Ryan pulled out a pillow from in-between two of the dusty cardboard boxes and dropped it onto the ground. He sat down on it cross-legged, and looked at the spirit in front of him.

  Morgana was floating over the book she was currently reading.

  The Theory of Magic, Levels, and Living Gingerbread Men. A book written by a woman who Awakened to the Baker class and soon learned how to use the magic that she had learned earlier in life to create not just new applications of existing skills, but even lay the groundwork for new skills.

  It was not just an exploration of how the system could enhance magic in unexpected ways, but even that the system as we had known it to be was not as rigid as it seemed to be.

  Morgana had requested it since she apparently wanted to figure out how to best teach Ryan. After all, while being technically a summoner class, it didn't have the existing framework or necessary support for casting spells.

  "So, what are we doing today?"

  Morgana turned toward Ryan, practically pulling herself up onto an invisible seat mid-air. With her legs crossed under her long dress, she clicked her fingers.

  As the sound of porcelain hitting porcelain disappeared, a thread of mana was being formed between himself and Morgana. Shudders ran over Ryan's back as a notification popped up in front of him.

  [Morgana has forcefully activated the -Spirit Link- Skill]

  "Urgh, I hate when you do that... Just tell me to activate it myself," he complained and straightened his back.

  The link with Morgana was a special one. Similar to Jester, she was a 'blind' spirit. Jester simply seemed to perceive the world as it was, like he was scanning the surrounding physical world. Meanwhile, Morgana perceived the magical world.

  The information that was flowing into Ryan's mind was that of the magic around this attic. There was a generally pretty high amount of magic in this area. Not to the point of needing to worry about dungeonification, but just a healthily high amount of magic.

  Though, down below in the Titan's skull, it was ridiculous. Morgana had a tough time the first time she was down there. Apparently, the magic there was twirling around so wildly that it felt like you were getting dust thrown at your face every couple seconds.

  But here, it was more like a thin mist that enveloped everything. Mana lingered in every object, so Morgana didn't fall behind anyone else's perception. Even the letters on the book's page had some more mana in them. Maybe that was why she didn't like using the computer - there wasn't a huge difference in the flow of magic between the individual pixels, so it would be quite blurry and hard to deal with.

  With every movement of Ryan's hand, he could see the misty mana in the air swirl around him. He never got bored of this sight. But Morgana made sure that he didn't get lost in it for too long.

  Instead, Ryan gave up some control to her, just as he had done with Jester in the past to learn how to unlock the physicality stat.

  He could feel a small lump of his mana move inside of his chest, moving from his shoulder over his elbow to his fingertips.

  Small threads of mana flowed out of his hand and carefully twisted around each other, climbing up into the air as if trying to push the others around them further up.

  Carefully, they began to pull in mana from the air along with them, wrapping around it and practically caging it in.

  The threads forced the mana into a particular shape. A pattern, created based on the mathematical laws that governed the universe, used to extract specific effects out of the magic around the caster.

  It was a magic circle, technically created with Ryan's mana. By its nature, it was visible even by other people, simply because it was taken on a magical effect.

  It was a simple spell, though. When it activated with a slight glow, a small glass marble on the ground in front of Ryan began to levitate. It was one of the basic telekinesis spells that Morgana could remember from the very beginning.

  And it was activated by Ryan's mana. Sure, it was painstakingly manipulated by an insanely skilled witch, and Ryan couldn't even imagine doing something like this, but it proved a very simple thing:

  As long as Ryan was able to manipulate his mana well enough, and as long as he understood the principle behind the magic, he could cast spells.

  Some mana was better for certain elements, principles, or concepts than others. Since everybody's mana was slightly different, it was very likely that they were more suited to a specific type of magic. A perfect example for this was Michael. His mana was insanely close to water in every way, which was why he was able to use such potent water magic. However, if he ever tried to cast a flame spell, he would probably fail miserably.

  Even Runar's mana, soft green and droplet-like, could be argued to have some qualities of ink. Since his magic relied on the act of magical scribing, the nature of his mana at the very least didn't hurt.

  But Ryan's magic was almost too 'clean' in a way. Without texture or colour, he seemed to not be suited to any one particular school, which made him worry that he simply didn't have enough uniqueness to activate any magic at all, but luckily that wasn't the case. It might even give him a benefit at allowing the use of a broader range of magic than normal, but he was also most definitely locked out of many schools that quite literally required certain qualities.

  But this school of magic that Morgana had used through Ryan's mana was a great match for Ryan's colourless mana. The benefit of this particular school of telekinesis was that the rules and exact effect were mathematically defined beforehand. Sure, you needed to do all the calculations correctly beforehand and change the magic circle accordingly, but for someone like Morgana that was clearly an easy job. Plus, it allowed Ryan to use magic despite technically not having the needed understanding of the spell.

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  "Holy fucking- Is that what we're doing? You're finally going to teach me how to draw magic circles?" Ryan asked excitedly, staring at Morgana with a broad smile on his face. She slowly nodded.

  It wasn't as though what Morgana had taught him so far was boring, quite the opposite. She helped Ryan understand magic and how to manipulate his own mana more than anyone else. He even learned how to train his mana capacity. The way him and Michael had attempted actually worked, just not quite in that stationary way as he did.

  While Ryan was holding on to that lump of mana inside of him that wanted to escape by any means possible, he had to actually make it move around, practically mix it into his own mana without letting it escape. It was ridiculously hard, and he hadn't done it fully yet, but just attempting it was enough to raise his mana stat.

  But actually learning how to draw magic circles? That was ridiculously fun.

  For many people, their skills actually acted as a shortcut - just by providing the needed mana, the system would do the rest for you. That being the case, though, there were of course ways to use magic without the assistance of the system. Morgana seemed to be casting her magic mostly manually, anyway, despite her spellcasting skill, which actually made Ryan think that her skill had a different purpose than normal ones.

  "So what do I do first?" Ryan asked excitedly, and Morgana quickly held her own hand forward and created a sphere in the air, made from that same sort of magic as a magic circle. There was no effect, of course. It was just a simple exercise in trying to use manual magical writing.

  "Okay, I'll give it a shot."

  Slowly, he started moving some of his mana toward his hand. It was easier than normal - Morgana was helping him out a bit. Basically giving him training wheels.

  He tried to push out some of the mana through his fingertips, but he wasn't able to make fine threads like Morgana. It was more like a particularly thin rope, like paracord or something. It wasn't even close to being good enough, but it was just the start for now.

  Morgana's particular way of casting spells required gathering ambient mana together, basically just using your own mana as a way to contain and manipulate it. Others generally used just the caster's own mana for spells, so it was much less efficient, though maybe easier to use. So, Ryan should try to start as slow as he possibly could.

  He moved that rope of mana along, trying to practically scoop up the mana from around it. Somehow, the ambient mana was clinging to his own. He hadn't done this himself, though, that was something that Morgana did, though he could practically already tell what was happening here. Morgana was making Ryan's mana twist around itself, creating a sort of vortex that dragged in whatever surrounded it. He didn't have that level of control yet, but that was an interesting thing that he should try to do himself sometime.

  Ryan continued on and slowly gathered all the mana into a ball. At its core was a mass of ambient mana, while that rope of his own mana became a cage to keep it contained. It was almost invisible there. If others did this, they would be seeing a colourful, unique mass of mana, but for Ryan, it was just that slight distortion in the air that came with particularly dense spots of mana. Similar to how the light above a fire shifted around.

  Now that he had done this, Ryan was about to simply let go of it, and maybe try again, but Morgana stopped him.

  "Hm?" he let out, surprised, "Do you want me to keep this up? For how long?"

  The witch looked up at him, her porcelain lips shifting into a smile.

  "You're kidding... Just... as long as I can?"

  Morgana nodded, and held up her hand. She once again snapped her finger, but this time instead of forcibly activating one of Ryan's skills, she created another magic circle. And another and another. The whole attic was filled with, albeit weak and small, magic circles that were created before Ryan was able to take a shocked breath.

  "Got it... This has to come effortless to me. I need to be able to manipulate my mana properly even outside of my body. For that, I'll hold on to it there, and keep refining it. That it?"

  Morgana quickly nodded, and slowly grabbed the thread of mana connecting her to Ryan. She tugged on it, and...

  [Morgana has forcefully deactivated the -Spirit Link- Skill]

  "Dude, seriously, stop with that," Ryan complained, though he didn't have a lot of time to do so. Without Morgana's support, keeping up that ball of magic was a ridiculously tough thing. He couldn't even move his body without it almost unravelling.

  As he kept sitting there, trying again and again, he was slowly able to stand up from the ground. He could move back out through the door on the other side of the attic, and climb back down the steps. His eyes were practically glued to that sphere completely to ensure that he could keep it up. And, knowing what kind of person Morgana was, she definitely wanted him to keep going throughout his day with this sphere maintained, following beside him at all times.

  For that, Ryan approached a closet in the corner of his room. He opened it up, and looked at the outfit hanging on the left. Silvia had just finished her latest improvements on this one, the 'Urban Garden Golem', or as they called it day to day since that was just too much of a mouthful, the 'Urban Golem' outfit.

  It was by far the bulkiest of all the outfits Silvia had made for him. The main part was technically overalls, though at first glance you might not recognize it as such. The legs were wide and open, and could probably fit a giant if they tried to put their legs through them. They were covered in pockets all over, and were this light, beige-adjacent brown tone. Of course, they were made of a material that was easy to clean, since Ryan could get pretty dirty when helping Gaia out. Plus, the main reasons they were overalls was so that Ryan could keep things in all those pockets without worrying about them slipping down.

  The shirt he was wearing under that was a deep green colour, the same colour of Gaia's mana, that Silvia had actually custom-dyed to match perfectly. Over that, he was wearing a fairly thick, puffy jacket, still keeping on with that rocky 'golem' vibe. It was a dark brown with green stripes running down the arms and covering the back. Despite being so thick, it wasn't actually that hot. Somehow, Silvia had managed to ingrain the natural coolness that rock seemed to have into this jacket. It felt like he was standing in a cave when wearing this outfit, so it was great even on a hot day like this.

  The gloves that came with the outfit were a matching brown with a dark green on the back of the hands and fingers. They also fit so freakishly well that Ryan could wear them all day without being bothered by them. The dark brown, almost black boots were like thick combat boots but coated in rubber to ensure that Ryan could get them muddy without standing in a puddle.

  Somehow, he was able to put the whole outfit on without letting that orb of his mana disappear. At the very end before walking out the door, he picked out the right hat and dropped it onto his head. He had two different ones, each with the same, dark brown base, but each one had some unique stitchings on it. The first, the one he put on now, was covered in a wide range of colours. Wide ranges of green, purple, red, yellow, and blue, even some metallic orange sprinkled through - the stitchings represented the flowers in the garden up here.

  The other hat was much more monotone, with different iridescent blue tones overlaying a base of green. When worn in the dark, this hat would give off a similar glow to those plants growing in the titan skull.

  Ryan made his way into the garden and approached the hut on the other side. Gaia and the sub-golems were already keeping busy trying to empty it out, and now that Ryan had the time, with Liam reading a bit on his own, he could quickly come and help.

  Luckily, one of the effects of this outfit were that he felt much more vigorous when doing physical labour. Carrying around crates and boxes was easy peasy. The harder part was keeping up the mana sphere the whole time.

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