-Robert Fayn-

Watching as mana swirled in a series of medium-sized spherical flasks, I noted that they weren’t shifting between states of matter as much: having class specialties in both Nutrient-Implement and Dreaming-Tonic on top of Flasaporium Hub’s Sour, Sweet, & Savory made potion making so much easier. Of course a Grand Key could only go so far to help deal with the fact I still had prolonged mandala fatigue on top of my Lesser Sim-ABS of the Incarnation of Gaia or that I couldn’t overexert myself. The ascension event should be starting in a couple of hours, I noted with a sigh as I watched the caketopian apothecaries maneuver the various flasks, mana extractors mixing & infusing pots, centrifuges, and distillation machines to make my Enigma’s array of soda-potions, potions, and tonics. Hopefully we would have a surplus after all the Vraglix bashers were dealt with cause god knows how long our supplies will last with everything that has been flying off the shelves with the latest wave of plague clouds from Borolio.

“I guess I better start getting ready,” I muttered to myself, going to finish up my last batch of mana and healing potions for the day: throwing the materialized mana into a few sets of mixing & infusing pots with various mana sprigs, crushed up magical cores, and other ingredients before turning everything on and sculpting the results with a series of spells with loose emphasises, fundamentals, and incantations. This would have been much easier if I didn’t have to deal with my doppelgänger’s shit… But at least all this crazy stuff that has happened over the past two months has netted me a resort in Startport Cyber in a really roundabout way.

“So this is where you make all your potions? Nice place,” interrupted Johari out of the blue, startling the hell out of me. Seriously how did someone as high tier as him manage to walk around without being noticed? Turning around I saw Reagan was there also, observing my entities work. Are they using some mandala inscription like Draceld’s or something?

“Indeed, it reminds of one of my earlier apothecary factories,” followed the high enlightened-blackzone manager simply as he continued to inspect the workshop, getting a few glances from some of the caketopian apothecaries who were starting to realizing how powerful the two were. Taking a split second, I checked to see if Lechiff was still alive: from the looks of it he was perfectly fine, but a bit spooked. They probably overwhelmed him with just their manalogical auras… I mentally sighed, feeling sorry for all the shit that the Greater Chiffon Dragon had to deal with.

“Umm… Reagan, Johari… I wasn’t expecting you two. Shouldn’t you be, I don’t know, running your nations or gearing up to deal with the Vraglix bashers?” I asked before awkwardly putting the potions I was making aside so that some of the apothecaries could take over later.

“If our blackzones and assets needed our constant supervision then we wouldn’t be able to call ourselves competent rulers. And no, we aren’t here to aid in defending the ascension event.”

“You aren’t?...” Seriously? They were living it to us? Couldn’t just one of them deal with the Glory Daze, SteelStar Supremacists, and Soldiers of Clay all at once?

“Nope, it’s not a good practice for us to do,” explained Johari with a smile and a half-shrug. “If we personally deal with troubles like this then we just open up holes in our defenses else where and invite people to do stupid things to try and distract us. So unless the situation calls for someone of our tier and portfolio of mandalas, it’s safer for us to delegate and give some assistance. Multilocation can only go so far.” Multilocation? I guess that made sense, they both had high tiers to make use of it: it didn’t matter if each duplication of yourself lowered your tier by fifteen if you were still hitting double digit full tiers.

“And so you guys are here to give some more assistance? I’m still paying off my loan to you Johari.”

“Yeah, but no loan stuff. This is… quest stuff.”

“Don’t tell me you guys are dumping a quest on me. I already have enough stuff on my plate right now.”

“Oh don’t worry, we know how you feel about the metaverse and its wills. We’re not giving you a quest, we’re actually the ones completing one.”

“You’re kidding right?”

“We are not. When a mage reaches legendary tier, progressing in tiers becomes an interesting task to put it simply. It easily takes over a year for people like me and Johari to raise a single tier if we focused all our time into actively raising our tier, something that is actually harder for us to do due to how powerful we are and the requirements for doing so. Instead we focus on shortcuts when possible, such as quests,” answered Reagan as he created a complex diagram out of light and mana to try and explain. “One of the benefits of being so high tiered is that we are offered a plentitude of quests to accept and decline at our leisure, we are rarely forced into something one.”

“And we happened to have been given a quest to make and give you some stuff in return for a tier. There wasn’t any reason for us to refuse cause you’re an upstanding guy and pretty interesting for someone your tier,” followed up Johari as he pulled out a mandala inscription and a glowing vial of something that somehow reminded me of the mandala formula base that I got my Grand Key from. So Johari will become tier 13.0 and Reagan will become tier 15.8? So the two of them are still making a quick buck off of me... I thought sourly before trying to find the upside of this situation: I was getting free stuff which was nice for sure, but I still have no clue what weird strings may be attached by the metaverse.

“So what am I getting cause of this?” I asked, eyeing the stuff in the young-looking blackzone manager’s hands.

“The first one is a blessed cursed attunement for you to connect to the Game System.”

“Wait? Blessed and cursed? So it’s still a cursed mandala inscription?”

“Correct.”

“Why the hell would I take that then?”

“Because you still don’t have three cursed mandalas yet,” answered Reagan simply. “It is impossible to avoid the fate of having three instances of the cursed tag within your portfolio of mandalas if you wish to be truly high tiered. All mages will have one of each by tier 7.0 and then three of each by tier 8.0. It is the same for the blessed, forbidden, self-altering, and will-marked tags, only with different tiers as their thresholds.” 

“So what, you’re saying I should just take a cursed mandala now? Just because I’m going to be stuck with later if I become a high tier. If!” I shot back, weighing my odds: it was a blessed mandala which would put me on par with Sous in the terms of blessed stuff cause of his blessed self-altering racial feature, Shaytan-Brachii’s Gem of Fancies: Magi-Sentience, but it was also cursed which meant there was some annoying downside.

“Indeed, and I wouldn’t turn it down as it was tailored specially for you. The attunement makes use of your cursed system slot, Negative Fortune Generator, and allows you to passively generate positively charged elemental luck without draining your vitality.”

“And the downside is I have to deal with the cursed system slot all the time?”

“Yes, but that is a non-issue, the blessed and cursed tags of the attunement cancel themselves in this case.”

“So no real downside, but no big bonus you are supposed to get from blessed mandalas,” I noted with a sigh before accepting the mandala inscription from Johari. At the end of the day a mandala inscription was a mandala inscription and it wasn’t like I could go behind their backs and sell it cause they built it with my Negative Fortune Generator in mind. Besides, with it I just had the Financial Colosseums left for fulfilling my six primary special locale requirement for attunements.

Feeling the mandala inscription inscribed itself on to one of my blank attunement mandalas, I went to scan it via my Enigma and some blackzone manager spells. Unsurprisingly it was called Reformed Negative Fortune Generator and it did everything Reagan said it would. Holy shit he was underselling this thing, I internally muttered to myself as I realized the good luck being generated was a constant compared to Negative Fortune Generator’s sporadic bursts of bad luck: I mean it wouldn’t help when the cursed system slot decided to hit me with some negatively charged manalogical force of karma but it would definitely help mitigate a lot of those cases. Also getting my black colour attunement pumped up to 4.25 and making me a proper ranked warlock was also a plus.

“Nifty mandala inscription isn’t it?” asked Johari, probably noticing how shocked I was at the attunement mandal.

“Yeah… So what is the second one?” I replied with a nod, trying to compose myself: I could already tell whatever was in that glass vial would blow what I just got out of the water but I couldn’t tell what it was.

“A modified mandala formula base for a Grand Key in liquid form.”

“Wait, wait, wait. What?! A Grand Key?!”

“Yup, also tailored for you. Although to be more precise it is geared and keyed to you, there are a lot of wildcard mandala inscriptions in there that will form to what is needed to create a mirroring Grand Key between you, your system assistant, Sous, and your primary spirit halo, Umi.”

“Okay so first one, what the actual fuck. Second off, you do realize I still have PMF and also have a Lesser Sim-ABS racial feature? Something like that would wreck my mandalas. And third off, Umi?” I shouted in shock, pretty much losing my cool at that point. The only reason why I got off with Lesser Sim-ABS of the Incarnation Gaia and not something worse was cause I had Terrafisimo help about on that front, and I’m pretty sure Reagan or Johari put in any safeguards in that though. Also why the hell is Umi being involved, she isn’t even a partial-magi-sentient, there is no way for her to have enough mandalas to handle a Grand Key, especially if it is anything like my Flasaporium Hub’s Sour, Sweet, & Savory.

“Don’t worry, all the benefits would vastly outway the downsides. And as for Umi, a part of the magics we worked into the mandala formula base is something that would turn your primary spirit halo into a partial-magi-sentient.”

“Could I just give it to her then? Or Sous?”

“You could, but it would have the same effect as if you drank it.”

“So I have to drink it then…”

“No, you don’t, but you really should,” reassured Johari with a complex look on his face as he paused to decide what to say next. “If you waited long enough, the magics and spellcraft used would degrade enough that anyone would be able to drink and receive similar effects without you or your spirits and familiars being affected. But the value of this isn’t something you can measure by normal means.”

“You should take it,” commented Sal audibly, finally deciding to enter the conversation. “I don’t know why, but I feel like the Vox Phantasm would want you to use it.”

“Your vox system assistant is right, you should take it. But don’t worry you can save it for after you deal with the ascension event.”

“Okay fine, I’ll save it for later,” I sighed in frustration, swiping the vial and tossing it into my own personal subdimension. I could still feel it even from there… Johari wasn’t kidding about the spellcraft used in that thing.

“Robert, I hate to interrupt you, but it is time,” whispered Sous from the back of my head: of course the Vraglix bashers would attack now of all times. Scratching my head, annoyed and overwhelmed at all of what was happening, I looked back over to Johari and Reagan and asked, “So you two really aren’t going to help out?”

“It is not our fight to intervene in at this point,” answered Reagan solemnly. “But trust us when we say we believe in you all and if anything terrible happens, we’ll send more aid.”

“Yeah, well I don’t think either you specialize in belief magic so I don’t think that will help too much,” I half-complained half-muttered before pausing and saying, “But thanks for the stuff anyway…”

With that, I headed up to my penthouse to get into my proxy body. Bearth would keep watch over here along with Sal, Sugar, and Spice, which meant I was free to use a SteelStar to help defend Old Fashioned New Imports. I swear to god if I get hit by some sort of cursed or forbidden magic like how Draceld did, I’m going to come back and haunt everybody.