-Robert Fayn-

It’s officially has been a three weeks since the attacks by the Soldiers of Clay, SteelStar Supremacist, and Glory Daze: twenty-one days since I got my second Grand Key, Historie Pastoria Sweet’s Dark Trinity of Spirits, and effectively became a cripple because of the backlash from inscribing it. A lot of stuff has been happening, although not everything we wanted like having to deal with recharging our dungeon core restoring Aux cores and waiting for the autonomous blackzone generating ones to kick into gear. So while we all waited on that, Louella, Sous, and Umi were working on expanding the number of mana generators and monster spawners we had, even going as far as researching into Aux cores for them, and Ras, Mita, and Draceld were working to try and expand the Enigma into Las Vegas with some minor help from the Goltinium Guild, I was stuck with therapy. Gasping and sweating, I felt the power-link from the multi-system slot, synthesized from my three Flasaporium hub-based system slots, to my body piece of a being forcing connections and reponses. Work out with a proxy body: absolute hell.

“Keep it up, you have a few more minutes of running,” called out Dr. Van Heime, my therapist and Glyirian sweet tooth, as I ran back and forth through one of Arbor a la Roll Cakes’s orchards. When I heard you could power-link to an entire piece of a being, not even worrying about extra restrictions like with synthesis mandalas or composite facsimile, I thought it was amazing. I mean why not just do that for your system slots piece of a being or your mandala pieces of a being… Well basically it was shit cause you didn’t get actual full access to it, instead you got the bare basics along with some attributes and improved access to the piece of a being’s type of magic.

“Why must I keep running?” I gasped in exhaustion, feeling sweat drip down my weird proxy body, made extra organic and normal looking from the power link. I could feel it ache along with my real body. That was the other annoying downside of these types of power-links: there was a minor but annoying level of transfer of wounds, exhaustion, and whatnot.

“Because if you don’t exercise regularly, your body may start to atrophy and open you up to more medical complications then you already have,” chided Dr. Van Heime sagely as he repositioned his clunky glasses. “Must I remind you while there is nothing physically wrong with your body, manalogically it is heavily damaged and metaphysically largely unresponsive to your other pieces of a being.”

“But running?... In a proxy body?”

“Well ideally I would have you use a power-link lesser specialty or feature, especially since you already have experience to such mandalas with your impressive array, Shaman-Assassin’s Branch Lance, Phantasma: Spear of Scorpius, Facsimile: Surcia-Curcumedioia's Sapience, and Facsimile: Heart-Stone of Driscoll... but your inflicted hexes of sentience would interfere.” 

“You don’t have to remind me,” I replied with something between a pant and a sigh: Inflicted Hex of Loss Magic (Spellwork) and Inflicted Hex of Loss Magic (Identity) were just once again fucking up my spellcraft. It was weird to realize how much I relied on and enjoyed using magic now that my spellcasting skills were all out of whack; not to mention annoying that I sucked at using those cursed forbidden mandalas’s spells unless Driscoll was behind the wheel.

“You can do it! Keep it up,” cheered Sal from the back of my head as I continued to run and complained, not even getting to enjoy the lack of plague clouds from the end of days, Borolio of Plague Clouds, overhead. Turning around a cone set up by the doctor, I found myself losing focus and slipping, crashing into the earthy ground with a thud. Fucking connections… I internally muttered to myself with a wince. Compared to the connections I had with others via my innate fi magecraft, my connections piece of a being? Well it was frayed and strained pretty much to hell. It probably was a minor miracle I didn’t have an actual malady for them, but that might be cause of my Emperor-Spirit’s Proof of Connections facsimile helping to pick up the slack.

“You’re losing your connection,” commented Dr. Van Heime, pointing out the slip as my proxy body started to break down. 

“No shit,” I muttered with a wince as I felt my consciousness start to get dragged back to my internal expanse of blackness, rubbing the points where my sapience of a composite facsimile connected to my fragmented mind and soul the wrong way. I always hated how it felt when the connections to this proxy body broke down: with other proxy bodies, they just returned to their system slot and the link was cut, but with this one I felt the breakdown process and it was worse than full body cramps.

“Just make sure you are ready for our next session on Thursday.” And with that, I was shunted back to my internal expanse of blackness, again. Doing my best of approximation of  collapsing to sit down, I went to look around: Driscroll wasn’t around because he was with Umi currently who was doing some spiritscape exploring for me and Surcia-Robert was currently piloting a replica that Blazehopper had summoned. Even Sal was technically away cause they were assisting the other system assistants in managing the blackzone on top of keeping an eye out on the condition of my pieces of a being.

“I guess I have some time to kill before my next thing to do,” I muttered to myself as I felt my connections, focusing on them to see what was going on in my penthouse. Peering through one of my cake-eye-balls, I saw Beath was relaxing with Sugar and Spice while keeping an eye on my real body for me. Pausing for a moment, I realized how no clue who the fourth person for my next thing for the day, stargranted training, was. Crap, better double check that, I thought to myself before telepathically asking Louella through our spirit contract,

“Hey Louella, which one of your friends are going to be at today’s training session?”

“It’s Wallace this time,” replied the noblewoman of a spellman casually as I felt the presence of her other spirits on the edge of my mind.

“That’s the ice flower dude isn’t it?” I continued to question as I drew on Memory Retention to double check with myself: amongst the eighteen spellmen that made up Louella’s house or whatever, three of them were imposter stargranted, Wallace, Hana, and Xinyi. You would think that between those three secret spellman, the other three who were imposter rulers, Aya, Armin, and Gilbert, and trio of herit crest users, Chad, Delia, and Levi, that they would be considered more important toward their guild, but nope. For whatever reason they were considered small fries until Louella became one of my underling blackzone managers: which made it terrifying to think how strong the spellmen that the Goltinium Guild favored actually were.

“Yes him, he is actually already here if you want to start your training session early.”

“One, I don’t want to start the session early, and two, I couldn’t even if I wanted to.”

“Was your therapy session that bad?”

“Yes, and Harvey has me summoned right now also,” I answered with a tinge of annoyance: not because Harvey had me summoned and I couldn’t talk to him right now but because it was so annoying having to deal with these ‘cool off’ periods. Every single time I get shunted back to this expanse of blackness I needed to recoup myself and not to mention it would be a short while before I could use that proxy body or whatever again. 

I could sense Louella nod in understanding and I let out a sigh of relief, cause I really didn’t feel like fighting against a summoning right now. Letting my mind wander to burn time before Louella summoned me, I took control of one of my cake-eye-balls. Drifting out of my penthouse to the lower floors, I maneuvered my summon to the caketopian apothecaries’ workshop to see all the entities worked at making more potions, soda-potions, and tonics while Harper and Alexander observed from their post. The two of them were practically inseparable now, but I didn’t really mind that. Their wedding and ascension event might end up being a total pain to do though.

Once it was finally time, Louella went to summon me through her spirit slots and Strange Man’s Working Contract attunements: squeezing my consciousness into the second of my four replicas and whisking me through space-time and layers of reality. Appearing in front of Louella, Sous, and Wallace, I felt a sudden wave of chronophasia-inducted vertigo. Not fucking now, I internally growled as I focused on my spirit powers to make the episode past faster: since Louella hadn’t bothered to level up our spirit contract yet, she only had access to my potion-wreathed mask, Surcia-Robert’s warm coloured polka dotted mask, and Driscroll’s textured dark flames mask. If we wanted to do anything else, even if it was another one of my spirit form’s masks, I’d have to use my own mana and spellcraft. 

“I still hate being summoned,” I managed to spurt out as the episode of chronophasia passed and got a chance to look around. We were in System Assistant’s Caketopia, we weren’t even in my Enigma but instead some sort of college campus. “Umm… where are we?”

“The Goltinium Guild’s spellman campus. Sous wanted to see what it was like and so we decided it would be easier to meet up with Wallace here,” explained Louella, motioning over to the pale blue haired and even paler skinned spellman standing next to her.

“I hope you don’t mind, I had a seminar I had to attend,” offhandedly apologized Wallace as he went to conjuring his gem of fancies, an ovular pale blue and misty white crystal with silver lace-bracing. Sous quickly followed up and conjured his own gem of fancies, black and beige-steel with bulky yet ornate shell-bracing.

“Of course you did,” I noted, furrowing my non-existent brow as I got a better feel of this place: it was absolutely crawling with pinnacles of mages. Suppressing the urge to freak out from the sheer manalogical aura of the campus, I went to summoning my own gem of fancies, also black and beige-steel like Sous but with weblike-bracing: proof that the two us were contracted to the Shaytan-Brachii compared to Wallace’s contract with the Gandharva-Marid. “Let’s just get this over with.”

Flooding the gem of fancies with magics and mana with more effort than I wanted, I activated its Wish Transformation and felt it wash over me. In my mind’s eye, I could feel my inflicted hexes of sentience interfere but the anachronistic nature and triple tags of racial, artifact, and self-altering mitigated a majority of their negative influence. As the transformation sequence ended, my mask-covered vest was replaced by a simple pinstripe suit with chains loops around my shoulders and waist and ribbons wrapped around my wrists fingers; in my hand was a long staff with a small circular fantasy-style loom at it’s top. 

Looking over to Sous and Wallace, I saw them follow suit: filling their gems of fancies with magic and manas until they shined with blinding lights. Sous’s pale skin and brownish ginger hair became a touch more metallic as his clothes changed something between a mage’s and chef’s attire with disc-like patterning similar to mandalas while Wallace’s clothes transformed for something you would see a male pop idol wear: a pure white stylized military outfit with icy blue vines with blooming flower sparsely wrapping around him.

“Now then, let’s start with a light warm up,” suggested the icy pale spellman, frost escaping from his breath as he conjured up a giant rose stalk made out of pure ice: his mana flowing unnerving ease despite its rigid ice-like appearance.

“A simple spar?” returned Sous with a nod as glyphs start to appear with the mandala discs on his clothes before separating from him to create a small array behind him.

“A light one. There is an open training facility we can use just down the way.” 

“Great… just great,” I muttered under my breath as I coaxed the strings from my loom staff to start moving and circulating, making sure I would also be ready once we started to spar. First running all over the place for therapy and now I have to fight a freaking spellman-impostor starganted. Why do I keep letting my schedule get booked up like this?

“Because you’re a busy person now and don’t let me organize otherwise,” answered Sal, almost right on cue to elicit a groan from me. It wasn’t my fault I got made into a blackzone manager or emperor-spirit or stargranted. You technically could say it wasn’t my fault I became a phantasma user or mortal incarnation cause Daphne and Lucilla peer pressured me into that. And it definitely wasn’t my fault I was about to get my ass kicked in this so-called light spar.