-Robert Fayn-

“Accept this benediction from myself and the Architect Compita for you and your allies in your coming trials.”

Those words from the Vox Phantasm still rang in my head as I told Mita and Ras that we hit a jackpot: this was like a repeat of me getting Umi, but instead of it being a normal synthesis attunement, it was a mirroring synthesis attunement that made it so Mita and Ras were sharing the same multi-origin asset with me. I wanted to try and ask the Vox Phantasm some questions but as soon as I felt the surge of power through my connection to them, it dimmed and I don’t think me hurrying back to my Enigma or going to either of the public Hidden Cities of Las Vegas would fix that right now. Crap, am I about to get dragged into another quest? While I’m stuck like this.

“It did sound and feel like that,” reaffirmed Sal, which just made everything worse cause how much more in tune they were with that connection of mine. “And it does seem that two new sweet tooths were made, how curious.”

“By the Vox Phantasm?” I questioned, still trying to figure everything out.

“I can’t tell, but it was at the same time. I’ll ask Sous to look into things. It looks like they are alt-rhis but I can’t confirm from here, that and there was some interference in their creation.”

“Okay… let’s just try to handle one thing at a time… I don’t feel like getting overwhelmed right now.”

“Why does this not feel like a jackpot?” asked Mita, feeling out his new system slot’s connections and inscribed mandalas with a bit of blackzone manager magic while staring at me. It didn’t matter that I had my potion-wreathed mask for a face right now, Mita knew me long enough to realize I was freaked out right now.

“Probably because I’m pretty sure we just got wrapped into a quest,” I explained as I felt Surcia-Robert and Driscoll inspecting the latest additions to my portfolio of mandalas.

“You three just got a quest? Right now?” questioned Louella with a raised brow. “I didn’t feel anything.”

“No, well yes, gah I don’t know how to explain it. I heard the Vox Phantasm when we got these system slot’s connections and mandala inscriptions and they said they were for our coming trials.” 

“So she is preparing you for a quest you will be receiving. I can’t make heads or tails of whether or not that is distressing.” 

“I’m just going to say distressing cause I hate quests.”

“I don’t that matters to the Vox Phantasm or the gods or the wills of the metaverse,” commented Ras with a sigh, rubbing his brow before continuing, “Which means all we can do is take advantage of the fact we know a quest is coming and prepare ourselves.”

“Ras is right, we should prepare ourselves,” agreed Driscoll, casting Candyman Form around my arm to move it. Drawing on our new system slot’s connection to the El’Vega hub and the Asset System, the sapience summoned a card in our hand and swiped it through the air, activating it. With a shimmer of metallic visible air and mana, an andrygonous android of an asset appeared between us, a steering wheel fused to its left wrist and a fully furnished motorcycle handlebars fused to its right one. Smoothing swivelling its realistically sculpted head back and forth, its emerald eyes looked on me instead of my actual body and said,

“Hello master, I am Rom, your asset.”

“A movement-centric asset, I guess that is useful for your Robert,” pointed out Mita, inspecting Rom and his own card for Rom.

“What are their flations?” inquired Louella as Rom continued to observe us passively while Ulra did the same to Rom with a smile. I wonder if Umi is going to be friends with this spirit… I mused since she wasn’t particularly close to Daisy or Tirel, but then again Daisy was even more of a free spirit than her and had access to all of Super-Sweet Valley and Treant Orchards and Tirel was chronically sleepy and only hung around the caketopian apothecaries cause of their similar styles of spellcraft.

“A microflation called Two-Wheel Drive and a mezzoflation called Four-Wheel Drive.”

“No exoflation from your attunements?”

“No, but I will look into what was given. I do have experience with the Asset System,” answered Driscoll telepathically to all of us. “I suggest you all make use of the fact we are currently on the Endless Strip to prepare for the quest that the Vox Phantasm warned us about.” Oh yeah, since we were already here in the Cesire Babel, we should go meet with our top pick for a potential sponsor. Racking my memory with Memory Retention, I remembered the person we were going to get sponsored by was Nathan Rosenberg, the head blackzone manager of an Enigma called Poor Gambler’s Sinchance; apparently they were interested in my portfolio of mandalas and that’s why they wanted to sponsor me.

Following my other sapience’s suggestion, we headed out of the SIEB and watched as Driscoll activated Rom’s Four-Wheel Drive, transforming the steering wheel on their arm into a full blown armoured convertible with hover wheels fit for four others since they are fused to the driver’s seat, prompting Mita to dispel Ulra while I unsummoned my replica. I could feel the strain from managing the mezzoflation because my El’Vega hub account didn’t have any money or value in it, but that stopped quickly enough after Mita dispelled my body some cash to put into my account. That feels so much better, I mentally sighed in relief as I felt my system slot unclench a bit, no longer being unnecessarily strained.

“I thought mezzoflations were supposed to be more expensive to use,” asked Sugar-Robert from his corner of the expanse of blackness.

“This is merely a transformation focusing on mobility with some enhancements to durability and defenses. A perfect carriage for our body given its current state,” explained Driscoll with a grin for his own corner, complex swirls of emphasises, fundamentals, and incantations floating in front of him as he examined our latest set of system slots and inscribed mandalas.

“It’s a car, not a carriage, but whatever. It is nice to think we have this now,” I pointed us as I went back to relaxing as much as I could: the idea of having to do another quest already was freaking me out more than I admitted, especially since the Vox Phantasm as went as far to give me a heads up about it. Trying to get my mind of that can of worms, I went to focusing on Four-Wheel Drive and see how expensive it was to upkeep: currently we were coasting a fifty-fifty percent ratio between mana and value, spending only one dollar a minute in upkeep, which was definitely worth it it cause maintaining this mezzoflation with just mana took four times as much mana. The Asset System really doesn’t kid around with making you use money and value… not like I can complain though, it’s not like it is forcing me to use connectivity materials also. 

Making use of a pair of cake-eye-balls clinging to my body’s shoulders, I watched as Rom listened to Louella and Ras’s instructions and led us to the second basement layer: it felt weird being so underground, but then again Babels apparently had a way of messing with your sense of scale. Then again, I already had a bad sense of scale from living in a blackzone for the past year, that and how bad my chronophasia could be at times. Crossing over the threshold to Poor Gambler’s Sinchance, I couldn’t help but squirm and sweat and it wasn’t because of the sudden shift in time dilation and spatial compression: for whatever reason my effective tier just dropped down eight. Great… just great… I’m a low tier 3 again… I moan internally to myself, realized how stupid and crazy it was since I was a tier 1.7 only two years ago.

“This Enigma’s tier suppression field always rubbed me the wrong way… it’s like being assaulted by a recursive mage…” muttered Louella as she went to circulating advanced lightning mana through her system, causing some arcs of electricity to trance up and down her platinum hair.

“You’ve delved here before? And wait, is this Nathan guy a recursive mage?” I asked the spellman of an underling blackzone manager, feeling a weird mix of emotions over our spirit contract.

“A few tiers when I first started out, never enjoyed it because its meant mostly for delvers in the tier 1-to-3 range. As for the head blackzone manager, from what I heard he isn’t one but has spellcraft similar to one.”

“So… why do you feel so weird about this?”

“Let’s just say I’ve had more blunders than I care to admit here.”

“Oh…” I muttered over our connection before shutting up. There was no reason for me to press and I already had a good idea how she fucked up while delving her: trying to rely on the mana generation given by her tier and colour attunement and failing. 

It didn’t take too long for us to get in touch with Nathan via his blackzone assistant and figure out which Subdungeon we needed to go to: some place called Shelter-Motel Relief. Through my cake-eye-balls, I watched as we followed the blackzone system assistant’s instructions, weaving through the monsterless roads: I couldn’t help but think how similar our two Enigma were with all the monster-free pathways and similar tier range for delvers. Hopefully the people that go to his resorts will be interested in ours, I thought to myself, already figuring the worse scenario would be we would work the resort union to make more resorts outside of the Interconnection we would likely be making with him. Felt weird that this would be the first time we would be dealing with loans and purchasing dungeon cores off said loan with just money, even the Glyirian government deferred to mana crystals and renting out our mines and mana generators.

Arriving at the Subdungeon, I realized that it was almost entirely a giant motel combined with a homeless shelter but with a surprising amount of class. There were no tent cities or hovels for the homeless of the Cesire Babel’s sub basements to live in but marketplaces and upscale microflats. Standing on front of a cubic set of microflat waving at us was a man with warm chocolate skin tone that was around my height and was probably in his early to mid twenties in a grey suit and tie: going by his incredibly potent yet subdued manalogical aura, I figured it was Nathan or at least one of his underling blackzone managers. 

“You must be Robert Fayn’s group, it’s good to see you. I’m Nathan Rosenberg,” commented the man as Louella summoned me while everyone got out of the car, leaving Rom to keep an eye on my real body.

“It’s nice to meet you also, I guess,” I replied awkwardly, trying to get a sense of what I was feeling: Nathan felt like me, but not like how Robby felt like me, it was different but similar and a lot stronger.

“A spirit form, that’s pretty cool. I didn’t know you were that much like me.”

“Like you?”

“Yeah, I’m a patron, sigma, and a cacodemon outside of being a blackzone manager and impostor blackzone manager. What manalogical post do you have?” Holy shit, he has three manalogical posts? The dude is five types of pinnacles of mages!

“Oh god wow… I’m just an emperor-spirit.”

“But you’re also an apex aren’t you?”

“Yeah… it’s a long story…”

“Which we can save for another time,” interrupted Ras politely before moving to the matter at hand, “We’re here to talk about you becoming our sponsor for joining the resort union.”

“Oh yeah that, I don’t mind. You already said in your application that you’re all well experienced with handling and paying back loans plus already have six profitable resorts, one of which is in Starport Cyber. That’s good money right there if you know what you are doing,” answered Nathan with a simple shrug before going to pull out some files and papers from a personal subdimension. Pointing over to Louella, he continued, “Having a Goltinium spellman definitely helps.”

“Why is that?” asked Mita with furrowed brows: I could tell he was refraining from being annoyed.

“The Goltinium Guild has close ties with the resort unions, not as much as Nierelf or the Coven of Ravenhaus, but there are a handful of Goltinium pinnacles of mages who actually run blackzone and divergent distortion resorts here in Las Vegas.”

“Well that’s just great to know,” muttered Mita as Nathan went to handing us some paperwork to start working on the process of becoming my Enigma’s sponsor for joining the resort union. Working our way through all the forms, I found that Nathan was a freaking tier 9.2 mage on top of actually being a local sentient turned partial-jiyu-sentient and partial-neo-sentient, I mean wow: it was 1 in 500 chance to be born a partial-magi-sentient on Summer-6, but it was 1 in 750 for being born a sentient and he managed to go from low tier 1 to low tier 9 in the span of a decade because of him becoming a blackzone manager. As for being a partial-jiyu-sentient here of all places, I’m pretty sure those odds were astronomically after what little I learned about them while studying about habitable quarter-worlds: that alternate form of manalogical sentience was weird, especially with their weird standalone versions of Trascendation Effects: Inner Trascendations. At least becoming a partial-neo-sentient made sense, they were sort of common in the six primary special locale based universe groups and just had a bunch more system slots instead of mandalas. And the only reason why his current effective tier was 5.0 and not 9.2? His Enigma plus the fact he had six fucking Inflicted Hexes of Tier Down that he had synthesized into a Grand Magus-grade mandala after he got proper access to mandalas with some status designation rank stuff that I only heard about in documentaries about the struggles of non-magi-sentients.

“So how the hell are you only a C-lister in the resort union?” I asked Nathan as I finished writing another signature, feeling drained from doing all these enchanted contracts while being summoned as a spirit. Why couldn’t the resort union just do a single grand tier enchanted contract and be done with it?

“Because I’m a partial-jiyu-sentient and partial-neo-sentient but not a magi-sentient, even jiyu-sentients aren’t treated that well in most parts of the Endless Strip and neo-sentients aren’t treated much better. Only reason why I’m not a D-lister is because of all my philanthropy toward the homeless, sentients, and partial-magi-sentients of this Las Vegas and the neighboring ones.”

“Oh damn, you’re a philanthropist?”

“Yes, I am a self-made man, minus some influence of the wills of the metaverse, and I would feel bad if I didn’t help people who can’t do the same for themselves,” answered Nathan with an earnest nod before sliding me and the others a thick packet of papers. “Anyway, that should be it. You’ll be getting the split core soon enough, and I’ll make sure it leads to Las Vegas itself and not one of its modes of transportation. From there I can help you set up the frontier core, its expansion is going to need to be in a corner of a mode of transportation but it should still bring in a lot of guests and delvers” Score! Another loan and another Interconnection plus an expansion. And this time around we were guaranteed to rake in the cash cause of it.