"... What are you doing?" with a slightly confused stare, Runar looked at his nephew in the livingroom. It was around 4am and Runar was absolutely exhausted after dealing with the aftermath of the attack at the Magic Tower's expo, so when he finally managed to make his way home, the last thing he expected to see was Ryan doing acrobatics.

  Grinning at his uncle, Ryan glanced over toward the spirit next to him, who he was currently blocking out with his body, "Jester is teaching me some stuff so that I can awaken the physicality stat."

  Runar took a few steps forward, finally seeing the small harlequin doing the same pose that Ryan was doing. The two of them were currently doing what seemed like some form of extreme yoga, pushing their bodies to the limit. Though, while it appeared like the sort of acrobatics you would see in a circus when looking at Jester, for Ryan, it looked more like a child trying to copy that.

  "You managed to complete his quest? What ended up doing the job? Was it meeting Goria that excited him that much?" Runar asked with a slight smile, "Ah, I'm pretty jealous. Even I haven't met Goria yet. She's supposed to be ethereally beautiful."

  Ryan raised a brow as he slowly dropped to the ground. He was doing a sort of back bridge where he was basically trying to curl himself up as much as he possibly could, and it wasn't an easy position to get out of. So, after dropping down, he quickly turned over and stood back up, "Well, Goria was definitely beautiful. Unlike anything I've ever seen. But... you're probably talking about Melusine, not Goria."

  With a scoff, Runar shook his head, "No, no, not Melusine. Why would I be talking about her? It's not like anyone has seen her before. She's just Goria's supposed daughter."

  "She's not her 'supposed' daughter, she's Goria's eldest daughter, and happens to be the one that's depicted in all those drawings and statues."

  Laughing, thinking that Ryan was joking, Runar stepped into the livingroom and dropped down onto a chair, "Right."

  "No, I'm serious. They do it like that because people find Goria easier to accept when she looks like that. And I'll admit, Melusine was probably the most physically attractive person... well, spirit, I've ever seen. But she's not Goria."

  "Mhm. So, what does Goria look like, then?"

  Runar clearly didn't believe Ryan. It seemed like he was assuming that his nephew was just messing around and joking as he used to, but... to Ryan, they still weren't at that point again. He wasn't in the mood to joke around with Runar, so he was just telling it as it was.

  "You know the whale that's sometimes depicted together with Goria?"

  "Yeah, the colossal beast. Apparently also quite a sight, but-" Runar replied, unsure where Ryan was going with this, but he quickly stopped himself as the realisation kicked in, "No. No, that's not- You can't fuck with me like this, that's not funny."

  Ryan stared at his uncle, "Mhm. Sure, if you say so," he said, walking over to the table. He grabbed the small orb that was laying on there and handed it over to Runar, "Goria called me to give me some items. This is one of them. Basically, it's supposed to react to nearby water spirit cores, particularly the 'kind' that I can contract."

  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 laying 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 stretched out his hand, "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 took 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 started, 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 how-powered Awakened. Then, a few years down the line-"

  If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  "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 toward 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 his brow, "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 onto 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 forward 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 was 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 pulled 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 came 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 most kind and truly good people that Modak had ever met. Her kids were great people too, just a few years older than Modak himself. And they 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 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 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 more rare, of course, and a lot harder, but there were people that were rumoured 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 down 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 tried to teach a ton of it to Modak when she learned that his body couldn't hold mana. He 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 to the spiritual, and they believed that using mana to do so was wrong in some way, 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.

  Check out the Patreon! Read up to 15 Chapters ahead!

  Join the Discord!