-Robert Fayn-

It was amazing to think I was getting to join Blazehopper’s stream again. I mean to think nearly half a year ago I was pinching pennies over system slots and relying on attunements and other mandalas on a quest with him in Neo Hollo Oceania and now I was diving straight into the different uses of system slots. But I guess the circumstances were completely different: medium-type system versus non-medium-type system, real body versus proxy and simulated bodies, and even metaverse proper versus artificial world clusters. Not to mention those coded system slot’s connection that Johari gave me and the others really pushed things over the edge… enough for me to be stupid enough mutate four system slots into two multi-system slots and end up getting a cursed system slot in the process. So now my Sins of the SteelStar account had three empowerments, including the one cursed that attracts bad luck, and the two power-links for the Shaman-Assassin's Branch Lance I got from Daphne and Earthen Graven Embrace I got from Lucilla. Honestly having an attunement that power-linked to another mandala, Lance of Branches, and an attunement to the Reaper System that didn't give a psychopompic spirit or empower one was weird, still needed to get used to them, especially through these power-links.

“Hey Manic, chat is curious, who are you grinding attunement mandalas for?” asked the VoxView streamers as we made our way through RV Dazzling Desserts, his mixture of solid and translucent camera-balls flitting around to get better looks.

“Sous, he barely has any mandala inscriptions for someone of his race advancement,” I answered, rubbing the back of my head. Sous was a tier 3.5 underling blackzone manager and stargranted… not to mention triple race advanced, but he only has eleven class specialties, seven lesser spell specialties, eighteen features, three schools, two attunements, five sub-features, and an anachronistic sub-feature. He is incredibly undeveloped, and that’s coming from me, I mentally sighed, still annoyed by the fact that getting him out of his penthouse was like pulling teeth. That and he was lucky enough to have his racial features all also be will-marked, although from what Louella told me that was the status quo for spellmen, stargranted, spirit kings, and realm conquerors… I mean seriously talk about lucky bastards getting easy access to high value tags... “So we figured we get attunements for him first since we’re already grinding levels and ranks with some experience boosting stuff.”

“Hahaha, that’s pretty smart! The SyDruids can drop pretty good multi-special locale attunements.” Blazehopper wasn’t wrong, there was a reason why those druidic-technic entities and GNPCs and their familiars were farmed for mandala inscriptions even with their abysmal drop rates and low quality. Dealing with requirements for attunements in terms of the six primary special locales was a pain. And of course my new system slot-wrought bad luck, both the attunements that Sous got were shitty summons that used a charge system, they weren’t even familiars: Valley of Stars Whale for Link Bridges with Ambergris Valley and Knights of Sleeping Steel for the Slumbering Palaces with Spirals of Hopelasting. I could understand why Daphne rarely used Scorpius, he was such a pain in the ass to charge summoning for even with Soured Scorpius Assassinations.

“They do provide interesting ingredients, they are both summoning ones with three charges max each and passively take a week to regain a charge. I currently have one for the Slumbering Palaces and one for the Link Bridges. Luckily we’ve managed to find people selling mandala inscriptions that match my needs. It shouldn’t be too long before we manage to acquire one of our own at this rate,'' answered Sous as he looked at the weird tree-and-terrarium-covered spaceship of the SyDruids in the distance. Could you not jinx our luck? I internally groaned to myself as the three of us hopped on a train headed to the edge of the Roving so we could get in Intercept Mode-distance of the system lair. Blazehopper could sling himself over from here, he did have upgrades for open space combat, but me and Sous didn’t have time to pick up those upgrades yet.

Getting into position once again, I activated Intercept Mode and locked onto the SyDruid ship system lair: as a launch platform appeared beneath my SteelStar, a jetpack emerged from its back. Looking over to Sous and Blazehopper did the same with Blazehopper’s SteelStar’s jetpack actually had a sturdy set of wings attached to it. Sous and I definitely are going to do the space wing missions soon…

“I agree, but let us deal with the Vraglix bashers first,” commented Sous before our jetpacks activated, sending us rocketing out of the Roving to the system lair in a burst of plasma trails. Nearing the ship with rapid speed, Intercept Mode activated its second phase and sent us phasing straight through the hull. 

On cue, Sous went to activate his second ability, Tech Tapping, to disable the cameras while also using his third ability, Motive Jacking, to body-jack a nearby chameleon-hound hybrid familiar that was a staple sentry of the SyDruids. He still sucked at combat outside of possessing my knife or a monster or managing my mandalas, but all this practice at least he had his entry down pat for this place. Watching in what probably was amazement, Blazehopper let his chat-controlled camera-balls do clean up on the other chameleon-hounds.

“Wow you guys really know what you are doing,” laughed Blazehopper, watching as I thrusted my up arm up to make use of Earthen Graven Grasp, catching one of the escaping familiars with a giant earthen hand that shot up from the floor and crushed it.

“This is probably our fiftieth something time going through this system lair, we actually have this place pretty much mapped out,” I replied, already figuring out where we were. Hopefully this time we would actually get something and not have to fish the markets for Sous’s next attunement. Looks like we aren’t too far away from a boss room… I noted as I pulled up my map of the place via a translucent screen.

“You two really were grinding hard,” whistled the streamer, readying his gunlance as I led us down the verdant giger-esque hallways, trying to keep encounters with patrols to minimum.  

The first patrol we encountered was a small group of low level SyDruid wetware-mages, creepy Technologia-based druids with exposed muscle and splicing of greenyer under tattered hoods: between me throwing up a Crash Barrier as makeshift cover and Blazehopper’s camera-balls they went down fast enough that Sous didn’t even have to use Tech Tapping to shut down any alarms.The second patrol not so much, or the fourth or fifth patrol.

“I swear to god these guys are always annoying,” I shouted in frustration, holding back swears since I was Blazehopper’s stream. Throwing down another series of Crash Barriers down to give us cover, I went to use Rising Murk to block off a hallway. This may have been a system lair for low level SteelStars, but that didn’t prevent it from being a total pain in the ass to greater game through how all these large open crossroads and antechambers and the fact the SyDruids were quantity over quality. The fact everything had a strong undertone of extra chemical fertilizer when it came to smell didn’t help either.

“Don’t worry about it! They make for great experience,” commented Blazehopper as he shot from cover to cover, making full use of his SteelStar’s lithe figure and physical capabilities to control the flow of the firefight. If he was hit by a thorn from one of the SyDruids’ infantry, it was only a glancing shot: a complete opposite compared to all the thorns denting up my SteelStar’s exterior.

“Next SteelStar I’m getting, I’m definitely aiming for one with at least average mobility,” I muttered under my breath as I lumbered forward a piercers one of the bulkier infranties with my power-linked Lance of Branches: green chlorophyll-infused blood splattered over my SteelStar’s army green as the weird tree-spliced human GNPC collapsed. Even Sous’s desire of relations model was faster than mine, and his was still below average in terms of mobility cause it was support-and-utility-centric!

“You’ll have to focus on that later, right now we have another round of infantry coming,” commented Sous as he hid himself behind my Crash Barriers while body-jacking a pair of infantries and a pair of chameleon-hounds to fight for him.

Seeing that the SyDruids on this part of the ship weren’t going to run out anytime soon, I started pulling on mana from my proxy body to rapidly cast a wall of Crash Barriers for Sous to run along. As visual glitches started to appear in my vision and my movements started to turn sluggish and delayed, I told Sal to start inserting mana cartridges into my proxy pod also.

“I’m on it, do not worry about mana or connectivity,” answered the vox system assistant before giving my proxy pod the much needed influx to handle my excessive use of abilities.

“Which way is the boss room we’re aiming for?” asked Blazehopper, swapping out ammo cartridges as his camera-balls wreaked havoc on all the infantry pouring in from the upper floors of this room. It was crazy how useful those things were now that they were weaponized, even if they got shot down they were back up in less than a minute. Let’s hope they don’t hit their upper limits before we hit the boss room, I thought to myself, trying to sense any impending misfortune before replying to the streamer,

“Down the hall straight ahead!”

“On it!”

“Come on Sous, we’re breaking through,” I told my system assistant as I rushed after Blazehopper as he blazed ahead. The second Sous broke through the hallway with us, I went to reploying Rising Murk to cut off the infantry and give ourselves a second to breath. “So Blazehopper… how are your camera-balls holding up?”

“Hahaha, just fine, CharmBall Co. makes their camera-balls to have more backups than normal and my Grand Key really shows that off. Definitely helps now that they are legitimate targets!”

“So you could say they use a similar recipe to the philosophy of the SyDruids? Sustainable quantity?” inquired Sous as he went to killing off the familiars and GNPCs he still was body-jacking with his mid-range blaster.

“Yeah, kind of like the SyDruids, although I’m all about positivity and good vibes, but nature isn’t a bad motif to have.”

“I wouldn’t say nature is apt for these guys,” I interrupted as I crushed a wandering chameleon-hound with a simple use of Earthen Graven Grasp. “These guys are gene-spliced glasshouses, not nature.”

“Hahaha, good one, Manic!” laughed the VoxView streamer before he narrowed the lights behind his SteelStar’s visor and asked, “So chat is curious, how long is RV Dazzling Desserts going to be following this system lair?”

“Probably a few more days at least, the goal to get another attunement for Sous at the bare minimum. Any longer and we might have system lairs chasing us…” I didn’t care that my Enigma had three dungeon core restoring Aux cores now: I wasn’t going to waste any of their charges, especially since it would take an entire year for one of them to recharge if we didn’t prioritize budgeting its dungeon-mana reserves.

“Oof, yeah that would be pretty bad. Can’t have a nice Roving like that getting turned into a warzone.”

“Yeah no kidding…”

“Wait, were you planning on doing that?”

“I’ll tell you after your stream,” I commented, looking out at Blazehopper’s camera-balls drifting around the hallway we were moving through: no way I was going to let myself be a victim of info-karma before a boss fight because I told him about my alt-rhi and the Vraglixian Blossom Rebellion. I mean yeah I really liked the guy, but I wasn’t stupid enough to get hit by more bad luck than I had to. “Info-karma.”

“Oh yeah, don’t want to get zapped,” replied Blazehopper with a nod, catching my drift completely. God, he is such an amazing guy.