-Terrin Von Leoia-
Waking up as sunlight streamed through my apartment’s window, I stretched and reached out for my daily medicine. Grabbing the gel-covered pills, I swallowed them whole and went to getting dressed for the day. Inscribing thirteen mandalas in two months was going to leave an effect on pretty much anyone, especially if you counted for the two mirroring synthesises that Ras convinced Uncle Ester and Robert to let me have along with the 2nd generational synthesis feature I made: it was just proof of how fast things were moving since we’ve had a lull in dangerous activity since Draceld Z, if you didn’t count the plague-bearing end of days, Borolio
Allies of Isabella, the month long project and synthesis of Synthesis: Von Glyirian’s Sprite-Spirit, Mirroring Synthesis: Lion-Headed Intellectual, Mirroring Synthesis: Zethuron’s Offspring Binding Contract, and Contracted Cake-Eye-Balls that made copious use of mandala formula processors and my own expertise in mandala inscriptions: it was probably the reason why I’ve gone up a shocking three tiers and not two these past few months. Although heading to the Endless Strip to get a system slot connection forged and receiving the beautiful robotic storyteller, Indexia, and then developing attunement mandala inscriptions for her and Teresa, Story-Mecha of Many Origins and Varied Lady of the Pumpkin Turtle, probably helped.
“Morning Terrin,” happily whispered Isabella into my mind, already up and about and playing with my four blue-tinged cake-eye-balls. Now that she was being directly supported by three different mandalas and indirectly by eight more, she is a powerhouse that outstripped what my Flasaporium hub’s system slot’s current gas glands or my Slumbering Palace’s system slot’s persona parameters could provide for her: she could probably support an entire fogbank of mist and magical miasma all by herself now.
“Morning Isabella. What’s got you up so early?”
“It’s snowing!”
“Snowing? But it’s the second week of May.”
“Just come and see,” chided the sprite-spirit, sending out waves of excitement through her mandalas. I wish she would get more excited about other things, although I guess snow this time of year is special, I mused, laughing a little bit as I went to look out the window so see that was actually snow. Looking upward to the cloudline, I saw the shimmering of wide-scale cooling glyphs and commented,
“Well looks like Ras finally got the Aux core set up.” My half-brother has probably been pulling half a month resources and time into making that Obscurus System-based cooling glyph Aux core. Glad he actually finished it, the heat was starting to get unbearable. Plus he could potentially make more of those Aux cores to put on the Earth side of things to deal with the plague clouds. Shifting my attention back to Isabella as she flitted through the air, I asked her, “Guessing you want to go play in the snow?”
“Of course.”
“Okay, just don’t get in any fights with any delvers. And don’t expect the snow to last, knowing my half-brother, this is probably just a short test run.” Opening the window, I watched as Isabella shot out with two of the cake-eye-balls in tow. Looking at the other two, it was pretty clear they would prefer to stick with me. Allies of Isabella is really influencing them isn’t it? I pondered with a smug smile: before they were used as a part of the 2nd generational synthesis feature’s formula, they were near-mindless contracted monsters, but now they were starting to develop personality quirks.
With Isabella out and playing in the snowfall, I went to saying good morning to my other spirits: Oscarra, Sora, and Indexia were all residing in their personal spaces and chatting with each other and other spirits via the spirit scape; Editon was enjoying himself with Uncle Ester and Uncle Ester’s family at the Noble Gin; and Neo Draceld Z was doing her own thing in Tyrian Island of Blackcurrant, partially obscuring what she was doing with her own portfolio of mandalas. Curious and kind of annoyed with that, I focused in on her through my Analytical Domination (Dominator) feature that Ras made me get for her: with a few glimpses of information I could figure out she was working on her own mandala inscriptions before her Advanced Obscurial Glyphs class specialty and peculiar Grand Key kicked back in again. Yeah Ras is going to blow out a leg when I tell him about what she is doing.
Making my way up to my half-brother’s penthouse, I found him standing in front of a pale blue elongated octahedron of a Aux core that was covered in floating glyphworks and spell diagrams. After watching him examine the dungeon core for a few minutes, he finally noticed I was there and commented,
“Oh, good morning Terrin. Have you seen the snow yet?”
“Good morning Ras, and yeah I have.”
“It’s nice isn’t it? Although making snow this time of year is a bit of a drain on the dungeon-mana reserves. I’ll likely just use this Aux core to help with the temperature and humidity, but that’s it.” Figured as much, I noted to myself before walking up to examine the Aux core: there was some spellcraft I could parse out and understand, but I was no blackzone manager and it definitely was my field of expertise. “So Terrin… any news on Neo Draceld Z?”
“Yeah, but you won’t like it.”
“What is it?”
“She made herself a 2nd generational synthesis using our three dominations and the mirroring synthesis mandala we have to contract her with.”
“What the hell?! But she isn’t showing up as a part of the mirroring synthesis!”
“Yeah I know, it’s cause she made the synthesis give herself a backdoor so she isn’t counted toward the maximum of four people. She is a high enlightened, Ras. Self-contracting and self-domination is a specialty of hers by birthright.”
“Saintess Mic Christine, she’s going to betray us isn’t she?”
“No, she isn’t building that sort of backdoor. From what I can tell she is just trying to have better access to the abilities those mandalas grant and make a third Grand Key out of it.”
“You sure about?” asked Ras with a glare, it was painfully obvious how angry he was. I could understand, the black wyrm of abstraction wasn’t a blackzone god you could trust, but Neo Draceld Z wasn’t Zethuron, she was her own person.
“I mean you’re the one that brought on to keeping an eye on her cause of my expertise in spirits and mandala inscriptions. Besides I’m your brother who you are grooming to become an underling blackzone manager, do you really think I would lie to you?”
“No, I don’t think you would lie to me. Also don’t talk about the grooming, I don’t want other people to know about it yet.”
“Fine by me,” I replied, raising my hands with a shrug. He really was careful about talking about that stuff, probably cause he knew the other’s system assistants could potentially be listening in and he didn’t want to disrupt the balance of things and piss off Robert. Not like Robert would be angry with someone like me becoming an underling blackzone manager under Ras, he was the type of guy who enjoyed having more people to hand things off to.
“I guess we’ll just have to keep a closer eye on Neo Draceld Z,” commented Ras with a furrowed brow.
“We should be fine, she is a sweet tooth and blackzone manager with multiple contracts and dominations on her. Not to mention an enlightened monster-witch-cursed contracted existence. There are a lot of steps she’ll have to take before she can try to backstab any of us, and she hasn’t made any of those steps yet. Besides we have more present matters to attend to.”
“Present matters? I thought our schedule was clear for the next few weeks.”
“Did you forget? Jezebel and the twins are coming to stay with Uncle Ester’s family next week at the Noble Gin,” I reminded my half-brother. Did you seriously have to forget about something so important? I internally sighed: I know that he didn’t have a close relation with my older sister or cared too much about my half-twins, Artoria and Arthur, since they had a claim to the Von Leoia name, but this was noble business we were talking about here.
“Shit, shit, shit! That’s next week?”
“Yeah.”
“By the saintesses, I haven’t told Robert yet.”
“Wait, seriously? This is Enigma based business though.”
“I know but he usually keeps me in charge of this stuff,” replied Ras before barking off some commands to Pattissoria, including having her conjure up some floating translucent screens. “Have they already sent us their decision on the matter?”
“No, they haven’t. All they said they would be doing is seeing the state of the blackzone and doing survey work to see if the Glyirian government will want to try and have us as one of the contact points for that artificial world cluster.”
“Are you two talking about Witch Synthia?” suddenly interrupted Editon with a roar into my mind and from the looks of it, Ras’s also. Seeing the chance to escape, I told Editon ‘yes’ and left him to talk with Ras. With that, that was all my noble business done for the day in one go.
Not that I didn’t want more information about Witch Synthia, a series of artificially stabilized lesser worlds filled with magical witches was interesting, especially since influences from the Grands was supposedly minimal. But I wasn’t a blackzone manager of Historie Pastoria Sweets, so I didn’t have to stress out about appeasing the visiting nobles and government officials. I’m so glad I don’t have to kiss up to them, I mentally chuckled to myself as I made my way down to the apartment block.
“Aren’t you going to have to kiss up to them to get the Von Leoia herit crest?” asked Teresa, causing me to pause. Well she got me there, sort of.
“I can just talk to dad or grandmama about that potentially,” I replied, picking up the pace again. And as much as I would like to gain access to the Lion of Von Leoia herit crest facsimile and get a mandala inscription to improve upon it. “Besides, I’m planning on making a 2nd generational synthesis attunement for you and the others first.”
“Catching up to Isabella would be nice,” commented Teresa, sending a small jolt of approval as Oscarra, Sora, and Indexia agreed from their own personal spaces. I was glad that they were all in agreement with that, but then again I haven’t met a contracted spirit or familiar that wasn’t interested in getting more power via mandalas. A 2nd generational synthesis for them, a 2nd generational synthesis for the Lion of Von Leoai, and then a Grand Scholarship that used both of them with Allies of Isabella: a solid Grand Magus-grade mandala that fit my style of spellcraft as a spirit mage and Obscurus and Psyche system caster perfectly. Of course that was still a lot of time and wiggle room to make adjustments as I continued to work on the formula.
But until this it was time to enjoy myself and experiment with the other systems: like by heading over to Embassy-Resorts a la Rainberries and do some delving and ingredient hunting. Conjuring up my primary spirit halo, I asked her,
“So now then my lady, how about we try to raise your rank again today?”
“I would love to.”
