Ryan heard Silvia's words and his eyes widened. What did she just say? Her mother had done... what?

  Lilianna looked around nervously, seeing the stares of the other people in the café. Whispering was becoming a clear background noise in the space, and the elf was becoming self-conscious about it.

  "Th-That's not... that's not how it happened, you know?" she stuttered out, trying to defend herself, "They just took you against my will, I-"

  "'And then, I had a thought. Why not give them the brat? That way she'd finally come in useful for once'," Silvia said, staring at the woman in front of her, "'But as it turns out, she really just messes up everything'."

  Lilianna's face went pale, "I-I don't... What are you saying?"

  "Those were your words. I saw the videos of you, dusted up, in the interrogation room. I heard every single word, and I will never be able to forget them. But I guess I do have to thank you, because that was the only way that I could have met my real family," Silvia grabbed her bag, and Ryan saw her hands shaking intensely. Knowing her, she would probably try to run off somewhere without knowing where to go or what to do. Silvia was like that when she got upset.

  Ryan stepped up to her and placed his hand onto her back. She flinched slightly, not having expected to be touched, but when she saw that it was Ryan she quickly calmed down, "Come on, just go upstairs. The door's unlocked, I'll be there in a second when Runar comes back."

  Silvia slowly nodded, tears in her eyes, as she rushed off behind the counter to make her way upstairs. Seeing this, Lilianna tried to run after her, but Ryan quickly blocked her way.

  "Please leave," Ryan said, glaring down at the woman in front of him, "You don't have to pay, just please leave."

  But despite Ryan's words, Lilianna didn't seem particularly satisfied with that. She tried to push past Ryan, "What? No, I need to talk to her, I-"

  "I'm sorry, but I don't want to repeat myself," Ryan said, trying not to get too emotional while facing this woman. He cleanly blocked her path, but the elf wasn't as easy to pressure as he thought. Or rather, hoped.

  "I just... Please, I need to explain everything to her," Lilianna said, her desperation clearly written on her face. Ryan was actually pretty taken aback by how genuinely emotional she seemed to be. But maybe 'desperation' was the wrong word. To Ryan, it was a different emotion; one that he had seen in the faces of people standing in front of him far too many times. It was fear. It was like she was afraid of what would happen if she didn't get to finish her conversation with Silvia.

  But frankly? Ryan didn't care. But there was an issue; Ryan really wasn't the best at threats. He was better at actually acting on the things that others would say as threats. But being an Awakened, he couldn't use violence on non-awakened without a good reason, aka self-defence, and even then, that was a thin line to walk depending on how high your stats were. But again and un-awakened elven woman that was two heads shorter than Ryan? There was no way he could ever feel good about starting a fight with her. So, he had to try and go for the 'threat' route after all.

  The spirits were currently inside of their domains, since Ryan had just come back upstairs earlier from the subterranean refuge to meet Silvia here in the café, just to find out that her birth mother was here with her. Runar also happened to just then have something to take care of downstairs, so he was here alone and had to take care of this without anyone else. That being the case, Ryan pulled Gaia out of her domain, simultaneously activating his newest skill, the 'Spirit Seal Recovery'.

  Luckily they had already managed to test this beforehand, so he knew how it would behave with Gaia's body. Before the threads of green mana managed to settle into a solid form, they they seemed to split apart and attempt forming a whole other body. Gaia was more than a metre tall at her 1/10th scale, so with the 'Spirit Seal Recovery' skill active, she was towering over Ryan at around 2.1 or 2.2 metres. He would have to measure to be sure. The plants that had taken root in her body didn't grow in size, but their coverage increased. It seemed like Gaia's skill that linked her physical appearance to that of the garden didn't make any 'actual' plants grow on her. They were just representations created through mana that would grow and wither as the plants in the real garden did. As such, this was still the case as her size doubled in every direction.

  Moss was burrowing into the grooves of her body and thin roots were covering her like spiderwebs. Flowers that were so close to blossoming were growing on her shoulders, and even the two small saplings that Gaia had planted upstairs had already taken root in her body. To Ryan, she was truly beautiful, but in the eyes of someone that didn't expect this sight, she was more startling than anything. After all, a massive golem had just appeared out of nowhere.

  Ryan looked at the woman in front of him, "As I just said. Please leave."

  Slowly but surely, now that Ryan had some support, Lilianna was more confused, startled, and scared, and had no choice but to leave. As she stood there, outside the café, Ryan looked into her face and said one last thing very clearly, "Listen, if she wants to talk to you again, she will come to you, okay? I may not know her all that long yet, but I know her pretty damn well. Pushing her like this will make any hope you could ever have at reconnecting in any way worse. And seriously... get a grip and re-evaluate what happened in the past," Ryan said, stepping back into the door, "You're banned from coming back here until Silvia says otherwise. So please stop loitering in front of the store."

  As he left the stunned Lilianna just standing there, Ryan pulled out his phone and texted Yamada and Anders who were standing around by the car outside, asking them if they could keep an eye on the elven woman he was just with. Anders replied with a thumbs-up emoji. Somehow, in a weird way, Yamada was actually more talkative than the dwarf.

  Ryan pushed his phone into his pocket and looked around at the other customers, clearing his throat, "I'm really sorry for the inconvenience, everyone."

  The other customers were looking at him a little nervously. Or rather, they were looking at Gaia, who he had clearly summoned to intimidate that woman just now. So, Ryan figured he should do something to calm them down, and at the same time, find a way so that he could join Silvia upstairs as soon as he could, "As an apology, my summon Gaia here will hand out some snacks for everyone. On the house, of course."

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  With a smile, while the customers were a bit confused, Ryan led Gaia behind the counter. Her footsteps were heavy, but this was an old, solid building and could easily support her weight here at the ground floor. Ryan hurried and grabbed something from the back. He could swear he saw an old pack of 'Café Runic' branded aprons here for different species that probably worked here in the past when Runar could actually be bothered to hire outside help.

  There was one that fit larger species pretty well, which he quickly put onto Gaia in the back room while asking her to split off the sub-golems off of her. As she did, instead of two small boulders, three fell off her body. Her 'Garden Golem's Division' skill had levelled up, and now she was able to create three sub-golems. It didn't even use up any more of her body to create the third one than before, like a bit of extra stone was just suddenly produced by magic, which of course made sense.

  The three sub-golems were also double the size, around 40cm tall each. They were given the smallest aprons Ryan could find, and they seemed to fit somewhat alright, though they might still have been a little too long, so Ryan folded them up a little bit and fixed them up like that with safety pins.

  He quickly grabbed a box of cookies that were supposed to be put into the baked-goods display next to the counter, and gave it to Gaia, "Alright, you hand them out, and I'll go check up on Silvia, okay?"

  Gaia quickly nodded, seeming both excited and incredibly nervous. Ryan smiled, "Don't worry, I'm not leaving you alone."

  Quickly, he activated his 'Spirit Link' skill. It was level 13 now and could be active for around 14 minutes. It wasn't long, but it was enough to make sure Gaia and the sub-golems properly handed out the cookies while also giving Runar the time to come back up from the basement before the skill effect ran out.

  Ryan quickly rushed upstairs while using the link to control the sub-golems in particular. He had gotten pretty good at doing that since going into the dungeon. He was sure that Gaia would be able to have them act properly with some practice as well, but she wasn't the best around people right now, and tended to get a bit nervous when interacting with them for more than a few moments at a time, so Ryan figured he should take some pressure off her.

  But since the sub-golems could still act independently to some degree, even more so now that the division skill levelled up a bit, Ryan didn't have to control them like marionettes, and could just make sure they didn't mess anything up all too much.

  Ryan rushed up the stairs and got into the flat, immediately making his way to his bedroom. In there, Silvia was already covered in one of Ryan's blankets, just creating a mound to protect herself with.

  Carefully, Ryan approached her, sitting down on the side of his bed, "You wanna talk?"

  Silvia pushed one of her hands through a gab in the blanket shell around her, pointing her thumb down.

  "You wanna be left alone for a bit?"

  Silvia hesitated, but just kept her thumb pointing downward.

  "Well, in that case, want me to sit out here, or are you gonna let me in?"

  Slowly, Silvia pulled her hand back inside the blanket, and then threw it up over Ryan's head. With a sigh, he moved a bit closer, before Silvia placed her head onto Ryan's shoulder. The two just sat there silently, with Ryan's legs peaking out over the edge of his bed from underneath his blanket.

  He didn't know what else to do but to just sit here. It felt like he should say something, but for once, he wasn't confident in this gut feeling. It wasn't the same kind of intuition that he usually felt, but more a sense of anxiety that was trying to push him to make sure he was doing the best he could for his friend.

  For a little while, the two of them just sat there, doing nothing, until Silvia took a deep, loud breath, throwing the blanket off the two of them.

  "Sorry, I just... needed a moment," she said, and Ryan just shook his head.

  "You're fine, no need to apologize," Ryan replied, slowly standing up, "I, uh, I told her to leave. And that she wouldn't be welcome back until you say so. I don't know what your plan is from now on, so-"

  The young elf scoffed, "What, do you think I should try to forgive her or something?"

  Ryan immediately shook his head, "Oh, no, I'm not thinking anything at all. I don't have any opinion beyond, you know... that my priority is that you're alright in all of this," he pointed out, "If you think you want to keep meeting her, then sure, as long as you're going to be okay, you have all my support. If you never want to see her again? Same thing. I don't feel super great about abusing this, but Runar has some contacts in the police force, so we could make sure she can't get near you again like that."

  Silvia hesitated, "Okay... uh... I don't... I don't know. I absolutely don't want to see her again, but if we call the cops on her, she might go back to prison, and I don't want that either."

  "If she goes back to prison, then that's her own fault. You're just trying to protect yourself," Ryan pointed out.

  "But..."

  "No, seriously, you don't owe her any of this," he squatted down in front of the bed, "If my step dad showed up, asking for my forgiveness? Well, first, I guess I'd beat the shit out of him now that I actually can, and then I would turn around and call the cops on him and have him taken away. We don't owe our abusers forgiveness."

  Silvia looked at Ryan, trying not to cry, "So what, I'm just supposed to hold onto this? I thought I could finally move on if I got to talk to her about everything, but... no, it just made everything a thousand times worse. I just feel so... dirty. Even being in the same room as her made me feel..."

  "... Like you were a kid again?"

  With a slow nod, Silvia looked down at Ryan, "Yeah, that's exactly it. Like I was a kid trying to painfully get her attention that she only gave to me in the form of throwing empty bottles at me."

  "Yeah... those hurt a lot, huh?" Ryan laughed awkwardly, "But we're not those kids anymore. Like I said before, I'd beat the shit out of my step dad, and I have no doubt in my mind that I could. I mean, maybe you can't beat the shit out of her with those noodle arms, but..."

  "Oh, shut up," Silvia kicked her foot forward, lightly hitting Ryan's shoulder as he was still squatting in front of the bed.

  With a laugh, he continued, "... but... you've definitely got her beat in everything else a dozen times over. We're not those kids anymore. You've got an amazing family, an awesome girlfriend, two really fun and handsome best friends."

  Silvia laughed, "Yeah... I guess so."

  "Not denying the 'handsome' part, huh?" Ryan stood up straight, a grin on his face, "I'll take that. Anyway, uhm... I might have to go downstairs before Gaia accidentally breaks the coffee machine or drops any plates and mugs, so..."

  "You left Gaia alone down there?"

  "Hey, she's doing an... okay job. But yeah, really, I should check up on her. You can stay up here if you want. There's a literal ton of food in the kitchen, so just grab whatever you want if you get hungry. Or, and Liam should be home around 3, don't let him push you around too much."

  Silvia nodded, "I'll try. Thanks."

  "You got it."

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