-Umi-

“It seems that more of our own are going to ascend before I get an equal,” complained Lechiff from his makeshift throne as he stared at the Swarm of Hundreds and Thousands sent by Fuhrer Vel and the dancing spirit-nymph sent by Queen Tara, the two legion monsters listening in and conversing through them.

“You have to understand things have been hectic, and Harper and I are surprised we are even getting this opportunity,” explained Alexander as he brushed one of his lover’s wings as she sat next to him, still half a head taller than despite the fact she was sitting and he was standing. Honestly I wasn’t surprised that Robert was footing the bill to have the two of them be ascended: he and Mita had weird soft spots for romance and after the confession of love on Blazehopper’s stream, a lot of people were rooting for the two of them. Still weird they want to be fused together, I thought to myself as I licked on my lollipop and sat in the corner with the system assistants sans Sous, all currently possessing different types of cheesecake knights.

The original plan was to use a secondary core Mita had bought to fuel an ascension event and turn the two into magi-sentient blackzone managers, but they wanted something different: they wanted to be fused together into one being. And they didn’t want the conceptual combining via facsimiles and mandalas but the full deal: something that was incredibly hard to do because you couldn’t rewrite mandalas and it was hard to have more born racial features and innate schools than normal. You usually needed the help of something on par with a Legendary Magus-grade mandala or stronger to achieve that. At least they were both sentients still so those mandalas weren’t fully inscribed yet, but it still meant they could only become a singular partial-magi-sentient blackzone manager only connected to the Enigma by the fact they would be one of its blackzone managers and also one of its contracted existences.

“I think it’s sweet, you don’t see humans going as far as Harper and Alexander do,” chimed Anlola from the back of my head, obviously drawing on the soap operas and rom coms she’s been watching.

“Yeah, most idiots like dad would only go as far as a Matrimony, and you can still sever that sort of contract,” I replied with a sigh, thinking about all the contracts that dad and pappa had: spirit contracts, familiar contracts, system assistant contracts, our Grand Key, dad even has a Domination on Draceld plus another contract-centric mirroring Grand Key, but neither of them were married or had a Matrimony.

“Well neither of them are dating anyone,” noted Anlola before the Matron of Blackcurrant told Lechiff, “You shouldn’t worrry Lechifff, Ras is making a raid monster in the form of a dragon.” It took a few seconds for me to realize it was Draceld talking and not her secondary conscious, NDZ, that usually inhabited and controlled the roaming legion monster. Did she hand off the Penobscot sweet tooths to dad and pappa already?

“Another raid monster of a dragon? One worthy of enough marking a grand wedding? I approve,” exclaimed the Great Chiffon Dragon in a bout of draconic pride, leave it to a lightning head like him to turn Harper and Alexander’s wedding into something to prove that dragons were amazing.

“Does that mean we’re going to be getting more types of upper tower women?” I asked, butting into the conversation to bring up the red velvet consorts and princess cake prophetesses. It would be nice to have a larger variety of them, even if I would have to go to Capita Sweets to fight them.

“Yes, and surprisingly Ras is lettting me make them, probably because Robert told him tooo. Do you want to make one? I was thinking of letting Enigma’s Enigma make one.”

“I’ll make it,” I answered, shuddering at the thought of that legion monster deciding one of the new types of upper tower women. I knew she managed to make her fourth budget Grand Key recently, which was impressive since she managed to complete her third one while still recuperating from being killed, but it was still weird to think it a contract-based one for her legion monster self and the Enigma’s Enigma. To think the Enigma’s Enigma is a contracted existence now… I mentally quipped with a weird sort of internal laugh: it was a notion but it also was funny how pissed off the Glyirians were when they learned about them.

“Umi can have input in creating one, but I can not?” complained Lechiff with a glower and poof of lightning. 

“You may have seniority over us, but you are only a raid monster still,” chided Draceld, waving all four of her legion monster body’s dark purple licorice-esque tentacles that stuck of its back. For someone whose current body was only just short of two meters, she was able to stand up to a bonafide dragon, even if he was cake-themed: she really was like Auntie Daphne in a lot of surprising ways.

“Don’t worry… it will be your time soon,” interjected Harper, cutting the dragon off before he could roar something out at Draceld Z in a rage.

Seeing now was probably a good time to leave Lechiff and the others, I ducked out of the dragon’s lair along with Draceld and our system assistants, Anlola in her tropical-style seaside delight cheesecake knight and Barrravvish in her jester-esque blackcurrant cheesecake knight. Making our way down the tower to Historie Pastoria Sweets proper, the four of us caught the eye of some delvers group, but none of them were stupid enough to try and fight us since it was obvious I was a partial-magi-sentient apex and Draceld was possessing her legion monster counterpart.

“So you’ve been using your legion monster body more often, why is that?” I asked Draceld, trying to make some idle talk as we made our way to Capita Sweets by foot since her current body couldn’t fit into any of the train cars comfortably.

“Simply put, I don’t like dealing with my Lessser P-Beige-Steeel Sensitivvity and Lessser P-Yelllow Sensitivvity,” explained the high enlightened, the tentacles coming out of her back quivering and wrapped around her bosom what I could only assume was mild annoyance.

“Oh…” I replied, making a small ‘o’ face as I realized how stupid of a question that was. No one liked dealing with weakened mana generation and resistance when it came to chromatic manas, but when you had cursed mandalas, even lesser ones, weakening your ability to use both beige-steel and yellow manas: it was a big deal. The state her defenses must be in… talk about a real hassle.

“Your back, and you brought Umi,” commented Terrin as we entered the lobby of Sweets Capita, lurking behind him was the oversized colourful carrion blight that was the Enigma’s Enigma of Draceld Z, obviously staring at the sweet tooth through a flock of cake-eye-balls.

“Is the Enigma’s Enigma stalking you?” I half-questioned half-pointed out to Terrin as I noticed he had Isebella summoned with his own flock of four blue-tinged cake-eye-balls who were staring back at the Enigma’s Enigma’s.

“They are and it’s rude,” answered Isabella telepathically as she conjured up a cloud of mist to try and obscure the legion monster and its conjured monsters, only to have the cloud be instantly dispersed with invisible waves of ambient mana. “See?”

“It’s fine, they are just keeping an eye on their master,” explained Terrin, pulling it off with a shrug. “Draceld has taken to stowing her real body in her personal space with me. Not that I mind, it helps with my analysis of her portfolio of mandalas.” With that, the Glyirian conjured up a sheet made of mist with some imposed on it for me to read, it was Draceld’s four Grand Key: Blackcurrant Abstraction of Lore, Blackcurrant Child of Zethuron, Blackcurrant Chains of Freedom, and Blackcurrant Twin Legion Contracts. Portfolio of mandala and information obscurement, accessing and amplifying divinity, manipulating and managing contracts, and then two familiar contracts with the contracted existences of legion monsters, I mentally noted as I tried to read through some of them smaller blurrier text to little avail.

“It would be nice if you didn’t revveal alll a woman’s secrets the second you found them,” half-heartedly complained Draceld as she unpossessed her legion monster counterpart and summoned herself between us. 

“Perhaps we should get to work on the new upper tower women?” politely interrupted Barrravvish, conjuring up the Monster Creation Menu for Draceld; almost on instinct I went to ask pappa to do the same for me since he was my blackzone system assistant also.

“Here you go Umi, I can’t wait to see what recipe you come up with,” commented pappa as he opened up the Monster Creation Menu for me as we proceeded to start to walk up to the upper floors. Smiling at that, I went to work and pulled up the monster information of the red velvet consorts and princess cake prophetesses. I didn’t need to see their monster information to know what they did, the red velvets had defense and charm banes in their whips, spell shields in their bracelets, and denatured fey, shade, arcane, space, and time manas while the princess cakes had their predictive and tracking spells along with control over Bento Glyphs, Gaia-Menu, Hunter-Gatherer Tech, Nutrient-Implement, and Sweets Cast-typed mana. Those two types of monsters definitely were dad’s counter to Esarathon’s Space Locket of Sweets and they were still paying dividends cause of those locket’s popularity, they were being made into artificial mandalas and sub-feature and attunement mandalas these days for a reason.

I wonder how many of those mandalas that Esarathon person has now, I mused with a smile: he was actually pretty cool to hang out with and delve with at times with that bow and car of his. Yeah he definitely has a handful, I continued to think and get inspired by him, remembering all the times he used those lockets. Nodding to myself, I went to decide what sort of cake this upper tower woman would be based off of. Since it was for a wedding, I decided to go with something white. Seeing that dad and pappa sometimes compared Glyirian culture to French culture, I decided on french vanilla.

Taking the figure of the red velvet consort, I changed the revealing velvet robes to be more modest and eggshell white with frosty frills. As I changed their skin tone to match their new cake, I went giving it affinities in elemental gravity and Hunter-Gatherer Tech. With their appearance and affinities of the way, I quickly changed the habitat to be the upper floors of Capita Sweets and made their personality more elegant. 

“Perfect,” I muttered to myself with a grin as I adjusted their denaturing ability to target air, plant, fey, time, and gravity. Moving onto their equipment, I scrapped their bracelets and whip and replaced them with two larger mitten-like gauntlets, the left having the ability to conjure sets of bulwark-like shields while the right had the ability to create chains made of elemental gravity and wellspring spectral to restrain their victims. Tweaking their drops, I made it so their magical core and gauntlets had better chances of surviving while they dropped slices of blackzone french vanilla cakes that reduce physical fatigue. “There we go pappa, my ‘french vanilla shieldmaidens.’”

“What an interesting recipe for a monster, let me add them now. Formalizing monster. Entering monster information into Enigma’s monster generation protocols as ‘French Vanilla Shieldmaidens.’” replied papa before summoning a few instances to us to see. Admiring my work, I noticed a handful of more monsters appearing, these being fully trapped in yellow white with thin lines of yellow, orange, red, green, and blue.

“There we go, my vvintner’s reduction artisan,” explained Draceld with a prideful toothy smile. “Affinities in elemental plant and Simple Cast with basic elemental spells and moderate control over plant, ooze, magma, smoke, and ice manas.”

“Oh, vintner's reduction, now that’s a nice cake,” commented Terrin with a thumbs up of approval. A Glyirian cake? Interesting, I mused as I watched as the two types of upper tower women intermingle. It looked like we had some overlap in our monster’s mana manipulation abilities: plant mages were going to have a much harder time in Capita Sweets now.