"The delivery's here!" Modak yelled out, stepping into the entrance of the garden from the front driveway. Ryan immediately turned his head over and began to jog toward him. He was wearing the Urban Golem outfit again to help him with physical labour, and Gaia was trotting behind him to help out as well.

  Until now, they were cleaning up the garden a bit more and setting up everything for the party later. They were expecting a ton of people, so they borrowed some standing tables and prepared a proper bar setup. Ryan spent all morning prepping some snacks for the party, Silvia was in charge of decoration, and Modak was setting up a bunch of speakers and was putting some finishing touches on some playlists.

  "Yo, what's up," Ryan said with a smile on his face, and one of the delivery guys looked up from his tablet to double-check some details.

  "Are you Ryan Aglecard?"

  "Yessir."

  "Then please sign... here..." he looked up at Ryan while holding forward the tablet. While Ryan was signing the document, the delivery guy looked up and saw the 3 metre golem standing behind Ryan, "Are you a... mage or something?"

  "Hm? Oh, no, I'm a summoner," Ryan replied with a smile, turning around, "That's Gaia, she's going to help carry everything."

  "Ah... I was wondering how you were going to do all that. Are you going to need any help?" the delivery guy asked.

  Ryan thought about it for a moment and looked into the back of the truck. There was quite a lot of stuff, "If you've got the time, I'm not gonna say 'no'," Ryan laughed a bit, and the other delivery man got ready and started moving the crates and kegs to the front of the truck, where Ryan quickly grabbed them and handed them to Gaia and the sub-golems. The other delivery guy and Modak were also moving everything, of course.

  Once they were on their way, Ryan just stacked everything up next to the truck, until it was time for the kegs.

  "You said you're a summoner, right? Don't try to lift these on your own, yeah? Just wait for that golem," the delivery man in the truck said, and Ryan just looked at the barrels.

  "They're 50 litres, so... 60 kilos each?"

  "Uh... yeah?"

  "That should be doable," Ryan said, grabbing the handle of the barrel before pulling it out. The delivery man wanted to stop him, but before he knew it, Ryan was lifting the keg, "Don't worry, I awakened the Strength stat."

  "Ah..." with a sigh of relief that his customer didn't just hurt himself, the delivery man sighed, "Coulda said that earlier, no?"

  Ryan laughed, placing the keg on the ground before grabbing the next one. Of course, even with Ryan's strength stat, 60 kilos wasn't exactly light, especially when lifting it out of a truck like this, but an awakened strength stat just allowed your body to safely output strength close to your limit at any time, so this wasn't really an issue. Plus, once multiple stats were unlocked, there were certain synergies.

  For example, for most people, the 'stamina' stat just enhanced your general physical endurance, but if you also had the 'strength' stat, then it began to apply to your muscle endurance too. Basically, you could carry heavy stuff for longer without your muscles giving out. Of course, to some degree that made it harder to train muscle endurance further, but it made it easier to push your limits and continue to grow your overall strength output.

  Soon, the truck was unloaded and everything was carried into the shed in the garden. When it was done, Ryan looked over at the delivery guys, who were breathing quite heavily and sweating a good bit, too, "Oh, do you guys want something to drink? Just take your pick, we've got plenty," he laughed a bit, pointing at the crates of drinks.

  Of course, there were tons of non-alcoholic drinks there too. Plenty of people coming tonight either didn't like drinking or were going to be the dedicated drivers, so they had to make sure that those people didn't lose out too much either.

  The delivery guys happily did just that, grabbing some sodas for themselves, "Do you have a bottle opener?"

  "Yes, hold on," Ryan placed his hand on something on his hip. He didn't go anywhere without this thing - the horn of shapeless water. There was a trick Ryan had been playing around with all yesterday evening.

  He had gotten a hold of how to keep up that 'sphere' of mana outside of his body without issue, and had come to some kind of realisation, like an epiphany of sort. It wasn't anything specific or tangible, but he had gotten a hold of the essence of how to manipulate mana outside of your body, and began to apply it to something new.

  He let his mana flow into the horn and pulled out a bit of water. That's right - as long as it was a small amount, he could control the water just like that. Not fast though, and it wasn't useful offensively, but it did help Ryan train mana manipulation a bit more. Anyway, Ryan quickly formed the water into the shape of a bottle opener, and quickly used it to open the two bottles. While placing the small piece of ice into his mouth, so that he could keep cool in this hot weather as well, Ryan grabbed a bit more water and turned it into an ice straw, placed it into one of the bottles, and then repeated it for the other.

  Of course, it was pretty hard and expensive to cool drinks during a delivery, so it was all still pretty damn warm and wouldn't be all that refreshing. But with a straw made of ice? Especially magical ice that didn't melt as easily as normal ice? That was the perfect way to quickly cool down a drink.

  The delivery guys looked at each other, quickly taking a sip, "I'll be damned, magic sure as hell is convenient, huh?"

  "Sure is," Ryan responded with a smile, as one of the sub-golems came running over toward him with his wallet in hand, "Here, just as an extra for you guys."

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  He held out two hundred-Gild bills, giving one to each of the delivery guys. They were a bit surprised at first, especially since this was coming from what was essentially just a kid to them. But looking at the house, and seeing that he was an awakened... they slowly took the money and thanked Ryan a lot.

  And then, after finishing their drinks, the delivery guys went back on their way, pulling out of the gated driveway.

  "Man... the kinda money you've got, just paying 200 bucks in tips like that," Modak yawned slightly, and Ryan raised a brow as he turned around.

  "I mean... If I have the money, why not spend it like that? I used to help out with these kinds of deliveries a couple of years ago, and getting any kind of tip at all really helped me out a ton a lot of the time," Ryan pointed out, "Anyway, how are you still tired? Didn't you wake up, like, two hours ago?"

  Modak quietly stared back at Ryan, "I may... or may not... have gone to bed at 7am?"

  "Dude, seriously?" Ryan let out a long sigh, "What were you doing for that long?"

  "Uhm... you know how I've been working on the watertight prototypes?"

  "Mhm."

  "I was testing them out all night, and brought them into the pool, and I kind of lost track of time... But it's worth it, don't worry! I'm going to give a small show with them tonight, it's going to be absolutely sick," a broad smile appeared on Modak's face.

  Though Ryan was certain that it was going to be as amazing as his friend was claiming, seeing Modak so tired was still a bit worrying, "Just go take a nap for now, people aren't going to start showing up for a while anyway."

  "... Are you sure? I don't want to leave you guys all alone with the setup."

  "I mean, the setup's basically done. Out here, the only thing we've got to do is have Morgana set up the Blizzard Field spell in the shed and then bring some of them out when the party actually starts. And let's be honest, Silvia's not going to let you touch any of the decoration anyway. She's very particular about this stuff."

  And while Modak clearly still felt quite bad about it, he decided to just do as his best friend was telling him to, and let out a deep, long sigh, "Alright, got it. In that case, uh... wake me up if you need me or when people start coming. Whichever happens first."

  "I gotcha," Ryan and Modak fist-bumped before the orc went inside. Ryan quickly went to go check to make sure that everything was really alright for now, and that there wasn't anything where a drunk idiot could get hurt, and then also made his way inside, "Guys! Come on, I've got to head downstairs for a moment."

  The spirits, one after another, came together in Ryan's bedroom and entered their respective domains, and Ryan walked up to his closet and swapped out his hat for the one with the glow-in-the-dark flowers stitched onto it before pressing the coin he carried on his keychain against the wall.

  The powerful illusion magic made way for a moment, and an elevator appeared in front of Ryan. He rode it downstairs into the shrine in front of the skull. This place had basically become a small hidden storage space for some items that Runar wanted to keep safe. According to him, he could store them in the hidden village under his own place, but because there were so many people down there, including children, as well as some animals that could get loose and do some real damage if something went wrong, he said that there were a few things that he would just much rather keep down here.

  They were mostly different cursed items that were kept safely in protective fields, or some of the more dangerous and volatile magic items. It was a bit annoying to walk past them every time he came down here, as if they were mocking him, reminding him that he wasn't allowed to use them, despite being just so extremely cool.

  For example, there were some gauntlets that drained their user's life force when they were used to enhance the strength of attacks, or a dagger that made the user run wild with bloodlust. They just seemed pretty cool, and Ryan wanted to try them out at least once, but Runar told him not to because it was 'too dangerous', and 'an absolutely batshit thing to want to do'. Whatever that was supposed to mean.

  Runar didn't even tell him why those items were kept here instead of the family's official storage facility for these sorts of things. He just kept dodging the question whenever it came up. But well, Ryan had gotten used to it by now. Both Runar's dodging and the cursed items themselves. He was a little worried about the curses at first, but the protective boxes were literally so powerful that even Maximus, with an attack fully-enhanced through his skills and by being unsealed, wasn't able to even put a slight scratch into their surfaces. They couldn't even move either, it was like they were locked in space. Only Runar would be able to take them away. So, they were apparently incredibly safe there.

  That being the case, Ryan wasn't here to ogle those items again. There was something much, much more important to check on.

  He opened the first door in the titan skull's mouth, closed it, and quickly opened the second, to make sure that none of the insects in here could escape. Ryan approached the centre of the titan skull, looking at that thing standing right there in front of him.

  That old, wooden door that seemed to just be mocking him every time he looked at it. Runar had placed a particular few magic circles around it to make sure that nothing could happen, but shockingly, even he wasn't able to destroy it.

  Silvia had apparently created it with one of her skills, 'Artist's Incarnation'. But, different to the other things she drew with this skill, it turned into a real thing, completely disconnecting from her magic.

  It couldn't be opened, either - hell, it didn't even have a door handle or a lock. But it was somehow undeniably clear that it was a door, to anyone that looked at it. Ryan was just incredibly paranoid about it, and though Runar told him not to worry too much, since he didn't sense anything malicious from it, he liked to come down here to double-check that everything was okay with it.

  He wouldn't want some monstrous creatures to come crawling out from a hidden elevator shaft in the middle of a party with at least a hundred drunk university students in the building.

  But there was a particular reason why he came down here, specifically every Saturday. Every week since Silvia originally painted the door, something happened.

  A note was pushed out under the slit in the door. It didn't make any sense, obviously. While there was a small gap underneath, the only thing you could see was the grass of the titan skull's garden on the other side of the door. Not whatever space was supposed to be behind there.

  Ryan saw the small piece of paper laying there on the ground and carefully picked it up. There wasn't anything written on it, though, it was just random scribbles. Plus, these notes were all completely and utterly non-magical. Runar had literally put them through one of the most sophisticated magical analysis units that he possibly could, and there wasn't even the slightest trace of anything. It was just mundane paper. Old, sure, but mundane.

  Even so, just in case, Runar told Ryan to keep the notes safe inside of one of the boxes with the other cursed items, where nothing could happen.

  "You got it?" Ryan asked, inwardly looking at Morgana. The witch spirit nodded her head, looking up from the piece of parchment in front of her. She had noted everything down and was keeping a record of each of the notes, so that they could hopefully try figure out what this was. Runar told Ryan not to act on his own, but... well, Ryan still felt like he had to do something to help figure this out.

  For now, with Gaia's help, Ryan did the second thing he wanted to do. He grabbed a few flowers from down here inside of small flower pots meant to move small plants like these. They were going to plant them in the garden, just to help light everything up for later tonight.

  They carried everything over and brought the pots into the elevator, dropped off the note, and then, with Gaia back in her domain, Ryan made his way back up to finish preparing for the party.

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

  Join the Discord!