"So... feeling less stressed?" Jay looked over at Ryan with a curious smile, and the young man quickly shrugged in response.

  "I guess so."

  The two walked off the mats together, sitting down on the benches at the edge of the room. Ryan drank some water while Jay still curiously stared at him.

  "Want to tell me how the fuck you suddenly got so much better at fighting? I mean, you were already good, way better than me anyway-"

  "You were starting to catch up."

  "Mhm, if you say so. Anyway, something happened, right? New skill?"

  Ryan thought about it for a moment. How much should he really reveal here? Frankly, keeping track of all the secrets in his life was getting a bit annoying. So, he decided to just be a bit more honest. "Kind of. Not really a skill, but more like an extra effect of the class, some hidden 'mechanic'," he started explaining, putting his water bottle to the side. "You know about Maximus, right? Him and I spent a ton of time together one-on-one, and at some point, one of his skills started affecting me, too."

  "Wait, what?" Jay stared at Ryan confused. "You can use the spirits' skills?"

  Ryan scoffed, shaking his head, "Not really, no," though he couldn't help himself but mentally add the word 'yet' to that. "It's just a passive skill. It basically helps out my muscle memory. I can use any technique I attempt a lot more easily. That's what it feels like, at least."

  Jay scoffed as he stood back up. "Fuck, man, that's cheating."

  Though his words would make it seem like he was upset, Jay had the biggest grin on his face.

  "You think so?"

  "Yeah, for me. If we keep sparring, I'm going to get so much stronger. Your techniques have a sort of wild, unpredictable side to them. And now, they're even more varied than before. It's amazing practice."

  Ryan raised a brow at that. "Wait, do you mean that they're still wild and unpredictable?"

  "Uh... yeah, of course, you didn't realise? I mean, sure, your actual movements are a bit more refined, but you still mix them together like an absolute maniac. Your techniques may have gotten better, but you still have your own fighting instincts." Jay tried to explain it as best as he could, though he clearly wasn't quite sure if he was putting it right. But Ryan understood, of course.

  "... Huh. That's a little calming, to be honest."

  "Calming? That you're a fuckin' maniac?"

  Ryan scoffed, standing up from the bench. "That it's still me doing the actual fighting, I guess."

  He headed over to the gym's showers. Ryan had built off a bit of steam and could head out now, a bit calmer. Actually, while fighting, he had figured out a way to address at least one of the things that had him so pissed of.

  Honestly, the Arianda problem had basically resolved itself. He didn't have to worry about what kind of bullshit she might pull anymore, and was basically 'let loose' to do his own thing. Granted, Ryan was still worried about the being that Arianda was working under. She was a spirit, that was much was clear, but the fact that she was not only that size but could fully speak Riverian meant that she was at least a higher spirit.

  Frankly, Ryan and Modak had spent a few weeks looking up literally every single spirit in existence, not only to figure out who Arianda might be, but also to just understand spirits a bit more. Ryan's spiritology class also helped him understand spirits a lot more over the past couple of months. Actually, he was, shockingly, at the top of his class. And not because he actually had spirits with him all the time, no, but because Ryan was good at this. With his new classes, Ryan's grade average was better than it had ever been.

  But even so, they had never found anything about Arianda. Hell, Ryan decided to go up to the university's researchers that specialise in spiritology and they didn't know anything about Arianda or 'Fate Spirits' altogether. Sure, that was a problem, but at the end of the day, as long as she didn't get in Ryan's way for the plan that was slowly but surely unfolding, he didn't care.

  Rather, the issue that Ryan had to take care of was Nora. He could actually hit two wisps with one stone.

  "What's got you so in thought? You've been standing in front of the door like that for a good minute," Jay pointed out with a scoff, also having gotten dressed after showering.

  "Hm? Oh, sorry. Just something I've got to take care of. Actually, I've got a question for you. What do you think about Vampires?"

  Taken aback, Jay narrowed his eyes, "Vampires? As long as they don't bother me, I don't care, I guess. Vampire, Giant, Human, Elf, it's all the same to me." He crossed his arms in thought. "Then again, I'd by lying if I said I didn't have a few paranoid thoughts back then. Like... You know how back in the day, before we were even born, Arachnids suddenly popped up? Just out of nowhere? And now they're kind of everywhere and nobody thinks twice about them?"

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  "Mhm, of course." Ryan nodded as the two started walking, heading out of the gym.

  "There're obviously more, right?"

  "Hm? More vampires that didn't reveal themselves?"

  "Well, obviously, it's going to take a while for people to feel comfortable with some of the fuckers out here. There's a lot of people that really fucking hate magic, and according to the official press releases, vampires are a 'magical species'. It's scary, you know? And vampires, well... I don't care because I know it's not all of them, but vampires used to survive only off of the blood of people. That's great ammunition." Jay explained, and of course, that was something that Ryan was more than just aware of. But at the end of the day, the anti-magic folk were just a minority. A very loud and aggressive minority, but they didn't have any social motion right now.

  "Okay, but what was your point about the 'more'?" Ryan asked, since it sounded like Jay was trailing off a bit.

  "Oh, right. More species. I don't know, Mermaids, Gorgons, Fairies, the kind of mythical beings that were considered 'monsters' just like Vampires."

  Ryan was actually a bit shocked. Frankly, Jay was totally right. All three of those existed. Of course, they each had a reason why they hadn't been revealed until now.

  Mermaids possessed so much magic that they could barely control it. Over the grief of losing her child, a particularly powerful mermaid once caused a storm so bad that numerous people died or got injured. Not on purpose, but just because her tears affected the world around her. The Aglecards were currently trying to figure out if they could create mana-suppressants or training courses that allowed mermaids to control their magic better, but both were a dead end so far.

  Gorgons would temporarily petrify people if they locked eyes with them. It would go away after a few hours, but it wasn't a pleasant process and a tough issue to find a fix for. Right now, the route they were going down were special glasses or contact lenses, but it was tough to make them stable enough to be used by someone every day.

  As for Fairies... they were particularly troublesome. They were very few and far between, even compared to other magical species, but each one was very powerful and just had a different sense of morality from other people. To them, things were 'good' of they were fun, and they were 'bad' if they were not, and it didn't go much beyond that. And well, society wasn't exactly fun all the time.

  Most species that were currently protected by the Aglecards were facing these issues. Ryan just still didn't understand why there was a need to hide them away instead of just being transparent about the issues they were facing, and gathering public support for them.

  "And... what would you do if it was suddenly revealed that all of these species existed?"

  "I really wouldn't give a shit, mate." Jay patted Ryan on the back. "Anyway, I've got to head out, I have class in a second."

  With that, the two split up and Ryan turned around. He had someone to find, and quickly saw the right kind of people, a couple that was at the party the other day.

  "Yo, how are you doing?" Ryan asked with a smile, and the pair smiled back.

  "We're doing well! Did you guys clean up properly after the party?" one of them asked, and Ryan laughed a bit and nodded.

  "Yeah, it all worked out well. Sorry again for things getting sort of out of control back there."

  "Oh... no, it's all good. Actually, we're the ones that should apologise, we sort of really went at it in the middle of the livingroom..." the other of the couple started blushing intensely and looked at her partner, who cleared his throat and nodded awkwardly.

  Ryan scoffed. "Don't worry about it. That's better than the guys that kept beating each other up, you know?"

  "Right, right..."

  "Anyway, I meant to ask, do you remember Nora? The person that came into the livingroom and started yelling all that 'monster' stuff?"

  Their blushes turned into uncomfortable grimaces. "We remember. We were actually just talking about it. They did some messed up stuff and then got into an accident, and now they're saying that you used magic on them? That's ridiculous."

  "Right, I mean... Not as ridiculous as you may think." Ryan laughed awkwardly. He had actually spent a lot of time during the trial thinking about a good excuse for everything that happened beyond just a 'gas leak'. Though the couple was a bit surprised, they listened to his explanation eagerly. "We have a lot of things in our house that run on mana. The stove, the fridge, we have security around the property... Not inside the house, don't worry, just around the walls... Mostly because my uncle is kind of really into magic and a bit paranoid. But yeah, the house is really old and it settled in a weird way after the construction that some of the cables tore. It wasn't a gas leak, it was a mana leak."

  The couple's eyes widened. "Wait, really? Seriously?"

  "Yeah... we only really found out afterward, but it was all fixed. You know, a lot of mana in the air can make you dizzy if you're not used to it... So that's kind of what happened." Ryan explained, smiling nervously. "But it's totally harmless! We think that the mana and the alcohol kind of worked together to just make everything a lot worse."

  "Ohh, okay. Yeah, that would make sense. I mean, at least it was a memorable party, huh?" the pair laughed it off pretty well. "So that's why Nora thinks that you used magic on them? Because of the mana leak?"

  "I think so, yeah. I've been trying to talk to them, actually. Have you seen them around? From what I know, they're already back for classes."

  The girl quickly replied. "Not yet, but we have class together later. Maybe you can catch them if you wait outside the lecture hall?"

  "Oh! That would be great, thank you." Ryan smiled. "I really just want to figure this all out. And I just want to say, but if you guys got hurt at the party and it wasn't healed afterward, or anything of the sort, just let me know. I'm really, really sorry about what happened. I'll buy you two a couple beers sometime, yeah?"

  The couple laughed it all off, mostly because they were probably too embarrassed to accept something like that, considering that they essentially hooked up in the middle of the party. But well, Ryan was just trying his best to calm everyone down and see if there was anything he could do for the people that were most affected. Particularly the ones that did something as extreme as they did, or the ones that started actively beating each other up, were people that Ryan was worried about and wanted to talk to.

  At the end of the day, it was still Ryan's fault that this happened, but it wasn't like he could tell them the exact truth about what happened. At least not right now.

  Either way, it was time to go and meet Nora and try to talk this all out.