-Sous-

As Louella and Wallace led us through the winding pathways of the Goltinium Guild’s spellman campus, I took the time to observe my surroundings: this was the first time I have ever seen a college. From the abundance of ambient mana and the trace amounts of extra-periodic materials in the architecture of the opulent yet academic neoclassical buildings, even I could tell this was no simple university. Perhaps I should learn if it is possible for me to enroll here, I mused to myself tactfully, reports showed that my intellect was developed enough that I would be able to handle college courses and biologically speaking my real body was comparable to a twenty-four year old male despite it not accurately reflecting my actual age or lifespan.

The recipe of becoming a student here did amuse me and would open up many doors… but there was much more I needed to learn. The culture and aptitude of spellman and similar pinnacle of mages was something I needed to research: the commonality of pinnacles of mages, particularly spellmen, starganted, and spirit kings and realm conquerors, was much higher than public knowledge. There was also the nature of the places of learning I needed to be better informed about. Just from my few months of existence I’ve already learned about a few of them: The Goltinium Guild that operated as a major delving guild; the Schools of Noiria and Nierelf, both running multiple universities and affiliated magic schools bearing their name; and through Mita and Ras’s work I was learning about the Coven of Ravenhaus, a particular coven that the Goltinium Spellman Nine secretly knew about and operated a handful of high end resorts and brothels on the Endless Strip along from the shadows. To think there are so many powerful organizations working from the background to shape and control the knowledge of magic across the entire metaverse, I thought to myself, split on my exact feelings about these places of learning and the Great Houses and Factions that worked with them: on one hand, their scale and power inspired me, but on the other hand, something about their secretly and sometimes stifling natures irked some part of me deep down.

“You’re getting lost in thought again,” commented Robert, dragging my thoughts back to reality.

“I don’t see why that is a bad thing, a good chef should always be pondering over his stock of ingredients and recipes,” I replied as the four of us made our way around an oversized topiary of a mage with leaves tinged with some extra-periodic golden metalloid.

“It is when I’m right next to you, I don’t feel like getting looped into going down your rabbit hole.”

“If you worked on your fi magecraft and mental barriers, you wouldn’t have to worry about overhearing unwanted thoughts,” telepathically noted Driscoll before opening up a connection to just me and continuing, “But Robert is right, you are a system assistant, you possess a natural of absorbing and exuding information and thoughts. You should work on having your secondary consciousness and Departie reconfigure and fortify your mental defenses. Your range of connections is far more than just Robert and other blackzone system assistants, and your connection to Robert is many times deeper and more complex now.”

“I get to work on that right away, sir,” commented the vox system assistant from the back of my head, already processing the needed emphasises, foundations, and incantations to modify my mental barriers: something I had not put much effort into like most others, but because of my nature rather than an unwillingness to learn the needed magics. Feeling my connections to Robert and Umi along with the rest of system assistants I am in communication with, both consciously and subconscious, become more fortified and monitored, the four of us arrive at our destination, a medium-sized open-air training facility off on the side of a pavilion. 

“Why couldn’t you just summon me when you got here?” offhandedly complained Robert to Louella as he impatiently tapped his loom staff on the sidewalk. “You know I can only stay summoned for so long, especially like this.”

“I figured it would be good for you to see the spellman campus. You are having Mita and Ras working on an expansion on the Endless Strip through the Goltinium Guild, so you should actually take the time to learn about the guild,” answered Louella calmly as we entered the courtyard of a training facility. I could the protective and spellcast-aiding magics weaved into the fencing and ground. A recipe like this would require an Aux core for our Enigma, or at least one of us becoming a tier 5 or higher mage with specialties in enchanting… I observed, noting that we would likely have to do the former rather than later if we ever attempted to do something this: all the blackzone managers of Historie Pastoria Sweets had offense or utility centric specialties if they had one, the closest to having expert in this sort of spellcraft was actually Lucilla and that was only barely.

“Now then, shall we do a two on one spar” inquired Wallace as he strode to the other side of the open-air facility, leaving a trail of snowflake-and-petal patterned ice mana in his wake. Both Robert and I nodded at that, we were tier 4.7 and tier 4.1 but with effective tiers of 3.9 and 3.7 because of the hexes of sentience that came with Driscoll: a tier 4.9 spellman-impostor starganted like Wallace who had expertise in stargranted-based magics and wasn’t hampered by curses and hexes of sentience would be able to easily crack us like a couple of eggs in one on one or free for all. “Perfect. Let me take the first move then.”

Drawing a circle in the air with his icy rose stalk of a cane, the pale spellman started to create long thorny vines of icy blue roses from his feet. Reacting as fast as I could, I channelled magics and spells through my array of glyphs: drawing on Driscoll’s aid, I fired off a few bolts of hexes of tier down-infused ancient-mana. As Wallace threw up a spell shield to block the effective tier decreasing assault, Robert went to create a line of glowing thread and sending it straight into my back. 

I could feel a connection be formed, drawing in on our many other connections to empower himself and increase his own access to magic: unlike my wish of magi-sentience that manifested in my Wish Transformation’s ability to make use of the best of both dishes of magi-sentience and being a system assistance, his peculiar wish of dependency manifested in an ability to link up to others with connections and contracts to him and or similar portfolio of mandalas, mimicking, empowering, and altering spellcraft he could technically already do.

“Come on Driscoll, time for you to pay your rent,” proclaimed Robert as he conjured up his dark flame-textured spirit mask of Driscoll before putting it on.

“You should not rely on me all the time,” chastised Driscoll through the spirit mask, creating strings of mana infused with hexes of sentience.

“Fighting you two is like fighting recursive mages minus the aura,” noted Wallace after a short while; his vines of icy blue roses continued to grow and started to rapidly shape themselves into barricades, allowing him to weave through our attacks with even more ease.

“Which means we are much easier to handle,” sourly followed up Driscoll over our mental connection, obviously feeling some frustration that neither Robert or myself were recursive mages and therefore unable to produce their signature auras of curses and hexes the drew power directly from counter, the ninth damned will. Even between our strings and bolts of hexes of sentience, the two of us weren’t able to land enough blows to apply any hex of sentience through Wallace’s Wish Transformation-empowered defenses.

Twisting around a thrust of a blue rose-covered vine, I felt as its thorns scraped across my spell shield and passive spell shield, leaving thin cuts across my clothing and skins that would quickly mend themselves. This stargranted training session wasn’t only proving how much of a gap that Robert and myself had in comparison to Wallace in both expertise and tier but also how bad of an idea it was for me to rely on Driscoll for my Wish Transformation empowered spells. My wish was for magi-sentience, so trying to channel Driscoll’s particular brand of spellcraft through my gem of fancies and Wish Transformation was like putting salt into a batter instead of sugar: his spells were meant to steam the influence of magi-sentience, not extol it.

Changing tactics, I focused on drawing in as much mana as possible, to the point I could keenly feel the anti-mana generating influence of the Heart-Stone of Driscoll and its related power-linking feature mandala. In sync with my gem of fancies and secondary consciousness, I channelled the mana that was being circulated through my mandala and flooded into my Sea of Phenomena out into my glyph array.

“Departie, manage the outputs for me,” I told my vox system assistant, drawing on a recipe from Robert’s cookbook: using your system assistants for micromanaging and fine tuned spellcasting.

“Optimizing the ratios now. You may proceed with firing,” replied Departie as beads of ionized mana emissions started to form at the center of each of the glyphs. With high pitched whirls, a series of sustained lasers started to cut through the pale spellman’s icy blue rose-covered vines. Vine after vine were severed in quick succession, but it was a vain attempt: they already covered a third of the facility and forming barricades and pillars by the dozens, their growth rate already outpacing our damage output.

“Excellent casting,” complemented Wallace before continuing, “But you should have done that over a minute ago.” With that, one of the pillars of twisting vines of icy blue roses moved with surprising speed, lancing it way through the air: a split second before it pierced my side, it stopped. “You can’t let someone like me gain ground like that.”

“It is nice to see you in your element and not flustered or overwhelmed for once, Wallace,” noted Louella from the sideline, taking this time to stride over, careful not to step on every of the vines.

“It is… I definitely prefer training with Robert and Sous compared to Xinyi,” answered Wallace as he started to dispel his vines, letting them curl into nothingness in elegant patterns.

“Yeah, magical girl kung fu is too much if you ask me,” agreed Robert as he went to sit down, obviously already to get the training session over with despite the fact his summoning could likely last one to two more hours. It was obvious over the course of the rest of the training session with Wallace and Louella that Robert’s foundations as a mage outside of his potion making and strange connections-centric spellcraft was sorely lacking. Each spar, lesson in simple magics, and practicing magic circulating techniques and spell processing wore away at his summoning, the damage to his various pieces of a being and his multiple mandala-wrought manalogical maladies and hexes of sentience weakening him gradually. 

As it stood, the extent of the damage he sustained from the SteelStar Supremacist combined with the amount of mandalas he inscribed over the past months and the fact he wasn’t built for such stress meant… that the harm done was neigh irreversible: he truly was unlucky with how severe the injuries were. Either he would have to spend years with expensive therapy and medicinal treatments or develop his spellcraft to work around his disability or potentially turn them into his strengths: both would require him to devote some portion of his portfolio of mandalas. Our only solace here is that his skill in both potion making and fi magecraft can be useful for either dishes… Now only if he devoted himself to more fully understanding the ingredients he has at his disposal, I mused to myself, dispelling my Wish Transformation and wiping off the light sheen of sweat that was sticking to my brow.

“Alright, have a nice day, Robert,” commented Louella as she dispelled Robert, electing to undo the summoning before it broke down on its own to the frustration of Robert. “I know Robert hates being summoned, especially over long distances. But he doesn’t understand the half of it, it feels so weird summoning him and keeping him summoned.”

“Because he is your boss?” questioned Wallace, sipping on a vanilla-and-caramel flavored soda-potion from Historie Pastoria Sweets.

“No, not that. It’s the curses on the system slots and attunement that contain my spirit contract with him, it makes him inefficient. Combine that with the damage and maladies his pieces of a being are dealing and he is a grand spirit that I only have normal system slots and a mandala toward, it’s a peculiar situation,” tactfully explained Louella with a sigh as she took out a fan from her personal subdimension to wave away the hot Las Vegas air that was returning now that Wallace was maintaining his icy blue roses.

“Oh I see, and it’s not like you can get a Grand Magus-grade mandala or stratum 3 multi-system slot to empower him and mitigate him. The ethics and awkwardness involved… I’m glad I’m not the one dealing with it.” 

“Actually, especially since I do enjoy working with him and the others, you included Sous,” continued Louella with a sort of defeated look on her face. “But I can’t stomach asking him if I could make one, the amount of control it would give me over him, it would be like telling my earl of an uncle that I own him.” 

“Yes, I could see Robert gagging and throwing a fit at the mention of such a dish, even if it would help him,” I noted with a knowing nod: I understood roughly what the noblewoman was dealing with, less from an emotional standpoint but more of an experienced-acqued one. Robert was not that type of person who would let someone control him unless he absolutely had too, perhaps if this had happened half a year ago he would have been meek and stressed enough to along for it. We can’t pamper him too much though, sooner or later he’ll have to eat his vegetables one way or another.

“Well I hope you two figure something out, but in the meantime, how about we get some dinner?” interrupted Wallace with a half-smile, pulling out his phone to show us a fancy menu. “I have a reservation for a nice place downtown if you’re interested.” A high end restaurant on the Endless Strip? I paused, thinking about the abundance of plague clouds recently due to the end of days, Borolio of the Plague Clouds, nearing the US from the pacific ocean, but ultimately relented. The Endless Strip had a large array of powerful glyphs to ward off the plague clouds and this was the first I was invited to eat out at a fine dining establishment.

“I’d love too,” I replied, already dissecting the menu and wondering how I could use this experience in managing our Enigma. Perhaps I could find a suitable dish for the upcoming wedding of Harper and Alexander.