Runar stared at the man standing before him. Did he understand him correctly? If the 'blessing' was awakening, then he just said that he didn't awaken... right?

  A broad, unsettling smile formed on the man's face. His yellowed teeth, those that were still inside of his mouth, were clearly rotten to the core. With their senses, Runar and Yamada could smell them from where they were standing.

  "Awakened? How dare you call yourselves by such a name when you have been asleep your entire lives?" the man asked, "No, we are not 'Awakened', for we are the ones who have been awake all along. We are the ones who have been Enlightened to true death by our lord!"

  "... Enlightened? That's a silly name. The system specifically says that we 'awaken'. What, did your system screen say otherwise?"

  The smile of the man persisted, "Do you wish to receive the lord's enlightening as well?"

  "Let's say I do. What would I need to do?"

  "Pray that you are reborn into a life worthy of such truths," the man raised one of his swords above his head. All the magic and aura in his body seemed to be siphoned toward the bony weapon. Soon, there was more in the sword than in the rest of his body.

  The two energies twisted around each other, not directly combining, but layering themselves together to the point where it was hard to see where the aura stopped and the mana started. This was going to be a big attack, very clearly so. With the strength that this guy already displayed, it was very possible that this could be something he was instructed to do in case he encountered an opponent that could be a threat to the whole group - something that would, if it didn't kill the intruder, destroyed the passageway altogether.

  "Annoying," Runar sighed, glancing over at Yamada before starting to sign to her, "Continue using the R0 strategy for pattern SCPB."

  The demon quickly began a barrage of bullets that she seemed to shoot arbitrarily around the space, as Runar jumped up. He stepped onto one of the enlarged bullets with his left foot and was shot forward, before stepping onto another one with his right foot, swapping his momentum with that of the second bullet.

  This way, Runar was able to move around freely mid-air, taking advantage of Yamada's skill that allowed her to calculate complex bullet trajectories in an instant. She, who had an overview of the whole room where she was standing, allowed Runar to move to all the correct places at the correct speeds, allowing him to write a series of runes into the air.

  This whole thing happened in a matter of a few seconds, the time that the man took to gather his energies together in his sword. But Runar couldn't just cut that guy down - if he lost control of all that energy, that would cause an even more uncontrollable explosion, breaking this space and killing the man who Runar had been trying to keep awake this whole time.

  The man clearly knew that as well, as that would be the only reason why he did something as bold as that right in front of his enemies. But Runar wasn't a combatant, technically. Frankly, the things he did most of the time were enchantments, supportive spells, construction, and most relevant at this time, barriers.

  Because what he was doing right now was create an extremely high-powered barrier. However, barriers were something that required a lot of setup. Specific instructions on what needed to be blocked and what could go through, the size of the barrier, the strength, how much mana they were supposed to use, and of course, there were thousands and thousands of different formulae for barriers that were each more useful for blocking a particular set of things.

  The one that Runar was setting up now was specifically useful for blocking in energies, and had a particularly flexible nature to it. Through Yamada's expert shooting, Runar was able to jump around in a way where he was able to draw each of the lines the exact way he needed to. After all, she knew all the patterns for these relevant combat barriers as well, and knew what she had to do. They had never actually done this in a real scenario, though that didn't matter considering the trust the two of them had for each other.

  Suddenly, Runar could hear something crack. It was the man's shoulder, breaking under the force that was gathering inside of his own sword. Runar had to hurry it up a bit. There were just a few more runes he had to place.

  Three... two... and the last one... done!

  Runar pushed away another small metal ball bearing, getting rid of the momentum he was experiencing. At right that exact moment, the man slashed his sword downward, and an arching attack was shot forward right at Runar.

  But... the attack was stopped. It impacted the barrier, but the energy stayed visible throughout it all, as if it were a physical thing trying to force its way out through the invisible wall. The aura and mana inside of the slash continued to collide, crackling and exploding repeatedly and continuously, and kept pushing against the barrier.

  The man, whose arm was now loosely hanging off his shoulder, the bone sword having shattered into dust, was staring forward maniacally, "This is a power bestowed upon me by the lord, do you really believe that you can stop it?"

  Runar shrugged, "Yeah, I am, aren't I?" he replied, but the man stayed confident.

  And soon, Runar began to understand why. The slash, which kept exploding within itself, began to move forward again. It seemed to be pushing through the barrier. And once it did, it was going to completely tear this place apart, together with Runar, who was standing right in front of it. But Runar himself... was completely and utterly calm.

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  He looked at the slash head on, and began to tuck away his things. He put his pen into his chest pocket, and removed the runes off his hands and boots, turning toward Yamada, "You okay? How are you looking on bullets?" he signed.

  Yamada glanced to the side for a moment, then looked back at Runar. She holstered her guns and shrugged, responding back, "I'll need to refill on rubber rounds, but we've got plenty back at the café."

  "Okay, that's good. Let's head back after we take care of this. I would really like to check in with Ryan. His party should be starting soon, and I want to make sure that Liam is doing okay."

  A smile appeared on the demon's face as she looked at Runar, who just raised his brow, "What?"

  "Nothing, nothing. It's just cute how much you think of him now."

  "Okay, that's making it sound weird. It's not weird. Liam's just my responsibility. It's for the sake of all the vampires in the world for me to make sure he's okay."

  "Really? So how exactly does it help all the vampires in the world to set him as your phone background?"

  "... You saw that?"

  "You were fiddling around with it for like two hours last week because you couldn't figure out how to do it. I may be deaf, but I can still see you watching tutorials online," Yamada smiled, and Runar let out a groan.

  "Yeah, yeah, fine, you caught me... I'm trying, okay? It's just... nice to-"

  The man, whose sight was blocked by the slash of energy that he had created himself, which was still creeping its way forward bit by bit, stared forward confused.

  "What are you... What are you doing? Why are you so relaxed?" he asked, clearly off-put by what he was witnessing.

  "Hm? I mean, it's over, right? You're completely out of aura and mana, and this attack was useless. Suppressing you now will be extremely easy," Runar explained, peeking past the slash that was still practically stuck mid-air, with the exception of moving forward ever so slightly, "Do you really think mana or aura, let alone a combination of both, could act like this?"

  Runar stepped forward and slightly tapped the surface of the barrier. The moment he did, ripples ran over the magical surface, though only Runar could see this with the special glasses he was wearing. The barrier had another few special additions. It was an almost perfect barrier to energies, but it couldn't block anything else beside aura and mana. But in exchange, any energy that came into contact with the barrier would immediately become stabilised and encased in layers of the barrier itself.

  Basically, the barrier was immediately focusing on the point of impact, slowly wrapping itself around the energy to keep it practically locked in place. And now that it was almost done, Runar could make the barrier collapse around the two intertwined energies.

  As the barrier fell apart, what used to be a slash quickly turned into an orb of energy, further exploding within itself as the still stabilised energies were compressed deeply. Soon, the barrier shrank down to the size of a basketball, and was just floating in the air in front of Runar. He quickly held onto it, pressing his hands onto both sides of the barrier and using his own mana to further push onto it.

  Slowly, the barrier hardened and practically crystalized, as the two energies were locked in place.

  "Thank you for the sample, by the way. With this, we should be able to figure out the source and nature of your abilities. At least, we should be able to figure out what kind of class you have. Skills tend to have their own sort of signatures, you know? So if you used any skill at all in the process, we'll know. Rather, we'll even know if you're telling the truth about not being an Awakened, or whatever it is you mean by 'Enlightened'," Runar said, simply tucking away the sphere in the pouch enchanted with spatial magics that he had kept on his hip.

  With a smile, he then walked forward, approaching the man rather casually, "Now, let's have a talk."

  "Right, and then after setting up the core processing unit inside of my head, I used the custom circuitry that I had already created for one of the projects I'm working on to create secondary processes inside of my heart and stomach. My stomach would read the mana signature from the pill that I ate, and then I could try and replicate the effect and directly apply it to my blood. And there, boom! I was able to clear my system out, just like the blood rose pill does!" Modak explained smugly, sitting on the couch with his legs crossed. Yanna stared at him, still confused.

  "... Seriously? That's a thing you could do with aura?"

  "Apparently! Either way, it's cool, right? I mean, the process isn't perfect, and it only really acted as a filter, clearing out the blood that directly passed through a specific few blood vessels, but it still helped speed things up a lot. My aura has also been completely out of whack, and frankly I'm in quite a lot of pain, just like I worked out too much? Is that normal?"

  Yanna smiled lightly, patting her boyfriend's back, "It is not, honey, it is not. Stop playing around with your aura when you're high, and make a better plan next time, yeah?"

  "... Okay, fine," Modak let out a long sigh, leaning back on the couch right as Ryan stepped back into the room. His phone was still pressed to his ear while he grumbled to himself.

  "... fucking piece of shit, never there when you actually do need him, there's a ridiculous fucking emergency for once and you're not even going to look at your texts...?" Ryan dropped down on the couch, pulling the phone away to keep trying to text his uncle instead of calling him.

  "... No dice?" Modak asked, and Ryan immediately shook his head.

  "No fucking dice. None. Absolutely none. I've been trying to reach him literally all fucking night. Shit, the whole place has been cleaned up already and he's still unreachable!" Ryan yelled out, and Yanna looked around with a slow nod.

  "I mean, to be fair... the... what did you call it, 'Cedric', had most of it cleaned up before sunrise."

  "... Well, yeah, they're experts," Ryan sighed, looking around. All of the real damage that had been done really fixed and cleaned up. Sure, some of the more specific things that Silvia had picked out for the place were still not replaced, but that was by her own request. She needed to make sure everything was just right, after all, and was upstairs in her room doing just that right now.

  "So, what now?" Modak wondered, "We can't just keep an open door to the abyss downstairs, right?"

  "Of course not. I mean, first of all, I requested for all the artefacts to be taken away again with the guys that brought it here. It's too unsafe down there. Gaia wants to reposition some of the plants and all the insects and critters down there to a safe place, so I ordered all the parts that we need for some kind of darkened growhouse in the garden. Either way, this is messed up," Ryan sighed, already pushing himself off the couch again.

  Yanna looked toward him, "Where are you going now?"

  "To that fucking cultist chapel. There's some stuff I need to figure out."