"What's wrong?" Silvia asked, looking at her friends curiously. Ryan turned toward her, groaning as he tried his best to keep his mana flowing in that cycle.

  "I think I can feel Modak's aura? At least, I don't know what else this could be... but it's just in there like a massive slab of stone and doesn't want to move at all."

  "You can? Seriously? Where exactly do you feel it, it's-" the orc asked, trying to turn around excitedly, but Ryan pushed him down by his shoulders while trying to keep everything going.

  "It's all over, man. Literally everywhere in your body. There's a denser lump right where your heart is, but it's lodged in all of your unmoving aura..."

  "Uh... what?"

  "Just get up," Ryan said, interrupting the cycle and letting his mana settle back inside of his own body, "We're taking a small run."

  "... Here?"

  "Yes, here. Aura is the energy of the body. It becomes easier to control as the body gets moving and heats up."

  "And that's necessary? I can't really move that well, still..."

  "If you want to loosen up your aura. I was hoping to awaken my aura at some point as well, so I spoke to some guys at the gym, and they told me that at its baseline level, aura should still be flowing through you to some degree. But for you... I think it's just so much and so dense that 'flowing' isn't an option," Ryan stretched slightly, "It doesn't need to be much, you just need to get your heartrate up a bit. Here, put this on."

  He pulled the watch off his wrist. He got it to track his training properly and make the extreme levels of progressive overload that an Awakened was expected to do more manageable. Modak carefully placed it onto his wrist and started tracking his heartbeat.

  "So what should I do? Just run around in a circle?"

  "Yeah, just move as fast as you can. Get your breathing up. That kind of thing," Ryan said, quickly looking at the watch that the orc was now wearing, "Try to get your heart rate up to... 125. Start sweating a bit, you know? By then we should see some kind of difference. If you start hurting, then stop immediately, obviously."

  Modak started jogging around the area, still shirtless, trying to get his heartrate up. Meanwhile, Ryan decided it was a good time to let out Gaia, and talk to her a bit. Though, before he was able to say anything, the golem just started running off into the thicket. Ryan and Silvia glanced at each other, both realising that something wasn't quite right, and decided to follow behind.

  "Wait, where are you guys going?" Modak asked, already breathing a bit more heavily, but Ryan just quickly turned to him.

  "Just taking a look at where Gaia is headed. Don't worry, we'll be right back," he explained, climbing over a bit of tall grass. Ryan pushed some large leaves to the side, climbed under branches, and soon followed Gaia off the path toward a small open area to a particular field of flowers. They were giving off a faint glow, and just stepping closer, the scent of sweet berries filled the air. The flower itself had large, pale pink petals. They were quite unassuming, especially considering that there were so many extraordinary-looking plants around. Most of the things here were giving off their own glow, so these flowers just looked a bit boring in comparison.

  "What are these?" Ryan asked, looking at Gaia, who quickly touched one of the flowers. A message appeared in front of Ryan's eyes.

  [Titan's Eye]

  [A small flower thought to be extinct. It possesses incredible magical potential and is capable of boosting any other magic that it interacts with]

  "... Extinct?" Ryan frowned lightly, looking over at Silvia, "This is basically an extinct flower. It's called 'Titan's Eye'."

  "It's in a good place for that kind of name, huh??" Silvia scoffed, squatting down to it, "Should we show someone? If it's supposed to be extinct, then maybe the Botanist Guild?"

  "And what are we supposed to tell them? 'Oh yeah, we just found this in the giant skull under our house'? No, either we tell Runar, or..." Ryan hesitated, glancing over at his friend, "... or we don't tell anyone, and just let Kim use these to make stronger potions for us."

  "What? Why would we do that?"

  "We need some kind of upper hand. We need to start acting in a way that those guys from the family won't expect. It's the same reason why we're neither telling people about the exploit at the gift shop nor about how to solve the puzzle in the food court."

  Silvia grumbled slightly, "... And what if they find out about all that later, and then ask us why we didn't tell them?"

  "Then we just say we didn't know we had to," Ryan shrugged, "It's not like we need to keep this a total secret either and hide it somewhere. If someone does come down here to check on things and finds it, we can just say we didn't know or something. As long as Gaia takes care of it, we're going to get plenty more of them anyway. We can just keep them to ourselves for a while before then."

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  "I guess so. But what now, is Gaia going to make this place her new garden? Or the one upstairs?"

  "For now, just the actual garden upstairs. Apparently her Golem Garden skill unlocks some new slots when it levels up a bit more. So when that happens we'll add the one down here."

  Ryan looked at Gaia as she was squatting in front of the flowers, carefully caressing them. He could really tell how much she liked them. It made him want to let her turn this place into her main garden, so that she could have them sprout on her body. But they had already 'spoken' about it, and had decided against it.

  "Ryan!" Modak's heavily breathing voice sounded out from the middle of the skull, and he quickly turned around to get back to him. Gaia could just spend some time around here alone; it wasn't like there was anything dangerous down here.

  "I'll stay here with her for a bit, alright? I've been wanting to watch Gaia a bit more so that I can make something really good for the garden!"

  "Awesome, thank you," with a smile, Ryan went back over to Modak. He was really struggling already, just running around in a circle for a little bit, "... Dude, you really need to start working out a bit when you're healed up."

  "I... know..." he let out a long groan, so Ryan quickly grabbed the 'Horn of Shapeless Water', which he had by his hip all the time. Apparently, the more you carried magic items like this with you, the more effectively you could use them. Like a small bond was forming between you. He even kept it on his nightstand when he was sleeping. And while playing around with it, he learned of a pretty obvious secondary function, though he should have realised it much faster. It was a drinking horn, after all.

  He filled it with some cold water and handed it over to Modak, who quickly downed a few gulps, letting him calm his breathing a bit.

  "Are you okay?"

  "Yeah... I'm good. My heartrate is at 130... should we try again?"

  "For sure," Ryan sat back down on the ground, waiting for Modak to sit down in front of him. He was about to touch his back, when he realized a fatal mistake with this plan. Modak was now covered in a thin layer of sweat all over his back. Inwardly, Ryan reminded himself of why he was doing this; to help out a friend he loved. Taking a deep breath, Ryan quickly just went through with it, and quickly started pushing his mana back into Modak.

  He returned back to the cycle from before, trying to add more and more mana into it. And before long, Ryan realized that this all did make a difference. It still felt like he was dealing with a solid block of aura here, but now it was slightly cold clay instead of stone. It felt like his mana was leaving behind some 'grooves' in Modak's aura, pushing it to the side as the mana flowed through it.

  Of course, Modak's body still fully rejected mana even without the addition of the aura, but it felt like the mana was able to keep its form a bit better, allowing Ryan to slowly but surely change the trajectory of the cycle. He had gone around it until now to establish this flow first, but it felt like they really had to dislodge that extremely dense boulder of aura where Modak's heart was.

  Slightly grumbling to himself, Ryan carefully moved the flow of mana toward his friend's heart. There, it was starting to hit the sides of that boulder. But Ryan wanted to hit it straight on, and slowly but surely destroy it. Soon, the mana was flowing against the aura in the angle he wanted, and Ryan could feel his mana try to scatter. It was actually pretty damn hard to pull it all together again, but he was able to keep the flow going somehow. That boulder was now basically an island in the river of mana.

  "Fuck..." Ryan groaned. He could try to eat away from it slowly on the sides, but he might just make it worse that way, pushing it into a denser mound. He had to do something radical, and shatter it all at once. When an idea came to Ryan's mind.

  It felt like a bit of a shame to let go of it, but it wasn't like it really ended up helping Ryan until now after all. So, he decided on using Michael's mana. Ryan still had almost all of it inside of the domains' space, so if he could just somehow feed it into the cycle and hit the boulder all at once, it should do something. It was also possible that Ryan's mana was just not aggressive enough. With how 'bland' it was, it was possible that it wasn't the most effective way to deal with this sort of thing.

  But Michael's mana had such an immense water element to it that it might be just strong enough. Ryan immediately pulled all of the remaining 40 points worth of mana out of the domain space, placing it into the flow. To not let it escape, especially inside of Modak's body, Ryan used his own mana to encase it. Like the insulation on a wire.

  Forcing Michael's mana along as fast as he could, Ryan soon pushed it into Modak's body. Getting it through his skin was rough, and even Modak tensed up and flinched.

  "Ouch, what was that? That stung like a bitch..."

  "Sorry, just... trying something," Ryan concentrated, as he shoved the mana forward one more time. It was almost impossible to keep the mana in place in there. Not only did he have to balance his own mana within Modak's body, but he had to balance Michael's mana inside of his own. But maybe it was thanks to those light 'grooves' that Ryan had dug out with his mana in the aura earlier, but he managed to let it all flow forward.

  Michael's mana slammed into that dense boulder of aura. It couldn't get through either, at least not in one go, but as Ryan kept pushing and pushing, funnelling the mana into a single spot, he was able to slowly bore through it.

  Slowly, bit by bit, Ryan was able to drive the spike that was Michael's water-soaked mana into that lump of aura.

  And then, finally, he pushed through. A hole in the middle of the dense aura was formed, letting Ryan's mana flow through. The pressure of the sudden release seemed to drag the aura way from the inside, as if slowly but surely dissolving it.

  Ryan was about to celebrate, but Modak fell forward. His whole body seemed to be cramping up, and as they broke contact, all the mana escaped from the orc's body at once, which probably didn't help the situation.

  "Holy shit, Modak, are you okay?" Ryan immediately scooted next to him, trying to see what was going on. But by that point, he already seemed to be feeling a bit better.

  "It's... it's okay, just... it felt like my body just went so tense, but now that it's over it... it actually feels really good," Modak said, a smile forming on his face. He pushed himself back up, and quickly flinched and pushed his hand to his ribs, "Oh, fuck, yeah that one really hurts..."

  "Don't scare me like that, man," Ryan held his hand to his chest, taking a deep breath, "And you're sure you're okay?"

  "Yes, I'm sure... actually, I think I... I think I might feel something. It's not mana, though... is this what aura feels like? It's so... sludgy."

  "Yeah... that sounds like it. You have so much of it, it's kind of ridiculous. You might even have more aura than Yanna," Ryan slowly helped his friend up, and Modak took a few deep breaths.

  "Well, I don't know about that, but it feels good. I feel like I've got so much energy all of a sudden."

  "Wanna run a few more rounds to loosen your aura up a bit more?"

  "... Maybe not that much energy."

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