around. Maybe because Ryan had more spirits with him now, the skill evolved to account for each individual spirit. Of course, with his current mana, he could only activate the skill three times at best anyway, but if he was able to get Kim to start making some mana-recovery potions for him, that should work out pretty well. Either way, it meant that he had to properly increase his mana stat. Though, that was pretty damn hard to do.

  The 'mana' stat really only defined the maximum amount of mana your body could hold, while the 'spirituality' stat changed how well you were able to manipulate that mana. It was similar to how the 'Strength' stat defined how much strength you could exert, while the 'Physicality' stat changed how well you were able to move your body while exerting that strength.

  Frankly, the only way to 'train' your mana stat was by loading up the magic you used. Basically, by putting more mana into them. It was like progressive overload in muscle training, just with magic. But all of the 'magic' that Ryan could use was in the form of skills. If he wanted to do this, he had to learn how to cast some spells on his own.

  "Ah... fuck," Ryan groaned. He didn't really know a ton of mages, and he didn't want to bother Runar too much. For one, he didn't want Runar to catch on to what Ryan was planning to do long-term, but he also just didn't want to pull him away from blocking the White Shadow Society. There was only one person that he could think of that he had in his contacts that he could randomly call up for this sort of thing. Luckily, that person would probably know a thing or two about mana volume.

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