Upon reappearing in my bathroom, I set Aster in the tub and pull my phone out of my storage. I let it pop out onto the counter since my hands are sticky, but it pings multiple times immediately after that happens. Pulling it out was in case someone tried to contact me while I cleaned up Aster but it seems someone tried while I in the Mythic Forest.

Either several someones or one person several times. It's probably nothing but I want to check in case there was an emergency of some sort.

"Stay there," I tell Aster, then wash my hands so I don't make my phone sticky.

There are a few messages, including from Nick asking if I wanted to hang out, Wyatt checking if I've got plans since he heard I decided to close my shop for the week, Kelsey asking if I wanted to go to a Monster District with her, and more. The most recent ones were just a minute ago and are from Ryan.

[Ryan]: Didn't think about it earlier

[Ryan]: Did you make sure to eat lunch

[Ryan]: Guess you aren't home or at the shop if you haven't had lunch yet I got you something

It's really sweet that he's checking to make sure I'm eating lunch and I'm happy that he's a little concerned for me. Not in a "he should be worried about me" sort of thing but that he actually cares enough to be in the current situation. Mentioning that I busy my day to avoid my lazy nature probably had him worried I got so lazy with the day off that I forgot to eat lunch. I did almost forget, but only because I was busy.

While his concern isn't needed, it's still touching.

[Evan]: I'm home and haven't had lunch yet. Was going to do that after cleaning Aster. He's all sticky again. Are you still nearby?

[Ryan]: Just got to my truck so be there in minute

Oh, duh. Those texts were recent enough that he was probably still waiting to see if I responded.

"Stay," I tell Aster, who plops his butt onto the ground. "Good boy."

I head to my front door, then wait for Ryan to knock. When I open it, he starts to say something then pauses and stares. That stare lasts longer than it takes for me to examine him.

As always, he's looking pretty nice. It's only as I take in his outfit, which is the same as he wore when he stopped by earlier, that I realize just how much I must have been out of it. He's looking pretty handsome and I hadn't even noticed this morning.

Today's outfit consists of dark blue-grey shorts and a grey sleeveless with a slight metallic sheen to it that fits against his body quite well. He's got his hair styled up a little and those beautiful orange eyes of his contain their usual light.

"Yes?" I ask after he spends a few moments longer just staring at me than could be considered normal.

"You're naked."

While I could have put something back on at any point in the four minutes since my Level 5 Awakening Quest, there wasn't much point to it. The Quest itself risked destroying my clothes, then I had to stop Aster from harassing a monster. After that, I was talking with him, then brought him here to clean him up. A minute later, I'm talking to Ryan but will be returning to the bathroom once we finish.

"Aster's sticky enough I figured it's easier to give him a shower than try to just wash him in the sink," I step to the side. "And some of it's coating my arms and on my chest, as I'm sure you can see. Come on in."

"Aren't you worried about someone seeing you?"

He glances behind himself as he enters, though also glances at my chest and the small chuckle lets me know that he hadn't noticed the honey stuck to it during his staring.

"The deck has privacy enchantments woven onto it," I inform him. "It creates an illusion of an empty deck to those who aren't on it or in the house and prevents our voices from being heard off of it. The audio portion is always on unless I want to talk to someone off of it, while I turned on the visual one before answering the door."

"Oh," he says. "There's one of those on the roof of the apartment building, just didn't think of it being small-scale."

This sort of enchantment is usually found in more high-end places, such as a roof with a pool. It allows for things like tanning and nude swimming without fear of being peeped on by creeps. The enchantment itself is technically expensive, but I had enough money when having the shop and house built to buy the materials needed. A large portion of the cost comes from the installation of the enchantments itself, which I could do on my own.

"Unconventional, I'm sure," I say. "But I put it in myself so the cost was a fair bit lower. I do like to tan a little sometimes and since I don't have a yard, this was the only spot I could do it unless I went somewhere which allowed nudity."

"That's neat," he says.

"Come on," I beckon and start walking towards the bathroom. "I do need to wash Aster up before he gets into more stuff. I was doing something and he decided to shift into his bear cub form and raid a very large beehive. You can wait out here if you want, or come join us."

"I'll join you," Ryan follows me and looks around once we're reached the bathroom. "Nice. You went for luxury, I see?"

His eyes are on the separate bath and the spacious waterfall shower. The bath is only used for relaxing in, as is the norm for when they're separate like this. It's more square-circle shape rather than rounded rectangular also tends to be for ones used for relaxing than washing.

"The number of times I've fallen asleep in there is beyond counting," I say, causing him to chuckle. "Ready for your washing, Aster?"

The pup actually stayed in place this time. I was half-expecting him to have vanished somewhere while waiting for us but he choose to stick around for some reason.

"Woof!"

"Ryan's decided to join us in here," I tell him as I enter the shower. "Are you okay with that?"

"Woof!" his tail wags.

"Alright," I glance at Ryan. "You going to sit out there and talk, or come in here and help? No pressure for either one, it's up to you."

"I'll come in," he undresses and enters the shower.

I turn on the shower as he does that and sit down. The water temperature is already to my preferred temperature immediately thanks to the magitech behind it so I don't need to bother with adjusting things. Ryan tests the water temperature for a moment and nods, then sits down.

"You know you're supposed to eat the honey, not get covered in it, don't you?" Ryan asks as I wash the pup's face and he washes the pup's tail."

"Woof!" Aster starts wagging his tail again.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"Hey!" Ryan laughs. "I can't clean it when you do that!"

That only makes Aster's tail wag more. I scrub the pup's cheeks clean, then get to work on his body as Ryan wrestles his tail into getting washed. Aster starts to want to wrestle while we clean him, which makes it take longer than necessary, but I'm glad the pup's having fun. We rinse the three of us off, then exit the shower and dry off, first using towels with drying enchantments on them, then a hairdryer for our hair and the pup's fur for good measure.

"How do you feel?" I ask Aster as Ryan and I start getting dressed.

"Woof!"

"You should really stop getting yourself so covered in sticky stuff," I tell him. "That's not good for you."

Aster just shrugs and lets out a breath in response.

Once we're dressed, we head out to the balcony and Ryan pulls out two bags of lunch and looks at Aster. The pup shamelessly stares back with expectation on his face.

"If you ate that much honey," he says as we sit down. "I'm guessing you're pretty full, right?"

"Woof!" Aster shakes his head.

"You're not?" Ryan asks. "You want something to eat?"

"Woof!"

"How about some varyihn beef?" Ryan asks as a plate with a some chunks of meat appear in his hands.

Aster goes nuts over that, causing us to chuckle a little. Ryan sets the plate on the ground and Aster dives to it and starts eating.

"Figured he'd enjoy that," he pushes over one of the white paper lunch bags. "Our sandwiches are from the place down the street, the one I ordered from the first time."

"Thanks," I open up my bag and start pulling out food. "And thanks for being concerned. I did almost forget, but not quite. Just got a little bit delayed due to what I was doing."

"I've kind of always wanted to eat lunches with you," he confesses. "But your 'no friendships with customers' rule prevented me from asking once you opened the shop. Before then, I guess it was mostly nerves? We kind of talked about why earlier."

"That feeling of not being worthy," I say.

"Right," he says. "And related to me being a demigod, there's something I wanted to mention."

"What's that?" I ask.

"I'm able to sense not just souls," he says. "But mana as well. Most demigods are good with it to some degree. It's been obvious you're getting a lot of EXP somewhere… but you definitely gained a Level since I saw you earlier… twice. Did you go into a Monster District and push yourself to an insane degree? Though I don't think there are any Monster Districts which would allow for that much EXP to be earned, not for a Rank 5."

Monster Districts are former inhabited districts within a city. This one has only three out of the nearly thousand districts of the city, as they don't occur very often.

Rarely, a thing called a Monster Egg will form. It's a mass of tangled cord-like energy streams that are black and red with a same-colored mist flowing off of them. They produce monsters and then fade from sight, but they're not gone. Once they appear, they're always there. Monsters living near them never need food or sustenance, and the Monster Eggs will reappear from time to time to spawn more monsters.

Which actually explains the Mythic Forest's monsters. The Great Napping Spot must have had another spawn session after a few days of me being outside of it, which is why more goblins were there. It's also how the monsters don't need food to survive.

With mythical beasts regularly showing up to kill off the population of monsters, such as the springscale icthinios taking out the lake icthinios, the Mythic Forests aren't simply packed full. However, they're regularly reappearing.

No one knows what causes Monster Eggs to appear, nor do we know how to get rid of them. I guess even the Mythic Forests aren't immune to their appearances.

And when they appear, they drain the land of life, dry up water sources, and more. It wasn't monsters that killed off the Mythic Forests, it was Monster Eggs. The King of the Celestials must be getting rid of them as I clear up zones, and he's probably enabling water to form again when I complete Quests relating to making water flow once more as well.

Here in the city, hunters can get a permit to hunt within a Monster District. Once the eggs appear, the district it's in is evacuated of all residents and put under the strict control of the bureau. They regulate who can pass through its gates and ensure the protective magics on the district's boundary walls are stable while also making sure monsters don't breach the gates.

Going into one as a hunter would help explain my burst in Levels, but he's right in that they don't have enough EXP to boost me this fast. He must have a passive sense for the mana in people as I doubt he was just checking mine for whatever reason.

I did know people can sense mana and that some people are more sensitive than others. The reason I can perform such precise control over my alchemy is because of my own innate talent for sensing magic and mana. Sensing more than just the ambient levels in an area requires conscious effort from me, which is probably why I didn't think others would have noticed mine.

"Know how we think the King of the Celestials is missing because he's observing humans?" I ask.

"Yeah."

"He's been issuing me random Special Quests a lot," I say. "It's what I was referring to this morning, when I said I had stuff to do. Some of it is hunting monsters, some of it is stuff like cleansing contaminated soil. I've been growing plants as well."

This isn't quite the truth, but there's enough there for me to be fine with it. I do want to hold off on telling him everything until things are more confirmed and the Mythic Forest is more ready for guests… as I'm hoping I'll be allowed to take people with me there later on. I do want to show it to Ryan once I've restored enough of it for the place to be truly scenic.

"I see," he says. "I hope you're not stressing too hard with the Special Quests."

"They're all fully optional," I tell him. "And I'm taking a lazier approach to some of them. I'm partially curious about what the King of the Celestials is doing and hoping that he'll tell me if I do enough."

Mostly, I'm just wanting to see what the Mythic Forests look like once they're restored. The more I work on the one I'm assigned to, the more I think I'll have to reach a certain point before their master restores it the rest of the way. He'll probably only let me see them in their full glory if I do a good enough job.

"Do you have a favorite part so far?"

"Meeting Aster," I say, and the pup looks at me. "Yeah, little guy. I love meeting you the most from everything there. Other than you stealing all of my jams and honeys and such, that is."

Aster huffs, then lets out a sound that sounds like a snicker before he returns to eating his lunch.

Ryan and I make some small talk as we eat our own lunch, the topic drifting away from my Special Quests to some hunter gossip. It seems some of the lower-strength guilds have noticed the bigger shifts in things and are now trying to recruit the new Awakened who became such before the Awakening Quests ceased.

But they're acting desperate and it's turning the hunters off.

"The bigger guilds aren't recruiting?" I ask.

"They generally prefer more background to go off of," he says. "Even if someone has rarer Skill types. They'll also be less-affected since they're more established and have bigger reserves. Their members can leave the city and gather more materials more easily as well."

"Ah, right," I say. "What about you? I know you're pretty wealthy on your own, but will you be alright when shortages start, if people start panic-buying?"

"Is your visual barrier still up?"

"It is."

Ryan reaches towards his bracelets and another one appears in his hand. Items with storage spaces can be stored inside of others, unlike in some fictional stories I've read. In reality, there's no issue with it because the space taken up by a bracelet isn't affected by the space enchanted into it. That pocket dimension takes up no real space.

It's like putting a jar into a box. They're both a form of storage container and yet the jar fits in just fine.

Ryan wouldn't have asked me about the visual barrier before pulling that out without a reason, so I check its information.

[Stasis Storage Bracelet] Tier: 21 A temporal-spatial iron bracelet enchanted to contain a storage space 9' x 9' x 9' in size. All items stored within are held in a temporal stasis, keeping their state unchanged while within.

That is a ridiculously expensive bracelet per cubic foot and it's a nine-cube one. The lower Tier for it is probably because that's as expensive of one as he could afford even with his funds and ifhe supplied the raw materials for its creation to help cut down the cost.

"You've got that stocked up?" I ask.

"Nearly to the brim," he tells me. "I've built up the stores over the years, mostly in case of an emergency. Mostly the last few years. A city in Europe fell about three years ago and that made me a little bit paranoid. An extremely high-rank monster appeared and destroyed the city's barriers and walls."

"I didn't hear about that," I say. "Though I don't pay much attention to foreign news."

"To avoid mass panic," he says. "They kept it out of standard news here. It's a rare occurrence, but I wanted to be prepared just in case something happened here and it was awhile before I was able to get to another city. The only reason I could afford this bracelet was because I supplied the ores and crystals needed for its crafting and the reagents for the enchanting. That cut down the cost quite a lot."

Just as I suspected, then.

The bracelet vanishes back into his others.

"I've accepted now that there's no reason to be paranoid of something like that," he tells me. "But realized that it's also good to be prepared just in case of a food shortage. If the Dungeon Drought lasts long enough to start causing them, I'll be good for awhile. I can even help you out some, if you need it."

"I probably won't," I tell him. "But if it comes to that and you do help, I'll appreciate it. Just make sure you take don't run out of it for yourself."

"That's one of three of those I had made," he chuckles. "If I run out of food while feeding two people, you know the world's ending."

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that," I say.

"Let's hope."

"Woof!"