"Alright guys, this is Liam. He's the vampire kid that'll be staying with Runar and I from now on," Ryan stood next to the boy and introduced him to his friends.

Modak smiled as though he were looking at his siblings. Zigg and Mogh were a bit younger than him, but they were around the same height as Liam. He figured that maybe those three could become friends, "Nice to meet you, Liam. I'm-"

"A sturdy orc and a beautiful elf, I see. They will do," Liam nodded his head approvingly, before getting a light slap to the back of the head. It was really just enough to get his attention and not hurt him, though.

"Don't be rude. And don't call people older than you 'beautiful', that's just weird," Ryan scoffed lightly. Rather than finding Liam annoying, he was starting to understand the humour in the boy's actions. The fact he was being so serious about it all just made it funnier. Obviously that was only the case as long as he didn't start actively insulting others.

"Ow! Don't hit me, I'm just speaking the truth!" Liam complained, clearly overacting how much that light tap hurt. Ryan rolled his eyes and looked at his friends.

"That's Modak and Silvia, they're my best friends. Treat them well, please, and don't treat them like servants. That's not what they are."

"I mean... technically we're your 'aides' now, right?" Silvia pointed out with a slight laugh. She was looking pretty rough despite trying to act as she usually did. Modak seemed to have noticed it earlier as well, but right now wasn't the time to talk about it. Not in front of everyone else. And she said she would be fine, so Ryan and Modak had to trust that.

Ryan shrugged lightly, "Just officially though. Anyway, Liam, don't be a dick to my friends."

"Don't call him a dick, he's 10," Runar yelled out from across the café, holding a wooden crate in his hands that he brought from upstairs.

"Yeah, but he's also being a dick," Ryan shrugged, and Runar simply sighed loudly.

"Whatever, just come, we're heading downstairs."

Runar shifted the crate's weight onto just one of his hands as he unlocked the basement door. The wooden boards cried out under every one of Runar's steps, as though he had suddenly tripled in weight. The boards were old, but even the towering Modak was able to walk over them with only some minor squeaking.

"What's in the box?" the orc curiously asked. The top was slightly open so he was trying to take a peek, but there was nothing but darkness in there.

Runar turned back with a slight grin, clearly excited to show it off. But even so, he was trying to stay patient, "You'll see. It's pretty cool, don't worry."

"Hm... alright," Modak muttered, "Oh, and by the way, I met with Vanda earlier. You really took care of everything overnight, huh?"

"Yeah, I guess. Thanks the gods for all the nocturnal species in this city, huh? This kind of thing takes so much longer in other parts of the country," Runar explained, pressing his palm onto the runic patterns on the floor. He turned back around as the ground opened up, revealing the stairway down below, "I was a bit surprised that we managed to get it all done on the weekend though, but I guess we got a bit lucky."

'Lucky? As if,' Ryan thought to himself. There was no way that luck solved all of this. He stayed up pretty late, just scrolling through article after article describing Aglecard foundation's work. It was a massively influential organization.

While they were largely a philanthropic group, they had their hands in many industries to some degree. Construction, agriculture, journalism, clean energy; all the companies that were directly supported by the foundation were leading actors in their specific industries.

The Aglecard family was not only extremely wealthy, but vastly powerful and influential. It was almost to a scary degree; the more Ryan dug around, the larger and more shrouded the scale of this all seemed to become. There was no 'luck' involved in the fact that Vanda's situation could be figured out literally overnight, headed into a weekend; it just showed the ridiculous and vast power of the Aglecard family.

"So you were checking up on Vanda?" Silvia asked as the group started walking down the stairway, and Modak slowly nodded his head.

"Yeah, I wanted to talk to her about something. Her 'Energiser' imitated the powers of an enhancer, right? But the way those powers work is by alternating, high-frequency energy patterns, and she was struggling to figure out a way to do it at the low power output that she needed, so she had to use some weird tricks," Modak explained, turning back toward the elf walking behind him, "I showed you the mana tapes a bit ago, right? I figured maybe the mana-inscribing method that I used would work to solve Vanda's problem."

Ryan looked at his friend with raised brows, "Oh damn, so what does that mean? She can rebuild Energiser without having to use a spirit core?"

"Hopefully. And really, she didn't know. She was given the fragment by someone else, right?" Modak pointed out, and Ryan let out a slight sigh.

"I know, I know... I just... feel really weird about the whole thing. Like, what was the plan there? Why did some rich kid give her one of Gaia's fragments?" Ryan pointed out, inwardly glancing at the two fragments in his mind, "Runar, do you know anything about that?"

"Sadly not," he replied, "I've got some guesses, but none of them are substantiated enough to really be worth adding onto your pile just yet. You've got plenty of other things to learn and know. And whichever the plan was supposed to be, you foiled that."

"I... guess?" Ryan let out unsatisfied, but he figured it was a good point. However, he looked back at Modak with some curiosity, "Also, what's this about mana tapes?"

"I can show you in a second. You know how Silvia and I have been customizing some older retro tech together? Like cassettes, flip phones, those box TVs and monitors."

"Ugh..." Runar groaned loudly, "That stuff is 'older retro tech' now? That was practically sci-fi for me when I was growing up..."

"Wow, how old are you?" Liam asked bluntly, and Runar flinched lightly.

"Hearing that from a kid that grew up while cosplaying the Middle Ages really doesn't feel great..."

Modak laughed awkwardly, "Uhm... either way, I was working on some stuff that Silvia asked for, and more recently, a lot of newer tech is integrating mana more directly, so I figured why not give it a try and see if I can adapt some older stuff with mana-based tech. So instead of giving the actual tapes a magnetic charge to store data, I figured out how to do the same thing with mana," the orc explained with clear excitement in his voice, "I mean, it's useless in a practical sense, because even if the mana-cassettes can store more data than regular cassettes, even a small USB stick completely shatters the amount of data that can be stored in comparison. It's just a neat little thing I had fun playing around with."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"That does sound kinda cool though. Doesn't need to be 'useful'," Ryan pointed out. Though he didn't really understand much about this kind of thing, he did know enough to realize that it was something pretty damn impressive.

While they were talking and Modak explained a bit more about how it all worked, Ryan noticed that his uncle was paying pretty close attention to the whole thing. And not just that, it looked like he was thinking about something, and Ryan doubted that it was just him trying to understand what the orc was saying.

Before long, the five made it all the way down the stairs, walking through the hallway to that large stone door. Runar pushed it open with his back, as he was still carrying that small crate in his hands. This time around there weren't any plants growing in the way, and the overgrown path had been trimmed down for the most part. And then, once they got to the other side, Ryan was able to see these ruins properly for the first time.

It was a large cave that had clearly been specifically cut out to accommodate this space; in parts of the walls, more ancient structures were sticking out above the treeline, some seemingly being used by the people living and working here, and others being taken over by some kind of bird's nest. As he was looking around, it was actually taking surprisingly long for a very simple fact to dawn on him; it was incredibly bright in here, to the point where it was almost disorienting.

But Ryan soon understood that this was due to the large crystals embedded in the ceiling. Remembering how this place looked last night, those crystals were also the cause of the 'stars' that he had noticed here last night. However, the thing that he really did notice most of all was just how busy this place was now that it was daytime.

Hiding between the thicket and the bushes and trees were Dryads of many different types and forms. Some looked like people, others like animals. Along the roads, there were many Geodes walking around, and though they were quite small, Sprites were hopping around the walls and on top of boxes. There were also plenty of other people here, most of which looked like any other person above ground. In regard to their appearance, there was clearly no difference between them and other people, so Ryan wondered what exactly the thing holding them back from joining up with mainstream society really was.

"Woah!" Liam let out, looking around excitedly, for once showing some proper childlike excitement., "Now this is what I call a castle!"

"You could call it that, I guess," Runar smiled lightly, walking along the path as the others followed behind. The people in this small, hidden underground town were throwing glances at the group as they walked, muttering to each other curiously about these people that they had never seen before.

"Alright, Liam," Runar started once they got to the building that seemed to be his office, "Anders is waiting for you inside here. He's going to show you around and introduce you to the couple other vampires we have here specifically."

Liam raised his brow, surprised, "There are other vampires here?"

"There's four others living here. None that are your age, but it would be nice if you got to know them, alright?"

Liam carefully walked up the stairs, looking around as if trying to see if he could spot the other vampires from here. His demeanour completely changed the moment Runar mentioned other vampires, something that definitely didn't get past Ryan.

"Is he alright? I thought he'd be a bit more excited and say something like 'finally some noble compatriots' or crap like that," Ryan pointed out once Liam closed the door behind him, but Runar slowly shook his head as he continued guiding the three others down the road.

"I don't think there were other vampires where he grew up. About 90% of the vampires in Riveria are here in New Riverside. There are plenty of jobs that allow them to live nocturnally to avoid the sun, and with how many people there are here, it's hard to notice if someone is being 'weird'."

"So he's just nervous?" Ryan asked, and Runar quickly nodded.

"I guess so. Anyway, let's worry about you for the time being," he replied, "It's going to take a while until you can really figure out what you want to do as part of our family, and since we do a lot of different things, you're going to have you test out a few things. I think this is also going to help all three of you figure out if you actually want to do this."

Silvia picked up her pace, walking up next to Runar a bit confused, "Didn't we already join? You gave us those coins, right?"

"Those coins just mean you're affiliated with me directly. It doesn't mean you've joined us, but just that you're someone that's important to the head of the family," Runar quickly explained, "Frankly, I'm going to be dragging out any official announcements for as long as I possibly can. Luckily everyone here is in my faction, so they'll stay quiet about it."

"Did you just say 'faction'? As in, there's more than one of those in our family?" Ryan asked with a concerned frown.

"... Yeah, it... I was a bit worried that I played up the good side of our family a bit too much yesterday. The way things work, the thing I'm directly involved in... those are the ideals laid out by our founder that I fully support," Runar turned around the corner, walking down a sloped road to a lower part of this large cave, "But not everybody in our family is convinced of those ideals... There's a reason why I could understand that your father wanted to leave, though I obviously couldn't support the way he achieved that. Our family has a lot of ugly sides to it, and depending on what you choose to do, you will face them more than you'll already be forced to."

Ryan turned back toward Silvia and Modak. The fact he was worried was written boldly on his face. It was one thing to get himself caught up in something potentially dangerous, but dragging his friends into it was a whole other matter.

"So... what will be the first thing we're dealing with?" Ryan nervously asked, as Runar finally slowed down a bit. They were on the outskirts of that small, half-ruined 'town' and standing in front of an old building that didn't seem to be particularly in use. If it weren't for the glowing coals in the forge at its side, it would certainly look like a completely abandoned structure.

Runar finally put the crate down onto the ground, "Something that I feel like would be a good introduction to some of the 'weirdness' we deal with on a day-to-day basis. So, I mentioned it briefly, but we don't only deal with 'people'. We deal with animals as well. Usually, these are magic beasts who are treated horribly due to certain magical qualities they have. Other times they're regular animals that have mutated to attain some magical quality. Frankly, almost all the beings that we deal with, whether person, animal, or otherwise, are in danger because they're, in one way or another, 'magical' in some form."

Silvia's eyes slightly widened nervously, "Wait, wouldn't that also include Changelings?"

Runar thought about it for a moment, but in the end just shrugged, "Kind of. Changelings came to be because they evolved in an isolated valley that was practically flooded with chaotic magic. The way their bodies adapted to that was by allowing them some level of shapeshifting. And then, when the valley broke open for some reason or another, they came out into the world and met other people. They developed their abilities specifically to let them become part of the already developing civilization. So our help really wasn't needed there."

"I see..." Silvia replied, thinking of Fae and the idea that she and her family and other people like her could have been in the exact same situation as all these other people walking around here if things had just developed a bit differently.

"So..." Modak curiously looked around, trying to figure out why they were here, "What do animals have to do with a blacksmith?"

Runar smiled lightly, pointing at the crate that he had just put down on the ground, "Ryan, go and grab a piece."

Obviously curious, Ryan walked up to the crate, pulling the top off. And what was inside was nothing but finger-sized rods of metal. He picked one of them up, and slowly turned toward his uncle in complete disbelief. This much had to weigh literally a ton. But could those old wooden boards even hold that much weight? But this was definitely genuine metal, "You carried all this down here? Dude, seriously, what level are you?"

Runar laughed and stepped up next to the lit forge, "Not telling. Anyway, hold your hand out with that piece of metal on your palm. Like in a petting zoo."

Nervously, Ryan did as told, taking a step forward. He had no idea what was about to happen. Runar carefully ran his hand over the bricks making up the top of the forge, "Come on, wake up. It's time for lunch."

With loud creaks and the sound of shifting stone, the forge at the side of the building started to move. As if unfolding, a form started to appear. Strong hind legs and large, clawed wings, all made of stone while its yawning maw held all the red-hot coals.

The old forge that had just taken on the form of a dragon curiously tilted its head to the side as its eyes landed on the piece of steel on Ryan's hand.