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54 - Repair (2)
🕑 Added 2024-08-16 15:22:40 +0000 UTCRyan carefully grabbed the pliers to bend the metal of this small piece Maximus' broken leg properly into shape, making sure that it fit right into the spot it was supposed to go. He pressed the piece into position, quickly pushing the needle through the metal to sew the parts together.
The metal fused back into a single part, and Ryan quickly ran over the whole piece with the handkerchief to clean it up and get rid of any further scratches. The threads had already dissolved, so now, it really just looked like Maximus' leg, as though it had never been broken in the first place.
[Knight Spirit Maximus' -Left Leg- has been fully repaired and can now be used again]
[The -Spirit Construction- Skill has levelled up]
A smile quickly formed on Ryan's face as he held the leg up to Maximus, who quickly hopped over. Ryan held the leg into the right position and quickly attached it before the skill's effect ran out.
"Perfect," with a relieved sigh, Ryan watched as Maximus properly moved around and put weight onto his freshly-repaired leg. He still had to do the same thing with Maximus' arm, but now that he knew exactly what to do, he should be able to do it properly in the 23 minutes that he would now have for the next activation.
" :D " Tiar seemed just as excited as Ryan had expected. He could feel them almost concentrating on his fingertips as he worked, as if trying to watch the whole thing as closely as they possibly could.
Just as he finished, he could hear heavy, rushing footsteps after the front door was closed. Modak rushed into the living room.
"I-I'm so sorry, I wasn't looking at my phone, I-" the orc apologized nervously, but Ryan just smiled up at him as he turned around.
"Dude, calm down, it's fine. I'm fine."
Clearly relieved to hear that and see that he was just sitting there with some pizza at his side, Modak let out a long sigh as he dropped his bag near the table.
"Oh, thanks the gods... What even happened?"
"Some experiment to try and use the spirits in a new way went wrong, I guess? Runar says they're still trying to figure it out," Ryan pointed out, as his uncle entered the living room as well. He had gone to the door to let Modak inside, and was now catching up to the panicked orc.
"Mhm, we managed to get some images taken. Most of it was destroyed when that giant went berserk, but we're guessing that they wanted this exact sort of thing to happen. Just... not now," Runar sat down on the couch, "But either way, we managed to get Gaia's last fragment. Hence, all the... stone stuff."
Only now noticing, Modak glanced down at the ground next to the dining table. A bunch of model frames were stacked up on the ground, "Those are all for Gaia's body?"
"Mhm... they are," Ryan sighed loudly, "It's gonna take a while. I'll work on her body over the next couple of days, I should be able to finish it by... Tuesday? Wednesday the latest."
Modak smiled lightly, glancing over at what was actually laying in front of Ryan at the moment. He spotted the tools surrounding the fractured remains of Maximus' arm, "Wait, what... What happened with Maximus?"
"Ah... he took some bullets for me, so his parts broke..."
Modak looked away from Ryan over to Silvia, who was just leaning back in one of the chairs, "Should've picked up the phone when I called you."
"Yeah, about that..." Modak hesitantly looked around at the others, particularly looking over at Runar, "Alicia Boreard visited me earlier..."
Taken aback, Silvia and Ryan looked at their friend, "Excuse me? What did she want? Are you okay?"
Modak looked at the anxious Ryan, quickly trying to calm him down, "It wasn't anything like that, she... she wants me to work with the magic tower to continue developing my Mana-Cassettes..."
This time, Runar was a bit surprised, "Seriously? I figured she'd be interested, but... to try and scout you. Good job, I wasn't aware you were that much of a prodigy."
"What did you say?" Silvia asked, excited for her friend, and Modak just nervously shrugged.
"I guess I told her I'd think about it? I was a bit overwhelmed, so I didn't know what else to say..."
Ryan looked at his friend, trying to suppress his complicated feelings about that. After Saturday, he thought about how he reacted when Alicia refused to help out with Gaia's fragment, and while he did think he overreacted, he still couldn't help himself but feel iffy about her. He looked at the orc with a smile.
"You should say 'yes'. That's an insane opportunity, man, I don't think you're going to get that kind of offer very often," Ryan pointed out.
"But I... I promised to help you out here, so I can't just go and join the magic tower instead!"
"Joining the magic tower doesn't mean we'll never see each other again. This is something you can't let up."
Modak looked at his friend, not really sure what to say, "I... I don't know, I'll have to think about it a bit more..."
Quickly, Silvia stepped in, "What's there to even think about? Just call her right now and tell her you're in! Don't worry, I'll make sure that Ryan doesn't die in the next couple of weeks," she said with a broad smile directed at Modak, who was almost tearing up at his friends' words.
"Guys, just... thank you so much, I-"
"Uhm... I don't want to spoil the mood, but..." Runar looked at the three with a raised brow, "Joining the magic tower doesn't mean you have to cut your connection with us. Plenty of the mages from our family actively work at the tower, and some members of the tower directly work with or for us. Shit, I was a member of the magic tower for five years. Actually, technically, I'm still a member, just an inactive one. You can do your research and stick around with us too. If you feel like it, of course."
Ryan, Modak and Silvia grew silent for a moment, looking at Runar who, albeit for a very good reason, ruined the moment.
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Red tendrils slithered over Ryan's skin, though rather, they were part of his skin. They wrapped around his fingers, carefully tracing exactly how he moved. Over the past few days, Tiar had gotten better and better at supporting Ryan's movements. Though Tiar didn't directly make his fingers more nimble, it still felt like he was felt with a bit more energy, and his fingers didn't feel tired as quickly.
Especially when using the Spirit Construction skill, his fingers and wrist would start to feel sore super quickly, but Tiar seemed to be doing their best to prevent that. And then, there was something else.
[Your Dexterity has increased by 0.01]
His dexterity was increasing way too fast. Sure, using related skills did make it easier to increase your stats, but that didn't mean that it should increase this fast. Just over the past two days, his dexterity increased by a total of 0.04. That in itself was already shocking enough, but to his even greater surprise, his intuition increased by 0.01 just this morning.
While trying to construct Gaia's body, since he didn't have anything to go off of beside a drawing of what she was supposed to look like when 'finished', Ryan was going mostly off his gut feelings. He's been having a lot of those lately, and when he was relying on those instead of just what he thought consciously might fit together, he found himself actually getting through the process a lot quicker. Not to mention,
Though, his stats weren't the only thing that grew a good bit over the past few days. Due to him constantly using the skill, his Spirit Construction skill levelled up quite a bit.
[Spirit Construction]
[Level - 9] [Proficiency – 13%]
[Allows the user to construct the Spirits’ physical bodies]
[Effect – Spirit Construction for 28 Minutes]
[Cost – 14 MP] [Cooldown – 1 Hour]
It was only one more level until he reached level 10; though there wasn't any technical difference as acknowledged by the system, usually people could feel some kind of tangible difference when a skill levelled up to intervals of 10.
Though, Ryan couldn't feel much of an effect from the skill anyway, so maybe it was wasted excitement. Either way, the fact that he could now have the skill active basically half the time was more than useful already. At this rate, he should be able to finish Gaia's body by dinner time.
Then again, there hasn't been much of a distinction between any proper mealtime and the usual non-meal time. Ryan was just eating as much as he could without ever feeling properly full. Tiar was really sucking up all the calories he ate completely. It was to the point that Ryan's jaw was way more sore than his hands were. Even the bullet wounds from just two days ago weren't that annoying.
However, at the end of the day, the only part that really mattered now was the fact that he was almost done constructing Gaia's body. The head, arms, and legs were done first, and right now he was building the torso. Really, he didn't know exactly what to expect considering the 'Garden Golem' in her name, but Gaia really just appeared like a classic Golem. As if a boulder sprouted legs, or if someone pushed together rocks until they vaguely resembled the shape of a person. Technically that was what Ryan was doing, just in a very deliberate, specific way that was far too annoying. It was the hardest model he had ever built, even beyond the fact that it was the largest model he had ever built. How heavy everything was when put together didn't help with that either. Turning around the torso was a whole ordeal in itself.
But for now, it was time to take a break, anyway. Ryan stood up and stretched, glancing over at Maximus. He was using his fully-repaired limbs again, and Ryan had swapped out the Crusader arm out for the Knight model arm, since it was the less bulky option.
"I'll head out to the balcony to water the flowers," he informed the knight, who turned away from the computer monitor, where he was once more reading some random web-comic that Ryan recommended to him.
It was getting close to a quite pivotal point, so Ryan wasn't surprised when Maximus immediately turned back to the screen to continue reading.
With a protein bar in his hand, unwrapping it as he walked, Ryan stepped out into the hallway. He could hear the bustling of the café downstairs, as Runar was taking care of business on his own. Ryan told him that he was fine with helping out, but his uncle insisted that he should take it easy and focus on Gaia when he could. Maybe this would finally convince Runar to hire some more part-timers, considering how busy the café looked to be today.
Ryan stepped outside and quickly approached the small 'shed' in the corner of the balcony, though it was really more of a box with a few tools in it. He grabbed the watering can from it and made his way back inside to fill it up in the bathroom. As the bathtub's faucet gurgled alive and started filling the watering can, Ryan felt a buzzing in his pocket. He stuffed the protein bar into his mouth and pulled out his phone.
There was an event that he had mostly ignored last time he got a message about it, because he had better things to worry about, and he barely remembered to just rsvp to it at some point. And now there was a reminder.
Newly-Awakened Get-together, Reminder
Saturday, 1st Memenar 1354, 18:00 at New Riverside's Awakened Centre
"Urgh..." With a loud groan, Ryan swiped the reminder away. There was probably nothing he felt less like doing than go and meet a bunch of random new awakened. He felt sort of excited about the idea when Yanna had told him about it, but right now he really couldn't care any less about it. But at the end of the day, he figured he should do it and go, even if it was just to try and boost his 'Sociability' a bit.
As the watering can overflowed, Ryan pushed the phone back into his pocket. He poured out some of the water, turned off the faucet, and made his way back out to the balcony. He went around and quickly watered some of the other potted plants, that definitely needed a good bit of care, especially in this weather, and then approached the planter that was Ryan's main focus.
The dirt was covered in small copper-coloured sprouts as the wildflowers started to push their way out. Some of them were already oxidized pretty badly, but there were a couple that seemed to be in pretty good condition. Either way, whichever the case, Ryan just had to keep on taking care of them and then see what would happen when they were fully-grown.
"Maybe Gaia can do something with these," he muttered to himself. Her being a 'Garden Golem', Ryan figured that at least shouldn't be too weird an idea. And she particularly seemed to care for flowers. After Ryan had fixed up her core, Gaia's domain had quickly changed. Though it wasn't filled with any objects like Maximus', the ground of her domain had been turned to a field of grass with bright flowers planted in a circle around where the core was floating. The Spirit Domain skill actually also levelled up as Gaia's domain developed, so when it did, it expanded enough to reveal a small root peaking out at the edge. It seemed like if it continued expanding, some kind of tree would soon come into view. But there were still a few level-ups needed for that tree to actually come into view.
When he was done watering the flowers, Ryan put the can to the side and leaned onto the balcony's railing for a while, just looking down at the road. And just as he did, he noticed a familiar car pulling up. A moment later, a young, white-haired boy stepped out of the car, wearing a small school backpack.
"Yo, Liam," Ryan said with a smile, watching as the boy looked around a bit confused before spotting him up on the balcony, "How was school?"
With a smug grin, Liam pressed his hands onto his hips, "It went amazingly! I recruited two young peasants as my servants!"
The pedestrians walking around the sidewalk looked at the boy confused, but he managed to ignore them pretty well, "Sounds great. Come on up and tell me about it, alright?"
