-Wes Chaput-
A wave of low-attribute manas washed over me as the blackcurrant cheesecake knight’s twin baton strike bounced off my enchanted polyester shield: Minerva was ready to take it down. Not wanting to take any chances, I activated one of my newer lesser spell specialties, Quicktime Frame, and felt time slow as I maneuvered out of the way to give Minerva a clear shot. With a single ballista bolt made of crystal clear low-attribute mana, the upper left half of the black and purple jester-like cheesecake knight was blown apart.
“Your reaction time is improving,” pointed Minerva as she swirled the mana around her, keeping it from dispersing and instead swirl around her current pair of floating compendiums.
“Not really, it’s mostly just me using Quicktime Frame, and I can’t exactly rely on it. Too mana intensive,” I replied, already cutting the flow of mana to the mandala. It was weird, I was tier 2.2 now and Minerva was tier 2.6, but the gap between the two us in terms of power and spellcraft seemed wider than ever: these past five months ended up with both of us spending a lot of our money and time in mandala inscriptions.
I managed to get an extra class specialty set for wellspring constitution and four more lesser spell specialties, Beige-Steel Physique, Orange Physique, Reaper Physique, Quicktime Frame, and Speed Telepathy: now I didn’t have to worry about getting lesser spell specialties to fill out the class specialty requirement. Also made myself a greater spell specialty, Synthesis: Anti-Blood Physique, with some mandala formula processors I managed to buy and spent two months creating an attunement mandala inscription that incorporated my blue steel wand primary spirit halo and Sheryl, my asset: Cursed Shields of Wand & Aide. The attunement wasn’t the best in the world but I was proud of my splicing skills when it came to inscribing without expensive external aid, and besides between all my physique-based mandalas, the amount of beige-steel manas passively circulating through my system was crazy. Although Minerva blew me out of the water.
She bought herself extra class specialty sets for domain of clarity, wellspring flux, and wellspring flow. Got herself a new school mandala in the form of Glass Library: Studious Chapter and made a greater spell specialty that was derived out of Wonderment Bolt: Improved Wonderment Bolt. Not to mention she went the distance to make a synthesis school mandala inscription using Glass Library: Studious Chapter and Improved Wonderment Bolt called Synthesis Glass Library: Bolt Volume and a synthesis greater spell specialty using Arcanic Compendium and Low-Attribute Bolt called Arcanist’s Compendium of Bolts. So not only was her low-attribute colour attunement was an insanely high 22 for her tier, she was developing her spellcraft to capitalize on this and improve her mana generation. Yeah… I can definitely see why Mita is still scared of her when it comes to combat, I mused as I watched mana ebb and flow around her and her compendium.
“Have you thought of getting a passive version of it? I know you like your passive mandalas,” commented Minerva, conjuring up her cake-eye-balls to do the looting for us.
“I mean maybe. Honestly got it more for the fact its mana source connections were elemental time and wellspring perception than anything else.”
“Really? I thought I got it cause you could bullet time with it.”
“Bullet time is fun, but nope,” I returned before fishing out a pair of mana crystals. If we were going to train like proper mages, might as well recover like one. I really need to invest some better rechargeable ones, I thought to myself as I tossed Minerva the second mana crystal. Using these were definitely better than mana potions with the mandala recovery that allowed for, but damn even the cheap rechargeable ones were expensive despite their poor charge. “How are you feeling mana wise?”
“A bit winded, using mana ballista bolts is still a bit of a strain on my mandalas in terms of spell processing,” explained Minerva as she found a glossy picket fence to lean against as she channeled restorative manas from the mana crystal.
“Can’t you just shape it and chunk it?”
“Yeah, but then I get into needing a lot more mana and that starts to strain my mana generation rates instead.”
“Must be hard, being able to hit so far above your weight class like that,” I joked, looking around to make sure we wouldn’t be suddenly ambushed: the road all the way to the Mocktail looked clear, no currantcrackers or cheesecake knights in sight.
“You’re the one to talk, how hard of hit does it take to even hurt you know?” shoot back Minerva teasingly before switching to a slightly more serious tone, “Besides, it doesn’t take too much to put me in an unfavorable situation.” She wasn’t exactly wrong, I was pretty tanky with my particular disposition of passive mana circulation and you just needed some solid manalogical defense to counter her, that or a lot of enemies or turn it into a matter of attrition.
“Your clubmates did mention that physique style spell specialties were popular for that reason,” chimed Sheryl sleepily from the back of my head.
“Yeah, cheap and simple but effective,” I replied, feeling the mana crystal’s charge run out: wasn’t too big of a pick-me-up, but there was no toxicity buildup or alchemical limits to deal with. “Back to hunting for batons?”
“Back to hunting for batons,” answered Minerva as she had one of her cake-eye-balls mage hand the second mana crystal back to me. Would have been nice if these Obscurus and Psyche System infused batons were easier to get, but it’s not like I did mind this task: every since town hall had one of the sweet tooths, Mr. Jamestown, take over as library manager, operations have been a lot smoother. Restrictions on us were way more lax too since Sugar Hills was making another public local library for people who didn’t want to enter the Enigma at all: we didn’t have to worry about the cut in wages from this though, delving made more than enough to cover the difference plus there were a surprising amount of delvers that made donations to help with the bottom line.
Although it took a bit longer than I wanted a matching set of Obscurus System infused baton and Psyche System infused baton, we got plenty of slices of blackzone blackcurrant cheesecake and an extra pair of Obscurus System infused batons. And I know Mr. Jamestown wouldn’t mind if we kept or sold the extra batons and some of the slices of cheesecakes. Still weird to think we can get something related to the Psyche System of all places, I mean Historie Pastoria Sweets has no area connected to the Slumbering Palaces, I nonchalantly mused as I tucked our loot away so we could head back: the really wasn’t much of a reason to mull over it, variantal areas could get weird by their very nature.
“You two got a good haul?” asked Harold, on another one of his smoke breaks, as the two of us neared the library. Ever since he managed to get all his class specialties scanned also, he’s really been making full use of the fact he had an elemental smoke class specialty: although not like it was a surprise to anyone he had the class specialty or that he would exploit the fact.
“Took a bit longer than we wanted, but we got some spare batons,” I replied, pointing to the spatially-expanded sack I was carrying.
“Ha, so you two did better than Chloe and Mahmud.”
“Is the researcher at it again?”
“Yup.” Sucks to be them, I internally sighed: being stuck with learning scroll collecting duty when Prof. Van Elise was also hunting cake-eye-balls was absolute hell. To think that that mandala researcher would go as far as to make a budget Grand Scholarship with just a few Contracted Cake-Eye-Balls, a few Lesser Contracted Cake-Eye-Balls, and an Obscurus System attunement that was used for binding. I would hate to be the monster that has to try and survive forty-two mandala-suped up cake-eye-balls that could use binding magic.
“Speaking of the researcher, I heard he is putting a lot of money into the raffle to become a sweet tooth.”
“That shouldn’t be a concern to any of us, the Glyirians have their own pool for the raffle,” commented Minerva before asking, “How much are you putting into the raffle anyway?”
“A few grand.”
“Aren’t you worried about the downsides of being a witch-cursed though?”
“Well you and the others make do just fine, and I mean there is medication and stuff, like mandalas, to help with all that immune system stuff. Besides, a free extra class specialty set and a Contracted Cake-Eye-Balls on top of the race advancement make it more than worth it,” countered Harold with a cocky grin, probably banking on the fact that not many people would be putting much in the raffle and that there was going to be six winners from this side of the Enigma.
“You know the medicine isn’t a cure-all nor it is cheap, doubly so for mandalas that help with the condition. There is a reason why we don't have one of them already,” chastised Minerva before stopping to pause and just sighing instead of continuing. Mandala inscriptions directly connected to wellbeing and vitality were definitely in high demand, especially with CEOs and spellites buying them up whenever they became available on the market. Pricey, hard to get before someone else buys it, not to mention closely guarded by mandala management companies… I thought to myself, wishing I could manage to get my hand on one: would honestly work wonders with my current portfolio of mandalas.
“Perhaps we could do some duels to get the capital needed to reserve and buy one?” suggested Sheryl sleepily as we entered the library to hand off the pair of the batons.
“We both know I’m currently not a good enough entre to win that much money. Besides if we tried for that, I’d want to get a witch-cursed one for Minerva first,” I noted as I placed the pair of the batons in the display that the library manager had Harold and Mahmud set up, this them we had all the weapons of the normal cheesecake knights on display. “Honestly it's going to be some time before we can even start to think about moving up to the next bracket of duels.” The Asset System of the Financial Colosseums was not a fair system by any means, forcing you to use wealth and mana for its abilities and making wagers with your money and potential for duels. And since I didn’t have much money or want to put up my potential, even if it would be temporarily taken if I lost, as collateral, I was stuck with low-stake duels at the lowest brackets.
Deciding to leave that train of thought for later, I decided to take a look around and see if anyone needed any help. Outside of the regular library goers and delvers, including the tiny handful of corpse hunters that still hung around cause accidents always happened, there for three of the members of the Goltinium Spellman Nine and some Boundary Watch officers. Honestly the Goltinium Spellman Nine were starting to become a common fixture of the library, probably much always coming in groups of three. Wonder where they are going to delve today, I thought to myself with a shrug: I didn’t mind them hanging around and it was obvious that they mostly hung around here for publicity and to relax, not to mention easy access to teleportation pads.
From the looks of it, it was Julien Light, Aya Kuwa-Muramasa, and Louella Barclay. Unsurprisingly the Boundary Watch officers were clambering around Julien for autographs and pretty much ignoring his girlfriend, Aya, and the noble, Louella. Leave it to the meatheads in Boundary Watch to only care about the members of the Goltinium Spellman Nine that were born here, I thought sourly, thinking back to all the times I had to break up fights between them and people from Glyiria and Ignae Automata. Would have been a lot if we could have just kicked them all out of the blackzone, but they were still a government agency: couldn’t break the law and get rid of them. Looking over at the other two spellman, I watched as Aya casually chatted with some of the corpse hunters and delvers as she polished one of the katanas from her budget Grand Key while Louella bought some potions from the caketopian courier-merchant currently set up shop in the open corner of the library.
“Oh, Aya is here?” asked Minerva, already back to work and having her cake-eye-balls work on reshelving books.
“Yup.”
“She is pretty nice, I honestly couldn’t believe that she was okay with helping me out formulating mandalas.”
“Didn’t she ask you to help brainstorm katanas in return? She kind of is a sword nut isn’t she?”
“Not saying she isn’t one, but I like her style of spellcraft. She doesn’t stick to any field of magic, only to will magic of change and what she wants,” noted Minerva with a sense of admiration on her face. Before I could point out that Aya only was able to make it work cause she was obsessed with Blade Tech, the seventh divergent will, change, and how to combine the two into katanas made with mandalas, system slots, facsimiles, and even Trascendations, Louella was walking up to us and waving,
“Minerva, Wes, just the two people I was looking for.”
“Hello, Louella what do you need? More books to check out?”
“No, not work right now. Although I am enjoying the biographies of secret Earth mages you’ve suggested to me.”
“So what do you need help with then?” I questioned, curious of why someone like Louella would need our help outside of library stuff: it wasn’t like we were regulars to her classes like Harold was.
“I need help getting contact with Robert.”
“Why?...”
“I’ve been thinking, and I’ve decided. I want to become one of his underling blackzone managers.”
“Wait… what?!”
