-Daphne Sucrose-

Making use our intel from the Vraglix Blossom Rebellion, I made my way to Sweets Futurism to protect. Unsurprisingly Umi, Tabitha, Mita, Margaret were all backing me up, all three of them using their simulated bodies instead of their real body like me, and surprisingly Robert’s alt-rhi, Robby, was also tagging along to shore up our defenses instead of helping out Louella, Tala, and the others elsewhere. I had no idea why he was helping out, he wasn’t an underling blackzone manager for Historie Pastoria Sweets like me and it wasn’t like he was on that great of terms of his original counterpart. Asking about it, all I got was a half-assed response about how his own Enigma was more than able to defend itself without him and something about him owning Mita a favor. Just say you wanted to keep an eye for overflow from your own Interconnection or something, I internally sighed at Robby’s proper Robert stupidness, remembering full well that not only the side of the Interconnection had a portal to the Trapdoor’s Interconnection to Cheesecake Emporos-Museum but also the entrances to both Interconnections in Mercury-Gardenia were close to each other.

“Are we just waiting now, auntie?” asked Umi, fiddling the strangling wire from her matching black azalea corsage. I was glad she got a black azalea for death threats over normal azaleas like Mita for temperance. 

“Yeah, cause Robert and the others haven’t installed any Aux cores for surveillance,” I replied, trying to sense what I could on the waves of ambient mana despite not having any mandalas that specialized in that. There was only so much I could do with training, I was going to have to work on expanding my portfolio of mandala again soon, maybe this time focus on system slots or facsimiles. I can’t believe I’m actually going to have the time and safety to do this cause I let Louella rope me into a mirroring Grand Key, I mentally swore to myself before feeling a sudden shift in the ambient mana: a dangerous shift. “Tch, and it looks like they are making their move now.”

With the roaring sound of cracking, I felt the split core and Aux core of the Interconnection instantly shatter. And by the sheer influx of mana and monsters I was sensing, who ever just destroyed the split core and Aux core of Open-Blind to Sweets also. These Glory Daze psychopaths weren’t just aiming for a chain reaction of distortion breaks to flood the surroundings with rampaging monsters and other creations of the Enigma and Trapdoor but going for the wholesale destruction of this entire Interconnection.

“Candy, damage report,” I asked my blackzone system assistant as I felt all my spirits stir, not just Scorpius and Daisy, from the sheer amount of dungeon-mana and other corrupted mana flowing around me. I could already see cracks forming the artificial sky: most of which wouldn’t lead to either of the blackzones or normal space but some hellhole in another layer of reality.

“All dungeon cores within the Interconnection have been destroyed for sure. Will take the entire charge of one of the dungeon core restoring Aux cores to repair our split core alone, the proxy access Aux core will require some charge from another one. I’m working with Wlogwa and the others to activate the repair. But don’t worry, the Interconnection will not collapse before then,” answered Candy as she conjured up a translucent screen for me to read off as the four of us headed to the tower that used to house our Enigma’s split core. From the looks of it, all four dungeon cores were simultaneously destroyed by a very powerful very specialized stratum 4 multi-system slot and the cracks in space-time weren’t toward the likely places, the major manalogical layers of reality for the Game or Obscured System: the Centnury Sequence and the Place Forever Shrouded.

“Are those… dead riders?” asked Tabitha nervously, watching a group of dark shrouded monsters on horseback started to descend from one of the cracks.

“Holy shit, dark monsters?!” followed up Margaret with a gasp, even more freaked out about it. Leave it to the tier 2.2 to be worried about something like a dark monster.

“Tch, yeah they are,” I noted in frustration as I put two and two together: there was no way an Interconnection like this one collapsing would lead to cracks to the major manalogical layer of reality of true magic, the Grove-Henges, without some outside influence. Whatever Glory Daze member we were dealing with had a stratum 4 multi-system slot not only capable of destroying multiple dungeon cores at once along with causing space-time cracks to lead to the Grove-Henges. Only solace here is it was only a stratum 4 multi-system slot: no way they pull off the same trick again for a long time.

“Should we split up to deal with them?” questioned Robby, already conjuring up a glaive and gun that looked somewhere between a pistol and rifle and starting to look a tiny bit nervous but also a bit annoyed.

“For now, at least until we figure out where the Glory Daze members are.” 

“Why couldn’t it have just been Clockwork Witchwork…” muttered Mita as he paired up with Robby.

“Umm… who should I pair up with?” asked Tabitha, looking between me and Umi,  then Robby and Mita, and finally Margaret who was already inching toward her boyfriend. 

“You have Vertrala to help you,” I pointed out, motioning to her dragon-shaped fruit currently conjured in his diminutive form before going to activate my Grand Key, Awakening the Chimera Scorpius, to summon my dragon-scorpion chimera. “Use him, Margaret, and this guy.” As the air turned hot and stingingly acidic, my hulking phantasma made its appearance. To think I would be using one of his charges so soon, talk about a pain in the ass. They just had to pull out all the stops, now I have to use this shitty trump card of a Grand Key.

“I am at your service… dragon tamer and… fellow dragon,” hissed the giant half-dragon half-scorpion with spear-covered stinger slowly, obviously noting the fact that Vertrala was less of a dragon than he was.

“Good to hear, chimera,” shot back Vertrala, even more obviously jealous that Scorpius was larger than his largest form by a few feet easily. If only he knew how small Scorpius’s base form actually was, I snickered to myself as I watched the sweet tooth split off with her fake dragon and my phantasma while Robby and Mita did the same.

“You sure it was a good idea to summon Scorpius like that?” questioned Umi as she stared at the visible mana circruity that was faintly glowing on my left shoulder. I was surprised she was able to figure out how the mana circuitry was even with how well my shirt and mana circulation skills were covering it: she was definitely a hell of a better apprentice than Robert.

“He’s charge based, it won’t drain my mandalas that much,” I explained nonchalantly as I conjured up my Sugar Scorpio. I wasn’t an idiot when I made the stratum 1 and stratum 2 composite facsimiles and Grand Key to enhance him: the only reason why he was technically stronger than me cause because I exploited his charge system to the fullest. “Now let’s deal with these first batch of dead riders.”

“Okay, anything I should be worried about, auntie?”

“They use true magic.”

“So they sort of are like me…”

“In a sense,” I replied with a nod, watching as the primary spirit halo conjured up her skeleton companion and a pair of fishing rods, one being extra simplistic and tinged with system cast and the other a darker one that faintly glowed from elemental demonic and basic dungeon-mana.

“Then I just have to prove that I’m better than them.”

“That’s the spirit.”

“Okay, auntie, let me show some tricks I’ve been practicing. Skeleton! Fishing time!” shouted Umi with a grin as the first dead rider neared us, a semi-skeletal rider in tattered rags on top of an equally skeletal six-legged horse. Thrusting a hand into its ribcage, Umi’s skeleton activated a skill to pull a fishing rod made out of bone. Leave it to Umi to invest in a skill that gives her companion conjuration a fishing rod to fight with.

As the primary spirit halo and her skeleton went to striking the dead rider with swift strikes from their fishing rods, I went to focus on the two dead riders behind it. In habit, I analyzed the monsters to get a name attached to the ugly faces: grisgafam disciples of Plagos. Scowling in annoyance I realized these weren’t just some users of a proto-enochian magical language but also monsters related to one of the monster god of diseases, Plagos.

“Seriously? Tch, we’ve dealt with enough plague shit this year,” I muttered to myself as I lunged forward, filling my spear with elemental radiance and wellspring poison. As the pair of dead riders started to chant verses of true magic off, I focused on the second one: sensing my murderous intent, the disciple’s mount reared up on its hindlegs to try and crush me.

Taking the counter-initiative, I sent out a split second blinding light with Ghastly Sunbeam, forcing the mount to stammer back onto its two hindlegs instead of four. Keeping the pressure up, I followed up with Nightshade Growth to tangle those legs slightly before slamming its flank with my side of spear. Collapsing into its side, the disciple’s companion moved to intercept me and fired off a spell,

“Gagaged grisgafam gonga.” Rolling out of its open semi-skeletal mouth, a black miasma started to fly toward me in tendril-like patterns. Even with a split second pole vaulting away, a bit of the miasma managed to touch me and singe my flesh with scouring disease. Disgusting, I cursed to myself before circulating mana with my system to fight off the fleeting but potent infection.

Feeling annoying and not wanting to give the other disciple a chance to get back up, I supercharged Sugar Scorpio and threw at the still exposed mouth of the standing disciple: with a searing blow, the monster’s head was sheared off by an explosive amount of radiance mana. With the other disciple still struggling and howling as its mount struggled to right itself even with the aid of magic, I smirked slightly. Let’s test some of Lucilla’s divinity, I thought to myself as I started to channel Lucilla’s part of Flasaporium Hub’s Sour, Sweet, & Savory. 

With a crunch, a giant earthen hand infused with divinity of the earth goddess and World System markings wrapped itself around the fallen disciple under my control with Savory Gaian Grasp. It didn’t have the same sheer potency as Lucilla’s mana-infused punches, but it was a strong source of crowd control if you managed the timing right.

“How are you holding up?” I called out to Umi as I conjured up a simple Lance of Branches and skewered the skulls of the disciple and the mount.

“Just fine!” replied Umi, flinging the dying body of the grisgafam disciple of Plagos onto my own to create a small impromptu pile. Unsurprisingly they started to dissolve and blend together: I wasn’t going to bother and try to loot them, they were just tier 2 rogue monsters, nothing special.

“Good work.”

“Thanks, now should we move to the next set of dead riders?”

“Yeah, let’s clear some of these trash monsters up,” I replied, looking up at the cracks in the false sky, intermittently spewing out more dark monsters. Of all the five types of dark monsters, we just had to deal with dark riders, at least we weren’t dealing with star eaters or end adjudicators though.