-Robert Fayn-

Standing outside of the boss room for a short break, Blazehopper went to talk with his stream’s chat and answer their questions while we all took the time to ready ourselves. It wasn’t a hard boss being one of the lower levelled Wives of Eden, but there were just the three of us instead of the usual party size of four to six. Taking the time, I went to seeing if I could sense any negatively-charged elemental luck or type of karmas: nothing I could feel but that didn’t mean my cursed system slot would make some. Seriously... Negative Fortune Generator… what a shitty cursed empowerment, I mused to myself. To ability to see not only negatively-charged elemental luck but also negatively-charged manalogical forces of karma was useful, especially for avoiding info-karmic retribution… but the amount of times I sensed either of those things that didn’t come from my cursed system slot was still countable on both hands. Still wouldn’t mind getting an attunement or even a feature or sub-feature for it, but the later are a no go cause I’d need an attunement for Sins of the SteelStar in the first place, besides it will likely end up being cursed also.

“Are you ready?” inquired Sous, standing completely still again. Centering myself, I could feel he was nervous: it was weird fi magecraft that I’ve been passively using lately, Flasaporium Hub’s Sour, Sweet, & Savory and its magus qualifications were definitely doing things to my spellcraft… and me.

“Probably more ready than you, you’re nervous.”

“Please stop reading my emotional state, you aren’t even a competent ranked dark empath, and you know I’m still not used to having a body with emotions.”

“Kind of hard not to, we’re right next to each other... Also multiple mandalas…”

“Hahaha, does Manic have some lorem ipsum-based magics?” asked Blazehopper, turning around to check on us.

“No, fi magecraft, tier byproduct stuff,” I explained at best as I could since I didn’t exactly understand it myself since it was still pretty much gut feelings to me. “We ready to start?”

“Yup! So who are we fighting?”

“One of the Wives of Eden, Gerwood. Mostly crowd control and plant-hybrid summons. We should be able to handle it with you around.”

“You hear that chat? Manic says we’ll be able to take her just fine!” laughed the streamer as Sous went to hacking open the giant barricaded door. It only took about two minutes for him to break through via Tech Tapping: with a loud creak, the boss room of a terrarium-slash-sub-control room opened up to us. Honestly I was so glad that this SteelStar had deadened sense cause the smell was rot, chemicals, and greenery was overwhelming as is.

“You two again?! Foul green and orange children of the Sinari! How dare you bring more of your kind to slay me again,” yelled the middle-aged women that would have been normal looking if not for the tubes sticking out of her abdomen and back and giant green plant-hybrid legs that linked into the mobile control platform she was on.

“And this is why we aren’t trying to stick around,” I muttered under my breath as I stormed the room with Blazehopper and Sous. It’s not like I didn’t feel bad about killing her over and over again, but with how foulmouthed she was and the fact the Game System aided in reviving her with cloning tech, I could suppress the guilt somewhat.

Seeing that she was already summoning her plant-hybrid clones while her platform swivelled away from us, Blazehopper went to unleashing a hail of blazing bullets as I started constructing a makeshift hut for Sous out of Crash Barriers. The streamer’s camera-balls going to town on all the stray monsters, entities, and GNPCs they could get their lasers on.

Pumping myself up the best I could, I started to climb up the side stairwells. There wasn’t much I could do in this: Gerwood was surprisingly mobile, especially vertically, and whenever I managed to get onto her mobile control platform I would just get knocked off it by a bio-energy pulse or oversized vine. Which meant my job was to block off all the potential entrances for those vines with Crash Barriers to slow them down. 

“Manic! Tell me when it is okay for me to use Corundum Blaze,” shouted Blazehopper as he peppered the low-levelled Wife of Eden with a variety of different bullets as Sous took control over four of the servants with thorn rifles fused into their arms: luckily they weren’t just familiars that Motive Jacking could target but also monsters for Jacking Wires. Only took us ten runs through this fight to figure that out: was hard to tell what was what here.

“Give me a bit longer,” I shouted back, running as fast as I could across the various outer railways of the sub-control room, throwing up Crash Barriers with awkward half-lunges.

“Stop defiling the green abode of the SyDruids! Stop defiling my green abode!” screeched the boss GNPC before picking up an arm cannon from her platform and blasting at me with a green pulse of bio-energy. I couldn't fully dodge it as I dropped down to the ground: a good chunk of the pulse scattered off my left side and sent my SteelStar’s wetware on the fritz. I fucking hate energy attacks! Also bypassing mana-based defenses, I internally scowling to myself even though this model didn’t actually have that much in the way of manalogical defenses except against green manas… not like it mattered for energies only derived from green mana and not being manifested mana instead.

“Do it now!” I yelled down to Blazehopper: only half the entrances for vines were currently blocked off, but they were the lower half. I didn’t have time to cover the rest of them if Gerwood was already pulling out the arm cannon, best I could do was lance them as they appeared and broke through the already set up Crash Barriers.

“Alright! Let’s do this,” laughed Blazehopper as he threw an oversized red crystal up toward the Wife of Eden: nearing the GNPC, it exploded into a six pronged conflagration that burned her frontside before she could reposition herself. That got Gerwood screaming as she entered her frenzy mode: I could hear the vines nearest to Blazehopper pounding against the Crash Barriers I set up, luckily I put into levels into that ability so they would hold for a bit. Seriously what is it with SyDruids and their hate of red manas and fire? I thought to myself as I got myself up.

Rushing up to the next layer, I hurriedly slammed my hand against the wall to throw up another Crash Barrier against another one of the entrances for Gerwood’s vines. Looking down I saw Gerwood repeatedly blasting at Blazehopper to little avail as Sous continued to hunker down, swapping out control over the SyDruid plant-hybrid clones as needed. The boss GNPC was distracted and I was at the perfect angle to jump on her.

Taking the chance, I bounded over the rails and started to fall down toward her. The Wife of Eden whipped around, clearly noticing me, and started to fire pulses of bio-energy at me. Half-expecting that, I was already ready and activated my Mana Buckler to tank most of the blows. Wincing, I felt my SteelStar’s integrity be shaved away as warning signs for malfunctions in its wetware started to pop up.

“Filthy green child of the Sinari!” yelled Gerwood in a mixture of rage and fear as my Lance of Branches pierced her through the chest. As green chlorophyll-filled blood gushed out of her, she slammed her arm cannon into the side of my head. Luckily I had enough practice to pull back before she could pull the trigger and launch me off her mobile control platform.

“Blazehopper! Toss me one of those Corundum Blazes!” I called out, getting an idea as I twisted the lance and did my best to use my power-link to have branches split off the weapon.

“Sure thing!” replied Blazehopper, tossing me up a crystal as his camera-balls darted back and forth, trying to dodge being destroyed by vines and slaves. 

“Let’s hope this works,” I commented to myself, grabbing the crystal and feeling it only a few seconds left from igniting. Shoving it into my Lance of Branches, I forced the branches that made up the weapon send the crystal into Gerwood’s body. “Kaboom?”

With an ear-splitting screech, the Wife of Eden erupted into flames, sending me flying straight into the weirdly grassy floor of the boss room. I hate it when that happens, I internally muttered to myself before looking up. Yeah, no way Gerwood was regenerating from that, especially since the upper half of her body was blown apart and so charred that none of the blood that the ship was pumping through her could spew out. So that’s what a level 12 pyrotechnic ability could do if you stuck inside an enemy… Thank god Blazehopper was the type of person who wouldn’t aim it anywhere near anything or anybody who wasn’t an enemy provided by one of the systems or dungeon-like distortions.

Clambering back up, I felt a tinge: bad luck was coming. Looking up toward the corpse of the Wife of Eden, I paused and realized it didn’t feel normal: it felt like it just… swapped to being negatively-charged and was faint too. Before I could put a figure on it, Blazehopper jumped up to the body and accidentally explained what was going on,

“Oh my Manic! Double attunements!”

“You’re kidding right?” I gasped in shock. I mean on one hand I wasn’t that surprised, Blazehopper was the type of person who attracted good fortune even without a class specialty in elemental luck, but on the other hand, we were talking about one in probably tens of thousands chances.

“What a marvelous harvest, but we should make our retreat now,” commented Sous, putting to the alarms that were starting to go off now that Gerwood’s vital signs had flatlined. Shit, I mentally swore to myself, this was probably the most annoying part of this boss fight: the flood of mooks that came in the aftermath.

“Blazehopper, we need to go, like right now. Umm… Do you think your camera-balls can form a frontline or something?”

“Hahaha of course! Chat would love that!” replied the VoxView streamer, most of his remaining camera-balls flying toward the entrance and the destroyed ones started to slowly make reappearances, repaired with backups provided by his Grand Key and its mandala formula.

With our loot stowed in Blazehopper’s Proxy Inventory, the three of us bolted for the nearest exit route. Keeping my Mana Buckler up and accepting the fact my internal reserves weren’t going to last, I stayed right behind the camera-balls lasering down the sentries and chameleon-hounds to try and soak up blows and thorn fire. Luckily by the time we reached the exit point, my SteelStar still had two thirds of its integrity. 

“That was amazing!” laughed Blazehopper over friend chat and we rocketed out of the SyDruids’ ship with our Intercept Modes.

“Yeah it really was,” I muttered back, amazed to realize I just sensed such a huge influx of fortune that bad luck was literally generated in the process. Luckily I couldn’t sense it lingering on any of us. Okay yeah, I need to get an attunement to make use of it outside of my SteelStar, I thought to myself, seeing just how useful it could be. I could always ask Daphne to help me get sub-feature mandala inscriptions to help with like she said I could get ones to deal with the downsides of Lesser Sim-ABS of the Incarnation of Gaia. As for the attunement itself, I could ask Eris if anyone from Ignae Automata could make one for me on short notice: just a straight transfer and linking of abilities from system slot to mandala.

Taking the chance, Blazehopper turned his stream off to take a break and allowed Sous and I to discreetly have Sal scan the attunement mandalas to reveal one was just for Sins of the SteelStar and gave Gerwood’s arm cannon while the other one for both Sins of the SteelStar and an Origin Lands called Lands of Forest & Evergreens that was gain charges for summoning a squadron of plant-humanoid hybrids. Neither of them were amazing, but they were still attunements.

“You sure it’s okay if I take one of them? I was already going to get one when my attunement collecting tour hits here and Gallant Gale of Guns,” asked Blazehopper, holding the crystalline disc of the former attunement mandala inscription, SyDruidic Bio-Energy Arm Cannon, in his hands.

“It is fine, I do not have need of that, nor does Robert really,” answered Sous nonchalantly, holding onto the latter, Servants of Plant Splicing. 

“Oh my Sous! Thank you so much! Chat is going to love it when I whip this out next stream. It may not be my usual weapon of choice, but hey, I can always get a synthesis to build out of that is a gunlance! Or even make it so my asset can use it when I get one.”

“What about your psyche-summon, Blendon?” I asked, remembering what he picked up his Living Necropolis leg of the tour.

“Already got a synthesis attunement planned for him and the gunlance I got from the Link Bridges, you know, Zombic Gunwilds.”

“Oh yeah… smart, do the same thing as the Vox Phantasm did for Ramsey and your multi-iris camera-ball.”

“Yeah, that! Exactly!”

“So does that mean your next Grand Magus-grade mandala is going to be a Grand Key? The six primary special locales, gunlances, and support and camera-balls for your streams?” 

“That’s the plan,” answered Blazehopper with a nod before pausing and asking me, “Okay, I have a question for you now Manic. Does your Enigma have connections to artificial world clusters?”

“Umm… are you okay with some info-karmic retribution?” I asked, feeling myself try to blink even though my SteelStar didn’t have eyelids.

“Don’t worry, I have something for that.” Oh yeah, the good info-karma stuff in his Grand Key’s mandala formula.

“Okay so, we have connections to two of them,” I replied with a wince, feeling and sensing the info-karmic retribution: it was less than I expected, probably cause of Blazehopper’s mandala and the fact he sort of already knew, but I could still feel my mana circuitry cramp up and twist from it. At least no pinched nerves and actual cramps with time.

“Really! What are their names?”

“Starport Cyber and Witch Synthia.” Another pang of info-karmic retribution, but much less this time. “And we’re dealing with some stuff cause of them… criminal players and shit.”

“Oh man, how bad is it?”

“Pretty bad I think? We have a lot of allies on this, but the big battle is going to happen in two weeks… we’re preparing ourselves and trying to sabotage their preparation so they can’t ruin the ascension ritual they mean to attack.”

“Ascension ritual?”

“Yeah, for magi-sentience and partial-magi-sentience, it’s a long story… involving my alt-rhi…”

“Okay that decides it! I want to help out! I know chat will love to help out also with the camera-balls.”

“Wait what?! Seriously?” I asked, completely confused and caught off guard. 

“Of course! You’re a great guy Manic and I want to help you,” replied Blazehopper with two thumbs up. I’m pretty sure my actual body’s face was feeling flush from his sudden commitment to help out. Well, more allies is always great to have, especially if it is Blazehopper we’re talking about.