-Robert Fayn-

It’s been three days since the fights with the Vraglix bashers over the ascension event: we avoided the brunt of the fighting but that didn’t mean we avoided damage. It was going to take a few months to fully recharge the two dungeon core repairing Aux cores that were used… and hopefully I would be able to figure out how to make the best of my new situation before then, especially since we haven’t had any autonomous blackzones be generated yet. With Driscoll’s help, we were able to exploit my Enigma’s generation protocols to create more Strange Man’s Working Contract attunements: one for Louella, and then a pair of Iogem Glyphs based ones for Mita and Ras. I couldn’t help but feel frustrated that they and the system slots that they fed into were all cursed, but only messed with me: making it inefficient to be summoned while giving access to cursed magic and shared cursed magic resistance.

Mita better hurry up with his audit soon, I sighed to myself as I drifted aimlessly around my internal expanse of blackness. The lion’s share of the loot from the fights was given to other groups involved, but we still did get a decent haul, like the pair of artificial Trascendations that Minerva managed to get from a dead Soldier of Clay general. The fact she had three Saint’s Tesseract-Well was impressive: once she managed to permanently bind with them then she might be on par with Tabitha again… Well on the path to being on par with her cause Tabitha and my cousin somehow managed to land a multi mandala and legacy contract with a fake dragon of a dark monster.

“Ugh… why did everyone manage to get such amazing upgrades out of this but me?” I muttered to no one in particular. Yeah I got my second Grand Key, but I got a completely unworking body in return with a fragmented mind and soul that was held together by a composite facsimile that was also me. Only reason why I was able to survive without an IV feed was cause I could still manage to sustain myself off my Enigma’s dungeon-mana reserves even with my wrecked outer genomes and connections: pretty much all my pieces of a being were damaged in one way or another. I could barely make use of proxy bodies or monster possession before I lost connection to them: being summoned as a spirit wasn’t much better because I had a limited number of replicas and repairing them wasn’t easy...

“You complaining isn’t going to help,” sighed Surcia-Robert with an annoyed look, or at least what I assumed was an annoyed look cause being a mass of sugar elementals made him hard to read. “Are you going to try it out today?”

“Yeah, not like there is much else for me to do at this point,” I answered with a sigh, thinking about how weird it was that I was actually going to astral project into the spiritscape. I mean I was a spirit now, a freaking grand-spirit, but the notion still foreign me. Especially when Driscroll and Surcia-Robert actually made me sit down and read about the habitable quarter-worlds using my cake-eye-balls. Worlds outside the prime physical layer of reality… I mean it makes sense and it doesn’t…. I mentally muttered to myself: it’s not like spirits, familiars, and other summons needed a physical place to converse, they were able to telepathically converse with each in a way that felt like an instant messenger. Friends, group chats, the whole nine yards. But it still was amazing to think, there are even more worlds out there, and apparently they had special locales like those of the prime physical layer of reality.

“Then I’ll bring Umi in,” commented Surcia-Robert, calling my primary spirit halo into my internal expanse of blackness.

“Why is everything black?” asked Umi the second she winked into existence.

“It’s the nature of this mental space,” casually commented Driscoll from his corner. 

“Well it’s boring.” She wasn’t wrong, the only reason why I was still sane was cause I could leave this place for short stints, that and the background noise from all my connections and new spirit nature helped. And it’s not like I tried to change things, even with the power-linkings to Memory Retention and Strange Man’s Working Contract this place stayed an expanse of blackness with only my other personality-slash-sapiences and lines of lights that were my connections to break up the tedium. “Let’s just go already.”

Nodding, I watched as Umi started to waver and flicker as she started to astral project out of here. Catching the racial magics she was using, I quickly started to mimic her, straining in the process because of how fucked up my outer genomes currently were. Leaving the expanse of blackness, I felt myself getting sent in a direction that definitely wasn’t any cardinal then the sudden sense of weightlessness followed the feeling of reality, except it wasn’t the reality I was used to.

Blinking a few times in confusion, I was greeted to the sight of a dozens of giant floating prismatic boulders of various colours, most of them easily dwarfing the size of skyscrapers. Before I could orientate myself, a wave of nausea and weird time flow as my chronophasia kicked in: looked like astral bodies were just as susceptible to chronophasia as proxy bodies. Great… now I feel like I’m stuck in Abstraction of Gastronomy now, I internally muttering to myself, dealing with my jittering perception of the flow of time as the background noise from other spirits picked up a notch.

“Where the hell are we?” I managed to gasp out, now just realizing that my form was that of my spirit self, not my normal self.

“An asteroid belt, duh.”

“Wait, what!?! Are we in outer space or something?”

“No, are you an idiot dad? This isn’t the prime physical layer of reality. We’re just in the upper atmosphere of this world… Near a citadel.” Racking my brain with the help of Memory Retention, I remembered that citadels were where people in these layers of reality lived. Habitable quarter-world was a sort of misnomer in that aspect I guess cause people who lived there generally could only really survive in the citadels, protected from dimensional miasma by the modes of transportation that existed there. I guess that is where astral bodies come in, I mused to myself glad I didn’t have to worry about the miamsa.

“I’m not an idiot… just not read up about this sort of stuff. Most people don’t leave their universe or universe group outside of the use of proxy bodies with the special locale, let alone, you know, leave the freaking prime physical layer of reality.”

“Whatever, let’s just meet up with Sous and Reagan.”

“Wait, Regan is here?”

“He is a high enlightened that is famous amongst enlightened robotics like pappa.” Enlightened robotics? Sous? I mean I guess technically, but he was only one twelfth from his faux crystalline enigma manager race: literally all his other race categories were higher precentage. Also isn’t he more famous for being the head blackzone manager of Ignae Automata? Or being one of the scions of Starport Cyber? I mused to myself only to get stared at by Umi. “He is famous for more than one thing you know.”

“Yeah, okay, okay,” I relented with a frustrated sigh: there was no getting around Umi when she got like this. It was my fault that Reagan Road was a legendary tier mage with more things to make him famous than I could probably find out. But hey, at least I was on his good side and managed to get him as an ally cause of his habit to try and ally all the Enigmas of Summer-6.

Making our way through the asteroid belt, I realized that I had no idea which way was actually up: the gravity around was all sorts of wonky. I also learned that Umi didn’t hang around the citadels which made sense cause spirits and the likes didn’t actually need to astral project into the spritscape to communicate with each other, that and she often was out and about in my Enigma or Neo Hollo Oceania. Moonwalking from giant boulder to boulder, I felt my various cursed mandalas, hexes of sentience, and the damages of my pieces of a being flux back and forth as Driscoll, Surcia-Robert, and even Sal worked on managing them in the background. I probably have a few hours at best before I get shunted out of this astral body...

“To think such an interesting world would exist,” commented Sal from the back of my head as Umi continued to navigate me through the asteroid; it was impressive how she was able to navigate through the place without the use of Grand Key-and-fi magecraft-based connections.

“Yeah, we’re definitely not in Kansas anymore.”

“We were never in Kansas though.”

“It’s an euphemism, don’t worry about and just make sure I don’t fall apart again,” I replied as I felt myself get close to Sous. Breaching to the edge of the asteroid belt, I was greeted to this habitable quarter-world’s sky, a swirling mess of stars and colours with a small sun off in the far distance. Looking further out, I saw a trio of people standing on a reddish boulder and looking at a long sloping citadel with tendril-like stretches wrapping around two satellite-styled Breakwaters: Sous was painfully obvious to pick out of the three cause he looked like himself but a hard light hologram with orange tint and metal wire adornments. 

“Ah, Robert, it is good of you to join,” called out Reagan, his voice carrying over the wind with surprising clarity: even in his regal robotic form that I pretty was how he actually normally looked, he felt incredibly powerful, just in a different way. Cane, cloak, crown, he really has it all, I mentally quipped to myself with a tinge of jealous as I looked over at the third person, a voluptuous enlightened robotics with a hard light angel wings and halo, that I pegged as one of Reagan’s system assistants, Mata.

“So this is the owner of the Old Fashioned you’ve been talking about, father,” followed up Mata as Umi and I neared the trio.

“Indeed he is, and I’m glad to see he is in good health. How do you feel, Robert?”

“Honestly like shit, my connections are all bungled up and I can’t hold a proxy body, or like any type of body,” I replied before awkwardly scratching the back of my head. I mean seriously, I didn’t know you could mess up that piece of a being as much as I did short of some rare severe manalogical malady or recovering from almost being true deathed.

“Well hopefully now that the ascension event your alt-rhi helped sponsored is done with, you’ll have time to adjust to your current condition, perhaps find a work around or a cure.”

“And invest in training your Grand Keys,” suggested Sous with a nod, now taking the time to get on my case about me working on becoming more familiar with my portfolio of mandala now that I currently wasn’t in the risk of being killed or enslaved.

“That too, something I would highly suggest.”

“See, Reagan agrees with me.”

“Yeah I see that, Sous,” I commented before looking at the exceedly powerful enlightened robotics of a pinnacle of mages and asking, “Are you just suggesting that as a general thing or because you know something?”

“The former but also a later. Seeing the extent of your damage and knowing your prospectivity of attracting not only allies but enemies and obstacles ranging from cultists to quests from the metaverse, your wounds aren’t going to heal any time soon. To put it bluntly, it would be an optimistic outlook to say you would be back to optimal health with years of magic-empowered therapy. It would be best for you to research and obtain facsimiles to overlap and replace your damaged pieces of a being along with mandalas to support them,” explained Reagan calmly, the gears on his cane, cloak, and crown churning to their own silent rhythms. Letting what he said sink in, I slumped to the ground: as much as I hated it, I knew he was right, my existence was fucked up and damaged and fragmented like crazy. I needed facsimiles and medical and self-help mandalas if I wanted to regain anything close to a normal life, whatever that actually was for a person like me.

“So either I stay a cripple or get expensive hard to get facsimiles,” I sighed in dejection, watching the horizon to see a giant whale-like creature that looked vaguely like Jupiter drifted into view.

“Yes, but you have the means to obtain them so you shouldn’t fret too much. Instead you should take the time to be proud of yourself for coming so far,” replied Reagan with a faint smile before taking note of the whale, “Ahh right on time, the roving Otherworld, Miniature Gas Giant Whale, Jupa.”

“Roving Otherworld?”

“Yes, Otherworld, as in the Grands of the major layer of reality groups outside of the prime physical layer of reality that happen to be every time of dungeon-like distortion. You should really take this time to study these things, you do have greater access to the spiritscape as a spirit now.”

“Yeah... I really should.” Staring at the giant whale of a dungeon-like distortion, I tried to gauge its size but failed to cause it extended well beyond my field of view. I guess, when in Rome, or whatever this world is called.