-Mita Orono-

“The mid-month numbers are in from Alexander and Draceld,” proclaimed Wlogwa from the back of my head as he conjured up a translucent screen to give me a breakdown of revenue: after converting everything to USD, we were looking at nine hundred thousand in profit. Even with the boost in delving and proxy bodies from the end of days’s plague clouds, already roughly one thirds of our revenue was from our resorts if you bothered to convert all the mana the Enigma was producing into mana crystals than convert that into cash. We were technically swimming in capita, even with the trio of loans split between the Refresco hub, Alihi’a’Pounga, and Sins of the SteelStar’s systems and the contract with Zethuron that only had a few months left on it. We can’t get complacent, I mentally told myself as I mulled over the numbers and logged them into our books.

We were lucky we were able to automate so many things with managing the resorts with our system assistants along with cutting down on by employing our entities and using the generation protocols for commodities. Not to mention we had the backing of various groups to smooth the process of operating the resorts from within a blackzone: the Colada and the Noble Gin were supported by Neo Hollo Oceania’s voxes, the Alexander and Milky Way were supported by the Game System of Sins of the SteelStar and its children of the locale, the Old Fashioned had Reagan Road’s backing, and then even the Mocktail had the backing of the Glyirian government despite Neo Draceld Z being the person running it.

“It would be nice if we could have managed to get some tax breaks,” I muttered to myself wishly, knowing just how hard they were to get. But when you were throwing around so many zeros, even a few percent would make huge dividends given time. I mean when the average Aux core cost half a million dollars while our more bread and butter proxy service Aux Cores and split cores for Interconnections respectively averaged around three quarters of a million and ten million: we needed all the spare capita we could get our hands on, especially if we ever wanted to get an Aux core for generating and maintaining autonomous blackzones, those dungeon cores costed thirty-five million at the cheapest.

“It would be but the chances aren’t likely we’ll acquire anyway,” agreed Wlogwa before affirming how unlucky we were to get them even with our allies. Shifting topics, Wlogwa continued to feed me reports, “Barrravvish has just sent another report, one of the members of the resort union has made contact with her and the Penobscot sweet tooths currently on the Endless Strip with Sagamo Sozap.”

“They made contact with us? Now?” I replied, widening my eyes a bit at that: the resort union that oversaw the möbius strip of the Endless Strip that this Earth’s Las Vegas was a part of were notorious for their stonewalling, even with the Goltinium Guild’s help we weren’t making too much progress. But now they were contacting us? When Sozap and the others were getting their system slot’s connections and assets from the El’Vega hub? “Did they finally finish their background check on us?”

“It would seem so, they are going to be sending us a list of potential sponsors if the report is correct.”

“Well that’s great to hear.” Gaining access to the Endless Strip might actually be our biggest windfall yet: even more than getting access to the artificial world hubs of Starport Cyber and Witch Synthia. If we did well in Las Vegas, the resort there could easily net us half a million a month plus bring more traffic to our other resorts.

“It is, but what Barrravvish is relaying to me is that the options are slim and there are none of the union’s top members.”

“So slim picking between B-listers and C-listers?” I noted in understanding, not really surprised about that. If you were to compare our Enigma to the blackzones and other dungeon-like distortions on the Endless Strip, we could still be considered small fries even with all our assets and connections: we were talking about a nation that managed to exist within so many other nations by their sheer number of grand tier mages, there were even a small handful of legendary and mythic tier mages like Reagan Road and Johari Vogt. Of course even with B-listers and C-listers, we were likely to get a blackzone with a grand tier head blackzone manager: thank god we didn’t have to compromise with any of the D-listers or E-listers. “Can you inform the others, Wlogwa?”

“Are you going to head to Las Vegas now?” asked my system assistant as I went to finish the books.

“That’s the plan. If we’re going to follow through and get an expansion or Interconnection into the Endless Strip, we better get our hands on system slot’s connections to the Asset System first,” I explained before summoning Ulra and asking her, “You interested in going to Las Vegas with us?” 

“Yeah, I want to see my new sibling when you get them,” replied my primary spirit halo with an earnest nod. Smiling, I logged in the last few things of numbers into our books and went to hand her some pieces of candy, glad she was so much more mild mannered in comparison to Umi. It was weird to think that the other demon candy girl was no longer just a primary spirit halo but a partial-magi-sentient, my coworker in terms of also being a blackzone manager directly under Robert, and… higher tier than. At least she is only a partial-magi-sentient and not a magi-sentient and also a stargranted, I thought in a vain sort of petty way to comfort myself: I was now tier 2.8, but Umi was tier 3.5 cause of her race advancement, even Sous was higher tier than me at tier 3.9.

With everything in order, I went to meet Robert, Ras, and Louella at the local library within Historie Pastoria Sweets proper. Arriving second, I saw Louella conversing with two other members of the Goltinium Spellman Nine: Esarathon and Astrid. It was obvious that we were going to hitch a ride with Esarathon is his car-granting Grand Ascension, V12 Star Streaker. As much as I hated spellmen still, I wasn’t stupid enough to not look up the Goltinium Spellman Nine and learn about them now that I was working with them cause of Louella. 

Can’t they learn to be more sensitive about their manalogical auras? I internally complained myself as I drew near them: at least Louella was more conscious about the mana she gave off and was practicing to rein it in, which was really appreciated, but the other two weren’t doing anything to stem the flow of their manas. Esarathon felt like staring into a starry night sky and being swallowed up by it while Astrid felt more like being stared down by a pack of hungry wolves and my low tier in comparison to them didn’t help at all at alleviating those feelings.

“Oh, Mita, you’re already here,” called out Louella with a smile, already suppressing her manalogical aura another notch and nudging the other two; looking over at me, the two of them surprisingly followed suit. Thank god these guys are actually considerate to a degree, I mused as I found myself able to relax a bit: these guys could be grating but at least they weren’t as a bad as some of the spellmen I saw while monitoring the Enigma in my spare time, there were some crazy ones out there.

“Mita, it’s good to see you again,” followed up Esarathon with a curt nod, “I hope our presence isn’t overwhelming this time around.”

“It actually isn’t… Why is that?” I replied, raising my brow as I tried to feel out their manalogical auras and saw that it was still definitely stronger than a delver of their tier but definitely not anywhere near the level of a spellman or similar pinnacle of mages. It’s probably on par with Sous’s manalogical aura now, I thought to myself trying to figure out the best reference point: Umi was a partial-magi-sentient so her’s was naturally more subdued, Robert’s was all over the place but hard to notice despite him being so many types of pinnacles of mages, and Sous’s was meticulously well kept and maintained from the get go.

“It’s because Louella has been telling us about how you and the other blackzone managers feel when we are around. So we decided to talk with one of the Goltinium Guild’s PR firms and they gave us mandala inscriptions for these sub-features, Aura Suppression (Earth), to help with that,” explained the elven spellman as he manipulated his manalogical aura in demonstration. So it’s mostly mirage mana doing the work… the earth mana part must be because of their class specialties, I internally noted as I got a better feel for the magics involved. It was nice to know they were taking steps to be more presentable, but it still was annoying that they didn’t do this sooner, especially since they had Astrid who was a vox reborn now plus the six impostor stargranted and impostor rulers with similar sensitivities to manalogical auras. I mean just because they were impostor type pinnacles of mages and not blackzone managers didn’t mean it was so weak in comparison that it wasn’t an issue. Right?

“Well… thanks I guess,” I told the three of them awkwardly, only to have Astrid shake her head and commented,

“No need, it was grating to me also… Even with being a spellman things were… oppressive at times. We also got… his lockets as mandalas too, very nice.” With that, the russian blue wolfkin went to wrap her arm around Esarathon’s and went back to being silent. At least I wasn’t to the only one having the issue with their manalogical auras outside of Robert being naturally sensitive to this stuff and prone to complaining, cause Louella sure as hell didn’t feel a thing since she was so skilled at being an elemementalist and Ras… well he never did let on how he felt about things but probably because he was already used to his uncle, Ester. Also they finally ended up getting Esarathon’s Space Lockets of Sweets as mandalas? Well, it only was a matter of time given the popularity of those things.

It wasn’t until after a few minutes of idle talk that I mostly stayed out of that Ras arrived with Robert’s limp body in tow in his wheelchair. So it looked like Umi and Sous were going to stay behind to work on Harper and Alexander’s wedding and keep an eye on things. Probably for the best we keep some people on watch.

“Do you want me to wheel around Robert for you?” asked Ulra, looking at the ten cake-eye-balls hovering around Robert, obviously acting as his eyes and ears right now.

“Why can’t Umi be this nice?” moaned Robert from the back of my head through my spirit contract with him: I could practically feel his frustration through my attunement and system slots connected to him.

“You just aren’t lucky dude,” I telepathically replied as Ulra went to take over wheelchair duty from Ras. “Just be glad we weren’t sticking you into your personal space to make this easier on us.”

“Fuck that, you know how cramped those things are?”

“Well you’re the only spirit I’ve heard complain about it, so it sounds like you problem.”

“Alright, we’re all here. Let’s roll out, these skies are currently clear and I don’t feel like being on the roads when the next wave of plague clouds hit,” proclaimed Esarathon, clapping his hands together and interrupting Rober for he could snap back at me. There were a few rare times I was glad to be around spellmen, and this was probably one of them.