As it tightened around his neck, the noose-like piece cut off Ryan's breath. For a moment he panicked, pushing his fingers in-between the fabric and his neck, quickly forcing it back open before staring at the perpetrator with a deep glare.

"Showing your true colours now, huh? And here I thought I could trust you," Ryan barked out, as the man across from him just let out a scoffed laugh.

"A bit dramatic, aren't we? I get that you don't want to go to the party, but it's good for you. Just see it as training for your Sociability stat," Runar replied, helping Ryan loosen the necktie that he accidentally pulled a bit too tight.

When the tie was properly in place, Ryan looked down at his body and let out a loud groan, "Do I really have to wear all this? I'm already sweating buckets in my fuckin' underwear."

"Don't worry, I thought of that," with a smug expression, Runar patted his nephew on the shoulder. The waistcoat that he was wearing lit up for a moment as the patterns sewn into it activated. The light soon faded, being replaced by a quite tangible effect. The heat that Ryan was feeling just moments earlier practically vanished as he was instead met with a cooling sensation as if he was standing in front of the open freezer.

"Oh shit, alright... that's better!" with a slight grin, Ryan looked back up at his uncle, "Seriously, having a mage in the family really comes in useful sometimes, huh?"

"Hah, don't expect to get these kinds of benefits forever," Runar shook his head, grabbing a small credit-card sized slab from the table next to him, pushing it into the waistcoat's pocket, "Just keep this in here, it should have enough mana in it to last you until... 6am? I doubt you'll be out that long, but better safe than sorry."

"Can I keep wearing this after tonight? It's so... pleasant," letting out a relieved sigh, Ryan sat down on a chair, quickly scooping up a bit of the fried rice that was in the bowl in front of him.

As he ate, Runar quickly came over with a towel that he pushed into Ryan's collar to make sure he didn't make a mess of himself just before heading out.

"... You know I'm not a kid, right?"

"Yeah, but you eat like one. Plus, this suit was pretty expensive, not even mentioning the custom enchantments I put on it."

"Enchantments? Plural? There's more than just the cooling thing?" Curiously, Ryan raised a brow, as Runar nodded his head slowly.

"The jacket and trousers have defensive enchantment. It's limited though, and once all the mana placed into them runs out, it's just like any other suit," Runar explained as he pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket, "And this one is pretty important. Since it looks like the shadows are using corruption pretty actively right now, I made this to detect most forms of corruption and curses in general. Basically, if it turns black, just call me."

"Hm... got it," Ryan replied as he continued eating, already not paying too much attention. He was glancing at his phone. This didn't get past Runar either.

"Still haven't heard from her?"

Ryan hesitantly shook his head, "Not from her, no... Yanna's been sending me updates, but she hasn't left her room at all. She let us in when Modak and I came over to see her, but she wasn't talking all too much."

"Do you think she'll be alright?"

Ryan looked over at his uncle, unsure what to say, "I don't... I think so? Or rather, I hope so. Like, her birth mother suddenly showing up without warning couldn't have been an easy experience for Silvia. She hasn't told us much, but it doesn't sound like shit was easy for her before she started living with her current... her actual family."

"I could look into it for you if you want," Runar pointed out, sitting down on a chair near Ryan.

"... Don't act like you don't know already. There's no way you didn't run some kind of background check on them."

Surprised, Runar raised his brows, "How did you...?"

"I don't know, isn't it kind of obvious that you'd do that?"

"... How high is your intuition stat again?"

"It's 1.32 right now," Ryan replied, scooping the rest of the rice into his mouth before wiping the corners of his mouth with the towel Runar gave to him. His uncle groaned lightly and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"Fine, whatever. Yeah, of course I did a background check on them, how could I not? And yes, I know what happened on paper, but police reports can't exactly tell a life story," Runar pointed out, "I didn't even know that Modak had no mana at all. I knew he had 'Mana Rejection Disorder', but I didn't know that it went that far."

Ryan glared over at his uncle, "I hope the checks came out clean enough for you."

"Yes, obviously. Otherwise I wouldn't have even let you bring them down to the sanctuary."

"Mhm, sure," Ryan stood up from his seat, "Either way... I don't want to know. I mean, I do, if it could help me be there for Silvia better, but if she decides not to tell us then that's just how it is. It's none of my business to know something she doesn't want me to know."

"If you say so," Runar glanced over at the clock on the wall, "Yamada should be there with the car by now. You don't want to be late, right?"

Ryan groaned, "I thought you didn't even want me to register in the first place, so why the hell do I have to go to this stupid newbie party?"

"Because, now that you are a registered Awakened, we might as well use this opportunity to let you meet a few more people and build more contacts. There's always a handful of people at these sorts of things that are worth getting to know," Runar explained, as he already has multiple times over the past couple of days whenever Ryan said he didn't want to go, "Plus, you've been flip-flopping about going all week, so now I've made the decision for you, as you asked me to. So just shut up and get down there."

Muttering something to himself that Runar was skilfully pretending not to hear, Ryan walked out into the hallway, "Guys, we're leaving!"

As his voice was carried through the flat, the sound of three sets of footsteps could be heard. The first was a particularly quiet tapping, almost being drowned out by the other two. The second was a lot heavier, thudding on the wooden floorboard and making them creak. And the third, the fastest by far, didn't belong to a spirit like the first two, but instead to the young boy that has been stuck to Ryan like glue for the past couple of days.

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"Wait, already? But you said you'd show me how to build one of those small knight models!" Liam complained, running up to Ryan. He ruffled the boy's hair and smiled down at him.

"You were busy with your homework, so I figured we could just do it tomorrow. We can just build figurines all day then, alright?"

Trying to push Ryan's hand away a bit annoyed, Liam began to grumble, "Fine... But if we don't do it tomorrow, you're fired!"

"... Can knights be fired?"

"Yeah of course! Usually that means they'll be rid of their head, but I'll make an exception for you," Liam pointed out with an almost smug smile, proudly proclaiming how generous he was being. With a laugh, Ryan looked down at Maximus who had just arrived, watching as the spirit fell apart into wisps of red light that were quickly pulled into Ryan's body.

"Sure, sure," he replied, peering over Liam's head as Gaia walked around the corner. As she approached, Ryan mentally took notice of the metallic sprouts appearing all over her body as well as the bits of moss and ivy. These were the plants currently growing in the 'garden' that Gaia had chosen; the balcony. Though the only plants that counted as part of the garden right now were the copper wildflowers that Ryan planted as well as the moss and ivy growing at the side of the building. There were other plants scattered around the edge of the balcony, but they were already old and half-withered since nobody had taken care of them properly for a while. So, instead of keeping them around, Ryan had helped Gaia take them all down.

Taking that opportunity, Runar had allowed him to properly remodel the balcony into a small garden, so they ordered everything that they needed for that. Really, having the money to do all that was really quite pleasant...

Either way, Ryan had been trying to properly plan the garden out with Gaia over the past couple of days, so they were going to grab everything they needed from some store on Monday so that they could start with the remodelling process properly. Until then, the selection of seeds that Ryan got after completing Gaia's quest to help her find a 'garden' was just held back so that they could properly plant them later on.

Once Ryan had completed the quest, he got three small seed packets like the ones you could buy from basically anywhere. He really hadn't expected something like that, since he thought that anything he could receive from quests were simply more parts to upgrade them and swap their parts out for better ones, but that didn't seem to be the case. Instead, Ryan had another idea of what it could be.

Similar to how Ryan was provided the parts for the spirits by his class, he figured that it was possible that Gaia's class could provide her with seeds for her garden. And since Ryan was Gaia's 'keeper', that was simply extended to him through the form of quests. She would probably have been given those seeds as a reward for finding her own garden anyway, and Ryan figured that she was going to keep being given seeds at certain points.

But whichever the case, Ryan would see that in the future. For now, the three seed packets were actually kept in Gaia's domain. Ryan slowly looked inward and read the labels of the three packets.

'Blue Mint', 'Blood Roses', and 'Glass Tulips'. He was able to look up some info about them online, but they were either so rare that it was almost impossible to to find anything about them, or, in the case of the Blood Rose, actually extinct. Runar was actually pretty interested in them and said that the family should be able to look into them, considering that it seemed like all of the seeds had some mana in them, so they should have some unique properties if observed closely.

None of that mattered right now, though, as Ryan still had to leave, no matter how much he wanted to procrastinate. Once Gaia was close enough, she fell apart into a flow of green threads that quickly poured back into Ryan.

"Alright... I'm heading out, then," he said, even if a bit dejected. After making his way out of the flat and down the stairs, Ryan quickly spotted Yamada's car. He pulled the door open and sat down in the passenger seat. The demon smiled at Ryan, as he hesitantly held his hands in front of his chest, "Erm... Hello, how... wait, what was it? How are... you?"

With a surprised expression, Yamada smiled back at Ryan after his attempt to sign to her. She soon returned it, though she tried to do it slowly so that Ryan could keep up, "I'm good, thanks. How are you?" she responded, and Ryan smiled as he tried to make sure he understood correctly.

"I'm good... too... thank you."

Nodding at Ryan with a smile, Yamada pulled out of the parking spot, quickly starting to drive down the busy roads of Oldtown. Though, Yamada was able to drive pretty fast, circumventing congestions in traffic and moving through gaps in between cars that Ryan would usually feel were too tight, but she was able to do so without hesitation and without even making Ryan feel like he had to be scared.

Though, since the car was completely silent right now, Ryan looked down at the back of his hand, where Tiar was currently practising some specific patterns that Ryan had been suggesting for them. Since symbiotes like Tiar weren't really public knowledge, having them sway around on Ryan's hand probably wasn't the best idea. Of course, there were cases where those sorts of tattoos were a thing, so even if someone spotted Tiar moving, he could probably excuse it away, but he wanted to draw as little attention to them as possible.

There were only really three ways for a tattoo to be moving. One, like in Fae's case, the 'tattoo' could just be an ability to manipulate the appearance of texture of their skin, allowing tattoo-like patterns to appear that might move around.

Two, it could be a magically-applied tattoo that might act as some kind of spell, curse, or boon. These were more on the rare, and incredibly expensive, side of things, though.

And then, there was the third way, which was the excuse that Ryan would go with if anyone saw Tiar move tonight; it was the effect of a skill. Since Ryan had a 'unique' class, as far as everyone else was concerned at least, he could just excuse it away like that pretty easily. But if possible, he would prefer it if Tiar didn't pull too much attention, and people though they were just a simple tattoo. That whole place was going to be swarming with Awakened of numerous different classes, so it was possible, even if unlikely, that someone might have the ability to either tell that Ryan was lying, or that Tiar was a living being instead of just a tattoo. And he didn't really want to take the risk of either of that happening.

"Are you ready to go, bud?" Ryan asked, ask two quick patterns appeared on the back of Ryan's hand, one after another; a smiley and an exclamation mark.

" :D ! " Tiar replied, before quickly returning to their practice. They were actually doing a pretty good job at staying still. Luckily, they only had to focus on Ryan's hand, anyway, since his sleeves were covering up the rest of the patterns on his arm. Taking a deep breath, Ryan figured he should also mentally prepare for the party. Going to these things completely on his own wasn't something he particularly liked, but maybe it was going to be a little fun after all. If it was horrible, he could always just leave early if he felt like it and then just deal with Runar's annoying lecturing.

After a while of driving all the way to the Channel, where the party was happening, Yamada stopped the car. Ryan quickly signed goodbye, hoping that he used the right sign, and then stepped out. He looked at the Awakened Centre with a long groan, though he was seeing plenty of people make their way inside just as he was. These were also freshly awakened people, so Ryan should try his best to be nice to them. He took a deep breath and made his way into the building, where a reception area for the guests was already set up.

After showing them his Awakened Licence, Ryan was let in. His stomach was already grumbling because of how hungry he was... he hoped there was some good food already set out that he could just dig into. Or at least, that was his plan, but when he stepped inside, he was met with something deeply annoying.

"Urgh... can't you be more careful?! Do you know how expensive this suit was?" some guy yelled out, his voice immediately sounding ridiculously stuck-up. Ryan glanced over into the direction that the voice was coming from, seeing a moment that he really would love not to have to deal with.

A guy in a dark navy suit and slicked-back blonde hair, yelling at a young woman that seemed to be some kind of waiter for tonight. She had already pulled back and had lowered her head, but that guy, a guest, wasn't letting off. Ryan could already smell the scent of food, and his whole body wanted to pull him toward its source, but he wasn't able to take even a single step away from the pair. Others were walking past them as well, perfectly fine and not particularly paying attention to what was going on. It seemed to be almost normal to them.

With an annoyed groan, Ryan looked away from the main hall with all the food, quickly approaching the guy yelling at the employee.