“… You ruined model building for me, you know?” Ryan groaned loudly, leaning back in his chair as he rubbed his eyes. He peeked out from behind his fingers at Maximus, who was seated on a small stack of books in front of Ryan’s computer monitor. Right next to him was the mouse that he was using to scroll down the page where he was currently reading a comic that Ryan recommended to him.

  A bit confused, the knight turned toward Ryan and tilted his head to the side.

  “No, you’re right, you didn’t do anything. There’s nothing wrong with the model either. I think I’m just still feeling weird about the whole Runar situation,” he pointed out, and Maximus quickly moved his hand away from the scroll wheel to pay more attention to what Ryan was saying.

  “And seriously, you don’t know anything at all? You remember nothing from before I woke you up?” Ryan asked, but Maximus quickly shook his head. It had taken a pretty long time of going through dozens of “yes or no” questions, but as it turned out, Maximus knew maybe less than Ryan did about all of this.

  Whether it was some kind of specific spirit amnesia or because he never knew anything to begin with, Maximus had no clue what was going on. He knew how to use his skills and had a very clear idea about what his values as a knight were, but basically nothing beyond that. Not if there were other spirits like him, nor why he was in that box with his father’s stuff.

  Though, it was probably wrong to say that he knew “nothing”; he did know that he had some kind of history with Gaia, but not how deep that history went. From what Ryan gathered, and he didn’t ask too much about it as he didn’t want to pry, they once were close friends. But since Maximus couldn’t say when exactly that “once” was, that was a dead end as well. Maybe Gaia would know some more things once Ryan found her other two fragments.

  At least there was a trace there. While he didn’t have another moment like when he recognized there was something in the Abandoned Copper Foundry dungeon, he could guarantee one thing; Gaia’s entire being was within this city.

  Though he was only able to tell him that since yesterday. When Ryan had spotted him seated in the domain in contemplation, Maximus was in the middle of realizing that and let Ryan know afterward.

  With a long sigh, Ryan leaned his chin onto his desk. “Like … and this could definitely just be me not wanting my uncle to be involved in some crime shit, but my gut tells me that it’s nothing too bad. I mean, I’m freaking out about it, obviously, but I’m not freaking out as much as I should be … right? But at the same time … I just can’t believe that he’s involved in anything bad,” he explained, as Maximus listened to him intently.

  Ryan looked at the knight’s expression, though it was really just the same unchanging helmet. “Am I putting too much faith into my raised intuition stat? It’s not like it’s a massive difference.”

  But to Ryan’s surprise, Maximus also shook his head.

  “Hm? Wait, do you also think it’s nothing bad?”

  Maximus nodded.

  “… Do you have some sort of secret knight’s intuition that tells you that?”

  After hesitating for a moment, Maximus just pressed his palm onto the center of his chest. Ryan sort of understood what he was trying to get at.

  “You think he’s a good person?”

  Immediately, the knight nodded his head once more, but Ryan just sighed, “I really do hope you’re right. I mean … we might figure something out soon? I mean, during that call, he did say that he wants to talk to me about some things first. I guess I should trust in him a bit more?”

  Feeling a sense of relief, Ryan looked back at the model that he had just built, smiling lightly. “Alright, let’s get this shitty thing taken apart. I might as well repaint it to make it look a bit nicer,” he said loudly, reinvigorated with a new sense of energy, as Maximus turned back toward his comic.

  As Ryan looked at the model, he did get an idea, however. According to the booklets that Yanna gave him, the main way to train your stats was to push the limits of what you were currently capable of. Frankly, ever since he got his class, he hadn’t spent too much time doing things with his hands besides building this model in front of him that he had put off, as well as building Maximus himself.

  His palm was practically perfectly healed at this point too, so he didn’t have to worry about hurting himself either. Ryan pulled out his phone, not wanting to disturb Maximus’s reading time by pulling it up on the computer, and started up a stopwatch. After taking a deep breath to mentally prepare himself, Ryan quickly got started.

  He grabbed the model and immediately started pulling it apart; not violently, of course, but with as much precision as he could. It took him a little while to get used to it, but before long, he was moving at a speed that he could barely recognize from himself. He had surprised himself when he’d worked on Maximus’s new arm, but this was something completely, wholly different.

  Ryan continued, and in the end, it didn’t actually take him all too long to finish taking the model apart. It didn’t have all that many pieces after all, at least compared to Maximus. Ryan looked at the stopwatch. Five minutes. That wasn’t bad at all. But this wasn’t the end yet; he still had to paint them.

  After priming the pieces with their new base color, he was going to go in with some finer brushes to paint in details. That was also something that dexterity was supposed to excel at, so he still had plenty of chances. Not to mention … Ryan still had plenty of money saved up. He could buy dozens of models if he wanted to, which he did.

  “Guess I’ll be a bit busy.” Ryan grinned broadly, standing up from his chair to grab his spray-on primer.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Trapped

  [Your Dexterity has increased by 0.01]

  The window popped up in front of Ryan as he was in the middle of pushing the head of a hippogriff onto its body. Excited to have increased his dexterity over the next threshold again, he placed the animal model onto the table.

  In the past few days, by spending hours and hours every day building models, he managed to increase his dexterity by a total of 0.03. Of course, it was only a little more than the lower end of how much it could increase through a level-up, but for the amount of time he spent to get to this, it was an incredible growth as far as Ryan was concerned.

  “Hell yeah.” Ryan grinned as he stood up, stretching to get the stiffness out of his back and shoulders. His right shoulder was overall feeling fine, but he still felt some pain when he moved it around too much.

  With a slight whistle, he picked up the finished hippogriff model and placed it onto his shelf with the others. “… I might need to make more space. Or put some away …” he muttered. The whole wall in front of him was filled with different kinds of models; historical warriors, famous mages, some animals, and even a few dungeon monsters. The one that he had most fun building was actually the grave worm. They were a pretty bothersome type of worm that was known to thrive in the middle of battlefields where numerous people had died, feeding on their corpses. These days, they were mostly a pest that could be found in graveyards. They weren’t really that big of an issue, but considering they could grow to be up to half a meter long and as thick as a thumb, they were certainly not a pretty sight.

  Apparently they were actually a type of maggot that either lost the necessity or ability to move on to the next stage of their life cycle. That being the case, Ryan remembered the stories about this graveyard that turned into a dungeon some twenty or so years ago, where massive grave worms were one of the more common monsters.

  And that was the model that Ryan was looking at now; a grave worm wrapping around a skeletal hand, all at a 1:1 scale. It maybe wasn’t the most complex model to build, but it was definitely a unique final product.

  With a satisfied expression, Ryan looked down at his phone to check the time. “Come on, Maximus, we need to head out.”

  The small knight, sitting on top of Ryan’s desk, quickly nodded his head. He stood up and walked to the edge of the desk, where Ryan was waiting to let him into the domain.

  You ready for the battles later? he asked inwardly, and Maximus stood in the center of his domain, showing him a thumbs-up. He’d been picking up some weird habits from the comics he’d been reading lately. And to think he didn’t even know what a fist bump was a week ago.

  Ryan threw his bag over his shoulder and quickly left his room, making his way through the flat’s main entrance. There were two different stairways, one leading right into the café, and another leading to the alley behind the building. When the café was busy, he preferred going out through the back. Ryan has been trying his best to avoid Runar as much as he could as well.

  He stepped out of the door and pulled it shut behind him, then pushed against it briefly to make sure it was locked before making his way down the alley. But as he turned around the corner, walking away from Café Runic’s main entrance, he heard someone call out to him.

  “Mr. Aglecard, one moment, please!” With a voice that already made the hairs on Ryan’s neck stand up, Simon Grand, the representative from Bluesky that just wouldn’t leave him alone, came up to him.

  Trying to act like he neither heard nor saw that stuck-up high elf, Ryan took out his headphones and pulled them over his head, picking up the pace a bit. However, it didn’t seem to take a lot of effort for Simon to catch up on him.

  “Mr. Aglecard,” Simon said once more, with that annoyingly fake smile on his face, now having cut Ryan off.

  “Fucking—Can you stop following me around already?” Ryan groaned loudly, stepping past Simon to continue on his way to the subway.

  With a laugh, Simon quickly caught up to him again, simply walking next to him. “We have been struggling to contact you to show you further offers. You must understand that—”

  “Okay, get it in your fucking thick ass skull already. I am not interested in selling my fucking class! I’ve told you like a dozen times, and I’ve already complained about you at the Awakened Center. What will it take to get you to finally leave me alone?” Ryan asked, at the end of his rope. This was probably the third time that Simon was waiting for him to leave the building so that he could talk about another one of his “offers,” but no matter what, he just wouldn’t listen.

  The corners of Simon’s mouth twitched slightly, though he was trying to keep up his smile. “There is no need for that kind of language. Bluesky Industries has a long history with the Aglecard family—”

  “Oh my gods, I’m not a member of that stupid ‘Aglecard’ family! I just happen to have the same last name! I grew up in fucking Maidsbury, dude. You somehow managed to find out where I live, but you don’t even know that?” Ryan barked at Simon and picked up the pace, rushing down the stairs into the subway station.

  “… You … just happen to share the same name?” Simon’s voice clung to Ryan’s ears, as though he was standing right next to him. “That certainly does make things a bit easier.”

  Ryan felt a tug on his arm as a hand tightened around his wrist. Ryan turned around confused, and was almost startled at Simon’s sudden change in expression. As if he was angry that Ryan had been wasting his time, he suddenly lost any will to be cordial with him. Simon quickly pulled Ryan a bit closer and placed his other hand onto his right shoulder. He buried his fingers inside the not-yet-healed wound on his shoulder, and Ryan felt his whole body cramp in response.

  “What the—” Ryan let out, or at least he thought so. But even though he opened his mouth, no sound left his throat. As he looked around, it seemed as though the whole world, practically everything beside himself and Simon, had been desaturated and robbed of its color. Meanwhile, despite what was happening to Ryan right now, nobody seemed to notice.

  People in this city stared when you wore a slightly weird jacket; there was no way they wouldn’t even glance over here when something like this was going on.

  “Now listen to me. I think there have been some miscommunication. Bluesky wants the Spirit Keeper class. And it is in your best interest to sell it to us. We will compensate you greatly, and you will never have to work another day in your life.” Simon’s voice was eerie and sounded like someone was scratching their nails on a chalkboard. Whatever professionalism he had before was gone like it never existed in the first place. While Ryan struggled to pull himself out of Simon’s grasp, the elf continued, “We will simply be able to make much, much better use of that class than you ever could. We have the resources to actually figure out the specifics of what it can do, and what the limits of its application are. Unique classes can bring society forward by years at a time. And you would really rob the people of this world of that chance for what? Some measly pride?”

  Ryan didn’t want to listen anymore. He ground his teeth together, angry at the words that this ridiculous guy was saying. He heard about some bad rumors about the way that class-trading was handled and about Bluesky as a whole, but he never expected it to be this bad. However, if they wanted to mess with Ryan, they should have at least brought a physical class.

  And just when Simon’s grip tightened, wisps of red light started flowing out from Ryan’s face as Maximus jumped out of his domain. With a perfect punch to the nose, the elf flinched, loosening his grip on Ryan’s wrist and shoulder, letting him break free. He immediately grabbed Simon’s hand and pushed his middle finger backward, putting as much weight behind it as he could. As the taken-aback elf pulled his shoulder back to avoid his finger being broken—blood pouring down over his lips—Ryan swept away Simon’s legs and violently kicked him away. Simon hit the stairs behind him and was left staggering for a while, clearly not having expected anything like this at all.

  Without a moment’s hesitation, Ryan turned around and ran down to the subway platform. He had heard the train arriving just now, so he had to hurry; he managed to rush into the train just as the doors were closing, and by the time Simon got up from the ground, it pulled out of the station.

  Letting out a relieved sigh, Ryan clicked his tongue, pulling Maximus back into the domain. “Fucking psychos … he’s an Arcane Trapper?” he muttered to himself while pulling out his phone. Without a moment’s hesitation, Ryan called Aurora.

  “Hey, hey~!” Silvia said with a slight wave as she stepped into the robotics clubroom, where the club’s members were setting up for the test runs. Modak was standing near the door, just watching them. The orc turned around and quickly greeted his friend.

  “Yo, how’re you doing?”

  “I’m alright, you?” Silvia replied, quickly glancing around the room, but Modak just sighed loudly.

  “Ryan’s not here yet.”

  “Huh? Seriously? He’s usually pretty good at being on time.”

  “I know. I already texted him, but he hasn’t replied yet. You think something happened?” With concern written on his face, Modak looked down at his phone.

  But Silvia just scoffed and shook her head. “Ryan probably just got a bit lost in model building. He sent me a picture of the pile of boxes that were stacking up in his room; he used up that reward money really damn well.”

  Overhearing the conversation as he walked around the room while setting up, Richie looked over at the two friends. “Reward money? What reward money?”

  Silvia glanced over at Modak, unsure if she should say it, but Modak just shrugged at her. “He didn’t seem to care if people knew.”

  “I guess so,” Silvia replied, and turned back toward the curious gnome walking up to her. “Ryan closed down a dungeon.”

  “… What? Isn’t that a really complicated process? Are you serious? How did he manage that?” Taken aback, Richie was practically stunned in confusion, but Modak quickly explained.

  “He didn’t fully close it himself. He found and destroyed the dungeon heart and then called the DMB right after. Because he called so quickly and showed them how to get to the core room, they were able to close it permanently, so he got a reward.”

  Richie thought about it for a moment, before seemingly remembering something, “Was it that factory in Copperbeach? That’s the only dungeon I remember being recently.”

  “That’s the one.” Stepping through the door with some heavy breaths, Ryan responded to Richie’s question.

  “Well, good job, and congratulations. Helping close a dungeon so soon after awakening? Doubt that happens all too often.” Richie looked at Ryan, clearly impressed. “… Do you mind if we mention that tomorrow? Like, tell people that the spirit our Duelists fought belongs to the one that helped close the dungeon?”

  Ryan just shrugged. He was exhausted from the way here. “I don’t care, man, do whatever you want. But, just to make it clear, I don’t ‘own’ Maximus; he’s an individual and my friend that chose to trust me with his safety.”

  “Ah, sorry … Yeah of course,” Richie nervously responded. “I didn’t mean it like …”

  “All good.” Ryan stopped Richie with a shake of his head. “Let’s just get ready for the Duels, alright?”

  “Of course!” Quickly, as if trying to run away from this conversation, Richie turned around to get back over to where the other club members were setting up. Ryan walked up to Silvia and Modak, who were both looking at him with concern.

  “You alright?” Modak asked, noting the annoyed expression on his friend’s face from the moment he walked into the room. And just a moment later, it became clear just how annoyed he really was.

  With a click of his tongue, Ryan shook his head. “No, I’m not alright at all. You know that fucking asshole Bluesky dude? He tried to fucking threaten me and used some trapping skills on me.”

  “What?” Silvia let out, confused. “What do you mean, he used trapping skills?”

  “He’s a fucking Arcane Trapper, or at least he’s got similar skills. I watched an interview with one last year, and it was exactly how he described it.”

  “Are you okay? Did he hurt you?” Modak nervously looked his friend up and down. “Should we call someone? The police?”