Robert Fayn

As searing pain lanced through me, through every piece of a being that made me me, I vaguely felt my body was still fighting and spellcasting. Trying to blink my eyes open, all I could see was an expanse of blackness with a large handful of faint colourful lines flowing out of me into the distance. I definitely was in an insanity-and-pain-induced out of body experience, or whatever you would call this. This is the first time something like this happened… and the worst fucking time for it to happen, I managed to think as I felt manas flow through my system in weird ways. 

“Good, you aren’t too far gone,” commented a foriegn-yet-familiar as I followed one of the colourful lines to a man with oily black hair that was wreathed in dark flames and wellspring demonic. Looking around in confusion, I saw standing next to him was a me-shaped mass of warmed coloured dots, balls, and strands that I didn’t even need the connection to it to realize it was my surcia-curcumedioia side. It didn’t take two and two for my pain-addled brain to realize the two were the ones in control right now.

“Yeah, but he might be in our way now,” retorted my surcia-curcumedioia side with an amount of tact I didn’t know it had. Wait… it’s sapient now isn’t it? I thought to myself as I felt the presence of four facsimiles: the mirroring one that connected to Sous and Umi definitely housed the sapience of the flaming man, the second one I felt was what declaring me an emperor-spirit, the third one was housing my surcia-curcumedioia’s newfound sapience while power-linking to Wild Shape of the Surcia-Curcumedioia, and the last one that was a composite one that I couldn’t make heads or tails currently. What was it? “See, he is thinking stupid thoughts right now. We need to focus on fighting, not restraining him or protecting Blazehopper.”

“Blazehopper? Wait is he okay?! We’re definitely protecting him! No questions!” I shouted irrationally, trying to stamp my foot down but finding that I couldn’t: my so-called body in this weird out of body experience was static.

“Calm down, Robert, Surcia-Robert. He is fine. We are protecting him, you are protecting him,” explained the flaming man as he fed information to me through our connection, including his name: Driscoll Avarawacky. Sights of the battle going on in RV Dazzling Desserts from my cake-eye-balls filled my mind’s eye: the fight was still raging on with my body in full surcia-curcumedioia mode with wisps of flaming demonic wellspring coming off it at the center piece, going toe to toe with the pitch black SteelStar. 

Strands of cursed magic flew from my hands and whipped through the air, slicing the SteelStar at every possible chance. I could feel my mana and tier fluctuating: I was tier 4.7 for sure but my effective tier was 3.9 right now, and that wasn’t because of my newly earned Greater Sim-PMF. Great… just how many cursed mandalas do I have now? I thought to myself in frustration, knowing full well I was too mentally unstable to even attempt to scan any of my newly inscribed mandalas. A single look at the pitch black SteelStar or Blazehopper was making my heart race like fucking crazy.

“So what? I just ride things out in the back seat?”

“I think we both know you’re sane enough to know that’s the best decision right now. You wouldn’t be able to handle the spells I’m casting right now anyway.”

“How the hell are you even doing that?” I asked, annoyed and worried for both my own safety and Blazehopper’s. Through my cake-eye-balls I saw my body jerkingly dodge blows from the SteelStar Supremacist, caught off guard by the fact I was still fighting after having three cursed mandala forcibly being inscribed.

“Jury rigging using the fact that you, we, are a supreme ranked dungeoneer that is a component ranked in both blackzone manager racial set affinity and fi school magus qualification. That and exploiting your two pinnacle points in blackzone manager and pinnacle point in apex with the connections provided by your Grand Keys,” explained Driscoll with a mixture of pride and annoyance in his voice. Bearing the pain, I blinked a few times and realized he had just managed to make an unique set of spells using my portfolio of mandalas basically on the spot. Who in the world was this guy and how in the hell did Reagan and Johari manage to put him inside of me?

Watching as Driscoll and Surcia-Robert controlled my body, I saw Blazehopper get hit by a stray surge of mana and magical miasma from the pitch black SteelStar’s longsword. Panicking, I started to tug on my connections to try and get control back: Historie Pastoria Sweets, Treant Orchards, Super-Sweet Valley, the spiritscape, Gaia, the Vox Phantasm, the greater djinn I had a contract with, Lucilla, Daphne, Scorpius, Sugar and Spice, my ten cake-eye-balls, Daisy, Tirel, Beath, Sal, Soul, Umi, Driscoll, Surcia-Robert, and then finally my own body and the rest of my pieces of a being. Before Driscoll or Surcia-Robert could realize what I was doing, I shoved my consciousness back into my body: the feeling of realness and weight as I suddenly started to collapse like a puppet with all his string’s cut off.

“Is the foul monster finally dead?” asked the SteelStar, keeping his distance despite my failing movement.

“Fuck you,” I managed to sputter out before telepathically commanding Sal to use Liquid Sugar Cowl.

“On it. I will do my best,” replied the vox system assistant, activating the lesser spell specialty and cloaking me in mana and liquefied sugar. I could feel one of the hexes of sentience that was inscribed onto my mandalas weakening it and making the flow from my shoulder blades unsteady. As I regained my footing and instinctively maneuvered myself to be between the SteelStar Supremacist and Blazehopper, I heard Surcia-Robert scream from the back of my head,

“You idiot! You know how hard it is to control your body right now?”

“There’s nothing we can do now other than help him. Robert, you move, we’ll support,” followed up Driscoll, also obviously irritated but working with the situation. Nodding, I lurched forward and swiped my hand across the air, letting the strands of curses fly and tear into the SteelStar’s pitch black metallic flesh and armour. I could hear him yell something in his native language but couldn’t figure out what was: not that I cared right now, all my pieces of a being that weren’t facsimiles were screaming in pain.

It felt weird, I could hear Blazehopper’s encouragement as he supported me from behind, but I couldn’t process it: it felt like it was intended for someone else, another me. It wasn’t until I noticed that both my mind and soul were in complete shambles: a complete mental break would be light for the damage they had taken. How the hell am I still even conscious, I thought to myself mid half-roll half-dodge of a surge of corrupted mana. Fumbling, I realized because my consciousness, my sapience, was currently coming from them but the third facsimile that appeared within me, the composite one.

“What the hell happened?!” I mentally shouted to Driscoll as I felt my control over my body and magic start to falter and decay.

“Your mind and soul were damaged from the sudden inscribing, you were inscribed with thirty-three mandala inscriptions in the span of seconds before you could even attempt to recover from the last time something like that happened,” answered Driscoll, wrestling a modicum of control from me with Surcia-Robert’s help but also dealing with the decay in control. “The primary sapience made up by your mind and soul were damaged to the point of comatose and insanity, which is why the mandala formula base created a composite facsimile with a synthesis of your mind, soul, me, and Surcia-Robert to act as a backup sapience and regulator, you. And now we’re paying the price of your existence, our existence being so fractured.”

As Driscoll’s lecture continued to race through my mind, I felt the SteelStar Supremacist land a blow on me, tearing into my arm and ripping it up. A lance of pain that was sharper and more distant than before just honed in the fact of how royally fucked I was: I was a coma patient walking right now. Fighting my irrationality and pain, I shoved my control back over to Driscoll and Surcia-Robert in a vain attempt to better attempt to protect Blazehopper, even though I knew he was still safe in his proxy body. 

“This is too much. But I can’t just sit in the back seat on this!” I shouted in frustration, looking back at the expanse of blackness with Driscoll, Surcia-Robert, and all my other connections in it.

“You pushing yourself right now won’t help anyway. You may be residing a composite facsimile, but that facsimile is still connected to your fractured mind and soul,” replied Driscoll as calmly as he could, still weaving spells together while Surcia-Robert continued to control my body.

“So what?! I’m still insane even now?”

“Technically, yes.”

“And I’m just stuck here?”

“Actually no… for us to get out of this hell, you need to summon yourself.”

“What the fuck do you mean.”

“You are a grand-spirit with a Grand Key-empowered contract with yourself,” answered Driscoll as he forced more information into my head: basically the only way we could properly control my body or really another piece of a being that wasn’t us, I would have to summon myself as a spirit. That’s right… I was a spirit now… an enlightened spirit. Feeling through my Grand Key’s, Historie Pastoria Sweet’s Dark Trinity of Sweets’s, mandala formula, I found a cursed attunement with a contract to myself as a spirit: Strange Man’s Working Contract.  

“Why didn’t you just have me do this in the first place?” I asked, piecing everything together and getting pissed off in the process. The whole issue of controlling my body and we already had a solution for it!

“Because we don’t know how well it will work. This version of me doesn’t have any memories on self contractions.”

“Now hurry up and summon yourself! We already lost an arm!” shouted Surcia-Robert as he stormed up to me and pushed me. Before I could even process that fact that my now sapient surcia-curcumedioia side was able to move in the expanse of blackness, I found myself back in my body, gasping in pain. I could feel where my right forearm had been crushed and fallen off and all the gouges along my sides: my passive spell shield was long gone at this point.

An influx of mana started to move through and the wounds, using up the last of the surge of mana from gaining my second Grand Key. It felt like I was being pulled through a sleeve as my body shifted and contorted in front of the SteelStar Supremacist and Blazehopper. After a moment or so, I felt the pain subside a bit: I was fully transformed, but that didn’t mean my wounds were gone. Let’s hope Surcia-Robert can reattach that arm… cause that definitely isn’t a clean cut...

“Oh my Manic!” shouted Blazehopper staring at my transformed state. Looking through my cake-eye-balls I noticed I didn’t look too different, the only difference was I was wearing a mask covered vest with six simplistic masks on it and wearing a seventh one. Instinctively I knew each mask represented a different person with designs and stylings: myself, Surcia-Robert, Driscoll, Sous, Umi, Daphne, and Lucilla.

“You only have a minute or so before everything collapses. So hurry up and kill that guy,” shouted Surcia-Robert from the back of my head, making the polka dot-covered mask representing him vibrate in the process. Nodding, I stared down the pitch black SteelStar and saw how much damage he had already taken: I guess me not going down at all plus Driscoll’s curses and Blazehopper’s supporting fire were wearing him down.

“So you are a spirit now? How vile!” howled the SteelStar Supremacist as he swung his spellblade of a longsword again, sending out another surge of mana. Still feeling fuzzy from summoning myself as a spirit and feeling the slight tug of so many layers of reality, Surcia-Robert took control for a split second and made me dodge the attack. Somewhere along the line, my mask popped in a thing of blood, ectoplasma, and mana emissions as it swapped places with Surcia-Robert. “Faceless fiend!”

“Really? Who cares at this point,” I replied, overwhelmed with mana-drunkenness, seering agony, exhaustion, and frustration. Pushing myself forward across the park, I channeled everything I could into my arm. Catching the SteelStar Supremacist off guard, I pushed my hand into his pitch black metallic chest: a surge of mana as motes of sugar elementals exploded out his backside, definitely totalling his SteelStar. Also draining my reserves and sending me tumbling.