“Ah …” Ryan could imagine the struggle of that. For him, any increase was amazing, but in Michael’s case, his massive amount of mana was a danger to himself and others, so having his mana increase at a pace that he couldn’t keep up with was the opposite of what you would want, for obvious reasons. “Have you spoken to any other mages around you? Maybe they have a good way to help you out. Or maybe they can seal your mana away for a bit; that should be possible, right?”

  “… I don’t really know any other mages. I just come here after school to use the training facilities and use the instructional videos.”

  Ryan closed his eyes for a moment. Of course, Michael was still going to school, so he probably didn’t even have that much time to worry about training all too much. Though that must make it even tougher for him. Ryan knew what it was like to go to school and have an Awakened pop up. Everyone would swarm them and ask to see their skills. He had been the same back when someone a couple of grades above him awakened.

  “Hm, what about Alicia? Have you tried reaching out to her? Maybe she could get you some help for that,” Ryan pointed out, but Michael shook his head.

  “I tried, but I couldn’t reach her. Her assistant told me that I need to raise my control a bit more before I can work with them …”

  Ryan frowned. That sounded about right, but it also showed Ryan the clear favoritism that Alicia was showing toward him and his friends. Modak was hired out of nowhere and given his own research team to lead, even if that team was just made up of two people. Either way, seeing how other people were treated when they clearly needed help was a bit annoying to Ryan.

  With a slight sigh, he patted Michael on the shoulder. “I’ll try to see what I can do, and text you afterward, alright?”

  “Wh-What? You don’t have to; it’s totally—”

  “Sorry, I’ve got to go; Aurora is here,” Ryan replied, turning toward the elevators.

  Michael looked to where Ryan was looking, but was just confused, as he didn’t see anyone there at all. But a moment later, the elevator doors slid open and the owl-woman Aurora stepped out.

  Michael was a bit taken aback. “How did you—”

  “I’ll text you later, alright? Keep it up, man; I know you got this.” Ryan smiled at Michael and turned around, heading over to Aurora. She was about to look around for Ryan, but he was already in front of her.

  “Ah, Mr. Aglecard, perfect timing! Are you ready for your remeasurement?” Aurora asked, and Ryan quickly nodded.

  “Yup, I’m so ready to finally get Bluesky off my back.”

  Aurora seemed a bit confused, tilting her head to the side. “Excuse me?”

  “Ah, well … I told you before that I was having trouble with Bluesky, right? But now that I’m level 10, I won’t have to deal with that anymore. The whole class-trading thing doesn’t work on me anymore now.”

  Aurora’s eyes widened, similar to how Michael’s had just a few minutes before. She cleared her throat. “Did I hear you correctly? You have reached level 10? Already?”

  “Mm-hmm. I thought I mentioned that when I made the appointment—”

  “I don’t recall that, no … I just assumed you would like to measure the growth trajectory of your stats,” she pointed out, but Ryan just laughed somewhat awkwardly.

  “Uh, yeah, no, that’s not it. Sorry if I wasn’t clear enough. But there’s no problem, right? The process is the same either way, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, of course. My apologies; I was just a little surprised, that’s all,” Aurora pointed out, guiding Ryan down the nearby hallway. “It is basically the same to the initial stat measurements you have already undertaken before, but since we already have your initial data, it should be finished a little faster.”

  The two of them walked into a small room together. Ryan had been in there before as well. There were different measurement instruments in there to test out some different stats. But there was one part of this that might change the fact that it wouldn’t take quite as long.

  “Ah, actually, I happened to have awakened two more stats as well. I guess those need to be measured too, right?”

  “Oh, you have? Two more? You must have been rather busy, Mr. Aglecard.”

  “You can say that again; it’s been a rough couple of weeks.” Ryan laughed quietly, waiting as Aurora set up everything for the measurements properly.

  “I can imagine.” She laughed slightly. “Would you like to tell me which stats you have unlocked and explain the details of your new skill to me? And if possible, please show me the skill.”

  “Right, of course. I awakened my strength stat first and, actually just yesterday, the stamina stat. And as for the skill …” Ryan replied, taking off his jacket in preparation for the stat measurements as he asked Maximus to step out of his domain.

  Ryan poured the milk foam over the espresso. He had gotten pretty good at drawing pictures in the milk with the coffee, and that had been the case even before he awakened. Now, with his dexterity as high as it was, Ryan was able to put whatever he wanted onto it. His dexterity applied to a lot of things he did that related to his hand-eye coordination. He had never been bad at drawing, but now he could put basically whatever he wanted on paper. Ryan obviously wasn’t as good as Silvia, but he was much better than he had been just a month before.

  He was also much, much better at playing games, typing things on his computer or phone, or, as he was doing just now, doing random things like drawing latte art. When he was done, Ryan placed the coffee on the small carrying platter together with an ice-cold caramel frappe that already looked far too sweet, as well as two small slices of cake. Taking a deep breath, preparing to step into the thick air that was currently filling the corner of the café, Ryan walked around the counter and approached the table where Silvia and her birth mother were currently talking. Or, rather, where they were supposed to be talking. Both of them were completely silent. But somehow, the silence itself was screaming out to anyone who wanted to pay attention. It wasn’t comfortable in any sense of the word.

  “Here you go,” Ryan said, placing everything on the table. “Do you need anything else?”

  As he asked this, he was very much looking at Silvia, who had been staring at him like she needed his help this whole time.

  “No, thanks, honey,” Silvia’s birth mother said with a light smile on her face, looking up at him. “You were one of my Silvia’s friends, right?”

  Already feeling the awkwardness of the situation, Ryan glanced over at Silvia. She was staring at the elven woman with a deep glare and couldn’t help but clarify an apparent misunderstanding. “Excuse me? ‘Your’ Silvia? Just to make it clear, we aren’t meeting here to reconnect as mother and daughter. Silvia Redhorn is here to meet Lilianna Oaklin because Lilianna Oaklin has been essentially stalking her for weeks.”

  Lilianna looked at Silvia with a slight frown. “Now, don’t be like that; I’m just trying to make up for the faults of my past.”

  “Make up for— I’m sorry? You can’t ‘make up’ for anything you did to me. I’m … How can you even …?” Silvia said, clearly absolutely baffled by what this woman was saying.

  “I—”

  “No, actually, you don’t get to talk yet. What makes you think that you get to do this? That you somehow have the right to just barge into my life after you had the gall to ruin everything? You never treated me as a daughter back when you had the chance, so why now? Why would you come to me now that I was finally able to start moving on?”

  Lilianna stared at Silvia, clearly not sure what to say.

  “You can talk now,” Silvia said, grabbing her caramel frappe and taking a sip. Lilianna averted her gaze slightly.

  “I know I made mistakes in the past. I did things that hurt you, and made choices that can never be taken back, but I atoned for those sins. I did my time. By now, I … I just want to be a family again.”

  By now, Ryan realized that this situation was not something he should just be listening in on. He briefly patted Silvia on the back, then made his way back behind the counter to help out other customers. But the young elf was just completely stunned right now. And then, she just started laughing.

  “Family? Seriously? You want to be a family again? You fucking lost that right more than a decade ago,” Silvia said clearly. “I’m sorry for being so blunt about this, but how could you be stupid enough to believe that we could be a family again?”

  Lilianna slammed her hands on the table, standing up with a deep glare directed at Silvia. “How dare you talk to your mother that way?!”

  Other customers in the café started looking over toward them. Silvia noticed, but she didn’t really care right now. She was getting quite riled up as well.

  “I would never talk to my mother like that! Good thing she’s not here. My mother is at work right now,” Silvia responded, but Lilianna just sighed loudly.

  “While I am grateful to her for taking care of you while I couldn’t, that woman is not your mother. I am your mother. And now that I’m back and I paid for my crimes, we can just go back to the way things used to be,” Lilianna explained, pushing her hands into her bag to look for something. A moment later, while Silvia was too overwhelmed to respond, Lilianna grabbed an old doll from the bag, holding it out to Silvia. “Please. Let’s just leave the past where it belongs, so we can move forward together. Let’s be mother and daughter again.”

  Silvia slowly reached out to the doll. It had been her favorite, and only, toy as a child.

  “Are you … are you serious?”

  “Of course. Come on, sweetheart; it can just be the two of us again. Alright?”

  Lilianna tried to grab Silvia’s hand, but she swatted it away immediately, jumping up from her chair. “How delusional can you be? I—I don’t get it; what makes you think that you could just come here and expect things to go back to the way they were? In the first place, why would you even want things to go back to the way they were? Our life was absolutely horrible, and that was literally nobody’s fault but your own.”

  Looking around, finally realizing that there were other people in the café, Lilianna tried to grab Silvia’s arm. “Let’s just calm down. I know that life wasn’t perfect, but—”

  “Life wasn’t perfect? You made my life a living hell!”

  The disgust in Silvia’s eyes and voice couldn’t be hidden anymore. Ryan had come back around the counter, hoping to step in between Silvia and her birth mother should things go too far or get violent. Lilianna stood there, slowly looking down at the ground.

  “I-I don’t … I don’t know what else to do. I apologized, and I—”

  “You didn’t even do that! You never apologized, not that it would even really change things anymore! But you just showed up and suddenly thought that you could put on an act like you were ever a good parent? No, a good person?”

  “… What did I do to make you hate me so much?”

  Silvia’s anger disappeared in an instant as she looked at the face of the woman in front of her. It was like a punch to the face that left her stunned and confused. Those genuine tears in Lilianna’s eyes, the tone of her voice that showed that she genuinely didn’t understand why Silvia was mad—it was completely and utterly disgusting.

  “What did you do? Do you want me to remind you?” Silvia asked, and Lilianna dared to respond with a nod, then tears started streaming down Silvia’s cheeks. She knew that there were people watching, but she didn’t even care anymore. “You fucking sold me to a cartel in exchange for some drugs.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Not Those Kids Anymore

  Ryan heard Silvia’s words and his eyes widened. What had she just said? Her mother had done … what?

  Lilianna looked around nervously, seeing the stares of the other people in the café. Whispering was becoming a clear background noise in the space, and the elf was becoming self-conscious about it.

  “Th-That’s not … that’s not how it happened, you know?” she stuttered out, trying to defend herself. “They just took you against my will; I—”

  “‘And then I had a thought. Why not give them the brat? That way, she’d finally come in useful for once,’” Silvia said, staring at her. “‘But as it turns out, she really just messes up everything.’”

  Lilianna’s face went pale. “I-I don’t … What are you saying?”

  “Those were your words. I saw the videos of you, dusted up, in the interrogation room. I heard every single word, and I will never be able to forget them. But I guess I do have to thank you, because that was the only way that I could have met my real family.” Silvia grabbed her bag, and Ryan saw her hands shaking intensely. Knowing her, she would probably try to run off somewhere without knowing where to go or what to do. Silvia was like that when she got upset.

  Ryan stepped up to her and placed his hand on her back. She flinched slightly, not having expected to be touched, but when she saw that it was Ryan, she slowly calmed down. “Come on; just go upstairs. The door’s unlocked; I’ll be there in a second when Runar comes back.”

  Silvia slowly nodded, tears in her eyes, as she rushed off behind the counter to make her way upstairs. Seeing this, Lilianna tried to run after her, but Ryan blocked her way without hesitation.

  “Please leave,” Ryan said, glaring down at her. “You don’t have to pay; just please leave.”

  But despite Ryan’s words, Lilianna didn’t seem particularly satisfied with that. She tried to push past Ryan. “What? No, I need to talk to her; I—”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t want to repeat myself,” Ryan said, trying not to get too emotional while facing her. He cleanly blocked her path, but the elf wasn’t as easy to pressure as he thought. Or, rather, hoped.

  “I just … Please, I need to explain everything to her,” Lilianna said, her desperation clearly written on her face. Ryan was actually pretty taken aback by how genuinely emotional she seemed to be. But maybe desperation was the wrong word. To Ryan, it was a different emotion, one that he had seen in the faces of people in front of him far too many times. It was fear. It was like she was afraid of what would happen if she didn’t get to finish her conversation with Silvia.

  But frankly? Ryan didn’t care. But there was an issue; Ryan really wasn’t the best at threats. He was better at actually acting on the things that others would say as threats. But being an Awakened, he couldn’t use violence on non-Awakened without a good reason, aka self-defense, and even then, that was a thin line to walk, depending on how high your stats were. But again, an un-Awakened elven woman who was two heads shorter than Ryan? There was no way he could ever feel good about starting a fight with her. So, he had to try and go for the “threat” route after all.

  The spirits were currently inside of their domains, since Ryan had just come back upstairs earlier from the subterranean refuge to meet Silvia there in the café, only to find out that her birth mother was there with her. Runar also happened to just then have something to take care of downstairs, so Ryan was there alone and had to take care of this without anyone else. That being the case, Ryan pulled Gaia out of her domain, simultaneously activating his newest skill, Spirit Seal Recovery.

  Luckily, they had already managed to test this beforehand, so he knew how it would behave with Gaia’s body. Before the threads of green mana managed to settle into a solid form, they seemed to split apart and attempt to form a whole other body. Gaia was more than a meter tall at her one-tenth scale, so with the Spirit Seal Recovery skill active, she was towering over Ryan at around two point one or two point two meters. He would have to measure to be sure. The plants that had taken root in her body didn’t grow in size, but their coverage increased. It seemed like Gaia’s skill that linked her physical appearance to that of the garden didn’t make any actual plants grow on her. They were just representations created through mana that would grow and wither as the plants in the real garden did. As such, this was still the case as her size doubled in every direction.

  Moss was burrowing into the grooves of her body and thin roots were covering her like spiderwebs. Flowers that were so close to blossoming were growing on her shoulders, and even the two small saplings that Gaia had planted upstairs had already taken root in her body. To Ryan, she was truly beautiful, but in the eyes of someone who didn’t expect this sight, she was more startling than anything. After all, a massive Golem had just appeared out of nowhere.

  Ryan looked at the woman in front of him. “As I just said, please leave.”

  Slowly but surely, now that Ryan had some support, Lilianna was more confused, startled, and scared, and had no choice but to leave. As she stood there, outside the café, Ryan looked into her face and said one last thing very clearly: “Listen, if she wants to talk to you again, she will come to you, okay? I may not have known her all that long yet, but I know her pretty damn well. Pushing her like this will make any hope you could ever have at reconnecting in any way worse. And seriously … get a grip and reevaluate what happened in the past,” Ryan said, stepping back into the door. “You’re banned from coming back here until Silvia says otherwise. So, please stop loitering in front of the store.”

  As he left the stunned Lilianna just standing there, Ryan pulled out his phone and texted Yamada and Anders, who were standing around by the car, asking them if they could keep an eye on the elven woman he was just with. Anders replied with a thumbs-up emoji. Somehow, in a weird way, Yamada was actually more talkative than the dwarf.

  Ryan put his phone into his pocket and looked around at the other customers, clearing his throat. “I’m really sorry for the inconvenience, everyone.”

  The other customers were looking at him a little nervously. Or, rather, they were looking at Gaia, who he had clearly summoned to intimidate that woman just now. So, Ryan figured he should do something to calm them down and at the same time find a way that he could join Silvia upstairs as soon as he could. “As an apology, my summon Gaia here will hand out some snacks for everyone. On the house, of course.”