Ryan sat on the steps in front of the house, checking something on his phone, biting into an apple. Behind him, through the open door, a ripping sound kept bothering him for a while now.

  "Dude, Jester, can you stop it already?" he asked as he turned around, watching the harlequin hanging off of the side of one of the cardboard boxes stacked up inside, "If that breaks when we carry it upstairs later, you're picking up anything that falls to the ground."

  Jester jumped off of it and back onto the ground. With an exaggerated motion, he 'stared' right at Ryan, and grabbed the 'Tragedy' mask off his hip and replaced it with his blank mask. Holding both of his fists against his cheeks, he started mimicking a cartoonish sob. With a scoff, Ryan dropped onto his back so that he could reach his backpack from the steps, stretching lightly to reach the small pack of paper tissues in the net on the side. He threw it at Jester.

  "Here you go, use those if you need them."

  As Jester stared down at the pack of tissues with stunned disbelief that his 'act' didn't work, Ryan sat back up and felt a pinch on his side. He had been running himself through the wringer this past weekend, trying to get as many coins in the dungeon as he possibly could, putting some of them on Silvia's card and some onto his own. With the coin goal that he currently had, it really took quite a while. He wanted to save up as much as he could so that he could at least get a good idea of what sort of items he could get for the spirits beside Gaia. If possible, he wanted to purchase as many parts of the Paladin set as he could before trying his luck with the hidden lab under the food court.

  Plus, it would be great if Jester and Gregor could get their hands on some kind of anti-undead weapons as well. There were so many monsters down there that Ryan absolutely did not want to take a risk. Even so, he was trying to make a plan on his phone right now. Basically a small schedule to make everything fit with his classes and the work that they were going to have to do on the house now that it was generally repaired.

  Just as Ryan was thinking so, he heard a honk as a moving-truck pulled onto the property. Yanna was the one driving, and Silvia sat next to her. In a car following them were Silvia's parents and Modak. After helping back the truck, Ryan went ahead by bike and was just waiting for the others until now.

  He smiled and quickly got up, hurrying to finish the apple in a couple large bites. The truck came to a stop and Silvia came jumping out almost before it fully stopped. She looked around excitedly.

  "Holy shit, it's actually fixed up? This quickly?"

  With a scoff, Ryan nodded his head, "Hm mm hmm hm!"

  Silvia raised her brow, and Ryan held up the apple's core and pointed at his mouth, quickly hurrying to swallow, "Sorry. I said 'tell me about it'. They did a ridiculous job. I was here for a bit of it, and the entire house looked like it was being prepped for some kind of summoning ritual or something."

  "I bet... I would have loved to see that," Silvia said with a slightly disappointed pout, as the others also approached. Dimos and Athina in particular were a bit shocked at what they were seeing.

  "You know, Ryan, when you said that you were buying a house, I imagined something a little... smaller," Dimos pointed out, stretching his neck out to try and see the roof from.

  Not quite sure what to say, Ryan just smiled a bit. He also had to admit that this place was a bit much. If it wasn't basically the perfect place for everything the three were planning, it would be absolute overkill in every sense of the word. Plus, now that Ryan knew about what was sitting underneath, there was no way he could just leave this house to someone else. Not even others in the Aglecard family. Frankly, the more he learned about the rest of the family, the less Ryan trusted them.

  Not that it mattered much at this point. Ryan quickly looked around, and the one that he was looking for already came trodding by. It was one of Gaia's sub-golems, which Ryan quickly gave the apple's core to it, watching it quickly run away through the tall grass.

  "What... was that just now?" Athina asked, pointing at the area that the golem just disappeared into, "Was that one of your spirits? Gaia was the earth spirit, right?"

  "She's a... specific sort of garden spirit, actually. But no, that wasn't Gaia herself, just a small helper she can create," Ryan explained, quickly looking around. He saw Gaia carrying a large scythe, sweeping through the garden to get rid of the brunt of the overgrowth, "That's her right there. Since we're actually moving in, she got a bit too giddy and wanted to get started on the garden, so they're taking care of that. They're also going to start a compost, so that's where the apple core is going to."

  "Oh, I... see," Athina looked into the distance, seeing Gaia walking around happily. She looked back at Ryan, seeing Jester currently climbing up his leg as if he was trying to reach the top of a mountain. Deeper inside, two more spirits were clearly waiting to get started, "Just wondering, but is it just the six of us? There is quite a lot to move... And I'm not sure if those little guys can carry that much."

  Modak scoffed lightly and Silvia also showed off a broad grin, "Those? Trust me, they're strong enough. Rather, Maximus is the strongest out of all of us here. Oh, and Fae should be here any minute now as well to help!"

  Silvia's sister and their parents were looking at Maximus standing beside the box. They obviously weren't so certain right now, so Ryan cleared things up a bit, "When I use one of my skills, he's basically got a strength stat a little above 3, so... Yeah."

  "Wait, what?" Yanna let out, "3? Seriously? That's more than I have..."

  "Yeah, well, Maximus is a bit special. Anyway, we're also getting some furniture delivered later, and I called over a couple of other friends to help. With everyone, we should be able to get quite a lot done. Though, that's not the important part for now," Ryan quickly walked inside the house, "Let's show you guys around first. We also still need to actually pick our rooms, so let's do that before we start carrying things inside."

  Quickly trying to change the topic, Ryan grabbed Jester, who had reached his hip by now, and tossed him over onto one of the nearby boxes. Yanna, Dimos, and Athina walked inside, looking around excitedly and curiously. As they were out of earshot, Ryan pulled Modak and Silvia closer, whispering something to them.

  "And later tonight, I'm showing you the new secret elevator."

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The two stared at Ryan excitedly, who just walked past them while trying to hide his own grin. Frankly, it was a bit scary down there, and considering that it was some kind of religious site, it felt a bit awkward to just use it however they wanted. But it wasn't like it was an altar to some actual god. Runar had made sure that there was no trace of any actual divinity down there. It was just people praying to the corpse of a dead titan, and that was it.

  But just as Ryan had said, he would only show them that place later. Right now, they had to just focus on actually moving in. After the tour of the house, the three picked out their rooms and decided on some of the uses for the other spaces.

  Silvia's room was on the south side of the building, with a massive window to greet the sun every day. Elves had the tendency to run cold, so having a warm space like this was important for Silvia. Modak was almost the opposite. Not in that he wanted a cold space, but that orcs were incredibly hardy and could handle almost anything. But even beside that, Modak just wasn't a particularly picky person. His old bedroom literally only had enough space for a bed, a desk, and a small closet. Almost any room in here was a massive upgrade. His room was on the other end of the hallway, away from the stairway and any place that could get noisy. As an orc, he needed the most sleep out of everyone, so Silvia and Ryan wanted to make sure he could get his peace and quiet.

  As for Ryan's room, though he wasn't particularly picky himself, Silvia and Modak insisted on him having the biggest bedroom. Without him, they never would have been able to get this place in the first place, after all. But there was another reason. The new 'master bedroom' had the most access to any other place in the building. Not only was it directly adjacent to the 'secret elevator' and already had a door to it installed, but there was a direct secondary entrance that led directly into the garden.

  It also had the tallest ceilings out of all the rooms. You could actually see the roof from here. Considering the variety of spirits that Ryan already had with him, they wanted to make sure that if there was some spirit that could fly, they wouldn't need to worry about the place. And to top it off, with a ladder, you could get right into the sectioned-off attic from here through a small door. It looked like this part of the house was actually a later addition, and there used to be a window there. Either way, though the attic wasn't in such a condition now, if they took their time and put up some proper walls, the spirits could have their own little rooms here as well, outside of Ryan's head. Just for some extra privacy for everyone involved.

  After all the rooms were picked out, all the boxes could be moved in. The ones in the entranceway were Ryan's, which he already brought here ahead of time. Not that he had that much to begin with. He only moved to New Riverside a bit before the start of the year, anyway. Most of his stuff were models, and they were pretty easy to haul around. There were just... a lot of them.

  As for the rest of his furniture, Ryan actually ordered new things, so that the bedroom back at Café Runic could once again become a space for displaced 'hidden' folk that needed a place to stay for a night or two. Instead of introducing them to the hidden village, it was apparently easier to just give them a bedroom to crash in for a bit while other matters were being arranged.

  By the time all the boxes were moved inside and some of Modak and Silvia's heavier furniture was starting to be moved, Fae also arrived. It also didn't take long until Modak's older sister came in as a surprise helper, together with his directly younger brother. Kora apparently couldn't convince their parents to let her bring anyone beside Pock.

  And though Modak was happy that the two of them came, everyone had to keep taking things away from him as he tried to carry stuff despite his broken arms. Instead, he was just in charge of organizing things and telling people where to go, which toward the end, he did have to admit he liked a little.

  At some point, the Aglecards' Brats also came by to help. Beyond just working with Ryan, he also wanted to actually befriend everyone. They fucked up a lot in the past and acted in ways that Ryan didn't agree with, but they were already on their way of fixing that behaviour. As he got to know them better, the five of them were actually a pretty damn nice group to hang out with.

  And toward the evening, as the day started coming to an end, Ryan had something special prepared that he had put into the kitchen already. Though there wasn't a fridge yet, he asked Runar for a couple of coolers that they could put food into. And of course, he asked Runar so that he could enchant them with some frost runes to actually keep some food cold. There were also a few old grills outside, and when Ryan dropped by here over the weekend, he asked one of the restoration-mages if they could de-rust them. When he got out a couple bottles of beers for them at the end of the workday, they practically lined up to help out.

  And then earlier while buying the food, he also bought some coals. He knew that it wasn't the most common thing to do around here considering that not that many people actually had gardens in the city, but where Ryan grew up, as long as the weather was good enough for it, if someone moved into a place with a garden, they would end the day with a simple barbecue.

  He had prepared a bunch of different stuff. Sausages, chops, cheese, tofu, bell peppers, corn, and basically whatever else looked good when he was browsing online. He even made a few different salads for everyone to eat. To make sure that Yanna and her parents could actually eat everything, though, everything beside the straight-up meat and cheese was vegan. Minotaurs couldn't digest animal proteins, so Ryan made sure that everything was safe for them. He also used different grills for the meat and the veggies, just in ca se.

  They set up the grills right outside the living room. Gaia was focusing on this area here, making sure that this area was actually usable. And it didn't take long to get everything going, and Ryan started dropping the first bits of meat and veggies onto the grills.

  "You need any help?" Modak asked, looking over Ryan's shoulder, but he quickly shook his head.

  "Nah, I'm good. Plus, do you even know your way around a grill?"

  "Uh... I know car grilles?"

  "That's what I thought. Can you just grab me another beer?" Ryan smiled, handing Modak the empty bottle, and he quickly nodded. He was happy to be able to help out in any way at all today. From inside, James peaked out his head. He had been inside, helping put together one of the shelves together with Mark and even Gregor. It seemed like the latter two were in a bit of a competition to see who was able to put their parts together faster. Not able to really catch up, James was more curious about what was going on out here, "Did someone just say something about car grilles?"

  Ryan turned his head, "Oh, right, Modak did. I forgot to mention, but his dad owns a garage, and he used to help out all the time. He knows a thing or two."

  Without a moment's hesitation, James beelined toward Modak, entrapping him in a conversation. Fae and Silvia were chatting away with Jasmin and Macy about some punk music stuff that Ryan didn't know a ton about. And surprisingly enough, Kim was really hitting it off with Dimos and Athina. Only Yanna was sitting alone, on her phone, and soon came up to Ryan.

  "You need a hand?"

  Ryan glanced past her and over at Modak, who was already deep in conversation with James, and then shrugged, "Sure. Just don't tell Modak I let you help."

  Yanna laughed, "Yeah, I feel a little bad. He's been walking around like a puppy wanting to help out all day. So cute."

  "Well, I get it. I'd hate not being able to do anything either."

  With a smile, Yanna started taking over watching the veggies. She looked out into the garden, and turned her head to glance up at the house, "Seriously, though... Your class is special enough that they'd give you all of this? For nothing?"

  "For nothing? Hah, good one," Ryan scoffed, shaking his head, "The only reason my uncle was able to get this through is because the... I guess you could call them the 'board'... those old farts want to trap me in the family. They held back Jester and Gregor's cores because they didn't trust me with them, but when they have the opportunity to actually put me in their debt? Trust me, they jumped at that shit."

  Yanna frowned lightly, "So... what, you're their lapdog now?"

  Ryan turned toward Yanna, smiling up at her, "What, you really think I'd let anyone tell me what to do?" He pushed down on the grilled chicken with his tongs, watching as the juices dripped down into the fire, "Don't worry, I can handle those guys."

  She slightly hit Ryan's shoulder with her arm, smirking, "If you say so, tough guy."

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