-Robert Fayn-

Feeling Miriam Port Slums’s clammy early June air breeze against my skin, I watched as the expansion formed right next to Galactic Dessert Imports, Treant Ochards’s latest expansion. It’s only been a week since Lucilla pitched the idea when we made Flasaporium Hub’s Sour, Sweet, & Savory, but she had already managed to work out a deal with Miria Port Slums’s board of vox reborns and guild heads to allow for her expansion. Are these guys just softies or something? I mused to myself before thinking back to the only correspondence I got from them: a simple message sent to my Sins of the SteelStars account that just asked not to expand the expansion or cause trouble. Basically a 180-compared to Verea and the other vox reborns of Neo Hollo Oceania, which probably was because I didn’t bother to get in touch with them: I’ve only expanded areas once before and I didn’t care to try and do it again anywhere, my Enigma still had a budget to keep.

Watching as everything stabilized, shifting from barren mechanical factory-esque ground with spotted slum squalors into a sort of scifi technic forest. It took a few seconds to realize why it might have been so easy for Lucilla to weasel herself into the deal, this public Hidden City was split between industrial barren wastes, compacted multi-story slums, and fancy technic highrises… and her expansion was a giant expanse of fresh greenery and potential produce. Free, well almost free, food to get people to shut up. A nice bit of nature is also always a plus.

“Indeed it is, I can understand why the Vox Comesssia was so adamant about allowing your friend’s expansion,” agreed Sal out of the blue.

“Wait? You know that the Vox Comesssia was involved with this?” I shot back, confused on how the hell that Sal knew that.

“This Hidden City has a true vox reborn for the Vox Phantasm of this hub. I am able to make a connection with them to get a vague understanding on what is happening here.”

“Is that just a vox system assistant thing?... Or is that a vox reborn thing in general?”

“The latter of course.”

“Good to know,” I muttered as I tried to figure out how to use that connection: it took a few seconds to focus on the mandalas that connected me to the Vox Phantasm and shift through their inscriptions to find the correct set of organic magics and protocols to use. Trying not to aggravate my PMF or new permanent cause of ABS, I started channeling and drawing on that connection: it was weird cause I can feel the Vox Phantasm I was connected to and then also the Vox Phantasm of this Hidden City’s hub and how they were connected. Focusing a bit more I started to get a very small feed of fragmented information about Miriam Port Slums’s current affairs, pretty much just gossip that would likely take hours to form anything coherent. 

This isn’t worth my time right now, I thought to myself with a sigh before heading into Treant Orchards. It felt weird crossing over, usually when I left my Enigma I could feel a shift in my connection. But now that I was an underling blackzone manager of Super-Sweet Valley and Treant Orchards, it was different, especially when I moved over to one of them. I wonder what monsters Lucilla has planned for this place, I continued to ponder as I made my way to the center of the blackzone, feeling the unique ambient mana of Lucilla’s Enigma get under my skin again. Treant Orchard dealt primarily with treants, plant mimics, and fruit and vegetable based dryads so it would be interesting to see what technic twist would be given to them.

It didn’t take too long for me to encounter a group of Treant Orchard’s staple fodder monster, stable saplings: oblong monsters made of green and brown vines and branches that were a bit larger than my Enigma’s living flans but still didn’t reach up to my hip in height, not including its feeler vines of course. Luckily they didn’t bother me cause I was an underling blackzone manager of this place and keeping my distance… the fact that I was tier 4.2 now probably helped. Let’s just focus on the task at hand, meeting up with Lucilla.

Making use of Flasaporium Hub’s Sour, Sweet, & Savory, I focused on my connection to the busty blackzone manager and worked on figuring which direction she was in. It was weird to think I was able to figure out how to do this on my own because the Grand Key gave multiple things: fi magecraft and potion making from me, Scorpius and a set of lances from Daphne, the psychopompic spirit and divinity from Lucilla, a deeper connection to the Veiled Countries that allowed us to easily use the Grand Key and its components anywhere influenced by the Obscurus System, and then a mirroring of mandalas between the three of us, including the phylatectary that can be used as a weapon like Louella’s. Also that weird set of magics for designating heirs and creating replacement magi-sentients for the Grand Key if one of us true deathed, that was weird and I didn’t want to bother with it all for some time. Tracking each other through the Grand Key was currently unique to me, probably from all my use of fi magecraft while making potions...

Finding Lucilla outside of the central tower of the expansion, a skyscraper made out of a single giant tree, I saw she was talking with a multicolour haired man that I intuitively knew was Miriam Port Slums’s Vox Phantasm’s Vox Reborn. Getting closer, I realized I couldn’t understand what the hell he was saying at all, it was just a fast paced slur of whistling slang.

“You wouldn’t have a translatory macro we can use?” asked Sal, trying to parse out what the man was saying while Lucilla joked about it with him.

“No, that’s Sous’s job and he’s currently grinding his SteelStar... fuck... I never bothered to learn about these languages cause of the Game System’s built-in translatory magics for proxy bodies,” I shot back, kicking myself mentally at the fact that I was stumped on what to do. I was decent at translatory magics, when I did research and prepared, but that wasn’t the case right now.

“Oh Robert! Hey!” shouted Lucilla, finally noticing me and waving me over. “Meet Velor.”

“Allo,” followed up the vox reborn before continuing to talk in whatever whistling language he was used to.

“Umm… hi?” I awkwardly replied back as I walked closer. How the hell was I supposed to say I didn’t understand him. I mean it was common courtesy for me to be the one to run the translatory macros, I didn’t need Daphne to drill that into my head with all the museum tours I’ve done back in New York.

“Could you like some assistance?” suddenly asked Jaffa from the back of my head with a teasing chime.

“Oh god, yes please,” I instantly shot back, waiting for Lucilla’s system assistant to rope me into whatever magic they were using.

“Lucilla, does Robert not understand Sheeian?” asked Velor as he went to rummaging around his personal sub-dimension, probably to find a translation device.

“Sorry, my usual method wasn’t available but Jaffa was able to patch me in,” I quickly interrupted in an awkward attempt to try and end this fuck up as fast as possible.

“Oh that’s great to hear!”

“Yeah… So why are you here anyway?” 

“Well it’s not like I’m going to miss up the chance to meet a blackzone manager that is also a mortal incarnation and an apprentice vox reborn of the Vox Phantasm now am I?” answered the vox reborn with a toothy grin. 

“Yeah, apparently we’re making big waves both here and in Neo Hollo Oceania. Tala has actually already approved my application to make an expansion next to your’s there also,” followed up Lucilla with pumped fists before having Jaffa conjure a translucent screen to show the message and map sent from Neo Hollo Oceania’s Vox Phantasm’s vox reborn. It was kind of weird to think that no one cared that we were apexes, but rather that we were mortal incarnations and vox reborns… then again it’s probably cause I didn’t feel much different: being an vox reborn apprentice meant I didn’t have much connection to the Vox Phantasm and well, the goddess Gaia was pretty damn inactive so I barely felt anything over my connection to her. Nothing really has changed… except, I guess I’m a tiny bit more conscious about the dreams of others and the ecosystem? now... only a tiny bit though.

“That’s pretty impressive, although is it okay for you to use all the spare dungeon cores like that?” I asked, both curious and impressed that Lucilla actually had enough makings for dungeon cores to make two expansions on a whim.

“I may not have the same amount of safeguards like lil sis with Aux cores and what not, but my Enigma is pretty low priority for getting trimmed ya know? So it’s a-okay!”

“Fascinating blackzone manager talk aside, it is time?” interrupted Velor, not looking annoyed at us but clearly waiting for something. I might have accidentally walked in something again didn’t I?

“Oh yeah monster creation time!”

“Yes, yes, yes, this is going to be so interesting.”

“Hey Robert, ya could some more practice with this stuff couldn’t ya? Don’t want to get rusty,” commented Lucilla with a sly grin as she had Jaffa conjure up the monster creation menu before swiping it over to me.

“Wait, you’re kidding right?” I yelped in confusion, trying to back out but quickly realized it was a no go, Velor was already staring at me in anticipation and there was no way I could outrun Lucilla anyway.

“Yup.”

“Okay, umm… I’ll just make a variant of your stable saplings then,” I commented, noting she already had her system assistant put in the monster information for it. As the busty blackzone manager nodded in approval, I went over the information: fodder tier 1.9, affinities in elemental plant and wellspring growth, simple enough personality, rarity, habitat, and drops, and then some vine based ability for entangling and whip strikes. With the vox reborn staring over my shoulder, I started to shift gears as best as I could and got to work. 

I wasn’t prepared to make a monster today, let alone a monster for Treant Orchard, but variants were simple enough. Getting the gist this monster was more for Velor’s entertainment than anything else through what was going on and my connections to Lucilla, both direct and indirect, I decided to make a variant that the vox reborn would enjoy. Starting with the affinities, I added wonderment and the Game System to the mix so that it would fit for the Vox Phantasm and the Digital Realm. Appearance wise I made it so there were small flower blossoms of every colour of the rainbow; I also went to make it so it’s sap-blood was filled with wonderment so it came out as a kaleidoscopic red. Crap that’s too much, I mentally noted to myself as I saw the generation cost and tier jump way up from there. Thinking for a few seconds, I went back and lowered the concentration of wonderment and made up for it visually by having the sap-blood have a built in glamour to give it the shimmering rainbow look of wonderment.

Moving on, I left personality and rarity alone and made it so the habitat was just this expansion. As for abilities, I adjusted the vine based attacks to make use of the Game System so it could have a bit more oomph to it with extra conjured vines and not fall behind compared to the monsters of Sins of the SteelStar. As for drops, I made it so the blackzone seed it dropped could be used to grow some garden flowers that Enigma already had its generation protocols, added Cyber-Sin Discs, and then finally made it so its sap-blood had a higher percent chance of being usable after you killed it. And with that, I somehow ended up making a fodder tier 2.3 variant of the stable sapling.

“What an interesting creature. Commencing prototype monster generation protocol.” chimed Jaffa as she went to creating one for Velor to see in the seedy flesh. As the ambient mana and aether around us dropped a bit, the space in front of us warped and chipped away until the prototype stable sapling burst out of the gap like it was jumping out of the ground.

“Amazing. So is this going to be a monster for this area?” asked Velor, giddy to see the stable sapling wobble around a bit, its colourful blossoms catching the light.

“Most likely, Robert did a great job don’tcha think?” replied Lucilla with a happy nod before winking over to me and continuing, “So time for your end of the bargain?”

“Oh yeah, information!” Information? Wait, Lucilla was doing this for information?

“It seems like it, she is surprisingly cunning isn’t she?” quibbed Sal as the vox reborn went on a speel,

“You two probably haven’t noticed it yet since you’re both new here, but there has been some activity here with an outsider group called the Vraglixian Blossom Rebellion. They’re from one of the artificial world clusters the Hidden City richer and higher tier citizens in the aerium suites have connection to, your friend Reagan Road is one of them. Actually pretty nice people, working toward helping sentient people become magi-sentient, or at least partial-magi-sentient… But not everyone is exactly kosher about that, especially the more violent players, so there have been some skirmishes.” 

“Okay, so help the Vraglixians and keep an eye out for evil guys messing with them? Gotcha,” quickly summed up Lucilla with a nod before going to do some final tweaks on the variant of stable sapling for Jaffa to finalize. “And there we go, stable phantasm steelstar sapling.”

With that out of the way, Velor didn’t stick around much longer since as much as he loved talking and idle gossip, he still had to help run the Hidden City and represent the Vox Phantasm. Honestly I was glad I wasn’t tied down to a Hidden City like him or Tala, being just an apprentice vox reborn was definitely a godsend, especially with all the stuff I already had on my plate from being a blackzone manager. 

“I didn’t know you did information gathering,” I piped up as the two of us moonwalked our way to a faux-World Bridge back to Earth Summer-6.

“Yup! Daphne always talks about fortifying your defenses, and hahaha, this is my way of doing that,” explained Lucilla between bounding leaps.

“Why does that feel like that is an incarnation of Gaia thing?” I asked, intuitively feeling why that was a good idea.

“Hahaha, kind of, Gaia is all about nature and understanding, but we aren’t that influenced by her cause we were born mortal incarnations of her.”

“Well that explains why I don’t feel that different… just more powerful? Also a bit more stretched out?”

“Stretched out?”

“Yeah, I don’t know how to explain it well enough,” I answered with a frown, focusing on all my connections: Historia Pastoria Sweets; Treant Orchards; Super-Sweet Valley; all my spirits and familiars, Umi, Beath, Sugar, Spice, and now also Daisy and Tirel; both my system assistants, Sous and Sal; Neo Draceld Z; the Vox Phantasm; Gaia; and even Scorpius. “It might just be my attachment burden syndrome speaking, but I’ve been sensitive to all the connections I have to other people and places.”

“Maybe you’re starting to develop your style of spellcraft now!” jokingly suggested Lucilla.

“Maybe…”