Runar widened his eyes as he took a closer look at the item. “Really? Well, that should be useful.”

  “Do you think you can—”

  “Strengthen the item’s effect? Probably. What else did you get?”

  Ryan pointed to his earrings. “These let me breathe and move more freely underwater.” He then grabbed the drinking horn also on the table. He quickly pulled out a bit of water, making the ice turn into the shape of a baseball bat. “And this does … well, this. It actually links up with Tiar, so I can use the Spirit Armament skill using this horn.”

  Curious, and clearly wanting to take a closer look at it, Runar held his hand out. “Oh, really? That’s pretty interesting. Can I—”

  “As long as you give it back, sure. But I really do need it. I have to keep practicing and training,” Ryan said, looking over toward Jester, who was still waiting for him to continue their practice. Since he had taken a long-enough break, Ryan tried to move on and enter the next pose that should help him a bit with his mobility so that he could gain the physicality stat. But while he was doing so, Runar let out a long, deep sigh.

  “Ryan. You should stay out of all this,” he said, and Ryan immediately jumped back up.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Just leave it to us. This is getting far, far too dangerous. Just … support us from back here, from the back lines,” Runar said, scratching the back of his head. “You get along amazingly with everyone downstairs, even better than I do a lot of the time. How about you just take over down there, manage the shelter, and let us do the dangerous stuff?”

  Ryan stared at his uncle, opening his mouth to protest, but he couldn’t say anything. He wanted to, but he was physically unable to say that Runar was wrong. That it wouldn’t be better if Ryan stayed back. Hell, he wasn’t even at superhuman levels yet for even one of his stats. What the hell was he supposed to do? Sure, with Tiar’s help, he had very strong resistance to corruption, but he definitely wasn’t immune.

  “What do I have to do to? For you to let me actually help in a way that matters?” Ryan asked, and Runar immediately replied with a groan.

  “Listen. Just … level up. Get stronger. Hell, do the whole Hero thing or something. Yamada is certified as a Hero, and that’s the only reason why we let her act publicly.”

  “… Okay. Fine. I’ll level up until I meet the requirements to be a Hero, and then—”

  “And then you’ll go through the roster and actually learn how to fight high-powered Awakened. Then, a few years down the line—”

  “Wh— A few years? Dude, are you serious? This shit is happening right now. What am I supposed to do to help with that?”

  Ryan stepped up close to his uncle, trying to get him to understand what the problem was, but Runar really didn’t seem to care. “I’m sorry, but you’re just not strong enough yet. You would just be a burden at this point.”

  “But I—I can’t wait for years, man. They hurt my best friends. Both Silvia and Modak could have died because of what they did, and for all I know, it’s my fault anyway; I can’t just—”

  “Wait, wait, what do you mean? How would it be your fault?” Runar asked, not sure if he was following.

  With a long sigh, Ryan rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Listen, that antlered girl, the one that can apparently see fate or whatever. She told me that I break fate, that I mess it all up. So, if I weren’t here, maybe none of this would have ever happened. I mean, I’m the reason why Richie was corrupted in the first place.”

  Runar raised an eyebrow. “If I remember correctly, the reason he was corrupted was because that one girl … Vanda, was it? Because she tried to power her robot thingy with a corrupted fragment of Gaia. Rather, if you hadn’t been there, a lot of people could have gotten really, really hurt.”

  “Well, sure, but—”

  “And who cares if you’re not properly aligned with fate? If it’s a massive issue, causality will take over and just sort of fix things anyway,” Runar pointed out, and Ryan frowned.

  “Causality? What do you—”

  “Okay, so.” Runar let out a long breath, trying to figure out how to best explain the concept. “Basically, causality is like … a restriction imposed by the world on every single thing. Well, it’s usually only a thing when you enter the domain of the gods or something like that. In simple terms, causality is the world trying to stop a specific cause from creating an unwanted effect. It’s why the Great Spirits can’t just walk around. They’re so powerful that their very presence bends the rules of the world. And so, causality will prevent things. Make sure that things go right again. It’s a separate force compared to fate, but they are very deeply intertwined. So, even if you stand outside of fate, even gods are affected by causality, and as long as that is the case … even if your presence causes issues, the world will try to fix it.”

  Runar held out the bead that Ryan had given him. “Just concentrate on this stuff for now. You will become more powerful in time; don’t worry. Just … focus on going into the dungeon to level up more. Since you just built Jester’s body, you should be close to level 11, right? We’re going to make sure that nothing else can happen over the rest of Spirit Week, okay?”

  “But—”

  “No. Just stop it; you can’t do anything.”

  Ryan groaned loudly. “Listen, I know you’re strong, but—”

  “99,” Runar interrupted, and Ryan was taken aback and confused.

  “What?”

  “My level. It’s 99. Ryan, I’m not just strong. I’m one level away from reaching max level.”

  Shooting up from his bed, Modak let out a loud, pained groan. He was completely drenched in sweat, and his head hurt from all the medication he had been given earlier. And since most of that medication was starting to wear off by now, Modak’s arm and shoulder were absolutely, totally miserable.

  He tried to reach over to the nearby button and call for a nurse so that he could maybe get new pills, but doing so just made him cramp up even more. At least he always recovered pretty fast when he got hurt. Modak slowly slid his legs over the edge of the hospital bed and stepped out, walking to the bathroom.

  When he saw himself in the mirror, Modak was almost startled. He looked ghastly. Bruised all over, an arm in a sling. His ribs were cracked, and even one of his tusks had been broken off at the tip. The swelling in his face that had come from that same attack almost made it impossible to open his eyes properly. If only healing magic had some kind of effect, he could at least go outside without making children cry.

  Modak stared into the mirror. His bloodshot eyes were filling with tears of absolute rage. How dare they ruin such a special day? How dare they trash his technology? How dare they hurt so many good people? And most importantly, how dare they so viciously kill Marge?

  She was one of the kindest and most truly good people that Modak had ever met. Her kids were great people too, just a few years older than Modak himself. And they had lost their mother because of the White Shadow Society. Just because they, for some inexplicable reason, hated magic. The thing that Modak desired the most for his entire life, just treated as nothing but garbage.

  Modak pulled away from the sink and mirror, and stepped back out of the bathroom. He couldn’t do anything like this, and it would take at least a week for him to recover well enough to go back to work and fix everything that the Shadows had ruined. At least, that was the case if Modak just accepted this as the reality he was stuck with.

  During his research, as he prepared to transform the qualities of mana to be more akin to aura, Modak had learned quite a lot. After all, the deal was that the person helping him with this would be allowed to study Modak’s body. Since his constitution completely rejected mana, apparently, his body was perfect to house aura instead. He didn’t quite understand the logic behind that, but if that was the case, then maybe he could strengthen his body somehow.

  There were some old scriptures in his colleague’s office that he had flipped through during the tests. Things from even before the era of the system. There were stories of people growing incredibly powerful even before the system came to be. It was a lot rarer, of course, and a lot harder, but there were people that were rumored to be even stronger than the strongest people in this current time.

  Whether that was true was uncertain, of course, but it did still give Modak hope that he could at least gain a grasp of his own physical aura and use it to help his recovery process along.

  He sat on the ground in a basic meditative position. Modak started by taking deep, long breaths, though those were often interrupted by heavy coughs until he got into a proper rhythm. There was one thing the mana rejection disorder helped him with, and that was the ability to actively sense mana. The sensation of it being pushed out of your body wasn’t the most pleasant, really, so every time there was any sort of injection of mana for a physical exam, Modak learned exactly how it felt.

  And since aura and mana were similar enough in their nature, maybe Modak could extend that to try and grasp some minuscule wisps of aura spread throughout his body. After all, according to the tests they had done in the tower, Modak’s body was already filled with a lot of that energy; he just hadn’t had the opportunity to become aware of it yet.

  Breathe in and breathe out. Before long, Modak found himself falling into routines that his grandmother had taught him. She was super into all sorts of old orcish tradition and had tried to teach a ton of it to Modak when she learned that his body couldn’t hold mana. He had never understood why until now.

  In the past, the species of people that stood at the peak of aura were the orcs. Tons of orcish tradition was focused around the physical body. Aura was the force that stemmed from the physical, while mana stemmed from the spiritual. And if Modak’s grandmother was to be believed, orcs of the past instead used aura in these spiritual ways, and they believed that using mana to do so was wrong somehow or was stepping into a domain that people shouldn’t touch. Tough Modak wasn’t quite sure about those parts of it; he figured that following those old orcish methods wouldn’t be the worst idea for him to try and learn how to manipulate his aura.

  Breath after breath, Modak fell deeper into a meditative state. He tried to stop thinking about everything else, which was actually the hardest part for him. Instead, Modak tried to focus on his own body as much as he could. The sensation of hot blood flowing into his wounds, the uncomfortable pulsating and pressure that he could feel as his body tried to heal.

  Bit by bit, Modak tried to grow closer to his own aura.

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Trying to Help

  Deep breaths were pulled in, then pushed out. In and out, in and out. Modak’s breathing became more and more stable as he managed to push through the pain that he was feeling. His broken ribs weren’t really making all this easier, either, and in the beginning, he fell into coughing fits a lot. But by now, he figured out the limits of his body the way it currently was and found a good niche to fit into.

  In this meditative rhythm, Modak tried to control his thoughts. It wasn’t that he wouldn’t be thinking of anything at all; that was completely unrealistic for him. Instead, he focused on the actual things that were going on with his body. The breathing and the pressure of the ground pushing against his bottom, and of course the pain of his injuries. All this was constant and predictable, and by focusing on these things, Modak managed to get into a good spot.

  If those old orcish teachings were to be believed, then this should be the beginning of his becoming aware of his own natural aura. After all, just like mana, aura was a force that every being with a physical body possessed. It was just a matter of how much, what the quality of that aura was, and how aware of it you were. Some people who gained this awareness compared it to being able to feel the blood flow through your veins. Not feeling your heartbeat but the actual flow of the blood. While it sounded a bit ridiculous, Modak was sure that it would be an accurate description.

  While mana flowed through the body along something called mana circuits, aura flowed along the blood vessels. So, becoming aware of your aura was basically the same as becoming aware of your blood. And what better time was there to become aware of your own blood than when it was trying to leak out of every corner of your body?

  The pain of his injuries slowly guided Modak toward his own heartbeat. Modak tried to focus on his breathing as much as he did on his heart. At some point, it even started to feel like his heartbeat influenced the shaking of his breath. And just when Modak started to feel a bit of the heat at the center of his heart, something woke him up.

  “Modak! What are you doing down there? Get up!” an almost-shrill voice called out to him, and he was immediately pulled out of his meditative state. A wave of pain flowed over him as everything that he had blocked out seemed to assault him all at once.

  His mother pulled on his arm, of course his uninjured one, to try and get him up onto his legs. Modak just looked at her with a frown. “What are you doing here? I thought you don’t think I deserve the blood flowing through my veins.”

  As he pulled his arm away, Modak slowly stood, and his mother clicked her tongue, followed by a slight hit to his arm. “Don’t talk to me that way! I’m still your mother!”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  Modak sat down on the edge of the hospital bed as his mother took one of the chairs right beside it. Completely naturally, she set herself up for the day.

  “So, you don’t have anything else to say?” he asked, and Modak’s mother looked at him, a bit baffled.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re not going to apologize? You’re not even going to acknowledge what you said literally right before one of the most important moments of my life?”

  Modak’s mother looked at him, clearly more upset at being spoken to like this than apologetic for her own behaviour. “You must have misunderstood me; I never said anything bad to you like that.”

  “Are you—” Modak stopped himself, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Listen, Mom. I’m moving out.”

  The only thing that came as a response was a loud laugh. “Right, of course, and with what money do you think you’ll be paying for an apartment in New Riverside?”

  With a long sigh, Modak leaned against the stack of pillows behind him. “You know I work for the Magic Tower, right? I’m a team lead. I already quit my job at the store, as well,” Modak explained. And of course, that wasn’t even mentioning that he was apparently going to get paid for being Ryan’s aide once everything went through on the Aglecard side of things. Incredibly well, at that. Modak couldn’t just afford a small studio apartment; he could afford an actual, comfortable, large space with a bedroom, office, and whatever else he needed just for himself, in a building that was actually accessible to not just orcs but also minotaurs. He could finally invite over his girlfriend without worry about her horns getting stuck on doorways or scraping against the ceiling.

  “Come on, now; stop being silly. Your younger brothers all need you around, or are you just going to leave them behind?”

  Modak frowned. “Don’t say stuff like that; you know I would do anything for them. It’s not like I’d live hours away. I’m happy to have them come over whenever they want; I can watch them after school and help them with their homework, as long as I don’t have work or classes then. But I need to move out.”

  “You don’t need to do anything at all; you just want to leave!” his mother protested, and Modak rolled his eyes.

  “Yes, I do. I want to live on my own. I can afford it. So … I’m leaving. I’m looking for a new place as soon as I’m out of the hospital,” he explained. He wouldn’t be able to live his life while still living with his parents. Not only did he feel constant pressure from every side, but he had absolutely no privacy. It felt like every time he was home, he had to do something for his parents or siblings, and it wasn’t that he hated doing things for them, but he just barely had any time for himself. And with what his parents had said to him yesterday? Everything just boiled over.

  Upset, Modak’s mother got all of her things together again, stuffing them into her bag. She rushed out of the hospital room, and just as she left, someone else stepped in. Yanna.

  “Uh … is everything okay?” she asked Modak nervously, and he slowly nodded.

  “Yeah, it’s fine. I just told her I’m moving out, and … well, my mom can be a bit dramatic,” he explained with an awkward smile.

  Yanna was a bit taken aback. “Wait, really? Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, I … I think so. It’ll be good for me.”

  Though the minotaur was worried about him, she just silently nodded. If this was Modak’s decision, then she would fully support him in this. Knowing what she knew about his family dynamics, it wasn’t the worst idea, either, as far as she was concerned.

  “Alright. I’ll help you find a place, then. Oh, and before I forget … Ryan called you last night while you were sleeping. I told him you would call him back when you’re awake.”

  Modak raised an eyebrow, taking his phone. “Right, I need to let him know about some stuff. I’ll call him in a second. And after that, do you think you could do me a favor?”

  Surprised, Yanna nodded. “Of course; what do you need? Do you want me to get you something? Here, I already brought you some books and some snacks,” she explained, quickly pulling a few things out of her bag. Modak smiled at her.

  “Thank you, but no, that’s not what I mean. Do you think you could … and I know this is going to sound a bit weird, but … could you push some of your aura into me?”

  Silvia was sitting in front of her television. Reports about what had happened at the expo yesterday were the only thing that any news channel was showing. Of course; it was a terrible tragedy of a sort that the city hadn’t seen before. Spirits attacked people viciously and without reason. Instances where spirits attacked people did appear, but those were usually cases of self-defense. Or, for example, if a lake was being polluted, a spirit born from that lake could attack the people doing the polluting. And usually, that didn’t end in deat, but was just a way to stop whatever damage was being done.