"Wait, is this really what- is this what chocolate tastes like? Seriously?" Jade asked with her eyes widened, while her and Ryan walked through the garden. Ryan had given her one of the small tester-bottles of the artificial blood with some actual flavour in it, while he grabbed himself some of the snacks that he made earlier in the day.

  "It's close. A lot more metallic, though," he pointed out, and Jade frowned surprised.

  "Wait, what? What do you mean?"

  "You know, metallic. Like, that coppery taste of blood?"

  Jade seemed even more confused, "That's not... that not what all food tastes like?"

  With a laugh, Ryan shook his head, "No, that's not what all food tastes like. I mean, you're always welcome to just taste stuff, you just can't swallow it."

  "I guess so? I never thought about it, it just seemed like a waste to do that, you know? I didn't want to just spit it back out right after..." Jade explained, "When I was still really young, like five or six, we... you know, didn't really have great access to blood. My dad worked with some of these shady guys, and they would sell blood to us for so much money... I just don't think I want to waste food when I know what it's like to go hungry, you know?"

  Though he didn't know exactly what that was like, he nodded. His mom and him were always teetering right by that edge, and more than just a few times, Ryan's mom would use the excuse of 'I'm going to eat later', when he knew perfectly well that they didn't have anything else for her in the house. He understood that perfectly.

  "Yeah, I... I get that. I've been eating a ton for the past few months, like, five thousand calories per day 'a ton'. And I-"

  "Hold on, hold on, five thousand calories? Don't humans usually eat like... two thousand?"

  Surprised that she knew that, Ryan smiled a bit, "Yup. I, uhm... how much do you know about other hidden species?"

  "I know they exist? Like, succubi, ghouls... you mean those?"

  "Yeah, those. If you want, I can introduce you to some of them, I help out in a... I guess you can call it a 'sanctuary', a couple times a week. Well, most days a week. Okay, maybe I go there every day whenever I have a free minute, but the point is..." Ryan looked around, trying to focus his intuition to make sure nobody else was around that could be eavesdropping, "Do you know about symbiotes?"

  Jade raised her brows, "Yeah! I do, my mom mentioned them a couple times after we got into contact with the Aglecard Foundation. I think they even tried showing the symbiotes to them? I don't really know why, though..."

  "Oh, I can explain that. Basically, there needs to be a certain spiritual connection between a symbiote and their bond for things to go well. Now, those are pretty rare, so the family acts as an intermediary between symbiotes and potential bond candidates. And..." Ryan pointed at his arm. He had quickly rushed up to get changed earlier and came out wearing his usual outfit, which recently was just a sleeveless shirt, "This right here is Tiar, they're my bonded symbiote. Usually symbiotes are supposed to cool down with how much extra calories they consume, but yeah, not in our case."

  Jade was completely taken aback, staring at Ryan's arm. She had noticed that the 'tattoo' was moving, but she figured it was just the effect of some kind of skill, since that was the excuse that Ryan had been using. But now that they had been introduced, Tiar quickly tried to say 'hello' with a smiling face on the back of the hand.

  "Wow, okay... that's crazy, so you just... I don't know, share a body?"

  "Yeah, basically. I mean, with the spirits I'm technically sharing my body with a total of seven people, myself not included. So, yeah," Ryan explained with an awkward laugh, and Jade's face immediately flushed red.

  "Oh, so... they're there whenever you... you know..."

  Ryan scoffed, nodding his head, "Yeah, they're there. But I've figured out some ways to stop the spirits from peeking all the time. I can sort of create a bit of a sensory veil around them if I really need some privacy."

  Somehow breathing a sigh of relief, Jade placed a hand onto her chest, "Okay, I see! But... what about... Tiar, was it?"

  "Well, Tiar is a bit more complicated. But it's basically their body as well, so... most of the time it's not an issue. Though I can ask them to go to sleep if need be, though it's never really happened before. They usually just sleep when I sleep," Ryan pointed out, smiling down at his hand. Obviously, he could tell why Jade was asking all of this stuff. He just didn't exactly know how to bring up that he didn't exactly care all too much about 'that'. So, he did the next best thing. Completely remove the thought from her head by bringing them into a situation where thinking about sex, and especially insinuating the possibility of it, would be incredibly awkward.

  "Liam! There you are," Ryan smiled, approaching the young boy who was sitting in Gaia's lap. She was currently unsealed to the full three metres, basically so that Ryan could have her act as a bit of 'security'. She was by far the most wholesome of all the spirits, but a massive golem just had a bit of an intimidation factor to it.

  The boy looked up at Ryan and smiled, "Hey! Look, I finally figured out this puzzle in my game!"

  He held his handheld console toward Ryan, who quickly squatted down and took a look, "Oh, damn, I remember that one being pretty tough. It definitely took me longer to figure out than you."

  "Hah, of course! A king always has to be more clever than his subjects!" he exclaimed smugly, looking back at the game. Ryan tried to just keep on smiling, though he could tell what was going on. These days, Liam only did the whole 'king' thing when he was particularly anxious.

  "Well, you've got that one right. Anyway, your majesty, I would like to properly introduce you to someone," he said, looking backward at Jade, hoping she would get the gist and just play along, "This is Jade. Just like you, she's a vampire."

  Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

  Liam froze up for a moment, looking up from his screen, "Really? You're a vampire? Promise?" he asked excitedly, looking back and forth between her and Ryan.

  With a slight laugh, Jade leaned forward and grinned, happily showing her fangs, "I promise."

  Happily, Liam did the same thing, grinning wide enough to show off his fangs to Jade, "You were there on the couch earlier, right?"

  "Right. You're pretty famous amongst vampires, you know?"

  Clearly surprised at this, Liam didn't quite know what to say, "Uh... re-really?"

  "Yes! Of course, you're like the face of vampires joining mainstream society, you know?"

  "I, uhm, I..." Liam looked away and avoided eye-contact with Jade, "Th-thank you?"

  Jade almost squealed again as she looked at Liam, "So cuuute!" she said, as Liam slightly hid behind his game console, pretending that he was just playing really intensely all of a sudden.

  Ryan laughed a bit, looking over at Jade, whispering, "Is he really that famous?"

  "Oh yeah, for sure! I mean, we've all been kind of waiting for something like this. Having to hide isn't exactly fun, you know? But it's just always been this tradition that forced us to stay hidden, and now that tradition was kind of broken, so... it's nice. I haven't really told anyone yet, but... it's just freeing that I don't have to hide it anymore, you know?"

  He carefully nodded. He knew what she meant, to some degree. He was happy that he had Silvia and Modak to share all those Aglecard secrets with. Without them, he would probably go absolutely crazy.

  "Oh, there's someone else I should to introduce you to I guess," Ryan pointed out, looking at Jade, "This here is Gaia, she's a particular kind of garden spirit," he said, and Jade seemed a bit confused.

  "Uh... what?"

  As she replied, Gaia slowly raised her hand, carefully waving at Jade. She hadn't been moving at all since Liam was sitting in her lap, and she didn't want to hurt him. Jade took a step back confused.

  "S-Spirits get that big?" she asked, and Ryan laughed, nodding immediately.

  "You've got absolutely no idea, spirits can get massive. And Gaia here, at her best, would be around 10 metres tall. I just can't quite get her there yet," Ryan patted the golem's arm with a smile.

  Jade nervously waved back at Gaia, "It's very nice to meet you, Gaia," she said, and though she wasn't able to physically smile, Ryan could tell that the spirit was quite happy to meet her as well.

  "You wanna meet the others as well?"

  "Oh! Can I?"

  "Of course, just-" Ryan said, immediately feeling a twinge of a bad feeling popping up in the back of his head. A moment later, he heard a loud crash from inside the house, "... Wait here."

  Without hesitation, he started running through the garden, unsure what was going on. A crowd had gathered around the door leading from the living room into the garden, and Ryan quickly forced his way through. Inside, he saw two guys just absolutely going at it in a fight.

  They were throwing each other onto the ground, against tables and shelves. Some beer bottles fell to the ground and broke earlier, and the coffee table was completely cleared as one of them was thrown onto it.

  "Dude, what the fuck is going on here?!" Ryan yelled out, trying to get the fight to stop. He grabbed onto one of the two, the one that was currently on top, punching the other, and pulled him away immediately. He knew who these guys were... they were supposed to be best friends, so why were they fighting each other? "Calm down, what happened?"

  The one that Ryan was holding onto glared at him, trying to push him away, "That asshole keeps trying to fuck with me, all the time!"

  "The hell're you talking about, man? I just tripped into you!"

  "You did that on purpose to make me look stupid!"

  "Oh go fuck yourself!" the guy who was thrown onto the table got up and tried to ram into his 'friend', but Ryan was able to push the two of them away from each other.

  "Can someone grab one of these guys?" Ryan asked, looking around. But everyone was just standing there, seemingly trying to enjoy the show. Rather, he was noticing that some people got angry themselves that he had stopped everyone.

  Looking around, some people had been completely unbothered and were just making out, or basically dry-humping right in the middle of the common spaces.

  "What the fuck is going on?" Ryan looked around. Things were escalating pretty badly right now, so there was definitely something going on. This wasn't normal. With a groan, he quickly yelled out, "Morgana! Come down here!"

  People were confused for a moment, but it didn't take long until the witch spirit appeared, coming flying through the window. She sat down on top of Ryan's head, and he didn't hesitate for a moment to link with her. And what he saw was... ridiculous.

  He had seen something similar when looking at Jester's magic through Morgana's sight. His buffs and de-buffs would latch onto his targets and manipulate them. This was extremely similar - everyone's mana had something mixed into it, as if it was trying to distort their actions. As he looked down at himself, he saw that this was the case with himself as well.

  Where was this coming from? What was going on?

  Ryan stared down at the ground, and saw it. The ground was covered in beer and soda from the broken bottles. From that liquid, a slight mist was flowing up, the same colour as whatever is mixed in with everyone's mana.

  "Oh fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck," Ryan's stomach dropped immediately as he let go of the two angry guys. They immediately went back at it, punching each other and causing a big mess. He immediately ran outside, trying to see what was going on, and sprinted toward the shed where they kept the drinks. Did someone sneak in here and cast something on the drinks?

  Though, as Ryan looked inside at the spell that was happening, the 'blizzard field', he couldn't exactly see anything. Though, to some degree that was because of the spell's magic in there, which was blocking the view of any other sort of mana in there. Sure, the spell was weakened so that it wouldn't go below zero, but it was still pretty dense magic.

  "Morgana, please-"

  He didn't even have to finish the sentence before Morgana cancelled the spell going on in the shed and forced a flood of frosty magic outside of there. Though Ryan felt cold for a moment, he should be fine. Now, he was able to see what was going on. A small mist of mana was escaping from the ground, seeping through the thin layer of dirt in there.

  "This wasn't there when you cast the spell, right?"

  Morgana shook her head, and Ryan immediately groaned and started pulling the crates out of the shed, at least enough that he could push away that dirt. Underneath, on the concrete floor, some kind of complex pattern had been carved. It was clearly old, and nothing that had been put here anytime recently.

  "Are you fucking kidding me- those psycho cultists, urgh," he yelled loudly, getting up immediately. He pulled out his phone and tried to call Runar, but he didn't answer. When he video-called Yamada, she didn't answer either, "Holy shit, you absolute useless-"

  Ryan stopped himself and instead quickly texted Runar and Yamada that there was an emergency. He didn't know who else to call right now. This was terrible. It wasn't like these guys had a curse cast on them, but they were infected by some kind of emotion-boosting spell that seeped into the drinks. Probably, the spell that Morgana cast in there activated that pattern on the ground.

  "How did we miss this?!" Ryan's hands were shaking as he tried to figure out what to do. People were fighting and making out and crying, and he had no idea what to do to help everyone.

  But then, a person popped up into his mind. Ryan pulled out his phone and dialled a number he hadn't called a lot. It rang, and rang, and rang, until finally...

  "Y'ello! What's up, Ryan?" It was Rose, the succubus zoologist working for the Aglecards.

  "Do you know how to cancel out buffs and debuffs?!"

  "Huh? I, uh... kind of? They're pretty similar to curses in some ways, so some of the emergency potions we have should work. Why, what's wrong?"

  "You need to get to my place immediately! Literally as soon as you physically can!" he said, and then began to whisper into the phone's microphone, "You know about the shrine under my house, right? Well, turns out, those fucking cultist were dumber than I thought. One of the sheds in the garden is some kind of gods-damned chapel!"