-Robert Fayn-
Looking at the pair of proxy pods and their gear console set up in my penthouse’s spare room, I couldn’t help but grin a little bit: it had to be over a year since I last plugged into Sins of the SteelStar, and now I finally had the chance to greater game again. And this was ironically the first time I could actually binge the Digital Realm. I can’t believe I could barely even enjoy proxy MMOs, let alone Sins of the SteelStar itself, I thought to myself, weirdly glad to be a blackzone manager instead of a museum educator. Of course that didn’t last when I remembered all the extra danger and shit I had to deal with because I was a blackzone manager now. Although it would be interesting to see if I could try to make a proxy MMO like how the Open Servers rent out their areas to developers. Maybe I could get some Aux cores to allow for something like that.
“Such a recipe would likely not only require multiple areas in the Digital Realms and Aux cores that give you access to the Game System and related proxy services, but mutant variant dungeon cores, an ingredient that is currently out of your grasp and all your underling blackzone managers’ grasps… With the exception of Neo Draceld Z of course,” interrupted Sous before appearing in his crystalline mote form and continuing, “So these are the proxy pods you purchase. Don’t you think dipping into the funds we acquired from the sweet tooth race advancement raffle was a bit… dubious?”
“Oh shut up, Mita okayed it, and beside you were the one that made me buy a second set, that’s why everything was so expensive. Why do you even want me to buy two sets anyway?” I shot back, raising my eyebrow at the currently physical system assistant.
“Because I want to try out Sins of the SteelStar also.”
“What?...”
“Just because I am not a magi-sentient like you does not mean I lack a tier or create a system slots facsimile. I do already possess one, despite it only granting four faux-system slots instead of normal ones.”
“You have a tier? What is it? Also you’ve made a facsimile of a system slot?”
“1.7 from the looks of it. As for Umi, she has a tier of 2.5, and Sal only has a tier of 1.5. And indeed I have, it took some effort.”
“Wait, so you’re the same tier as I was before I became a blackzone manager? Wow… that’s actually pretty low,” I pointed out, surprised to find out that both my system assistants and Umi had tiers: although I guess it only made sense, it was only natural for living beings to have tiers. I guess the only weird thing was Sous actually went and made a facsimile without me noticing.
“It is so low because you are only tier 4.0 and only have 3 mandalas for me. And unlike Umi, I do not have a system slot with ranks to improve my tier or an active way to improve it.”
“Not like us system assistants often mind. Having a powerful contractor, regardless of whether they are a blackzone manager, vox reborn, or descended architects, is often more than enough,” explained Sal cheerfully.
“So does that mean Sous is actually an oddball?” I asked with a laugh.
“If you are talking about his desire to make and use system slots facsimiles or become a magi-sentient, then yes. But it is a noble goal if you ask me.”
“Please shut up Sal, you aren’t helping here,” quipped Sous sourly. “Now then, shall we start greater gaming?”
“Yeah, yeah, fine. Although you sure you can handle it?” I asked as I climbed into the proxy pod and looked over at Sous. I mean he was just a floating crystalline mote, wasn’t exactly a lot for a proxy pod or gear console to latch onto physically. Does he just fit his entire body into the headgear or something?
“I should be fine. I have done enough research on this procedure to work it out with my telekinesis and tactile sense field,” explained Sous before addressing, “You understood what you need to do?”
“Yup,” replied the other system assistant as he conjured up one of my cake-eye-balls and possessed it through Synthesis: System Assistant’s Cake-Eye-Balls. “Keep an eye on Sugar and Spice with Umi and Beath and insert mana cartridges into your proxy pod as requested.” I felt both Sugar and Spice rejoice at that from inside their shared personal space. So that’s how Sous is going to handle this, just chug through mana cartridges, I noted how underhanded that tactic was: it wasn’t exactly easy to communicate with people out of your proxy pod while greater gaming, but I guess system assistants possessed a work around.
Shrugging and leaving them to it, I told Sous to try and send me a friend request when he got his system slots facsimile’s connection forged and account set up and then plugged in. Activating the magics of the gear console, I felt my Sins of the SteelStar system slot whirl to life and push my focus elsewhere.
The sounds of circuitry and gears as I was logged into my account and inserted into my proxy body. Opening my eyes, I saw my self-hub ship, the same way as I left it: incredibly basic and unupgraded. Feeling my proxy body, it felt smoother than normal but that probably cause I was using better equipment and higher quality Cyber-Sin Discs. Seeing that I had some time to spend before Sous sent his friend request, I decided to spend my time at my ship’s computer and checking up on the latest news and events I had access to. After a few minutes of sifting through random dungeon and shopping events on the planets I was currently nearby, a small holographic window appeared in front of me with a prompt asking if I wanted to accept a friend request from SousRMFHPS. Seriously? That’s the account name he chose? I thought to myself as I clicked ‘Y.’
“I find that offensive coming from a person whose account name is LazyMuseumManic,” complained Sous from the back of my head as his proxy body teleported into my self-hub ship in rings of holographic lights. Honestly I wasn’t expecting him to look the way he was: lanky, a few inches smaller than me, medium length brownish ginger hair, and a plain inexpressive face with brown eyes the same shade as mine. “How do I look? I choose the default option presented to me.”
“So that’s what you would look like if you were a human? Weird…”
“It does feel a bit weird, a definition sensation than my crystalline mote form or when I possess a monster or entity. Also, why does your proxy body look just like you do normally? I thought it was proper etiquette to spice up your appearance.”
“I mean, not here,” I awkwardly explained, scratching the back of my neck and feeling the cybernetic port that housed this proxy body’s conscious disk: one of the mainstays of this Digital Realm that all proxy bodies and NPCs had. “Players don’t walk around in their proxy bodies, they usually use their SteelStars.”
“How do we use our SteelStars?” inquired Sous, tilting his head slightly but still looking pretty much expressionless. Yeah, he was going to have to work on acting like a normal person now that he has access to a ‘human’ body.
“We just load in through the transference pods, you can use one of mine,” I replied, pointing over to the four wall-mounted pods at the back of the ship before walking over to one and getting it. A quick wince as the transference pod accessed my proxy body’s conscious disk as Sous watched: a screen of options appeared directly over my field of view and I mentally chose the only option I had, my Technologia of Holts SteelStar. It can’t believe my highest chromatic colour attunement used to be green, maybe I should have considered having another system slot connect to Sins of the SteelStar, I noted to myself as I felt myself being inserted into a bulky army green mech with a shield like forearms and knight-like visor.
“What an interesting yet bland dish, how fitting of you,” commented my system assistant casually as he looked at my currently unoccupied proxy body and my SteelStar. Calmly, he climbed into a transference pod and repeated the process.
I was expecting something like a crafts of gales SteelStar, mix-match whites and wings, not an orange mech with dark streaks, wires like tendril in loops on his shoulders and arms or hanging off his back loosely, and an opaque astronaut helmet. It took a few seconds of racking my brain to realize his SteelStar was a desire of relations model. It’s not working off my colour attunements? I wondered in confusion before Sous ended up clarifying he has his own set of class specialties, five of which were only theoretical without mandalas for them, the same with all of my other spirits and familiars. Sentients were weird...
“So you have a high desire colour attunement?”
“A theoretical colour attunement, but yeah. It would seem so.”
“Honestly… that explains so much about you.”
“Now then, how do we start greater gaming from me?” asked Sous, brushing off my comment as he inspected his SteelStar.
“We just use the ship’s teleportation pad to warp down to one of the nearby planets,” I explained, pointing to the window at the front of my self-hub ship and mentally changing its view of starry space to a display of the vast local solar system. “This SteelStar is still pretty low level cause I’m only rank 1, and well you just started out. So how about we get started with one of the hub cities for now?”
“That seems fair enough for me. I’ll follow your lead.” About time, I thought to myself as I had the ship’s teleportation pad home in on one of the low level hub cities: Delta Rim Spiral, a satellite hub city floating in the orbit of a superworld in the shape of a donut.
Beaming onto one of the city’s welcome pads, I was greeted by the familiar barrage of holographic ads and event and quest notifications. Waving through them to close them while Sous carefully read each of his own, I was left with a system prompt that read:
“Notification from the Sins of the SteelStar Game System:
It has been noticed that you are a blackzone manager of tier 3.0 or higher with 48 or more mandalas inscribed. The Game System is currently holding an exclusive lottery for blackzone managers with guaranteed rewards. Would you like more information?
Y/N”
“What the hell? Are you seeing this?” I muttered under my breath to Sous, pressing ‘Y’ and showing him the system message with all the possible rewards.
“An interesting proposition,” noted Sous with a tinge of curiosity in voice as the two of us made our way off the welcome pads and into the space scifi technic-styled city full of skyscrapers before someone else teleported in. “Although the minimum buy in is a steep one. Remember our dungeon-mana reserves are still being used to pay off multiple loans.”
“Yeah, but the smallest reward is an expansion and set of Aux Cores for proxy services and accessing the Game System! Plus they do have their own loan option built in for this. Do you think we can ask Mita if we could try it out?”
“I could relay the request through Wlogwa, but it would take some time for us to get a response,” explained Sous with a sigh. Nodding in understanding, I pointed out one of the side streets we could take to find a place to sit down and wait for a response. I know it probably wasn’t the best idea to get our Enigma tied up with another loan since we were already in loans toward the Refresco hub and Alihi’a’Pounga, plus the contracts with Zethuron and Glyiria, but getting access to fourth proxy service would help the Borolio shit. We’d have to probably spend more dungeon-mana reserves and mutagenic experience on monster generation, but the extra proxy bodies coming in could offset. Also we could make a resort in Sins of the SteelStar! I planned to myself, slowly figuring out how to make this work into what we already had going for us in the appeal department.
After a few minutes of talking with Mita through his system assistant, we figured out we could manage to pick up the loan to minimum buy in and then also use some of the dungeon-mana reserves we were saving up for researching, creating, and purchasing Aux Cores to make sure we hit the second bracket of potential rewards. So we would have to push back getting more Aux cores for improving our connections to the Halo, Obscurus, and Vox Systems and their proxy systems along with other stuff like monster spawners, but we would be guaranteed at least two areas. Making the decision, I filled out the transaction to get a loan and transfer over enough dungeon-mana reserves to make sure we hit the second bracket of the lottery.
“Congratulations. You have been rewarded one split core, one frontier core, one Aux core of accessing the Game System, and five Aux cores for Sins of the SteelStar’s proxy services,” chimed a feminine mechanical voice the second I pressed the ‘complete’ button. Before I could say anything, the voice started back up, “Notification, due to unique circumstances, you have been rewarded a second split core.”
“Another dungeon core? Jackpot!” I laughed as I felt the dungeon cores appear in my Enigma and connect to it with a flood of mana that was making me mana drunk even through my proxy body. Then it hit with a surge of vertigo as I was hit by a joint psychic scanning as one of the split cores activated to reach out. Feeling all three sets of my eyes roll back from the searing pain, I saw the image of a sprawling vaguely futuristic yet profoundly mundane city covered in music overlapped by a dystopian technic wasteland filled with tower-like servers. More flashes as I saw a college aged-looking spellite that I somehow knew was older than he looked and complex protocols that somehow told me this wasn’t a normal blackzone but something called a Trapdoor that hailed from the outer between space. The names Johari Vogt and Mercury-Hyacinths-Johari shot through my brain as I felt a hidden faux-World Bridge form in Historie Pastoria Sweets proper.
“Interconnection with Mercury-Hyacinth-Johari has been established. It has been designated Sweets Futurism. Additionally information over the five hidden hub types of the outer between space, Remnant Sagas, Back Continents, Legendary Trials, World Prisons, and False Earths have been analyzed,” explained Sous from the back of my head as my SteelStar creaked from me clutching my head so hard. Hidden hub types?! What the hell?! I began to mentally scream before being interrupted by another joint psychic scanning.
This time around it was like looking into a mirror and getting violated by it, even more than the usual psychic scanning. I saw a Historie Pastoria Sweets that wasn't my Historie Pastoria Sweets. I felt stagnation and a lack of ambient mana that wasn’t natural for the metaverse proper and the influence of multiple Grands and incredibly powerful blackzones… including Reagan’s Ignae Automata. The knowledge of a pair of names: Robby Fayn Beta and Cheesecake Emporos-Museum followed by flashes of images of another me. I could swear he was staring at me, looking so similar yet so different: blacker hair, lankier figure, sharper more aggressive eyes, and a magical-looking scar on the side of his face. As he started to swear something, the psychic scanning ended with a hidden faux-World Bridge appearing in Forgotten Historie Pastries and Sous announcing the Interconnection’s formation,
“Interconnection with Cheesecake Emporos-Museum has been established. It has been designated Sweets Depression.”
“What the hell?! There’s another me!?” I managed to shout in a gasp, trying to process this information as the last faux-World Bridge appears in Sweets Imports. I could vaguely remember something about doppelgängers of blackzone managers revolving the rhi phenomena. But my mind was racing with fragments of new knowledge and I couldn’t tell where I knew it from. Did Daphne teach me that? Did I learn it from those documentaries I used to watch, sometimes still did watch? Was it even real or was the mind raping of the psychic scannings making me think impossible things?
“It seems there is another you, Robert. What an interesting spice to discover.”
