-Lucilla Kite-
Staring down at the completed mandala formula base between me, Daphne, and Robert, I couldn’t help but smile: all it took us was four high quality favors and a hour or so of talking with the blackzone gods to make this mandala inscription of a Grandy Key, Flasaporium Hub’s Sour, Sweet, & Savory. This was so exciting! It’s been years since I’ve gotten Honorary Goddess of Gaia’s Enigmas and now I was getting a chance to get a second one. And Daphne was always complaining about me being slow about expanding my Enigma and raising my tier: helping out the local communities and blackzone farmers was so much fun, besides I was the one of the go-to girls for our hub’s blackzone gods when it came to non-nefarious requests and deals.
“You two sure this is safe?... There’s a lot of mandala inscriptions in there,” hesitantly asked Robert as he stared down at the large disc, glowing with mana and magics. Aww he is so cute when he is having second doubts, I mentally cooed before going to reassure him,
“It should be safe enough, especially since you had Terrafisimo make it so your PMF won’t act up when you accept the mandala inscriptions. Besides what’s the fun when there is no risk?”
“Lucilla, the last thing we should be encouraging Robert to do is take more risks,” chided Daphne with a frown. “That being said, you don’t just simply turn down a Grand Key, especially once that would elevate your position amongst blackzone managers. The long term rewards you could reap with it are too good to pass up.”
“I feel like that’s the story of my life right now, horrible short term shit and the potential of some great return long turn…” sighed Robert, looking at the two of us before looking back at the mandala formula base. “I guess there isn’t any turn back now is there though? I already used up my favor with Terrafisimo.”
“Pretty much, the only thing you can do at this point is cut your losses and we won’t let you. We used our favors on this also and either all of us use it or none of us use it.” Yup! That’s right lil sis, I mentally cheered on Daphne as she brought Robert back around and explained how to accept all the mandala inscriptions: it was going to be painful but as the saying goes, ‘no pain no gain.’ After a quick moment of steeling ourselves, the three of us touched the large disc and activated it, sending its payload straight into our mandalas.
Mana and magics surged through me, expanding my mandalas and inscribing a good number of them. I could feel my metrics shoot up a notch as I became an apprentice vox reborn of the Vox Phantasm and went from tier 5.4 to tier 5.8. This is what it feels like to be a vox reborn? Aahhh its so wonderful, I internally laughed to myself as I felt new connections forge, not just to Super-Sweet Valley and Historie Pastoria Sweets but a Hidden City universes away. The feeling of mana-drunkenness and euphoria was overwhelming as I felt the incredibly faint presence of the Vox Phantasm observing me and Daphne.
“That is correct, you are now one of the Vox Phantasm’s apprentice vox reborns,” suddenly replied a monotone unisex voice from the back of my head as I released my grip on the spent mandala formula base. While Daphne and Robert did the same, lurching back while doing so, I was already going to give my new system assistant a name,
“Jaffa, meet Bosch! I hope you two become the best of pears, hahaha!”
“Hehehe, nice one Lucilla. But I think we should check up on Robert, we might have went too far for Robert to handle,” chimed Jaffa as Robert suddenly sprawled himself on the floor, slick with sweat and mana. Perhaps having him undergo a race advancement while having twenty-eight of his mandalas being inscribed at once was too much to handle for him.
“Yeah maybe a 18 mandala formula Grand Key along with the two extra class specialty sets, advanced class specialty sets, lesser spell specialty, and then the racial feature and third set school from the race advancement was a bit much,” I mentally replied back, giddy with mana-drunkeness as I went to help Robert up.
“And this is why you don’t inscribe an entire Grand Magus-grade at once without a shit ton of safeguards,” quipped Daphne in frustration as she leaned against Sugar Scorpio to get herself stabilized.
“Did ya get hit by something bad?”
“What do you think? I just got two race advancements at once with a Grand Key. Ended up with Sim-AHC of the Incarnation of Gaia.” Ouch, atrophic hibernation condition, that isn’t a pretty manalogical condition to be stuck with. Although having your mandalas being prone to atrophying and compressing themselves wasn’t going to be an issue for someone who was religious with maintaining their mandalas with training like lil sis. “I’ll just have to get a few Effect Suppression sub-features to deal with it.”
“Ya think ya can see what Robert ended up for his racial feature?”
“Well, he isn’t swimming in cursed mandalas so Terrafisimo held up her end of the bargain, he just got Lesser Sim-ABS of the Incarnation of Gaia. Knowing how bad he is with his mandalas, it’s going to mess with him a lot.”
“Oh that’s not too bad. We can just teach him some mandala maintenance and mana circulation techniques to keep his mandalas in tip top shape even with some attachment burden syndrome!”
“You could give me liquor… a lot of liquor…” groaned Robert, summoning two cake-eye-balls and he struggled to keep himself up.
“Robert can’t keep himself from touching the hot stove can he?” asked one of the cake-eye-balls with a voice I almost instantly recognized as one of his system assistants, “This is a lot to process… Hmm… increase in tiers to tier 4.2, race advancement to quadra race advanced with a mortal incarnation as Robert’s sixth race, two-hundred-and-six total mandalas, twenty-eight new inscriptions including class specialties in elemental plant, Weapon-Implements, and Advanced Sweet Casts, a body-system slots hybrid phantasma with two system slots, one of which already has a connection forged, and then four system slots now possessing connections, Link Bridges, Living Necropolises, and surprisingly the World System, not to mention two spirits.”
“Two spirits?” I asked, tilting my head in confusion. I could understand him getting one spirit when he acquired a connection to the Living Necropolis cause of the attunement I added to the Grand Key’s mandala formula, Earthen Graven Grasp, was an attunement toward both the Living Necropolis and the Veiled Countries as a whole despite not granting a psychopompic spirit.
“It seems that Plants of Gaia, Afterlives, & Mysteries, the synthesis attunement made out of the attunement and racial feature mark you added to the mix provides a multi-origin spirit named Daisy that is connected to Adventure, Reaper, and World Systems. It is currently at… a luncheon with the rest of Robert’s spirits at one of his many resorts,” explained Jaffa as she summoned herself a floating fruit of a body to interact with Robert’s system assistant. A few seconds later, Bosch and Daphne’s system assistant, Candy followed suit as they made use of my 2nd generational synthesis feature, Mass Organic Com Array.
“Ooo! New spirit! Also wow, look lil sis, your system assistant can use Jaffa’s Com Array now.”
“I can see that,” commented Daphne nonchalantly as she watched Robert’s other cake-eye-ball, probably piloted by his other system assistant, Sal, work on making a cocktail. “Sch, I should probably head out now and do some research on our new Grand Key. I’ll tell you if I find anything interesting or bad about it.”
“Then I’ll keep an eye on Robert!” I replied as I watched my mentee start to teleport away. I probably could have stopped it, but this was the perfect excuse to spend some alone time with Robert. Ahhh this is perfect, I have a mirroring Grand Key with Robert now, I internally laughed to myself, excited I managed to pull this off.
“So you did use this as an excuse to be close to him. Why did you invite Daphne into making the Grand Key also then?” asked Jaffa, sensing my emotions and using our telepathic link instead of audibly talking.
“Because Daphne is my lil sis, I can’t just leave her out of it. Besides it makes it less awkward if things don’t work ya know?”
“Well things will never work out if you don’t ask him out.”
“I know! Aahh, I don’t know if he is into older girls or not though!”
“You’re only two years older than him and you are both quadra race advanced, the age gap is like only a season or so,” chimed Jaffa as Robert started to return to his senses as he sipped on a crudely made cocktail.
“I feel like shit right now, really high, but like shit,” muttered the blackzone manager, wiping some sweat from his brow.
“Well that’s what happens when you become an apex,” I noted with a laugh.
“Wait… I’m an apex now?”
“Yup! Same with me and Daphne also. All you have to do to become an apex is be at least three different types of pinnacles of mages. So we’re blackzone managers, mortal incarnations, phantasma users, and also apex.”
“Holy crap… that’s just… wow… I guess this cursed mandala was worth it.”
“I wouldn’t say that, if I heard was true about apexes, then it isn’t that popular type of pinnacle of mages. Cause ya know, it’s connected to magos.”
“Oh yeah… I think I know what you mean… a specialization as a generalist.” You did have to hand to Robert, he was actually way better at picking up on things than his plain but cute appearance entailed. I could definitely see the weird sort of appeal of specializing in the simple will of magic itself, variety at the price of potency, but I knew neither myself, Robert, or Daphne were really interested in that. “So… now what? We’re each other’s underlings, does that mean we work on making monsters and areas for each other or something?”
“Nope, not at all, it just means we’re allies! Although you can definitely do that if you want.”
“Hahaha, yeah no,” laughed Robert before coughing a little bit and calming down. “I suck at monster creation compared to my own underlings, they honestly all beat me out on blackzone management skills.”
“It’s the same for me and proxy access stuff, I’m horrible at that stuff. So I leave it to Tonny and Reggie, oh and I guess Neo Dracmos H now.”
“Neo Dramos H?”
“Oh ya didn’t know did ya? You and Daphne fought a version of Draceld, but I fought something else, a cosmic based one instead of an eldritch based seeded monster called Dracmos. So I ended up with Neo Dracmos H.”
“Geez, Zethuron really did create a lot of seeded monsters.”
“Yup,” I replied, watching as Sous and Sal in their cake-eye-balls went to make Robert another cocktail. Not wanting to miss this opprutinity, I pumped up myself and decided to ask him a request, “Hey, Robert, do ya think ya give me a tour of your resorts?”
“Yeah of course Lucilla, why are you even bothering to ask? I’d give one to you and Daphne regardless.”
“Ah that’s great! Cause I’m, hehe, have some spare makings of dungeon cores and I wanted to make an area or two next to yours.”
“Seriously!”
“Yeah, I mean you have so many amazing resorts in all these special locales… and all I have are some expansions for farms in the upper universe groups,” I replied, quickly making use of some info-karmic retribution to help repress my subtle blushing. Wincing slightly and still unaware to how I was feeling, Robert replied,
“Thanks, but ouch shit that hurt. Upper universe groups? I think Louella told me about those before. God I wish karma would just give me a break already. Anyway.. I mean that'd be awesome, but I mean, both of my expansions outside the Glyirian ones are in hidden cities, you’ll actually have to deal with their Voxes and vox reborns.”
“Don’t worry, that should be easy enough for me, now show your resorts,” I commented with a grin, cracking my knuckles. Yes! Success!
