-Micah Scollon-
I still couldn’t believe that Louella actually went and became a blackzone manager on us. I mean I understood why she did it: we were becoming third years at the Goltinium Guild on the place of learning side of things and neither the Goltinium Spellman Nine or our technically better secret half had managed to achieve anything truly of note. Yeah we’ve all done quests from the metaverse, but none of them were really big time or led anywhere. And yeah we’ve all gotten our first Grand Magus-grade mandalas, but most of us only got budget ones and none of us really bothered to hunker down and fill out their portfolio of mandalas. Plus despite all the fanfare we’ve been getting on the Endless Strip and Sugar Hills, we were still on the small side of things in public eyes and tethering over mediocrity on the more important secret side of things.
“There’s not enough epic quests to go around for everyone,” I muttered to myself sourly, thinking about how common it was for our Goltinium upperclassmen and professors to comment that. Frustrated at myself and just the metaverse in general, I kicked the hull-plated ground and shouted, “Why the hell am I pissed off? I’m famous. I’m freaking tier 5.0 despite being only twenty. I’m a fucking spellman. And my hometown is thriving!”
“Probably because this was such a close call,” commented Louella, deciding to make an entrance. Looking over her, I noted she was also in own her extra rare SteelStar, specially made from a modified unique attunement that the Goltinium Guild gave us along with a wild card mandala inscription each to use to make a synthesis that improved it: the same thing that used up all the cashable cred we had with the guild, built up over nearly three years worth of work.
“Yeah, cause you had to cash everything in,” I replied accusingly, catching her undertones of worry and relief. Silent Reader rarely came in use, but with how it synthesized with my Rare SteelStar Model: Ultraviolet Five Powers to make Ultraviolet Five Power’s Interfacing, tone was easy to catch in this SteelStar.
“It was the only way to make it work and you know it. Besides the Goltinium Guild gave our house direction with these mandala inscriptions and we have access to better classes and seminars now.” She wasn’t wrong about that, but I still wasn’t fond of how we got to that point. Doesn’t help she is a natural when it comes to this blackzone manager business.
“It would be nice if you apologized.”
“You know I’m sorry about this Micah. But it wasn’t like we had much of an alternative.”
“Geez, I know. It still doesn’t mean I don’t find it weird that you’re a blackzone manager for the Enigma that my hometown is now famous for.”
“Would you have preferred to be one to become the blackzone manager?”
“Oh fuck no. They would have sicked that dragon and harpy on me so fast.”
“Yeah, that sounds about right,” noted Louella with a sigh as she fiddled with the strange blade currently holstered on her SteelStar’s plated lemon yellow skirt. Must have been weird to have a phylactery in the shape of the dagger, double weird having it be turned into a weapon for her SteelStar cause her wild card mandala inscription turned into a mandala inscription for a synthesis attunement that used it. I wonder what cool shit it can do, I idly mused as I tried to filter through the potential options based off what I knew about the mandala inscriptions used. Of course that didn’t last too long when I remembered that she was getting a second phylactery cause of how the synthesis attunement came out, all the cred burned up cause of freaking bad luck.
“So now what? We just tramps around Sins of the SteelStar? Delia, Wallace, Armin and the others included? What about Oonn? Mugin? The Upper Lands? Hell what about us and the Endless Strip?”
“There is plenty of stuff for us to do in Sins of the SteelStar, and as for our secret other half, they have Ignae Automata and the Trapdoor, not to mention those artificially stabilized lesser worlds both of them are connected to. I think their artificial world cluster is called Starport Cyber,” explained Louella pausing before continuing, “As for the Endless Strip, the Enigma will likely expand into it soon enough. And for Mugin, I have plans to convince the others to expand to it also.”
“Good,” I commented, feeling myself calming down some: it was good to know we weren’t getting boxed into a dead end. Also good to know that Sugar Hills would profit off it by getting a shortcut to Las Vegas, no more long drives or expensive teleportations. Although I was definitely going to say silent about the latter. Last thing I need is Gilbert and Yokum making more jokes about me being a small town boy, I grumbled internally, stuffing those thoughts to the corner of my mind. “So why the heck are you here right now?”
“Just wanted to check up on you.”
“What about everyone else?”
“Pretty much all the of Goltinium Spellman Nine are in Ignae Automata and as for our other housemates, they over at the Trapdoor to get used to its Hybrid System.”
“Oh… Well I’m doing fine I guess. What about you? Shouldn’t you be doing manager stuff? Like helping out Ras with his relatives?” I replied before turning the question back on Louella.
“Iris is handling stuff for me right now, I really did luck out with the fact she can conjure a physical form. As for the Glyirian nobles, its best for me to stay away,” replied Louella with a mixture of dismissiveness and honestly: was it just her day for sending mixed signals?
“You’re a noble though. You should be best equipped to help out,” I pointed out, folding my arms and tapping against my elbow, sending out small sparks and motes of violet mana.
“I’m a Barclay noble, I don’t know Glyirian culture, I could end up stepping on toes.”
“So you came here to RV Dazzling Desserts to hide out?” Made sense, this place was probably going to be the last one those nobles surveyed, and she could just duck out of the faux-World Bridge that was opposite of the one they came through.
“More or less…”
“Well then let’s just do some delving to burn the time,” I replied, instinctively trying to summon my Cacodemon but wincing and stopping when I realized I was still in my SteelStar. Cross-karmic retribution wasn’t worth the use of a lesser spell specialty, even if it was for an awesome assault rifle.
“Sure, there’s a bunch of living odd-shape flans down the road we can practice on.”
“Seriously, why Odd-Shape though? I mean isn’t it more odd magic and facsimile focused than Digital Realms focused?”
“They were a part of the core-made monsters in Galactic Desserts Imports, it was easier to port over. Made more sense too since the other three systems each only have one type of living flans for them.” Not counting the Hybrid System of Flowers, I noted mentally, remembering the files that Louella gave us and the guild to read over.
“You think I can take them out from here?” I asked Louella as the living flans with their circuit board-ish markings made their way into my SteelStar’s enhanced optics.
“Probably,” she replied, watching the blaster drones slide out from my back and begin to levitate into position. Aiming the drones as their warmed up their routines of Game System-based Five Powers, I quipped,
“More like definitely. Pew.” Lasers of violet energy shot down the road and pierced into the fodder monsters with ease. So fodder tier 1.5 monsters are a walk in the park with this SteelStar, I internally told myself, completely unsurprised: attunement mandalas made the whole process much easier, I could actually some use of my high tier without worry about cross-karmic retribution or burning up my proxy body. Looking around the technic styled ‘suburbs’ covered in elevated train tracks, I frowned a bit when I noticed there wasn’t any one but Louella to see how cool my SteelStar was.
“You know you don’t have to show off to me.”
“I know, just want to flex and test out this bad boy’s powers.”
“Of course you do,” sighed Louella with undertones that definitely read as eye roll. With not much for the two of us to talk about, we fell into our normal delving routine with some slight variations: mainly us switching positions with me being long-range and Louella being mid-range. It was pretty damn impressive how versatile that spirit-blade was; the reach on it was surprising too. And to top it off, her SteelStar let her be an off-healer while also letting her keep up her shtick of lightning with ionized discharges of energy and mana.
Didn’t take too long for the two of us to finally stumbled onto one of Louella’s creations: a shock-melon cheesecake knight. Leave it to Louella to research fruit native to Sins of the SteelStar and use it as an excuse to make a monster with elemental lightning affinity. Although I guess it did also have elemental space affinity, which explained its short ranged offensive dimension door-style ability that sent cascades of electricity everywhere.
Aiding Louella with some cover fire as she tried to slice through the cheesecake knight’s half-medieval half-technic armour made of reinforced melon rinds while dodging laser fire from its blaster rifle, I realized our SteelStars’ current limit. Having to tag team a single tier 2.2 monster was a bit much, but at least it gave us a good benchmark. So for monsters with properly listed tiers, I can safely solo tier 1.5s… Going to need to do some testing to see how that converts over to Sins of the SteelStar’s ranks and levels.
“Decent enough exp?” asked Louella after we managed to down our sixth shock-melon cheesecake knight. Swiping my brow and checking to see how my connectivity and mana were holding up, I nodded: these guys weren’t bad targets for grinding. Sucks they didn’t give any rare drops from the Game System, extra sucky that it would still take a while to raise this SteelStar’s level up enough for me to be able to raise my account’s rank to 2. Probably should invest in getting another unique attunement for when I reach rank 2, make sure I get my second SteelStar, I mused to myself as we made our way from RV Dazzling Desserts to Galactic Desserts Imports.
Thinking about it, I’d probably have to find one on my own because I probably won’t be able to build back up enough cred to cash in with the Goltinium Guild to have them create another top notch attunement mandala inscription with their freaky fast experts. And I’m pretty damn sure I can’t sweet talk them with the fact I’m pursuing what they told us to pursue ever so subtly. Sighing a bit, I looked up to see the other size of the giant donut shaped superworld, Rimmulus Prime: the hardcore space scifi technic sight of dazzling cityscapes visible from thousands of miles away was more than to get me to shift my train of thoughts.
“Excuse me! Wayfarers, may I have a minute of your time?” called out a voice as Louella and I made our way across the expansion, looking for more monsters to kill for loot and exp. Turning around I noticed a man in a skintight bodysuit with white flowers sticking out of his chest jogging after us, he didn’t look like one of the entities of this expansion and he didn’t look like a GNPC generated by the local Game System. Focusing in I noticed my display glitch out slightly; with a bit of refocus, I saw that he had a quest marker faintly glowing over his head and the flowers on his chest were more plentiful. What the hell?
“Of course, what do you need?” replied Louella, slowing down so the man could catch up. As he neared, he looked around to see if no one else was close and seeing that the nearest other person was about hundred or so feet out in a SteelStar, he lowered his voice and said,
“I am looking for some helping hands, and I have a feeling you two are capable people.”
“Helping hands with what?” I asked, shifting my stance and eyeing the man: he didn’t feel like a magi-sentient and he didn’t feel or even look that local.
“Aiding the Vraglixian Blossom Rebellion… In Starport Cyber.” Starport Cyber? As the artificial world cluster Startport Cyber? The very worlds that the Goltinium Guild want more knowledge on and influence in?
“Oh now I’m interested. Tell us more.”
