-Robert Fayn-

It’s three days since Harper-Alexander and Alexander-Harper’s wedding, well more like it’s been three days since the event everyone was calling the Realigning happened: everyone pretty much of course the metaverse were still on varying levels of red alert. The revealing of new worlds in some place that existed aside the inner between space and outer between space called the neither between space, doorways to universe groups that were unknown or perhaps just straight up didn’t exist until now, the public learning of the ten heretical wills and their fucked up magic that could easily outdo cursed and forbidden magic in insanity, and the fact there were now a bunch of wills called the lesser wills waiting to be shaped and given purpose. Or the fact that there six new major layer of reality groups and three new types of pieces of a beings that people that were tied to new types of manalogical sentiences that the Realigning brought into existence: the physical heretical organs for nox-sentients, the mental Alternate Source for para-sentients, and spiritual heim of selves for arc-sentients. And to top it all off, there were apparently seven new types of dungeon-like distortions: hell loops, stretches of insanity, deeper descents, sin ports, hallowed halls, digi-layers, and digi-dens. All extra dangerous in comparison to the original four types even without their version of Grands and Otherworlds: Doomed Lands for the first three. Although I guess reports of the latter three said they weren’t that dangerous and were folded into their own thing called D-Terminals that also used system lairs: there was a lot of shit to parse out.

So to deal with all the craziness going on, we have had all our system assistants, both blackzone and vox, on research gathering mode to try and keep ourselves from being blindsided. Thank god all our Interconnections and areas offworld were coming in clutch: we were getting data from Glyiria, Ignae Automata, Neo Hollo Oceania, Sins of the SteelStar, the Humble Witch’s Union, and even the Endless Strip now. Sitting down in my expanse of blackness, I peered through my cake-eye-ball’s sight to try and make sense of the flurry of reports that were getting brought to me while Driscoll paced back and forth in his corner.

The one solace this whole Realigning business had so far was we were finally able figure out the tag that was attached to my Enigma Master’s Lich-Style Phylactery along with Phylactery of the Dark Spirit and Historie Pastoria Sweet’s Dark Trinity of Spirits: anti-heretical. Apparently it was a low-value tag that did three things: gave +0.125 in a will colour attunement which basically meant you better at handling the insanely rare and obscure will manas that weren’t the same as the inner manas at all, gave an anti-metric which lowered the corresponding metric’s effective metric, and gave +1 in a non-mandala metric called heretical counter which made you better at defending against a certain heretical will. For me, Sous, and Umi this meant we were better at handling magos will mana with our will counter attunement, had negative effective will magus qualification with one of the heretical wills called z-erub with our anti-metric, and were also good at defending against it with our heretical counter. 

“How much longer until the phylactery is repaired?” asked Surcia-Robert as he watched Driscoll working away at a series of repairative magics. 

“A day or two more, Sous and Umi had done most of the steps for me already, all I have to do is finalize the parts pertaining to the anti-heretical tag,” explained the sapience without even looking over at us.

“So you knew about this stuff the entire time? And didn’t bother to explain it to us?” I pressed with a frustrated sigh: the only thing more annoying than getting blindsided was getting blindsided when you didn’t have to. And because of it I was now racing with everyone to get a hold of how the changes that the Realigning caused: it was like cramming for three courses over magic at once and I freaking sucked at my magic 12 in college.

“Simply put, yes I had some information.”

“And you didn’t say so.”

“For your safety, you and the others have already tried to probe and saw how protective all the wills were of this matter. Not to mention when I was remade in this replica of a form, all my expertise in using the heretical will of z-erub along with the other heretical wills I had training in was lost. All I remember are the dangers that existed pre-Realigning and still exist post-Realigning.”

“So basically you were an expert in heretical magic when you were alive, but now you know jack shit and we’re screwed.”

“We are not screwed, I retain some knowledge of how to counter them, particularly z-erub. Most of my studies were against the use of heretical magic and not for.”

“Then you should be teaching us those skills rather than keeping themselves for yourself,” sourly pointed out Surcia-Robert, which was ironic cause his skillset wasn’t something that could be fully taught.

“I am already working with Louella and Harvey on teaching a class for defending against heretical magic and UMCs.” I freaking hated UMCs, I swear that new type of being was more annoying than monsters and magical beasts could ever be: creatures with innate use of heretical magic and their weird dunamancies were an absolute hassle to deal with. Hopefully Driscoll could actually teach people on how to deal with them without relying on us or throwing a bunch of resources at them when they did pop up. “Also I am more than willing to share my knowledge if you two reciprocate.” 

“Wait, what?! Me too?” I asked in confusion, what the hell did I have that they didn’t already have access to: they were basically other personalities on top of being their own sapiences cause of the composition of my composite facsimile, Advanced Secondary Conscious (Sync).

“Yes, while we do share a portfolio of mandala, we do not share our expertise. I have my expertise with wellsprings and countering heretical magic and Surcia-Robert has his experience with oldmark and racial magic for fabled werebeasts, you have your skill in handling connections and contracts with others with fi magecraft,” explained the flaming man as he continued to work on repairing our phylactery. Before I could say anything, I felt the calls of multiple summons split between Louella, Terrin, Ras, and Mita. Seriously? Are they just trying to chew up my free time outside of this place? I internally complained to myself as I resisted for a split second to delegate: since they were summoning all four of my replicas some of them were going to have to deal with the built-in secondary consciousnesses piloting them. Feeling that Louella and Terrin were both relatively confident in their fights, I had their replicas go on auto-pilot while Surcia-Robert went to Ras and I went to Mita, leaving Driscoll to continue the repairs.

“Don’t tell me? More UMCs,” I sighed in frustration as I appeared in spirit form in front of Mitas before looking over to my left to see Surcia-Robert with Ras. And from the looks and feel of our surroundings, we were in Black Market Import: looks like the rogue monster magnet Aux core was working well enough for the UMCs. 

“Yeah, e-alchoos goblins,” explained Mita, pointing to the weird goblin-like creatures in front of us with his oversized throwing axe: their bodies more fractal than flesh and covered in staticky mirages of themselves.

“God damnit, more of these guys?”

“If it is any consolidation, Umi, Draceld, and myself are dealing with these pesky recipes of an UMC,” noted Sous from the back of my head; I could feel him and Umi drawing on our mirroring Grand Key and Driscoll’s input. 

“Yeah, not at all,” I replied as I scratched my mask of a face and stared at the goblins in front me: there were around two to three dozen of them, but Ras and Mita had Editon, Ulra, and Rom all summoned. Were they trying to cut down on the time I could be summoned? Watching as the UMCs started to get closer, I went to ripping off my mask and swapping it out with Umi’s half-waves half-fishing net one: conjuring a slender fishing rod as blood and ectoplasm dribbled down my chin. On cue, I felt Sal possess the fishing rod as Editon and Ras unleashed an opening salvo of sparking chains and misty arrows.

With a series of shrieks and growls, the goblins entered a mad dash toward us, leaving weird fractal prints on the road’s concrete and in the air as Editon’s and Ras’s strike tore the nearest ones, only for half of the handful to completely reform. Following up Mita and Ulra fired off spear bolts of anti-matter spells with their axes, managing to put a few of them down despite not managing to use any actual antimatter or manalogical equivalent. Steeling myself, I went to swinging my fishing rod in wide empowered arcs and watched as half of the goblins hit by it just phased through it. E-Alchoos using bastards, I half-growled half-yelped to myself as I stepped back onto the sidewalk to duck behind a picket fence.

“Stop holding back, Robert,” called out Surcia-Robert as he blasted an e-alchoos goblin square in the face with a swarm of supercharged sugar elemental while riding on Rom’s motorcycle. 

“I rather not lose a replica to goblins!” I shot back, wincing as both my asset and surcia-curcumedioia got scratched by the UMCs’ glowing claws and sending tinges of erraticness across my connections to them. Why the hell did the sapience that was supposed to be made from my feral instincts as a fabled werebeast have to be so reckless? Doesn’t he know it will take months for us to remake even one replica? We might as well just sit as stare at the dungeon core restoring Aux core as it recharges itself to pass time.

“Perhaps it is because he is made from your feral instincts he is so sure of himself?” pointed out Sal before twisting the fishing rod in my hands and pulling me away from the fence as a goblin phased through it.

“He is much more decisive than you are, although that isn't a good thing against UMCs that use the dunamis of spontaneity. A bad blending of ingredients, Umi is the same,” agreed Sous as I stumbled to regain myself and avoiding the urge to duck into one of the empty houses: no way I was going to deal with creatures that could phase through matter in closed corridors. 

“I’m doing just fine!” quickly retorted the primary spirit halo over our link with a tinge of unevenness to her voice; I didn’t even have to focus on our connections with each other to see that Surcia-Robert wasn’t the only person getting scratched up. Shaking my head and whacking a goblin in the head with the end of my fishing rod, I started to dash toward Surcia-Robert. These guys were a pain in the ass and we didn’t have the luxury of going into a battle of attrition cause: one, our summons wouldn’t last, and two, I didn’t feel like losing my precious free time to some fucking goblins. 

“Ras! Mita! You better pitch in on giving me some mana,” I shouted as I started to pull on my connections with Surcia-Robert and my replicas with fi magecraft. 

“Fine, but don’t complain to me when you get a headache again from doing that spellcraft of yours,” replied Mita, watching as Surcia-Robert moved in sync with me, both our masks glowing as I fed the spellcraft to them and Ras. As the fi magecraft kicked in gear, drawing on its nature of working best in group castings, I launched the lure of my fishing rod into Surcia-Robert’s body and chanted,

“The mask of lures meets the mask of sugar and a web is formed.” In a split second of swelling mana and incantations, the two of us created a resonance between Umi’s and Surcia-Robert’s mask before Surcia-Robert swung his arm through the air. With a bursting sound, his arm flung out and turned into a wide-reaching net made of glossy fishing lines connected together by tiny clumps of sugar elements. Score, I told myself as we caught nearly all the remaining e-alchoos goblins in the spellcraft-infused snare.

“I swear, it’s so weird to see you use fi magecraft like that, group magic done by yourself...” proclaimed Ras, firing kill shots into the goblins one by one, not missing a single shot now that they couldn’t phase or revive and reform themselves.

“Well if you guys bothered to improve your system slots with me, you guys could actually use my masks for this spellcraft,” I told him as I started to feel woozy. Pausing to collect myself, I found that wooziness wasn’t subsiding: it was getting worse and shifting into something else. And before I could complain and tell the others, I watched as they started to suddenly sway and collapsed along with me.

Rapidly drifting in and out of darkness, I finally managed to blink my eyes open and found myself in a familiar wonderment-filled void. Great… the Vox Phantasm summoned me… I muttered to myself as I looked around to see the cloaked puppet figure of the vox along with Ras and Mita. And it’s related to the quest, go figured. Thank god we actually killed all the goblins first.

“I see you are all conscious now. I wish I could be less abrupt, but this is the best I can do given the certain pressing matters,” commented the Vox Phantasm in their chorus-like voice as Mita and Ras got their bearings.

“You’re the Vox Phantasm… but we aren’t vox reborns like Robert… unless this is related to that quest you warned us about?” half-asked Ras, already putting the pieces together as he tried his best to orient himself. 

“Yes, it is. Please consider this a prelude to it, one that I can only provide because both of you had summoned Robert and Rom at the same time. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to do this until after the start of trials when you two become apprentice vox reborns.” I could feel a sense of relief underpinning their tone: I guess we got really lucky with this? Also Ras and Mita were slated to be vox reborns like me and Tabitha now? Wow… 

“Wait, you’re making us into vox reborns also?” questioned Mita with wide eyes, realizing he was being given a race advancement for basically free. Just wait until we have to deal with another freaking quest… and the backlash from back-to-back race advancements… I internally sighed to myself.

“Yes, but that for later. For now I am here to gift you three with the beginnings of a Grand Key that will tie you three together.” With a pulse of mana, I felt a handful of my mandalas being inscribed, forging a connection between me, Ras, Mita… and Surcia-Robert? “I have provided a phylactery and a feature to ease the strain of inscribing and growth. It should carry you through your trials.”

“Great, now I have to manage three people’s instincts,” muttered Surcia-Robert from the back of my head, startling both Mita and Ras as they realized they could hear him also.

“Saintess Von Fortose, we’re surcia-curcumedioia now,” gasped Ras, warmed coloured dots appearing up and down his arms as I felt the gaze of the Vox Phantasm hone on me. Another pulse of mana and I felt my existence recoil as I was suddenly inscribed with another set of mandalas: my connection to my Enigma shifted and intensified as something was added to it. Feeling Driscoll wearily probing it and cursing something I couldn’t hear, the Vox Phantasm continued to talk,

“This second benediction is for you Robert, my faithful blackzone boy, a budget Grand Key to manifest your private divergent distortion. Your blackzone may not weather the coming blows, so it must be fortified… with another dungeon-like distortion.”

“Wait?! What!? No, no, I already have enough on my plate running my Enigma, don’t just add another to it,” I shouted between gasps of air, feeling the budget Grand Key solidify its inscriptions.

“The act is already done, it shall be fused with Historie Pastoria Sweets. Please understand, this will benefit you greatly.”

“Robert, something is terribly wrong,” rang out Sous from the back of my head. “Something has infected the first core and there is a shell over Historie Pastoria Sweets proper.” Great… just great… This is why I hated quests, I thought to myself feeling woozy again. As the three of us started to fade out of the wonderment-filled void, I felt my connections overwhelm me for once, and with that: I blacked out.