Ryan tied his hair up into a bun and straightened his jacket. He made sure that he didn't have any visible scars anywhere, though that was very unlikely, anyway. Hiding his scars was something he had a decade of practice with.

  "What are you doing?" Runar walked past the bathroom, seeing Ryan get himself ready, "Do you have a date or something?"

  Startled, Ryan turned his head to the side, "Dude, you're home? What the fuck? And no, I don't have a date, we're going to check out a house in Eastbanks."

  "Huh. Alright, nice. Just let me know if you get it or need some vouching or whatever," Runar said, about to keep walking past the bathroom, but Ryan quickly stopped him.

  "I've been texting you non-stop, why didn't you reply?"

  "Oh. Sorry, haven't been looking at my phone. What was it about?"

  Ryan closed his eyes, trying to stop himself from getting angry at his uncle, "Do you know about the 'perfect completion' stuff in the dungeon?"

  "Perfect completion? Oh, yeah, I guess so. Some of the zones have that, don't they? A bonus item appears in the gift shop if you do that, right?" Runar replied, clearly not paying perfect attention. But as he said this, he stopped himself and looked at Ryan, "Hold on, did you-"

  "Yes. Mascot Plaza. It was basically supposed to be a stress-test for how well the spirits can work together," Ryan explained, "I got the certificate, and then a bonus item, not for the spirits, but for me, showed up in the shop."

  "Oh? Did you get some kind of neat tool, or..?"

  "I got a fragment of Violette's core."

  Seemingly taking a few moments to really take in that information, Runar stared at his nephew. He slowly nodded, "Okay, that is unexpected. So the dungeon can give you cores?"

  "At least fragments."

  "Hm."

  Runar blinked a few times, clearly contemplating something, "... Would you..?"

  "Yes, I'm going to keep trying to get the 'perfect completion' thing, so just have someone text me all the info about the dungeon already," Ryan sighed, "And also, do you have the bead? Your guys did something with it, right? I'd like it back soon, especially with more parts of Violette just showing up like this. It seems pretty likely that there's more of her nearby."

  "I..." stopping himself from finishing that sentence, Runar narrowed his eyes. He was thinking about finishing what he was saying, and then finally just came out with it, "I didn't give it back to you yet?"

  "... No."

  "Right, sorry. It's downstairs in my office, I'll go grab it in a second. The craftsmen were able to refine it a bit and increase the range. And the base bead would only tell you if there was a core or fragment nearby, but now it's going to tell you the direction toward the closest fragment, if it is in range in the first place," Runar explained tiredly, holding back a yawn. The circles under his eyes were darker than Ryan had seen them in quite a while.

  "Alright, cool. Thanks. I'll let you know if I find anything else," Ryan walked out of the bathroom, "Fyi, we've added Silvia to our roommate plans, so we'll go for a slightly bigger place."

  Runar shrugged, "That's fine. Just let us know what place you settle on."

  With a nod, Ryan walked over to the kitchen, grabbing himself something to eat. Tiar was acting up again a bit more recently, and Ryan could feel himself get hungrier and hungrier. Thy symbiote didn't seem to do it on purpose, obviously. Maybe it was just in exchange for providing the extra skill, Tiar required a lot more calories to operate. Not that Ryan cared too much.

  He closed his eyes, standing in the kitchen while chewing the thick bar. Looking into himself, Ryan focused on the blob of mana floating inside of his domain. Michael's mana was just there; he had lost a little bit of it while practicing, since it was pretty hard to really take a hold of for a long time. It was always like at the last moment before he could get to a breakthrough, everything just 'broke down', like his body was rejecting what was happening. Basically, there was an interruption in his concentration; like when you were trying to stand on one leg, and suddenly your leg buckled. Ryan was hoping that if he just kept trying, he could either figure out a way to push through that 'buckling', or figure out why it was happening and what to do to prevent it.

  Ryan slowly pulled his mana into his body, trying to keep it all in. That in itself was already rough, because of the constant flow of mana coming into him from his natural mana regeneration. But that regeneration slowed to a crawl when it wasn't needed, and especially when there was this much 'pressure' from keeping it all inside, it soon became almost non-existent, speeding back up quickly when needed. Once Ryan could feel this happening, he started trickling in some of Michael's mana.

  It entered the middle of his body, and almost immediately wanted to push itself out, but Ryan was able to carefully balance it within him to prevent this. The pressure inside of Ryan built up. It was like he was teetering on the edge of blowing up like a balloon, but what he had to do was 'stretch' his vessel out more and more by adding things to the limit.

  By the time it felt like he couldn't even move without losing grip, Ryan stopped letting the mana flow into him. He held it like this for a minute or so, feeling it push against every fibre of his being, and then felt that sensation of everything crumbling away. The moment even a hint of this appeared, he pulled part of Michael's mana away again, preventing it from happening. And then, slowly but surely, Ryan let it flow back into his body, until the sensation came back.

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  Basically repeating this constantly, Ryan tried to understand what exactly was happening to try and find a way to get through it. But in the end, the only thing that he noticed was that the same thing kept happening again and again. Maybe it wasn't going to work with someone else's mana.

  "Do I really have to learn a damn spell somehow..?" Ryan groaned quietly, still trying to hold on to the last bits of mana inside of him. He really didn't have a lot of Michael's mana left in his vessel, so he was waiting for the last wave of that sensation to come, but... to Ryan's surprise, it just didn't come.

  A bit confused, Ryan looked at his overall vessel. He was at least 1MP over capacity, but somehow it seemed stable. Of course, if Ryan stopped concentrating on balancing Michael's mana, or if he let go of forcing his mana into his body, it would immediately all disappear, but right now he at least wasn't losing out on the extra mana. He had no idea why it was working, since he had already failed with less of it added on, but it did, and he didn't plan on complaining. Now, he just had to try and keep holding onto this for as long as he could.

  It didn't take long until Runar came back upstairs with a small box in his hand, giving it to Ryan, "This is it. You're going to need to attune to it, but I'm guessing it's not going to be super hard for you. Basically just try to fill it with your mana and connect to it somehow. It works a little different for each magic item that needs attuning though, so you might need to experiment a little."

  "Cool. Thanks," Ryan grabbed the box and took out the small bead. Though it was completely clear before, now it had different runes and engravings placed onto its surface. He carefully put it into his jacket's chest-pocket, "I'll be heading out now, I'll text you later if there's an update on the house."

  "Sounds good."

  Runar kept standing in the kitchen as Ryan headed out. He looked at his nephew's back, a little confused. He wasn't sensing that Ryan's mana was leaking out as much as it should, and somehow, there was something else mixed into there, "... I'm probably just imagining it," he whispered to himself, getting on with his own work.

  The car pulled up to the front of the building, stopping in front of a metal gate. Silvia, Ryan, and Modak quickly stepped out. The young orc stopped by the driver's side and gave Yanna a kiss, "Thanks for driving us."

  "Of course! But are you sure you guys don't want me to join?"

  "Oh, come on, we'll be fine!" Silvia said with a broad grin on her face, "We can handle this ourselves. I mean, we're two Awakened and someone working for the Magic Tower, they'll be begging us to move in!"

  Yanna sighed, "That's not really why I was... you know, yeah, you'll be fine. Just don't let them trick you in there, alright?"

  "Don't worry," Ryan reassured Yanna as well, "My uncle knows some people that can help with that."

  "... I still can't believe that he's sponsoring a goddamn house for you guys... Especially one like this." Yanna let out a long, clearly slightly jealous, sigh, "Just make sure to throw a party once you guys move in, alright?"

  "You got it. Alright, everyone, let's go in," Ryan said, quickly turning around. The three of them approached the gate and pushed it open, quickly making their way to the actual house. Just as it looked like in the online ad, this place had a huge property connected to it. It was some kind of old farmhouse, so there were a couple of external buildings which were perfect to put in something like an atelier, workshop, or even turn one of them into a greenhouse. The main building itself was also pretty big, though its age was showing in a lot of ways.

  The entire garden was overgrown, and some of the external sheds and buildings were clearly not usable in their currents state. Some of the main building's windows were barred up with wood. It was the kind of place that was just a couple years away from becoming a prime target for urban explorers. It wouldn't even surprise Ryan if this place had become a dungeon at some point; at least, most dungeons were places like this that were long forgotten. The nearest neighbour was a brisk five-minute walk away, and the only thing you could see from here were the tall Eastbanks trees.

  "Uh... are you sure about this place?" Silvia asked, looking around, "This would take a ton of work..."

  "Well, sure..." with a bit of an awkward smile, Ryan also looked at all the broken... stuff that was just laying around everywhere. Like someone had purposefully thrown everything from inside the building out into the yard, "But we can get this all fixed up pretty quickly. The Aglecard family owns some construction companies, plus, with some magic it should all go pretty quick."

  "Right, I've actually also been thinking about something," Modak added, smiling lightly, "I found out about this auditory application of mending magic, right? Some bardic mages can use the vibrations of their music to agitate the materials to basically mend themselves. It's pretty interesting, actually, you know how-"

  Seeing that Ryan and Silvia were just looking at him with smiles, waiting for him to either finish or get to the point, Modak cleared his throat and continued, "Anyway, basically I thought that if I create some tracks for exactly that kind of mending magic and fine-tune it for construction-use, we could repair a lot of internal damage in the building pretty fast."

  "Sick," Ryan grinned lightly, as they walked up toward the front door. They were told to just come inside when they got here. Now that they stepped inside, it was clear that the people that used to own this place were something like either giants or cyclopes. The doorways were all massive and the ceilings more than twice Ryan's height. The stairs and the bit of furniture that was left in here was also clearly made that way. It was cool that there was a lot of space, but they would have to do a ton of remodelling just to be able to live here. But since repairs needed to be done anyway, it probably wasn't the worst part of this all.

  Soon, they ran into a woman, standing in what seemed to have been the living room. It was a middle-aged gnomish woman, who quickly approached the trio and reached out her hand, "Oh, I didn't even hear you come in! It's very nice to meet you, I believe I spoke to..."

  "Yes, you spoke to me," Ryan smiled, shaking the woman's hand. Silvia and Modak also quickly followed suit, "The three of us are looking for a house to operate out of, and this one quickly caught our eye."

  'Your eye, at least,' Silvia and Modak probably thought simultaneously, and Ryan could feel their stares in the back of their heads. They honestly weren't quite sure about this, but Ryan really felt like this could be a great place. Or rather, he felt drawn here, as if there was something important in this place.

  "To operate out of? If you don't mind me asking, but you weren't quite detailed about this, but what would you be doing here?" the woman asked, clearly a bit hesitant, and Ryan quickly explained.

  "Well, you see, Silvia and I are both Awakened, and Modak works for the Magic Tower. We're cooperating for upcoming 'Heroic' activities," he smiled, trying to seem as likable and honest as possible.

  "Heroics?" the woman asked, her hesitancy immediately disappearing. The terms 'Awakened', 'Magic Tower', and 'Heroics' were basically a cheat code for something like this. Silvia wasn't lying when she told Yanna that they would be practically begged to move in, "I see! Now that is quite wonderful! Though if you don't mind me asking, if you are only about to start with Heroics, how would you finance this house? You all seem to be quite young, still."

  That was the last bit that Ryan figured they would be questioned about, so he already prepared an answer with Runar's permission, "Oh, we're sponsored in part by the Aglecard Foundation."

  That was the last push that the woman needed. She quickly got everything together to show them the way around the house, starting the tour eager to make the best impression she possibly could to make the sale.

  Now, Silvia, Modak, and Ryan just had to decide if they really wanted to live here, and most importantly, figure out what exactly drew Ryan to this place.

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