Ryan walked out of the classroom with a slight yawn, getting a small lunchbox out of his backpack. It was just a sandwich as a small snack after class. Though, he had to head over to the cafeteria to grab himself a few more things for throughout the day.

  Maybe it was because he only had stew over the past two weeks, but he felt even more hungry than usual right now. But somehow, he despite being so ridiculously hungry all the time anyway, because of Tiar, Ryan could barely swallow the food.

  "..." he silently stared down at his food and grumbled slightly. Ryan had played it off while she was there earlier, but that spirit, Arianda, being there just now completely startled him. She had just showed up without Ryan knowing, again, and told him things that he had no way of proving or disproving.

  First, she wanted him dead because he messed with fate. Now, she wanted him to live and keep doing what he was doing, also because he messed with fate, just in a way that she apparently liked. It was ridiculous.

  "Hey!" Someone called out to Ryan as he was walking through the building, eating his sandwich. He turned around. It was a pair of people from the Spiritology lecture that he just left. "You're Ryan, right?"

  "Mhm," he said, holding his hand in front of his mouth as he finished chewing, soon swallowing the mouthful. "What's up?"

  "You just threw that party at your house the other day," one of them pointed out.

  "Yes? Were you guys there?" Ryan asked nervously.

  The pair looked at each other for a moment. Ryan was getting a bad feeling about this. As they looked back at him, their expressions were... complicated.

  "Is it true that you used magic on people there?"

  Ryan raised a brow, "Excuse me?"

  "Yeah, we heard that people went totally crazy and started fighting each other and stuff, and that it was because you used magic on them."

  Confused how they could have heard something like that, Ryan frowned, "Things got a bit wild, sure, but nobody used any magic on anyone."

  Of course, that wasn't technically a lie. It was all just a big accident, and nobody directly used a spell. The magic was just activated coincidentally.

  "But Nora said that they were affected by some kind of spell. They got into an accident the other day after your party, and-"

  Ryan sighed, "Yes, I know about that. Just... we didn't do anything, I have absolutely no idea what happened either. I think people just got a bit too drunk or high."

  Though the pair didn't seem very convinced, they seemed to not want to keep fighting Ryan about it. For a few moments, they just stood there, and Ryan turned around and left. He really didn't want to bother with this.

  "Fucking shit..." Ryan grumbled lightly. He couldn't even get mad at Nora about this. They were a victim in all of this as well. Sure, they acted like a fucking prick at the party, and he wasn't sure if that could all be just fully pushed onto the spell, but at the end of the day they weren't fully under control of themself. And they did get into an accident, so they also had every right to be fucking pissed. As did everyone else that got hurt at the party, even if they were healed afterward.

  Ryan got out his phone and texted his group chat with Silvia and Modak, warning them that people knew that something happened at the party.

  "This is so... frustrating," Ryan ground his teeth. He had a bit more than an hour until his next class, so he had a bit of time to clear his head. And so, Ryan immediately headed toward the gym across campus. While he had workout equipment at the house, he still had a locker here at the university in case he wanted to work out with other people or if he felt like working out between some of his classes.

  Since Ryan stopped fighting people, stress kept building up that he simply wasn't able to get rid off that well. Working out was a good way to do that, and luckily, there were usually a few people at the gym that were up for some spars. And since those people were Awakened as well, it was fine for Ryan to punch them in the face.

  Right about now, there should be a guy there that Ryan had been sparring with fairly regularly. He was always there at the same time.

  Ryan quickly got changed into some spare gym clothes he kept in his locker and stashed his backpack. There were some people working out, as usual, and Ryan quickly joined them and went on a run.

  He hadn't gone running morning, because he was still recovering from the exhaustion of the trial, and even though Ryan was extremely tired right now as well, he just felt too stressed not too do something right now.

  So, for his warmup, Ryan just started running for a while. It was just for ten minutes or so, but it was a good warmup at least. When he was done and made his way to the sparring area of the gym, he saw the 'Fighter' who he had been sparring with.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Fighter was a pretty common class, so almost everything there was to know about it had been studied by now. Of course, the techniques that the individual chose did change the way those skills presented in pretty extreme ways sometimes, but when a Fighter went into sport, their training was usually made as efficient as absolutely possible. They had figured out the peak levelling conditions of that class by now, which was a benefit of such a common class. If you knew the tricks, levelling those up was fairly straightforward and much more efficient than for other classes.

  However, the person that Ryan sparred with was very different to this. He didn't follow that hyper-scientific route, and instead decided on just doing what was the most fun for him. Ryan could respect that a lot, so he was just a fun guy to chat with.

  He was usually pretty busy, so the two hadn't ever hung out outside of the gym, but that was just the sort of friends they were. Gym-buds.

  "Yo, Jay," Ryan said, approaching him with a wave. He turned around with a slight smile.

  "Sup? You here for a fight?"

  "If you don't mind."

  "Nah, this is great. It's nice when you have an actual partner instead of a fucking 'intelligent sandbag'," Jay scoffed, looking at the magically enhanced sandbag hanging behind him. It basically reacted to attacks and adjusted its defences so that it could hold out against aura or even magic-infused attacks.

  "Yeah, yeah," Ryan smiled a bit, "I'll just warn you, though, things will be a bit different this time."

  Jay raised a brow, "What, did you level up again?"

  "No, no, nothing like that. I mean, there was something like a... breakthrough, but it's not what you're thinking, probably," Ryan explained, stepping over onto one side of the sparring square marked off on the ground.

  "Hah, sure, if you say so. 'Breakthrough', sure," Jay laughed, hitting his fists together, "Just explain it to me later. So, what were you thinking? Want to test out some techniques, or do you want to go for a full-on clobberin'?"

  "... The full-on clobbering, I guess."

  "Huh. Stressed?"

  Ryan laughed, "You could say that." He pushed down onto one of the sigils on the outer corner of the 'sparring square' and quickly felt the magic course through him. This was a protective magic that was cast on anyone that was actually using this place to spar.

  It was basically just an extremely powerful defensive magic that was cast constantly on both people in the ring so that they could fight to their heart's extent without having to worry about getting seriously injured. It made things a little bit boring, but it was fine.

  Jay took off his shirt. He had clearly been working out for a while already, so he was completely drenched in sweat.

  "Alright, when are we starting?"

  Ryan thought for a moment, "On... 'go'?"

  "Sounds good. So... three... two..." Jay replied, almost immediately. He seemed pretty eager to have this fight as well. Jay had already entered a boxing stance. He usually swapped around to whatever he felt like working on that day, and today it was clearly this.

  With a smile, Ryan took on a similar stance. Though, it wasn't really the modern boxing stance that Jay was used to. It was slightly different. It was the stance that Maximus' training and the 'martial knowledge' skill were placing into Ryan. It was an extremely weird sensation. But just like before, it was just sort of muscle-memory, so he did it before he even realised. "One..."

  Ryan and Jay smiled, saying the rest together, "Go!"

  The two of them immediately rushed forward, and Jay threw forward a quick jab. Despite being so fast and light, it still had a ton of power behind it. For a skinny guy like Jay, he could really pull out some power with his boosted stats.

  But Ryan just guarded against the attack, placing his arms in front of his face. Jay immediately started throwing a few more punches. Jabs, straights, the sort. For now, Ryan just held on against the attacks, standing his ground. This itself was already a bit weird for him. Usually, Ryan was a lot more reckless in his fighting. He guarded, sure, but he tended to just drop the guard the moment he saw a good opportunity. But his gut told him otherwise right now.

  Ryan waited for a few moments, until he noticed Jay's pace slow down momentarily, and then immediately attacked. He threw forward a fast straight. It was actually way, way faster and more precise than any other punch he had thrown in quite a while. Usually, Ryan just pummelled people with his fists how his head told him to, but it was different now.

  The strike hit Jay's jaw, and though it wasn't enough to knock him out, Jay's head was thrown backward, and he was clearly taken aback for a moment.

  Before he could straighten his head again, Ryan threw forward the next straight, hitting Jay again. And then again and again and again and again. Rather, Ryan fully overpowered Jay. It was usually fairly even fight. Despite the fact that Jay's physical stats were a fair bit higher, Ryan just had the fighting instincts and experience that evened things out. That was actually why the two of them started sparring so much. They did it once, and since Jay seemed to get a ton out of it, they just kept on going. And he had grown a lot over the past month or so that they've been at it.

  Recently, things had gotten a lot more even. Ryan hadn't fought outside of spars in a while, and though he was training, that was split across six spirits, and Maximus didn't even always show him hand-to-hand combat, and rather focused on weapon combat.

  Meanwhile, Jay was in here basically all day, every day, and kept levelling up and improving his skills. So, they were a lot more equal at some point, taking rounds from each other all the time.

  But now that the martial knowledge skill tipped the scales, Ryan once again had the upper hand. It almost felt a bit like cheating.

  Ryan pulled back with a smile, and Jay stared back at him. He was clearly confused, but also got extremely excited about what was happening, "A breakthrough, huh?" Jay asked, grinning broadly, "That's one thing to call that!"

  Replying with nothing but a laugh, Ryan dodged Jay's attacks, countered, hit him right where it hurt the most, metaphorically of course, and just tried out some new fighting techniques that were basically carved into his body all of a sudden.

  Jay decided to switch from out-boxing to in-boxing at some point, and Ryan matched that. At some point, he moved over to judo, and grappling, and running through the disciplines that he was learning to fight in, but Ryan just seemed to have suddenly gotten way better in these fields.

  He was still undeniably the same Ryan, fighting the way he usually did for the most part, it just seemed like his arsenal was expanded and his tools had the rust polished off them.

  Around fifteen more minutes later, the two stopped. Jay dropped down onto the mats around him, breathing extremely heavily, "What the hell, man? How did you suddenly get so good?"

  Ryan smiled. Grinned, basically, "I just... spent a few weeks trying to figure all this out."