Ryan looked at his status window. Getting to level 16 in the time that he had been an Awakened was actually a pretty big deal, especially considering that most of the spirits were combat-focused. In this day and age, combat classes had a way harder time levelling up than others, which is why their percentage had shrunken down considerably. And most people that Awakened with combat classes used their abilities for sport.

  Of course, there were always Villains and Heroes, but particularly villains often had non-combat classes that they simply applied in criminal ways.

  Outside of sport and heroism, there was really just one other way for the spirits to potentially level up, which were dungeons. They were by far the most effective thing, since those were actual, genuine life and death battles. But dungeons weren't as common as you might think. There were always a handful of active dungeons across New Riverside, sure, but most of them were monopolised by other people already or were so powerful that Ryan couldn't get into them yet, even with the Aglecards' influence.

  So... the main way that everyone had been levelling up was through duels against each other. Training. It was disgustingly slow compared to the growth that Ryan had experienced just a few months ago, but it was still better than nothing. The most annoying part was that overarching feeling of 'stagnancy'.

  Of course, the spirits had all levelled up and each of them were above level 10 now, getting new skills. Gregor was now able to break things apart into its individual materials using his mana. Jester could establish a stage, something like a small radius where his abilities were given a small boost that he could deploy in the middle of a battle.

  Violette learned the skill Fencer's Honour, which boosted her power as long as she followed a self-imposed set of rules. And of course, Morgana had just used her new skill earlier, levitating up to the attic window.

  The spirits that were with Ryan were growing well. Slower than he had hoped, but they were growing. So were his skills overall, hence why he was able to unseal the spirits to a much greater degree, which also didn't help with the levelling speed, to be honest. A combat class levelled up faster the more they got to their limits, but the spirits with their stats tripled were so strong that their limits were getting quite ridiculous.

  Hell, Maximus' stats were all around the 5-6 range. The most average person in the world with a 1.00 in every stat, would need to boost each stat by 0.10 for fifty levels to get that strong. Of course, stats weren't everything. What was much more important in an actual combat scenario were one's skills and techniques, but it wasn't as though the spirits' skills and techniques were weak or useless either.

  Still, on the surface, progress was made. But Ryan was still just so damn annoyed that he didn't even have a clue as to the presence of other spirit cores in the past two months. It felt like he wasn't doing enough, although he was already looking into every possible clue that he could.

  That thing in the titan's skull was also just sitting there, practically mocking him the entire time. But Ryan had accepted all of this. He had to accept all of it.

  If a combat class wasn't able to level up easily, that meant times were peaceful. Ryan would be a total piece of shit if he complained about peace. But the only times when Ryan was able to get out his... frustrations were when he got some other awakened person to spar with him. And even then, it just wasn't the same feeling as a real fight.

  Running his hands through his hair, feeling the sweat on his palm, Ryan stepped into the house from the terrace in the back. There, Liam was already sitting on the couch, playing on his console. Ryan figured he shouldn't be grumpy around him, so he quickly put on a smile, "Alrighty, so. Tomorrow night, we're going to have a party. Runar made a mistake with when you're supposed to be here, so it's sort of all overlapping."

  "Oh..." Liam looked up at Ryan, "Can I join?"

  "It's a grown-up party. I'd prefer it if you could stay upstairs in your room, yeah?"

  "But..." the boy glanced away, not sure what to say. There was clearly something bothering him.

  "Okay, how about this... as long as you listen to me, and I always know where you are, you can stick around for a bit of it. But it's probably going to be pretty loud, and we'll have a ton of people over. And when I tell you to, please just go to your room, okay?"

  "I'll be good! I promise, I won't bother anyone! And I don't sleep a lot at night anyway, so..."

  "Liam. Please. Just..." Ryan raised up his hand, showing the back of his hand. Tiar immediately reacted, using the red, shifting lines that connected him to Ryan to form the image of a hand, which quickly waved at Liam. The boy smiled lightly and meekly waved back, "It's two against one. A party like this usually isn't a place for a kid your age."

  Liam stared at his cousin in disbelief, "But- that's not fair! You can't just use Tiar for a second vote!"

  "Why, do you want me to ask Silvia and Modak what they think? Or do you want to get the spirits' input?"

  With a slight sigh, Liam shook his head, "No, you're right..."

  Ryan walked past the couch and patted the boy on the shoulder as he did, "Don't worry, we're gonna have a great time beside the party as well. Come on, I've prepared something for you."

  Curious, Liam got up and followed Ryan into the kitchen, where Ryan quickly opened the freezer door.

  He pulled out a small, homemade popsicle, "So, I had Runar get me a few of the flavoured drink prototypes, and I've been playing around with it a little bit, and turns out, they freeze pretty well."

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Confused, Liam took the popsicle and looked up at Ryan, "Wait, huh?"

  "I know that you don't deal with the heat well, and sucking on ice cubes probably gets a bit boring."

  Liam stared at the frozen treat in his hand and just kept staring at it.

  Carefully, just as the boy had watched his peers do so many times by now, he put the popsicle into his mouth and tried to bite down on it.

  He pulled back immediately and held his hand to his cheek, "Ow! It hurts, why does it hurt?"

  Ryan smiled a bit and ruffled Liam's hair, "You don't really ever use your teeth, so I'm sure you'll get used to the cold. You do take care of them well."

  "Of course I do! A Vampire is nothing without his fangs!" Liam grinned broadly, showing the two sharp, long teeth in the top of his mouth.

  "Just don't bite down on it, and you'll be fine. That way it lasts a bit longer, too," Ryan explained, "That one should be the... strawberry flavoured one? How do you like it? Runar said it's fine for human consumption, so I tried a spoonful, and I don't think it's all too bad."

  Liam pulled the popsicle away from his mouth, "It... tastes weird. Is that what strawberries taste like?"

  Ryan shrugged, "Your drinks are pretty iron-heavy, and that's a pretty strong taste, but it's close. Hold on."

  He pulled open the fridge and looked at a small of strawberries, freshly harvested from Gaia's garden. He quickly gave one of them to Liam, "Now, be careful with this, and don't swallow it, I don't want you to get sick. But just take a bit, chew it a bit, and..." Ryan ripped a paper towel from the roll and held it ready, "Spit it in here."

  Hesitant, the boy held the popsicle in his left hand, and the strawberry in his right. He carefully took a bite. Liam still wasn't used to actually biting things, but strawberries were soft enough to not be a problem even for him.

  After just a moment, Liam's eyes widened, "Thish ish what shtrawberriesh tashte like?"

  "Mhm, yes it is," Ryan smiled, "Come on, make sure not to swallow anything."

  He held the paper towel in front of Liam's mouth, as he hesitantly spit out the mushed-up strawberry. Excitedly, he went back to continue eating his popsicle.

  "Thank you," Liam looked up at Ryan, and followed him back to the living room.

  "Alright, I'm gonna go for a swim. You can go ahead and watch TV if you want," Ryan put the remote on the couch, "When you're done with that popsicle, just put the stick on the plate here. If anything's wrong, then-"

  "I know, I know, if you're still outside and it's too sunny, go and look for Modak or Silvia."

  "Good boy," Ryan smiled, quickly jogging upstairs. He threw his clothes into the hamper in his bedroom and put on his swimming trunks and grabbed a small pouch that he had on his desk. With the weights that he was already wearing for his run in hand, he walked down the exterior metal stairway right from his room back to the garden. Making sure that the weights were tight enough around his legs and arms, Ryan approached the edge of the pool. It was perfectly squeaky clean. It was just put in a couple weeks ago, and was more than large enough to get some swimming in for a workout, and more than deep enough for Ryan to do something else that he had been doing every day after his workouts.

  He carefully dropped into the pool and let the weights pull him down, just enough so that he could properly sit at the bottom of the pool. Once underwater, a soft current seemed to surround him, flowing against his skin as magic filled his black pearl earrings. As Ryan took a deep breath, water filled his lungs. They were specifically not using chlorine to clean this pool. Chlorinated water burnt Ryan's throat when he did this. Sure, he'd get used to it after a while, but since they could just clean the pool with magic anyway, not using chlorine really offered itself.

  He just sat there for a while, as he usually did. Sometimes for just a couple minutes, sometimes for a few hours. Just thinking. Breathing. Something about all the noise of the world just being cut off gave him peace of mind. Plus, Tiar just loved it as well. The spirits were unnerved by it, though. Even Violette, though she was submerged plenty herself. Maybe it was because when they were in their domains, they saw the world through Ryan's eyes and ears, but with it all being dulled this way, it felt like being stuck in their cores again. So he couldn't really blame them at all.

  Once Ryan cleared his mind here in the water, he carefully opened the pouch that he grabbed earlier. Inside of it was a seed the size of his thumb's nail. It was the seed that was left behind when the dungeon fell apart two months ago. He knew for a fact that it was the same sort of seed as the others that were seemingly 'created' from the corruption.

  There were a few things that he had figured out. After giving the right clues to Runar, and being told things that he had no way of knowing beforehand, a few loose threads were tied together. Though, not even nearly all of them.

  Corruption was intended as a way for the White Shadow Society to force a true bond between a symbiote and another individual. As a symbiote usually died during the bonding process if there was no compatibility, the way that they found around this matter was to simply force it to stay alive - through undeath. One way or another, they attained 'seeds' filled with energies of undeath, and managed to implant one into a particular symbiote, which they then forced to bond with... with that boy that Ryan met in the tank at the heart of the dungeon.

  The undead symbiote became corrupted. It attacked the people in the laboratory, turned them into corrupted undead themselves, marking the deepest parts of their bodies with the symbiotic patterns that Ryan saw on the monsters' bones. More and more, corruption spread, leaping out of the old amusement park where it was made in the first place. And each time the corruption spread and what used to be the symbiote split apart, more seeds were formed with them, which was why he found them whenever he cured the corruption, turning the seed back into what it used to be - a seed of blessing. Though, that probably meant that somewhere in the mess with Energizer, a seed had dropped somewhere.

  Ryan already looked for it everywhere, asked if anyone found it, but no dice. Maybe Gaia had somehow absorbed it. Her other fragment was probably infected with corruption as well before it was used to artificially create a dungeon in Copperbeach, but she pushed through and was able to cure it, hence why the seeds that were dropped in her dungeon produced flowers that could do the same.

  And now, what Ryan was holding in his hand was the seed that started it all. Gaia was able to verify what it was with her Garden Golem's Eye skill. But it was still... different. More powerful than the other seeds that Ryan had found so far, as if there were other things stuck inside of it. That was the most that he had been able to figure out through his small 'experiments' here in the pool.

  When he was here, fully submerged, he was at least able to somehow connect to it. Feel that there was something reaching back out to him. But he just couldn't figure out how to absorb this seed, no matter how much he tried. He even thought about just swallowing it before, but his gut told him that wasn't the right choice.

  With a sigh, a stream of water flowed out of Ryan's mouth as he laid down on the ground. His long black hair flowed over his face, stopping the sun from flowing through like branches in a forest. Ryan closed his eyes, and entered the space in his mind, that white void where the spirits' domains are. He was right in front of the sapling on the small mound, and experienced the weightlessness of water. That was a neat trick he had found. Whenever he came in here while underwater, he could basically swim through the air here.

  There wasn't anything special about being able to practically fly here, but it was just... neat.

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