-Louella Barclay-

Walking out of the Sugar Hills branch guildhall, I held the tier 7.0 enchanted contract in my hands and looked back at Ras and Mita to see how unnerved they were. I wasn’t too surprised, Historie Pastoria Sweet’s interactions with the Goltinium Guild has been minimal and usually through intermediaries or phone calls. Me becoming the designated spellman for our Enigma was a long time coming, I mused, thinking about all the liaison work I’ve been assigned by Robert and the others. Although without me, we wouldn’t have been able to get a loan for a dungeon core restoring Aux core: no guild, let alone place of learning, would part with an Aux core that can near-instantly recreate destroyed dungeon cores, Schema and all, at the cost of months-long charging without having one of their members to keep an eye on things.

“Just another loan on the books to deal with… and we’re still dealing loans from the children of the locale from Alihi’a’Pounga and the Refresco hub, not to mention the contract from Zethuron,” commented Mita with a frustrated sigh as he typed away at a tablet.

“We’ll have to just make do, we still have to get the other dungeon core restoring Aux cores from Ignae Automata and Mercury-Hyacinth-Johari, not to mention the autonomous blackzone generating Aux cores from Glyiria and Zethuron,” followed up Ras with a sigh of his own being continuing to complain, “I mean by the saintesses, I can’t believe the attacks have gotten to the point that we dealing with the black wyrm of abstraction again.”

“It’s always better to be safe than sorry. We should be glad that between the various proxy services we have access to and the end of day’s plague clouds that we are able to stay in the black with all the proxy body activity. Not to mention these Aux cores will benefit us in the long run,” I chimed in, trying to soothe their worries. I could understand why they were so frustrated having to deal with my guild, they both had a lot ahead of them. After Ras worked with Sous to get his pair of Aux cores from Mercury-Hyacinth-Johari and Ignae Automata he was going to be stuck balancing the books in preparation for the final fights. As for Ras, he was going to have to work with Neo Draceld Z to get the autonomous blackzone generating Aux cores from Zethuron and Glyiria then try get the autonomous blackzones to appear in Historie Pastoria Sweets proper and System Assistant’s Caketopia while analyzing the artificial world cluster anchoring Aux core in the later. But all I have to do was work on bolstering our defenses with the rest of the Goltinium Spellman Nine and my housemates.

“Well let’s just get this done, I can’t just sit around and wait for Robert to make another unreasonable request for me to have to budget,” quipped Mita, waving as he tucked the tablet away in his personal subdimension. Good to see he is practicing with maintaining a personal subdimension now, I thought with a smile that Mita wasn’t just focusing on the extra Outer Genomes Tech class specialty he picked up when he made his 2nd generational synthesis or the extra Iogem Glyphs class specialty he was given when he, Ras, Draceld, and myself were given Enigma Manager’s Iogem Phylactery by the Goltinium Guild per Robert’s request. It was a pleasant surprise to find out I was getting a second phylactery, but it made sense with how my other one was being used due to the wild card mandala inscription: but it stung knowing that it also meant I had to work harder to rebuild my house’s cred.

“Keep us updated, I’ll be checking up on Draceld with Terrin if you two need me,” followed up Ras as he and Mita broke off from me to head to their respective duties.

“Iris, what’s the status on my housemates in Starport Cyber?” I telepathically asked my system assistant as I slid the enchanted contract into my own personal subdimension.

“Micah and Jean are still waiting for you, but Gilbert and Xinyi took Wallace to raid a SteelStar Supremacist hideout,” answered Iris without a second’s delay.

“I feel sorry for him, having to put up with Gilbert’s and Xinyi’s hot headedness.”

“The two of them do seem like that sort of person from their system slots.”

“You’ve been looking into our system slots?”

“Yes, but only marginally, I don’t have any really magics or protocols for doing so. I am surprised you all have so many system slots but so few spirits.”

“It’s just the places we’ve been. None of us are interested in being spirit mages and the Goltinium Guild originally wanted us to be mappers for the floating spherical orrery world that is my homeworld, Mugin,” I replied, pausing to feel the half dozen system slots I had dedicated to Hybrid Systems that covered the world, although none of them made use of the Reaper or Asset Systems. All of them were still low leveled and low ranked because I never had much time to make use of them, especially in comparison to my system slot to the El Vega hub’s Asset System with Tomyris-Osyris-Anayris or even the suite of nine system slots that contained Zenobia, Elizer, and Himiko. Hopefully that will change soon enough when I get around to convincing the others to make expansions into Mugin.

“I would enjoy seeing your home world someday,” commented Iris with what I felt was a smile.

Making my way to my penthouse in RV Dazzling Desserts, I went straight to plug into Sins of the SteelStar. I could feel the empowerment I got from Johari’s coded system slot’s connection thrumming with energy: it’s magics and perculiary-shaped protocols forming a bracelet for my proxy body and not my SteelStar. Having a second system slot to let me make use of this proxy body along with my Lemon Five Powers SteelStar’s Spirit-Blade was nice. Although hopefully I wouldn’t have to make use of it today.

“You’re late,” commented Micah sourly, also in his own proxy body, as I warped down to our meeting point in Netro Road.

“I’m sorry, the guild’s contract makers were being thorough… as usual,” I apologized, inspecting both Micah and the idle Jean’s proxy bodies. It was my first time seeing how their empowerments manifested since Ultraviolet Five Powers SteelStar’s Interfacing and Bronze System Cast SteelStar’s Halo didn’t have physical forms normally; naturally both of them had the bracelets like I did but Micah had an additional violet visor and Jean had a glove with a holographic halo on it.

“Well, while you’ve been busy playing blackzone manager, we’ve been working with our friends in the Vraglixian Blossom Rebellion.”

“Yeah, Fernand has been giving us a bunch of quests to do,” followed up Jean, tuning into the conversation to name drop the GNPC member of the Vraglixian Blossom Rebellion that I met a month ago with Micah. As much as I wanted to interact with the man more, dealing with Robert, Historie Pastoria Sweets, and relationships between it, the guild, and Glyiria has kept my hands full, which meant Micah was on point for dealing with him.

“A bunch of do-nothing missions. It’s been a month, Louella, and he’s only sent us on three raids against Vraglix bashers! Although… definitely heard enough of the term ‘scumient-lover’ to hate it. I mean seriously it is such a lame joke.”

“It’s not a joke.”

“I don’t care, that’s what I get when my Silent Reader picks it up tone wise. Oh yeah, the tone of these people are all over the place, it’s a fucking powder keg the second you go anywhere near the lower layers of this city.” Hopefully it wasn’t enough to agitate him with his cursed system slot he accidentally obtained from using his favours with some of our upperclassmen: the budget stratum 3 multi-system slot he obtained was useful, but the downside of its cursed component possessed was a poor addition for him.

“I take it we’re going to have to head down to the lower layers?” I asked, recalling the fact that due to the fact that Netro Road was a technic megalopolis it was built as six layers of cityscape stacked on top each other like an incomplete 3D jigsaw puzzle. Of course that was hard to tell when you were in Old Fashioned New Imports since it was on the outer reaches of the megalopolis’s layer four and didn’t have layer five or six looming over it.

“Yeah, all the way down to layer two. Fernand wants us to take out some of the drones that the SteelStar Supremacists have been using for scouting and encrypted messages,” answered Micah as he sent over the quest via our accounts’ friend chat. I knew they were criminal players, but to think they would make use of something this complex so recklessly, I mused as I read through the file to find out that these drones were actually monster-robotics hybrids that they made use of in all forms: contracted via magical devices, mandalas, and system slots; controlled via various spells and magical devices; and even rogue without a master to direct them. Hybrids were rare enough, but a robotics hybrid? That was some complex spellcraft. 

Without a second thought I had Iris scan the file via my proxy body and realized how awkward fighting these drones might be for me. I didn’t plan to be a spirit mage, but between Iris, Tomyris-Osyris-Anayris, Zenobia, Elizer, and Himiko, I was one now and this proxy body didn’t have anything to leverage that. I’ll just have to make due with my spirit-blade.

As the three of us made our way down from our current location in layer three, just a few kilometers away from Historie Pastoria Sweets, down to layer two, Jean took every chance he could to sample the local delicacies. And as much as Micah hated the delays, I enjoyed them: it was a chance to taste the various sauce and crystalline seasoning covered dishes and take note of the wide variety of different races and cultures within the city. Naturally there were a handful of misses with the food, not just because we were using proxy bodies but because when you involve ingredients with chemical compositions of more than a few percentages of extra-periodic compounds and dishes meant for literally alien physiologies, somethings were better left off uneaten and undigested.

“It seems that not only Jean but Robert is rubbing off on you,” chimed Iris as I enjoyed skewered balls of chopped up meats covered in an umami-and-mana-rich sauce.

“I’m an underling blackzone manager of a dessert themed Enigma, I should be endeavoring to be more of a foodie as Robert would put it,” I replied over our connection, watching the difference of quality of life between the layers rapidly shift like a crude gradient from the lift I was currently riding.

“Hope you too are done stuffing yourself, cause I think I’m seeing our first mark,” quipped Micah, pulling out a white rifle that looked like a technic telescope on a pistol grip and gunstock from his proxy inventory. Aiming it out toward the air above the hazy expanse above a lower class marketplace, he pointed out a boxy drone with five circular propellers and a mounted assault rifle: it was impressive that he was even able to pick it out from all the other drones through the haze and holograms.

“Phah, that hit the spot, now let’s see if this drone hits the spot also,” laughed Jean, downing his last thing of chopped up meat and prematurely opening the lift’s glass door. With a glow of circulating mana from his glove’s halo, the greater wereraccoon jumped onto the exposed roofing below us.

“Damnit, doesn’t he know that we don’t have body augmentation with these proxy bodies?”

“But we do have our bracelet’s quantum leaps,” I reminded Micah before following after Jean. Twisting through the air, I activated one of the lesser abilities of our empowerment endowed bracelets: a short-range teleportation that could adjust for inertia and momentum. With the sucking noise of rapidly displaced air, I landed on the roofing behind Jean with a wince. Micah was right about worrying about a lack of body augmentations: no high tier or passive mana circulation to bolster our proxy bodies’ physical capability.

“You guys are idiots,” commented Micah, switching to comms. “You could have just waited, but no, you had to jump.”

“It’s more fun this way. Get the blood pumping! Nothing like getting some wind in your tail,” laughed Jean as he bolted after the drone, not letting the uneven elevation slow him down in the slightest.

“You don’t even have a tail right now. You know what? Whatever. I’m just going to mark these guys as I see them. Try not to fall and die, or attract unwanted attention. I do not want to deal with proxy body repair this weekend.”

“On it! Oh this is going to be gouda!”

“Yes it is,” I chimed in, surging in after Jean, making ample use of quantum leaps. Before the drone could even pick either of us up on its radar, I was slashing through the air at it as Micah worked on marking more of them and taking sniping shots when he could. Looking at the mission, I noticed that there was no counter for it, only a time limit. Let’s hope we do enough for Frenand to be impressed, I thought to myself, already imagining how much of a hassle the three of us would be to the SteelStar Supremacist's information network in the coming days.