-Ras Von Leoia-
Sitting down at the local high end cafe at Appleville, I couldn’t help but feel queasy; stress and chronophasia was not a pleasant mix. I could understand why Terrin was so keen with decompressing himself, even it was only relaxing in Alihi’a’Sweets Resorts, Embassy-Resorts a la Rainberries, Galactic Desserts Imports, or RV Dazzling Desserts for their 125% time dilations instead of our Enigma’s usual 150%. Perhaps I should actually try to have some of his hypochondria rub off on me, I mused, watching my half-brother eat some medical herb-soaked fruit. It was surprising that he hadn’t already invested in medical mandalas, or at least tried to get one of those wellbeing and vitality improving mandalas that I’ve kept hearing so much talk about because of Borolio. Knowing him, it’s likely cause he was focusing on trying to get the Lion of Von Leoia herit crest since it did have some body improving abilities.
Looking at my phone’s clock, I noted we still had some time before our siblings and the other nobles had to arrive. It wasn’t too big of an issue: working with thirty-six hours and thirty-hours long days did wonders for not just your productivity but surprisingly also your patience. Although the two of us didn’t have to wait long for Jezebel to arrive with her entourage; it was only natural for them to arrive early to be not only polite and catch any lapse in preparation on our part.
Seeing Artoria and Arthur riding upon the back of a conjuring of the Lion of Von Leoia, Terrin straightened up in attention. He is obsessed with our family’s herit crest isn’t he? I thought to myself before suppressing a frown when I noticed Arthur was wearing his Order of the Clean Hunt robes. The fact he chose to join one of Glyiria’s oldest orders of mages and delvers and renouncing his claim to the Von Leoia house always rubbed me the wrong way. Why would someone with potential claim to ones of the higher ranking houses of the nations give up that claim? I know it wasn’t to spite me, but it was frustrating nonetheless.
“Terrin, Ras, it is good to see you two,” commented my half-sister with a simple smile, various chromatic manas rolling over her in gentle waves. Her particular brand of spellcraft that involved multiple mandala expansion produces, extra class specialty sets, and even anachronistic class specialty mandalas did leave as a mana-producing powerhouse, easily bypassing that pure magus sweet tooth, Minerva Poppers, and probably even Lucilla Kite with her Grand Key.
“It’s good to see you too, Jezebel. You brought along more people than you said you would, and I see you all brought the lion also,” replied Terrin for me, pointing out there were three government officials than our last communication detailed. Likely last minute changes, although we couldn’t fault them too much: Historie Pastoria Sweets had gone under a handful of last minute changes the past week itself.
“Oh yes, when we heard that Historie Pastoria Sweets acquired four new areas recently, the blackzone affairs department and the department of surveying decided it would be best to send more officials to spend up the process. As for the lion, well Artoria and Arthur are doing endurance training in keeping him conjured.”
“I’m currently beating Artoria by two hours,” followed Arthur with a grin, ruffling the marble-esque mane of the Lion of Von Leoia.
“Keep it up then,” replied Terrin, eyeing the aloof lion; sensing that he would likely derail the conversion toward our family’s herit crest, I decided to step in and ask about the plans for the survey,
“Jezebel, how long do you think the survey should take with the increase in number of areas?”
“The preliminary surveys should only take a few hours, but beyond that neither of the departments could give me an estimated time. Something about how finnicky artificial world cluster could be.” That made sense, artificially stabilized lesser worlds were maintained by the presence of Grands, or at very least a group of extraordinarily powerful blackzones working together: you generally had to have an invitation to expand your blackzone onto them.
Although Witch Synthia was one of the exceptions primarily anchored to this part of the metaverse, there were so many smaller extraplanar worlds branch of the central lesser world and so many hills of fantasy overlapping the entire artificial world cluster. You could reasonably split through the metaphorical cracks and install an area of your blackzone there and then reasonably attempt to establish yourself amongst the other blackzones and hills of fantasies.
Of course most of the stuff I knew about these cases were theoretical; my blackzone management classes were about pragmatics and maintaining artificial blackzones, not dealing with legendary tier and higher blackzone managers to get access to their private world-spanning enclaves. If it wasn’t for the fact the gem of fancies that Draceld Z dropped was attuned to one of the larger hills of fantasy that we knew originated from Witch Synthia, I would have said the prospect was impossible. Doesn’t help that one of the only rulers of Witch Synthia we know of that has local ties is in bed with the Fuer-Freans. Dealing with their northern barbaric culture would needlessly complicate things, I thought to myself with a scowl as I listened to the government officials introduce themselves and explain their jobs in the upcoming survey.
Most of them I already had a rudimentary understanding of their tasks: measuring connectivity to the Greater Aether Veils and other sources of mana, determining composition of the ambient and affinity toward the Obscurus System, topographic and monstological mapping for dunjologists to catalog and document. Some of the other things they were talking about went over my head but I bared with it until we reached the trio of surveyors that would be incharge of the gem of fancies and finding a suitable host for it; for one of the mundane-centric departments, they worked incredibly well when it came to nuanced magics, likely cause how closely they worked with the dunjologist department amongst others. Myself, Mita, and Rober are all ineligible, Neo Draceld Z likely possessed a high affinity toward the gem of fancies but on the names of all the saintesses we would never give it to her, and as for Louella… she is already a spellman so making her also a stargranted would likely cause a dangerous imbalance between all of us.
“Already mulling things over are we?” asked Jezebel as the officials wrapped up their presentations and readied their gear while the cafe went to catering our lunches.
“There’s a lot of moving pieces right now,” I noted between bites of my pickle and tripe sandwich. On the Earth and Goltinium front of things we were still dealing with the presence of the end of days, Borolio of the Plague Clouds, in the background and waiting for our requests to Louella to be fulfilled, which surprisingly if she was being honest would only take a few more days. With Robert, we were dealing with his latest fancy taking the form of Sin of the SteelStars and our new areas spawned from that, including an Interconnection to a type of blackzone that is not only hidden from common knowledge by karma and the wills of the metaverse but also run a person that is most definitely a legendary tier mage like Reagan Road. And finally we had this: Glyirian and my fellow nobles looking to use our Enigma as a waypoint to accessing an artificial world cluster. We didn’t even know if this survey would bear any fruit, or if we could find a suitable candidate to become our stragranted. We still have to factor any potential moves that Zethuron and Neo Draceld Z may take, I noted to myself as I tried to think out all the possibilities.
“Well, that’s just life for our family isn’t it?” offhandedly laughed Jezebel, making a slight gesture over to Terrin not only talking with Artoria and Arthur, but attempting to have the Lion of Von Leoia converse with him also. The Von Leoia house did have a great deal of complications this generation: my mother’s divorce, siring me with a knight while Terrin and Jezebel’s father remarried and sired Artoria and Arthur, Terrin becoming a witch-cursed, Arthur joining the Order of the Clean Hunt, and even myself becoming a blackzone manager to escape the fate of being another mere noble grata. It was a headache to think about all the gossip that stemmed from us in comparison to other local noble houses.
“Let’s just finish up our lunch and get the survey underway, shall we?”
“Of course, the sooner we get started, the better. Also I have to thank you for this meal, this was a good cafe to choose.”
“You’re welcome,” I replied with a curt nod, not bothering to explain it was actually Terrin that chose this place, not me.
Bringing the team of government officials along with our siblings into the Enigma was a simple enough task: Appleville’s expedited roads to the blackzone made for easy travel. There was some issue when we tried to move to the Earth side of Historia Pastoria Sweets as we encountered another pop-up station of US’s Boundary Watch. You’d think they would be too busy with the roving plague clouds to try to bother us, but luckily Jezebel had come prepared with papers so it didn’t take too long.
“Are they usually like that?” asked my half-sister as the government official went to work surveying Historie Pastoria Sweets proper.
“Sadly, yes,” I replied with a furrow brow as I watched the surveyors send out mechanical bird-like constructs, sending trails of mist and magical miasmas in their wake. “Luckily we have Mita to deal with them. Apparently they get really nasty when the IRS gets involved.”
“IRS?”
“Their department of taxation.”
“Ah, well for a cultist, Mita does seem like an excellent account.”
“He is surprisingly competent, barely asked any questions when he filled out the tax forms that the Glyirian government sent,” I commented with a nod, letting our conversion to devolve into idle chat while the government officials continued their work and Terrin continued to try sweet talk the twins and the Lion of Von Leoia. Unsurprisingly, my half-sister was dealing with suitors and succession as the head of the Von Leoia house. She was only a few years off from her thirties: it was either get married and sire a heir or open up the crate of monsters that were succession claims. I feel sorry for anyone trying to web her, I idly quipped to myself, thinking of how terrifying her distinct brand of spellcraft could be.
“So you’ve turned down over a dozen knights and final generation nobles?”
“Yes, they are like slimes coming out of a Witch’s Nest. All they care about is the title and making sure their children are nobles. The fact they don’t even bother to think about compatibility with spellcraft and professions is just aggravating also.”
“Speaking of your spellcraft… That’s why you were assigned to lead this survey wasn’t it? Not Uncle Ester?” I wouldn’t been surprising if it was Uncle Ester’s doing in some part, but I couldn’t shake the idea it cause of her spellcraft: the scant knowledge I knew of Witch Synthia was that their mages generally specializes in a drawing in and refining large quantities of mana like my half-sister.
“Someone has been doing their research,” answered Jezebel as she emitted a dense mass of clear low-attribute mana and held it in her hand like a ball.
“Madam Von Leoia, Sir Von Leoia, we have finished the preliminary survey,” commented one of the officials, interrupting our conversion. Looking at surveyor with his mechanical avians, my half-sister asked,
“And the results?”
“Better than expected Madam Von Leoia. We knew this Enigma had an indirect route to Witch Synthia via Ignae Automata, but that’s not all we found. Both of the new blackzones the Enigma has Interconnections with, they have direct routes to Witch Synthia. Not only that, one of them we think actually belongs to one of the rulers of the artificial world cluster.” I froze at that, did Robert just accidentally secure us the chance to serve a waypoint into Witch Synthia? Was his luck something from the heavens?... Or something from hellish depths?... Saintess Von Helmsim, please do not let this bite us in the ass.
