Ryan felt his muscles tense up as he carefully dropped backward. He pushed his hands toward the ground and kicked his feet into the air. Once his feet were above his head in a handstand, Ryan pushed himself off the ground, but not straight up, instead forcing himself to twist around fully once before his feet hit the ground again. With both of his feet solidly on the ground, Ryan immediately pulled himself into a squat, and sprung back up. This time, doing a front-flip, Ryan jumped on top of the gymnastic mats stacked up in front of him around a metre tall. He nearly fell forward off the other sides of the mats. But he didn't! He managed to balance himself well, and soon stood up fully on the mats, taking a few deep breaths.

  "What the hell are you doing?" Silvia asked, stepping into the livingroom. She glanced down at her phone, "It's like 6:30 in the morning."

  "Huh? Oh, sorry, was I bothering you? Was the music too loud?" Ryan jumped off the mats and grabbed the remote on the table, quickly muting the speakers.

  "The music? No, no, don't worry, I couldn't hear anything at all in my room. I just like to get a run in early."

  "A run? Hold on, I'll come with you!" grabbing a towel next to him, Ryan wiped his face, "There's this route that I found on my run last night that's super pretty, I'll show it to you."

  "Okay, a few things... First, why are you doing gymnastics in the livingroom, and did you just say you went on a run last night? When did that happen, we said goodnight at like 10."

  Ryan thought for a moment, "Well, I'm training to awaken my Physicality stat, so I'm stretching, doing mobility workouts, and gymnastics like this every morning. And my room is kind of cluttered right now so I don't have enough space, and the gym is also full with equipment that still needs to be properly set up. Though, even then, gymnastics would be a bit of a stretch. I was going to do it outside, but Gaia hasn't given me the go-ahead yet..."

  "Right, okay, that makes sense, then. And I guess you're not bothering anyone if you do it down here this early..." Silvia started stretching a bit, "And what about your runs?"

  "Ah, that. Well, I go for a 10k run every morning and night."

  "... 10k? I do like 5 and I feel productive for the day, what the hell?"

  "It is a lot, I know, but it takes a lot to break through the stat awakening barrier. After that, I can take it a bit easier," Ryan explained, "And to be honest, I'm already taking it easy compared to what others do to awaken some of their physical stats... Running marathons every day is a sort of baseline training for either stamina or physicality. But since I do other stuff on top of that and have Tiar, I don't need to run as much. Plus, I already have the stamina stat."

  Silvia groaned loudly, "Okay, remind me never to try and awaken physical stats."

  "Will do. Oh, and it's a 5k route, don't worry. I'll just run it twice," Ryan explained, smiling as he walked over to the door to put on his running shoes. They were already ridiculously worn through, though Ryan only got them a couple of weeks ago.

  After grabbing some water for the run, the two headed out together. It was a brisk morning, and the sun was still coming up. It was the perfect time and weather to run. Once outside the gate, Ryan turned on his watch to track his metrics, and the two got started. The area around here was extremely calm and quiet. The forest road that they were running on was fairly old and bumpy, and could use some repairs, but it wasn't bad enough that you really needed to worry driving on it.

  That being the case, it took them a hot second to come across some other buildings. It was a small neighbourhood. If both Silvia and Ryan weren't used to seeing how things were built on New Riverside's main island, this area would just look like a small town.

  There were a few people starting out the day, heading to work or school that the two of them passed by, and even so it was incredibly quiet. It was almost unsettling the first time Ryan came through here, because he was worried something happened and people had to evacuate. But then he remembered that he lived right by a busy road in one of the largest cities in the world.

  "Left over here," Ryan pointed out as they got closer to a cross-section. Since they got into a proper groove by now, the two started chatting a bit at this point. It wasn't anything in particular, just... life. With how much insanity had been happening lately, they didn't have a lot of opportunities to just talk about random things like they used to. It was nice.

  "And then, Fae just completely blended in with the wall. You should have seen her face when she realized, it was so cute," Silvia laughed a bit, though she quickly realized that Ryan had been quiet for a while, "Oh, sorry, am I annoying? I just start talking when it's about Fae and can't get myself to stop..."

  Ryan immediately shook his head, "Absolutely not, don't worry. I've just been thinking about some stuff. Like, my future and everything," he explained, sighing a little because he felt stupid just bringing this up, "But you know that I'm not really super interested in dating, right? Like, I'm not totally against it or anything, it's just that I'm not sure I've felt like that about anyone before. I don't think I'm aromantic? I'm pretty sure I'm asexual, but love and stuff... I don't know, it feels distant, but not wrong."

  "I don't think you need to stress yourself out about this at all, to be honest. You're 18 and you've got a lot on your plate right now."

  "Ah, yeah, I know, I know. It's not that I'm stressing myself out, it's just... we know that fate is kind of a thing, right? Runar says it's nothing rigid, and at this point I'm not super worried about fucking up fate, because I'm just doing what I think is right and all, but..." Ryan didn't quite know how to say it best, so he stumbled around his words a little, "But like... if fate is real... Do you think soulmates are real?"

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  Silvia thought about it for a while, smiling, "Maybe! I think it'd be a cute thought."

  "I agree, it would be cute, but... If soulmates are real, and I'm outside of fate... I wouldn't have one. The thought doesn't bother me as much as I thought it would, but it's just been sort of sitting there like a lump for a bit, especially when I see you with Fae, or Modak with Yanna."

  "Oh... Ryan, I'm sorry... I didn't know you felt like that. Do you want us to be less lovey-dovey around you, maybe?"

  "No! Again, absolutely not, I'm not bothered by that stuff at all. Seriously, not at all. I've just been thinking about how I really fit into things."

  Silvia didn't really know what to say, looking over at Ryan while she tried to put her thoughts into words. And that was when she glanced at Ryan's arm, "Wait! If soulmates exist, then they're some kind of special, fateful connection, right?"

  "Uh, yeah, that's kind of the whole deal."

  "Then what about Tiar? Isn't the reason you two were able to bond because you have that kind of connection as well?"

  Ryan looked down at his arm. Tiar was showing a big smile on the back of his hand. She was right; they did have that sort of connection. Even before him and Tiar met, Ryan felt like he was going to meet someone important soon. And that was Tiar.

  "I guess you've got a point there," Ryan said with a solemn tone of voice, "I really don't know what fate is supposed to do. It seems more and more arbitrary whenever I try to look into it. But that girl, she was so..."

  "The one with antlers? I'm sorry, but she's clearly got something wrong with her. She basically tried to assault us."

  "Yeah, because I fucked up your fate. Who knows what your life would be like if I weren't here?"

  "Exactly, who knows? Who knows what my life would be like if I didn't meet you. What if I didn't get adopted by my parents? What if my mom never tried to sell me? Things happen, and thinking 'what if' won't do anything for anyone," Silvia pointed out, though her breathing was starting to get a little heavier.

  "We'll be back soon, don't worry."

  Ryan was quiet for a while. He knew that Silvia was right, but he was still really worried about it. How could he not be?

  Before long, the two of them got back to the front of the house. Silvia was breathing heavy, staring at Ryan, "How the hell... are you not exhausted?"

  "Huh? Oh, yeah I don't know. Stamina is a weird stat," he shrugged, getting ready for the second half of his run, "Thanks for the talk, by the way. I think I just need to let all of this settle when I have the opportunity to. There's just... you know, a lot going on."

  "Don't worry about it. You're putting a lot of weight on your shoulders with all of this," Silvia smiled, approaching the gate, "And you're really going to run another 5 kilometres right now?"

  "Yup. But it won't take that long, I'll be going a lot faster," Ryan grinned and quickly got moving, heading out into the road. Silvia couldn't help herself but laugh a bit, since the way he was running all of a sudden was more than just weird, even if shockingly fast.

  But as Silvia pushed open the gate, she heard footsteps from behind her. Ryan was coming back.

  "Everything alright? Changed your mind?"

  "Something like that, yeah," a broad grin was plastered on Ryan's face as he helped Silvia push open the gate, "I can take it a little easier for a bit now."

  He looked past Silvia into the air, at a small system window floating in front of him.

  [Due to adequate growth and effort, you have unlocked the -Physicality- Stat]

  Ryan picked up a bundle of tall grass. Gaia and her sub-golems had neatly cut it down and tied together, using some of the longer blades of grass to tie them together. These bundles were stacked up neatly in the corner of the garden so that they could get rid of them later on. There was just way too much here to turn it all into compost. They would figure out what exactly to do with it later.

  Apparently you could donate this kind of stuff to community gardens where they had bigger compost areas, and while not that many people could even actually digest grass, depending on the type, this might be something great for food banks. Minotaurs or Minogids, for one, could digest grass perfectly fine, so 'grass salads' weren't something rare to see. One time, Ryan accidentally ordered one at a restaurant without knowing that humans can't actually digest grass. It tasted pretty good, but he had digestive issues for a couple days.

  Either way, the important part was to actually finish getting the garden cleaned up. All the plants had already been shipped from café runic over here after Gaia 'disconnected' her garden. She was pretty sad about it, but she knew that she would get a new garden with way more space soon, so she ended up being fine pretty soon.

  All the plant beds and tools were currently stored in part of the garden that Gaia had prepped beforehand, though it definitely wasn't in a great state yet, or was really accessible or well-organized. So, she wanted to hurry up and prepare the new garden to some degree, at least so that she could put everything in the place that she was intending for it.

  Currently, she was in the process of doing just that. The great part of being a golem was that Gaia was incredibly physically strong, so she was able to carry the big parts without much help, and even the sub-golems were able to transport all of the pots on their own, so Ryan just took care of the clean-up work.

  Before long, everything was put into place. It still felt a bit bare, considering how huge this garden was. Even with everything from the rooftop garden put down and settled into place, just a fraction of the free space that Ryan wanted Gaia to use for this was used.

  But it was enough for Gaia to connect herself to this new garden. Her body, which had fallen bare after she disconnected from the rooftop garden, was now growing new plants on it. First and foremost, her entire back and shoulders were covered in a thin layer of grass. Different flowers were peaking out through that grass, and the beginnings of tiny saplings were sprouting as well. Looking at her own body, Gaia couldn't help herself but trod around happily. She looked a little like a toddler doing a dance, just stomping on the ground in a circle. Not just that, she excitedly walked up to Ryan and gave him a tight hug.

  Of course, he obviously didn't mind. While her body was hard and pointy, she was still a surprisingly great hugger.

  "You like this place that much?" Ryan smiled, looking up at Gaia, who just nodded her head excitedly. But then, something else caught Ryan's eye. In the shadows created by Gaia's large body during the hug, a small green light was shining out. It came from Ryan's eyes, which could only mean one thing in this instance.

  Ryan quickly pulled away, looking at the notifications in front of him.

  [Gaia has levelled up!]

  [Gaia has learned the skill -Garden Golem's Little Helpers-]

  [You have attained a new seed expansion pack]

  "Awesome! Congratulations!" Ryan exclaimed loudly, smiling broadly as he did. Gaia also seemed to be extremely excited, and didn't hesitate to open up the new skill that Gaia had gotten.

  [Garden Golem's Little Helpers]

  [Level - 1] [Proficiency - 0%]

  [Allows the user to turn all sorts of bugs, molluscs, and other common garden pests into helpers]

  [Effect - Gardener's Little Helpers]

  "Helpers?"

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