-Robert Fayn-

Holding aggro for Sous, I slammed down another shimmering energized crystal wall with my SteelStar’s first ability, Crash Barrier. As varying beams of energy and liquid from the creme caramel jammers slammed the wall and broke off chunks of crystals, I shouted back to him,

“Hurry up and do something!”

“I’m deciding the best course of action still,” called out my system assistant. Seriously? You’re in a level 1 SteelStar with only one ability and no weapons attached, it wasn’t a hard decision. He was never like this when he was possessing our monsters. Don’t tell me he was only good cause it was possession, I internally groaned as I twisted around my crystal wall and moved in closer. Before the creme caramels could charged up another volley of beams with their tendril-mounted satellite dishes, I activated my SteelStar’s third ability, Mana Buckler: a surge of Game System-altered protection mana flowed out of my left shield-like arm and shaped itself into an oversized translucent buckler.

The first few beams ate through the mana-wrought buckler before the rest of them plowed into me: I could feel pieces of my SteelStar break apart from acid and ionization. That’s what I get for keeping that ability at level 1, I thought as I continued to rush down the monsters. Luckily, Technologia of Holts model SteelStars were built sturdy even at lower levels: I could see that my SteelStar didn’t lose too much integrity from their attacks.

“If you are going to take too long, I’ll just finish off these guys for you,” I commented as I neared the oversized flan’s striking distance. With an awkward motion, I dipped down and slammed my arm into the ground to activate my SteelStar’s second ability, Rising Murk: feeling my SteelStar’s internal reserves be drained again, the metallic asphalt ground in front of me swelled and distorted but erupting into a thick wall made of now-translucent and liquidized ground and Game System-altered elemental ooze. 

Despite being a defensive ability like all my other SteelStar’s abilities, I was actually able to kill most of the monsters, magical beasts, and enemy entities of this Digital Realm with it: suffocating them instead of trying to directly damage them with the buster gauntlets I had equipped. It was so worth it levelling up this ability, I noted with a grin as I watched the creme caramels slowly die from asphyxiation, unable to break through the mass empowered by eight levels in the ability. Just because they were slimes and had that weird sexual osmosis version of reproduction, didn’t mean they didn’t have to breathe. 

“It’s strange to see you be so competent for once,” commented Sous as I deactivated the Rising Murk; the thing was a real drain on internal resources compared to the cost of creating Crash Barriers or the miniscule upkeep needed for keeping Mana Buckler active.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It’s just that you usually are more cowardly when you fight, and you often rely on me, Sal, Umi, and even your surcia-curcumedioia side while doing so. Why is now different?”

“It is quite impressive, it is not anywhere near the fighting styles of Umi or Beath,” followed up Sal from the back of my head. I mean yeah, I wasn’t using a fishing rod and I had no way to conjure up the time dilation altering clockwork that Beath used. Honestly it was crazy to see the two fight together on the rare occasions that Beath felt like training… which I guess explained the sweet tooths were so cute to nickname them demon girl and angelic boy duo. Thinking about the two, I realized what Sous and Sal were noticing: I wasn’t freaking out as much.

“It’s just because I’m in a proxy body, well in a SteelStar.”

“What difference does that make?” questioned Sous, not shifting his stance in the slightest: he really needed to work on being more expressive now that he had access to his own bodies.

“You guys wouldn’t understand, it’s a lot easier and safer for you guys to be revived. It’s not the same for me, shit can get real real fast.”

“You are always overly cautious when it comes to your personal safety.” 

“Geez you make it sound like a bad thing,” I scowled before turning to watch Sous pick up the loot. “Besides, you shouldn’t be the one talking right now. You didn’t do anything this fight. Aren’t you supposed to be good at this stuff?”

“Fighting in a SteelStar is different than fighting in a possessed monster. The finer points of locomotion and system casting are still new to me.”

“Oh come, you have a desire of relations SteelStar, your first ability should be a body-jack.” 

“It is, but that does not change the fact the root of the magic is different. Just because the styles of spellcraft involved are similar does not mean they use the same magics. You wouldn’t use any citrus juice on a dish because you could use lemon juice for it would you?”

“That’s just… ugh, you’re using a SteelStar right now Sous. Use what you have and just I don’t know, practice with it,” I groaned in frustration: it was weird seeing my system assistant act so incompetent for once, especially with how well he handled possessing monsters or my io-tourmaline dagger or even managing my lesser spell specialties. I should probably give him something simple to use as a weapon… probably a mid-range blaster, I mused, opening up my proxy inventory to see how much money I had in my account: barely anything but that wasn’t surprising, wasn’t exactly cheap to greater game and whenever I did get my hand on some cash I usually just ended up converting it to USD to play bills and rent.

“A weapon would be nice. Although I can’t say that I’m familiar with any weapons using this body.”

“Of course you aren’t. Who cares though at this point, let’s just find a cyber-sin sweets citizen that sells weapons and see if we can get a discount because I’m their blackzone manager.” 

“There are a handful of sweet citizens returning from a market haul just north of you two. Although you’ll have to likely deal with some clone glucosehounds and cloned snackcrows,” explained Sal audibly so that Sous could easily listen in. So just some large fleshy sugar-coated hounds and oversized wetware augmented birds, nothing too much to handle. Got to hand it the Game System for giving us some nice pre-generated creations, unlike a certain set of dungeon cores sticking us with orthruses and pisceses, I quipped to myself before having Sous follow after me to meet up with the entities.

Making our way through the semi-gritty technic suburban scape, it didn’t take too long for us to hit the pack of glucosehounds and snackcrows. Exactly being prepared this time, Sous activated his SteelStar’s ability and caused a few of the tendrils on one of his hands partially detach and turn translucent before shooting off toward one of the gluclosehounds. Watching as Sous body-jacked the glucousehound, I went to creating some Crash Barriers to confuse the snackcrows; with each sudden rupture of crystal walls, the flying vermin magical beasts just cawed in confusion instead of diving bombing us.

“Can’t you body-jack two at time?” I asked Sous, shifting gears and heading into punch some of the gluclosehounds before the snackcrows figured out what to do.

“This body is only level 1, it does not have a large amount of internal reserves,” answered my system assistant, as he sort of clumsily controlled the minor magical beast to attack the others.

“Just use the mana cartridges in your proxy pod then.” 

“If my connectivity suffers from this, it’s your fault.”

“You’ll be fine,” I shot back as I crushed a glucosehound’s skull in with a burst of kinetic energy from my buster gauntlets. Even with a low level SteelStar, some lower reaction times from lag weren't going to kill him, regardless of how fragile his model was. With a slight nod, Sous used his other arm to body-jack another minor magical beast. 

Between Sous controlling two of the clone glucosehounds and my burster gauntlets and Crash Barrier, we were able handle the magical beasts well enough, although the cloned snackcrows were a hassle since neither of us had any ranged options of attack and I wasn’t going to be stupid and try to use one of my mandalas willy nilly, not like I had any ranged spells though.

“Jacking Wires will take a little bit to get used to, but it is a useful seasoning nonetheless,” commented Sous as he shifted through the paltry loot of some organic materia and a few credits; all I could see was a few tens worth of USD in profit if we sold all of it, no surprise there, they were just vermin and minor ranked magical beasts.

“Any bad limitations on it?”

“Only works on monsters and magical beasts. I can only assume it is because I’m a system assistant.” So no entities, spirits, or system-created sentient beings like the GNPCs? Heck, not even any of the robotic forces out there, Well that takes a lot of the table on what we can grind for levels.

“Good to know, now let’s just grab you a weapon now.”

“You are being surprisingly tactical about all of this.”

“Remember, proxy body.”

“Still, this is still reality,” noted Sous as we headed toward our target. “And you weren’t this skilled in Neo Hollo Oceania.”

“That was ingredient hunting and delving, this is greater gaming. I can actually unwind here and I actually have some practice here, although I’m still not a pro at this stuff.”

“So even here you are incompetent in comparison, I understand.”

“Seriously?! That’s where you go with that? You’re the one to talk!”

“I am a system assistant, I wasn’t made to directly fight others, or use system slots or facsimiles.” Well, he got me there… but still low blow, I thought sourly as we turned the counter and found ourselves looking at the group of entities, walking around a lev-cart filled with basic weaponry and upgrades and being flanked by some SteelStars probably hired for a low-stake escort quest.

A few minutes of partially successful attempts at haggling, I managed to buy Sous a basic mid-range blaster for a thousand credits. I can’t believe I ended up spending like five hundred bucks for something you could get from being mildly lucky in a level 15 ship raiding quest or just spending enough time rummaging around in a system lair, I mentally complained as Sous went through the process of binding the gun to his account and proxy inventory. 

“You did get it for 15% off though,” pointed out Sous, reading my mind. Before I could point how bad of a haggle that was, a fancy looking SteelStar with a series of floating internal reserves battery pack attachments interrupted me,

“Robert, Sous, I wasn’t expecting to see you two here.”

“Wait… Reagan?” I asked turning around as I instantly recognized the familiar nonchalant gentlemanly voice.

“In the SteelStar.”