Book 3 – Chapter 6 – Mita Orono – Overflow
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-Mita Orono-

After leaving Ulra with Sozap and the rest of the Penobscot sweet tooths, I went to walk through the Sweets Depression Interconnection. I couldn’t shake how weird this place felt. This place was a whole different ball game than Treant Orchards when I sent there through Sweets Enlightenment: there it was stagnant but stable in the flow of mana, more of a mingling of the world’s nature and the influence of the blackzone, here though, it was stagnant and dirty. But it wasn’t just stagnant, the ebb and flow of ambient dungeon-mana, there were huge influxes of various blends of manas, mostly corrupted manas, every so often: it was like this was either a vacuum sucking in mana from our Enigma or a broken dam dumping mana into it instead. I can’t even tell if this place is going to be a net positive or net negative with how things are right now.

Research on how our ambient interacts with this Enigma’s ambient will take time, it looks like the ambients of powerful blackzones and Grands are influencing it. Not only that there are multiple Aux cores in Cheesecake Emporos-Museum that interact with not only the Greater Aether Veil but also the Astral Horizon, Dimensional Folds, World Kernels, and Leylines,” explained Wlogwa from the back of my head as I looked around and waited for the underling blackzone manager that was supposed to show up. Sweets Depression looked just like Historie Pastoria Sweets proper, but I guess that only made sense because Cheesecake Emporos-Museum was created with a doppelgänger alt-rhi of Robert. Would have been nice to meet Robby Fayn Beta now, but there were other things to do.

You think we can get some information on how to replicate those Aux cores?” I casually asked back, adding the idea to the list of Aux cores we could add to our Enigma. Honestly I was still a bit pissed that Ras got to do that cooling glyph Aux core before we could make magnet and repellant Aux cores for rogue monsters: just another thing tossed on the backburner cause of our finances and current goals. Would be nice if we could control the flow of rogue monsters more. Or even try to make a monster generating Aux core.

It would be, but Robert’s decision to have us focus on improving our connections to proxy services and the systems is sound. The sheer influx of proxy bodies has already mitigated the drop in real bodies caused by Borolio and then some.” 

I know, it’s just I’d like to do something I actually want for once, not just act like another set of hands and everyone’s accountant.” I know I’m just biding time for Glyiria to give me a frontier core and help back me up when I use it, but there was more stuff to do in the meantime like work on Aux cores to improve the profitability of Historie Pastoria Sweets. The novelty of having nineteen proxy services access Aux cores that were spread across five systems was going to get old sooner or later.

“Apologies for the delay, deliberation for deciding who would greet you took longer than expected,” commented a mechanical voice as an enlightened robotics in a suit and tie drew near. Extending out a sleek metallic hand, he continued, “Allow me to introduce myself, I am Anachron Tracer, one of the blackzone managers of Cheesecake Emporos-Museum and its Ignae Automata representative.”

“Wait… Ignae Automata’s representative?” I asked, returning the handshake. “Do you know an Eris Rover?” The enlightened robotics paused for a movement before smiling and answering,

“I do know her, I did not know that Historie Pastoria Sweets already had an alliance with Ignae Automata. It seems I indeed was the best choice for this meeting, I will have to send her all the necessary information, although that should be easy enough.” 

“What do you mean?”

“Well it is only natural I am her superior.” Superior?

He is a penta race advanced, Eris is only a race advanced. This man is likely much higher in the hierarchy, which does raise some flags on why he is an underling blackzone manager here also,” explained Wlogwa with a tinge of caution in his tone.

“I see…” I noted to both Anachron and Wlogwa before trying to get a better sense of the man standing in front of me: my manalogical senses couldn’t pick up much other than he was definitely above tier 6.

“Now then, since the information at hand has drastically changed the situation, I will need to consult the other representatives, please pardon me for a moment,” commented Anachron as he activated a Grand Magus-grade mandala out of the blue. Stepping back in shock, I watched as lines of mana formed in front of him and took the shape of a circle housing nine more circles. Within seconds, the smaller circles were filled with five checkmarks and four ‘x’s. “There we go, we are in agreement to expand the reach of our generosity toward your Enigma in terms of alliances.”

“Okay umm… What the hell was that?”

“Our Enigma’s signature Grand Key used for management purposes, Cheesecake Emporos-Museum’s Board of Representative. I shall send some information over to your system assistant to expedite the process.” With that, I heard Wlogwa make a gulp from the back of my mind, something he almost never did. Was it that bad?

Is it that serious?

It will be best for you to see for yourself,” solemnly replied Wlogwa as he conjured up a small translucent screen with dense text and infographics on it. Looking at it I realized what he meant: the Grand Key had a mandala formula of 43 mandalas total with three advanced class specialties in its mana source connections! Looking through the information and how it made of four 2nd generational synthesis attunements, Cheesecake Emporos-Museum’s First Branch, Cheesecake Emporos-Museum’s Second Branch, Cheesecake Emporos-Museum’s Third Branch, and Cheesecake Emporos-Museum’s Trusts & Meditations, I started to see the bigger picture.

One, this Enigma has ten representatives total: Robby being one of them; an enlightened spirit; three representatives from different Grands; three representatives from giant powerful blackzones, Ignae Automata being one of them; and then a stargranted-spellman and a spirit king-spellman, each representing a powerful group of pinnacle of mages, something I only heard offhandedly about from blackzone managers of other blackzones. Two, outside of Robby and the two spellman, everyone was penta race advanced and at least tier 6.0. And then the chilling three, since Robby Fayn Beta was only a triple race advanced like Robert, the 17 attunements and 21 features of the Grand Key along with the advanced class specialty sets needed for it meant he was maxed out on his 30 feature mandalas and possibly also his 24 attunements: the guy was definitely having to use extra slot mandalas for any feature he wanted to inscribe onto his mandalas… Jesus christ… this guy is basically being held hostage by his own mandalas… all his current potential for mandala magic, basically magic in general, is just chained up into that Grand Key.

Indeed, his potential is effectively stemmed until he either race advanced again, reaches a high enough tier that he gains more mandalas, sacrifices his sub-features to gain some extra slots or perhaps uses his school, attunements, and spell specialties to gain some anachronistics and extra slots, creates or gain a mandala-granting facsimile, or even undergoes a mandala expansion procedure. There is also the option for quasi-mandalas, object-binding mandalas, and service-sharing mandalas. Although from this report, it is unlikely any of the representatives would aid him in any of those paths,” intoned Wlogwa sadly as he listed off the options, feeling the strange sense of frustration I had. I mean I know this wasn’t the Robert I know now, but he was a Robert I knew and to see how royally screwed he was was… just infuriating for some reason.

“Are you okay?” asked Anachron bluntly, noticing my shift in mood. Trying to keep him from realizing what I was thinking, I put on a straight face and replied,

“It’s just a lot to process.”

“That is understandable, it is not easy to parse out a Grand Key. Especially ours with its expansive mandala formulas. Now if you do want to learn more than what is given about it, I’d have to consult with other representatives. It’s the nature of the beast, I hope you understand.” 

“Yeah I understand… Hey, do you think I can meet with Robby sometime? Or do you need to consult with the others on that.”

“I would, but I can tell you now you wouldn’t be able to now,” replied the enlightened robotics with a sort of dismissive shake of his head.

“Why is that?”

“He is currently working on becoming experienced with mandalas he retrieved from a bad end.”

“Bad end?”

“The bad end of a quest. This isn’t exactly uncommon knowledge so I don’t mind sharing it with you. Those who receive a quest from the metaverse or a powerful enough entity will always receive some reward from it, regardless of the outcome. Most people know about good ends, which generally will increase the person’s tier and or give them a powerful and or unique item or mandala inscription. But there are also alternate ends, where something out of the ordinary happens that is distinctly neither good or bad, and then there are bad ends, which are self-explanatory,” lectured Anachron casually, having his own system assistant conjure up some translucent screens to help him explain.

“And what happened to Robby then?” I asked, already starting to regret my decision to press for more information.

“Robby received a set of cursed mandala in the form of a 2nd generational synthesis that passively drains his lifespan with the activation of it consuming even more lifespan. We are giving him treatment to mitigate the effects so he doesn’t have to worry about dying young, but we are still deciding the best next step,” explained Anachron before shifting onto other topics and asking about Historie Pastoria Sweets. Answering his questions and having Wlogwa help pick up the slack with his System Assistant Com-Booster, I couldn’t help but think back to Robby’s situation: A mandala-hogging Grand Key that restricted his options in spellcraft and mandala inscriptions and a cursed 2nd generational synthesis that forced him to stay under the other’s thumbs for treatment, that was too much even for me. Even the Harbingers of the Black Skies never went that far, well probably never went that far.

It’s still weighing on your mind isn’t it?” inquired my system assistant after we parted ways with Anachron.

“Yeah, it’s just knowing that there is another Robert out there who is a hundred times more fucked than our Robert, it doesn’t sit well with me,” I replied with a frown, already mulling things over.

You were always more empathic than you let on.” 

“I know, Margaret calls me a teddy bear for a reason. Now, Wlogwa, what can we do?” 

At this point? Nothing. There are still too many unknowns surrounding Robby Fayn Beta and Cheesecake Emporos-Museum and if we are not careful we’ll make enemies of not only Reagan Road and Ignae Automata but Zethuron and Abstraction of Gastronomy.

“Wait, Abstraction of Gastronomy?”

Indeed, I’ve been analyzing the influxes of mana coming in and I’ve managed to pinpoint one of them as Zethuron’s Grand. That Enigma has an Interconnection to it.

“So that Robert already dealt with Zethuron also?” I noted, thinking about how much shit that blackzone god dragged us through. I was starting to see why Ras and the Glyirian sweet tooths hated the black wyrm of abstraction to the point of hating Neo Draceld Z also. But right now that didn’t really matter. “Do you think we could try to get Robby treatment for his lifespan? Reversing diminished lifespan isn’t hard, just expensive.” 

We can divert some of our cash funds, but it would be a large enough amount that we would have to explain to others what the cost is going for. Then we would have to deal with the representatives on Robby’s side of the Interconnection, along with the bigger picture.

“The fact all of this is just stopgap measures, I know. We’ll need to find a mandala inscription or two for him that he can use.” 

Which means for now we must rely on their generosity and the fact that Robby is more valuable to them alive rather than dead.Yeah… for now...

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