At this point, he should be able to finish this in just two or three activations of the Spirit Construction skill.

  With the first activation of the skill, Ryan started quickly taking the metal parts from the frames, already pressing some together that seemed rather obvious. He was able to get all the outer parts completely ready, as far as they could be put together. There would probably be some larger gaps between each of the wooden plates, showing the mechanical interior beyond them, so those plates would be attached to things that Ryan had yet to build.

  When it came to those internal pieces, though, Ryan had a bit of a tougher time. For the other model kits, he had at least had some instructional manuals to work with, or he could cross-reference actual cars or planes. But he couldn’t do that with Gregor.

  “Or … can I?” Ryan muttered, pulling out his phone and dialing Modak’s number. The call connected soon enough.

  “’Sup?” the orc said, trying to suppress a groan. Ryan didn’t know what he was dealing with, but he did know that Modak was spending a lot of time at the Magic Tower. He was getting paid for this work, after all, and on top of this being a passion project for him, it made sense.

  “I don’t want to drag you away from your work or anything, but I told you about Gregor, right?”

  “Uh, yeah, you did. Is something up with him?” Modak asked, a bit confused, but Ryan hurried to explain.

  “Okay, so, I finished the quest he gave me and became his proper keeper, and now I’m building his model. But instead of being like Maximus or Gaia, he’s like those mechanical models I was putting together for his quest,” he pointed out. “But since the spirits’ kits don’t come with instructions, I’m kind of having a tough time. Do you think you can come over and help out?”

  The other side of the phone call was quiet for a little while, but soon, Modak responded. “I’m not sure if today is going to work out, man; I’m sorry. I’ve got a ton of tests scheduled here, and I’m getting help from a researcher that doesn’t really have a ton of time, so …”

  “Oh, no, that’s fine! I can probably figure it out somehow alone; I just figured it’d be faster if I got your help.”

  “Yeah … I’m sorry about that. If it can’t wait until tomorrow, try calling someone from the robotics club. One of them might be able to help out,” Modak suggested, and Ryan thought about it for a while.

  “Hm … I guess so. I guess I’ll give Richie a call or something.”

  “Ah, sure, but he’s apparently started working at his job already, so I don’t know if he’ll have time. It’s still worth a try, though.”

  Ryan thought about it for a moment and then inwardly sighed. “Yeah, we’ll see. Otherwise, I just gotta figure something else out.”

  “There’s also Vanda. I know you’re probably feeling a bit iffy about her still, but she does know her stuff.”

  “… I’ll call Richie and then we’ll see.”

  “Right, good idea.” The orc was clearly distracted as he responded. “Sorry, I’ve got to go. I’ll drop by tomorrow if things go well on my end today. Good luck!”

  “Thanks, you too! Tell me about how—”

  Before Ryan could finish his sentence, Modak had already hung up. It stung a little, though it was obvious that Modak was really just busy, so Ryan tried not to take it to heart. Instead, he just scrolled through his contact list and decided to call Richie right away.

  The phone rang a few times, and then the gnome answered. “Richard Snappertie. Yes?”

  “Yo, Richie, it’s Ryan. I just—”

  “Please call me Richard. What can I do for you, Ryan?” the gnome on the other side of the phone said. Taken a bit aback by his tone, Ryan hesitated for a few moments. But he also knew how stressful a full-time job could be, so he tried not to think about it too much, even if he had a weird feeling about this.

  “Right, sorry. Richard. Anyway, I’ve contracted another spirit, and I told you about how I built Maximus, right? So, this one is basically a robot, and I don’t really get how to put all the parts together, so I was wondering if you’d want to come over and help me out a bit,” Ryan quickly explained, hoping that Richard wasn’t all too stressed. Though he wasn’t particularly hopeful.

  Richard let out a long, deep sigh. “I’m sorry, but I don’t have time to play around with you right now. Would that be all?”

  “Huh?”

  Confused, Ryan stared at his phone. What was Richard’s deal all of a sudden? Ryan sat up straight and slowly responded, “I’m not playing around here, but you know your stuff, so I figured—”

  Once again, Ryan was cut off by the sound of a call disconnecting.

  “What the fuck?” he let out, his finger hovering over the redial button. But really, his instincts were telling him not to anymore. Something was off about Richard just now; he just felt … so different. Of course, Ryan didn’t know him super well, and it had been a while since they had spoken, but he still figured they were on better terms. Then again, it wasn’t as though Ryan was never rude to people just because he was in a bad mood … so he excused it for now.

  “I guess I’ll have to just rely on my intuition.” Ryan sighed as he was just about to put his phone away. He hesitated for a little bit, staring at the pile of parts in front of him. And then he just let out a loud groan, deciding to follow Modak’s advice.

  It took a few moments to connect, but soon, the voice of a young woman sounded out on the other side, “Uh, hey? Ryan, everything okay?” Vanda asked hesitantly.

  Similarly, Ryan wasn’t sure what to say, but it was too late now. “Vanda, uh, sorry for calling out of nowhere. And feel totally free to turn me down, but I was wondering if you could do me a favor.”

  “ … Depends on the favor, I guess?” the hobgoblin replied, clearly confused.

  “So … I explained how my class and skills work, right? Like how I build the spirits’ bodies and stuff. I just contracted with one whose body is basically like a robot, and I’m struggling a little. Would you have time to come over today and help me out a bit?”

  Vanda was silent for a while, and Ryan honestly expected he was about to hear the sound of another call disconnecting, but then he instead heard some rather surprising words.

  “… Sure, I guess? I don’t have anything to do right now. Uh, should I come to your place, then?”

  A bit taken aback, Ryan scrambled to gather the words and reply. “Yeah, that would be great! Just text me your address; I’ll send a car for you.”

  “You’ll send a car for me? What are you, rich?” Vanda scoffed, and Ryan stayed silent for a few moments before the stunned hobgoblin continued. “Wait, are you rich?”

  “Well … I’m not … not rich? It’s complicated, but I’ll just send someone to pick you up. Oh, but don’t be surprised: the driver is deaf and mute, so don’t be concerned when she doesn’t respond to you.”

  “… Okay? I’ll send you my address in a bit. So … see you later?”

  “Sure, great! See you later!” Ryan responded, hanging up. He let out a loud groan, burying his face in his hands because of how awkward that conversation had been. But still, he texted Yamada, asking her if she could pick someone up, then forwarded the address that Vanda had texted, and Yamada quickly replied that she would head out immediately.

  Taking a deep breath, Ryan got up from his chair. He pulled Gregor’s core into his domain for now so that he wouldn’t just be lying on the desk all alone, and then walked out of his room to get himself something to eat.

  As he was eating some leftovers, Runar came in through the door leading down to the café, quickly looking for Ryan. “So, why did you just send out Yamada to pick up a friend of yours?”

  “I mean … I wouldn’t call Vanda a friend, necessarily …”

  “Vanda? The girl that was tricked into using Gaia’s core fragment for her robot thingy?”

  “Yup.”

  “So, why are you trying to hang out with her? Are you two a thing or something?” Runar asked, and Ryan raised his eyebrows and immediately shook his head.

  “What? No, I don’t really care about dating or whatever, like, in general.” With a long sigh, Ryan rubbed the bridge of his nose. He didn’t particularly feel like having that conversation right now. “I completed Gregor’s quest earlier and became his keeper, but his model is more like the mechanical ones that I bought. So super detailed and pretty realistic, all things considered. But since I don’t really understand how a robot’s body works, and because Modak is busy at the Tower, I called Vanda for help.”

  Runar looked at Ryan for a few moments, then shrugged. “Okay, well … just say that next time.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that.”

  “So, you’ve already got another spirit with you, huh? I thought you’d become Jester’s keeper first,” Runar pointed out.

  “Tell me about it … I feel like he just wants me to get beaten up or something.” Running his hand through his hair annoyed, Ryan simply groaned.

  “Hmm, maybe. Some spirits have pretty unique tastes.”

  “… Runar, I would prefer not to get beaten up.”

  “We’ll figure something out,” Runar replied, turning around to get back to the café. He stopped before he left the kitchen. “Oh, and by the way, I’d wash my hands before touching my hair and face after working on those models.”

  Ryan narrowed his eyes and picked up his phone. He pulled up his camera and immediately saw his face covered in some oil that was still stuck to his hands.

  “… Fuck.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Robotic Assistance

  With still-wet hair from taking a quick shower to get rid of all the oil that was in extremely random places, Ryan walked up to the flat’s front door, opening it. At the bottom of the steps in front of him, Vanda started walking up the stairs.

  “Yo, thanks for coming so soon,” Ryan said, but the hobgoblin just stared up at him almost hesitantly.

  “Yeah … no worries … Honestly, I thought you were just gonna send me a cab or something, but you really have your own private driver?” she asked, reaching the top of the steps.

  “She’s not really a driver; she’s my uncle’s personal assistant, basically. And my uncle is trying to support me in any way when it comes to my class, so he was fine with me sending Yamada to pick you up.”

  “Ah … your uncle that’s running a small café can afford a personal assistant?”

  “It’s a long story,” Ryan responded, making way for Vanda to step into the flat. The two of them were looking at each other a bit awkwardly, not really sure what to do. The thing that Ryan usually defaulted to was just hugging someone, but that was mostly when he was on at least okay terms with someone. And while it wasn’t like he was on bad terms with Vanda, they weren’t really friends, either. Considering what had happened with Gaia, it was a pretty complicated situation.

  In the end, they seemed to mutually and without words decide to just move on and get to Ryan’s bedroom. He guided her inside, pulling up his chair for Vanda to sit on while grabbing the small stool at the side of the desk for himself.

  As Vanda sat down, her eyes landed on Maximus, who was reading something on the small monitor set up at the side of the desk. Actually, the monitor was much, much smaller than what you would usually see there, specifically made for extremely small species who simply lived in smaller spaces and needed the furniture to match to some degree to be useful. Ryan had set this up so that Maximus didn’t have to strain his neck too much when looking around the screen. Same with the mouse that he was using, and Ryan had even gotten a smaller keyboard and prepared a more-comfortable seat for him. Everything was still a bit too large for Maximus, but it was much better than before.

  “That’s the … spirit that you were using to fight during the Power Duels, right?” Vanda asked. Maximus slowly turned his head toward her, greeting her with a nod, before focusing back on his web-comic.

  Ryan raised an eyebrow. “I’m just saying, I didn’t ‘use’ Maximus. We both wanted to participate in the duels, so we did. If Maximus didn’t want to do it, we wouldn’t have done it. He’s not a tool,” Ryan pointed out. Vanda nodded in a panic.

  “R-Right! Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “No worries. But yeah, that’s him. He’s managed to settle in a bit more around here since then. He really likes fantasy web-novels and web-toons, apparently.”

  “So, you just summon him so he can do that? Doesn’t that use up a ton of mana or something?”

  Ryan quickly shook his head. “Summoning them doesn’t take any mana at all, actually. My class is technically a summoner type, but it works a lot different. When my class awakened, I basically became something like a home for them. They’re always with me and are free to come and go whenever. Gaia is upstairs in the garden right now, actually.”

  Hearing the name, Vanda flinched. Ryan knew why, of course. While officially, the story was that some “experimental power source” had gone out of control, though even that story had been suppressed as much as possible to the point where it wasn’t even a rumor around the school, Vanda knew that it wasn’t actually that. Ryan had briefly mentioned that it was a spirit core’s fragment, and he had even said Gaia’s name in relation to that fragment around her back then, so she was obviously able to put everything together.

  “She doesn’t hold any grudges; don’t worry. She’s ridiculously kind,” he explained, and Vanda let out a relieved sigh.

  “So, everything worked out? I don’t know how that whole thing works for your class, but you were able to summon her with that ‘fragment’ thing? Again, I’m really sorry about that, by the way; I really didn’t know that—”

  “I know. Don’t worry; it’s not your fault,” Ryan replied, smiling lightly. For a while, though, the two grew silent. It was starting to get a bit awkward, as they were just sitting there. Vanda was looking around the room, glancing at the dozens of plastic models set up all over the place, as well as the model cars, planes, and trains sitting on the ground in the corner of the room. As if trying to break the silence, she slowly said something.

  “You … you really like building models, huh?”

  Ryan scoffed, nodding. “You can say that, yeah. It’s been my hobby since I was old enough for my mom to trust me not to accidentally swallow the pieces.”

  “Fair enough.” Vanda laughed, looking over at the desk. “And the one that you’re building now is a robot?”

  “Yup, basically,” Ryan replied. “Though it looks like it’s a bit different from the ones you’re used to. A lot more … steampunk. Cogs and pipes rather than wires and computer chips.”

  Curious, Vanda leaned over the pieces. “I see … Do you have any idea at all where the pieces go?”

  “Yeah, so, one of my stats is intuition, and it works surprisingly well for me, apparently; I don’t know why … Anyway, I was able to figure out the sort of rough areas of each part, like splitting it up into the different limbs and stuff. Here are the legs, here the arms, these parts belong to the head, and then the rest should be the torso.”

  The hobgoblin cupped her chin as she took a quick look. She soon picked out some of the parts. “I think these should be the joints. Though they look more like heavy-duty hinges. I guess that’s what joints are, I guess?” Vanda muttered, and Ryan raised an eyebrow as he watched the girl continue sorting through the parts a bit more. “This seems to be a miniature pneumatic piston … and this part should be something like a shock absorber, but … Yeah, look here; it’s split in two. Did you do something to break it?”

  “Oh, nah. Some of the parts are probably split up into smaller parts.”

  “ …What?”

  “Don’t look at me like that; I didn’t make the models. Complain to the System Administrator or something.”

  “Yeah, yeah, fine … But alright, in that case, that’s a bit more annoying … Do we need to … I don’t know, weld them?”

  Ryan shook his head. “I’ve got a skill that can put them together properly. It’s off cooldown now, but I figured I should wait for your input before using it again so I don’t waste it too much.”

  “Hm … got it,” Vanda replied, carefully starting to sort through the pieces, trying to explain everything as well as she could understand it herself. Ryan didn’t get everything she was saying, but he picked up on the important parts, at least. And at some point, Vanda had properly sorted through all the pieces for one of the legs. The hobgoblin stretched a bit. “Alright, this was the other leg, right? I’ll do this one now as well.”

  “No, that’s fine. Get started on the arms; I’ll get to putting the legs together. Now that I know the structure one of the legs should have, I can figure the other one out easily enough,” Ryan pointed out. He cracked his knuckles with a slight grin on his face. Vanda’s eyes soon landed on the red, wriggling strands on Ryan’s hand. They looked like the red tattoo dye was trying to flood out from underneath his sweater.

  “If you’re sure, then alright,” Vanda responded, taking a closer look at the parts for the arms as Ryan had suggested. But as she started sorting through the pieces, she quickly got distracted. Ryan was picking up the small, individual pieces and pressing them together at a speed that looked like someone was watching a video and doubled the playback speed. And it wasn’t just the pieces that were being pressed together but even the screws and nuts that had to be put into place, the oil that needed to be applied to the right places on the joints and hinges.

  “Wow …” the hobgoblin muttered, surprised. Ryan chuckled lightly.

  “Impressed, huh?”

  “What? Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to stare.”

  “No, no, don’t worry. It’s all good.” Ryan shook his head as he pressed the individual parts of the foot onto the lower end of the shin, starting to build the thigh next. “I get shocked whenever I see this as well. My dexterity is above 1.8 by now.”

  “Seriously? Already?” Vanda asked, surprised. While she didn’t know a ton about Awakened, she knew that a stat like that wasn’t something you usually reached this fast after awakening.