Book 4 – Chapter 11 – Terrin Von Leoia – Broken Eggs
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-Terrin Von Leoia-

Resting at my half-brother’s penthouse, I watched as he worked through a small pile of paperwork. To think if the Realigning was enough with its heretical magic, UMCs, and promises of forging new wills of the metaverse, but to think we would also be dealing with Historie Pastoria Sweets suddenly becoming a super distortion, having Robert’s private divergent distortion manifesting and fusing with it because of some Grand Key he got. Running a blackzone was one thing, but running a super distortion because it was two different types of dungeon-like distortions at its core and not because it had fully subigated and incorporated other dungeon-like distortions into its structure was another thing: the different factions and blocs in the Glyirian government were watching us a lot more closely now.

“Terrin, how’s your research going?” asked my half-brother as he got up from his chair and stretched.

“On Robert or the new types of summons?” I replied, watching as Isabella played with my blue-tinged cake-eye-balls and making them fly through hoops of cold mist and magical miasma.

“Both.”

“Well on the Robert side of things, he is still out cold, apparently having a regulatory copy of your primary sapience doesn’t mean much when that copy is overwhelmed by an influx of connections during a mass mandala inscribing. From what I can tell the only reason why Surcia-Robert and Driscoll are fine is because they are shared with others.” 

“So his mind, soul, and composite facsimile are all ruined now?”

“No, the composite facsimile should be fine in a few days if I’m feeling the spirit contract out right. As for the new types of summons, what I could learn was there are two of them, drudges from the heretical will, i-moras, and GD-Summons from one of the six already formed lesser wills, digievos.” Honestly a decent bit of the information I managed to collect was beyond me: I was a spirit mage, not an expert in psychology and sapience or types of summons that have technically only been in existence for six days now. Although I wouldn’t mind learning more about the drudges and GD-Summons since they were more interesting than familiars in comparison… but drudges were definitely off the table with how dangerous heretical magic was. Either way, hopefully all this research could help me push toward tier 3.6.

“I-Moras?”

“Yeah, has something to do with a dunamis of enslavement, definitely on par with cursed and forbidden magic just going off the name,” I replied before noticing the look of concern on my half-brother’s face. “Ras, why do I feel like you’re about to say we’re going to be dealing with i-moras beyond the occasional group of rogue monsters and UMCs?”

“Because the phylactery that the Vox Phantasm gave us, the Blackzone Manager’s Curcumedioia-Style Phylactery, has the anti-heretical tag and is made to counter i-moras. That… and this,” explained Ras, conjuring up his new mirroring phylactery that looks like a mass of elemental motes crystallized together with a large smooth amber affixed to the bottom. Looking closer at it, I saw there was something lightly engraved onto the amber:

“The Realigning awakens the trials.

The disembodied chosen, the houseless king, and two-blooded inheritor shall cross the line to two lands beyond the veil. 

Armies of man wage war and carve up factions for cores of glory, dancing on the palm of a cruel system.

The house of coins of gold and sugar shall be besieged by plague and famine as the drudges grow in number under the madness of the sadomachistic hypochondriac. 

Two great threats will loom to be defeated or cause strife.

Regardless of the first step, the trials unwind.”

Ooo, a prophecy, how exciting!” giggled Isabella from over my shoulder.

“Saintess Mic Christine, the entire Enigma is caught up in a quest,” I swore as I let the prophecy sink in: the three people being talked about where obvious enough, Robert was the disembodied chosen, Ras was the houseless king, and Mita was the two-blood inheritor; the house of coins of gold and sugar was likely Historie Pastoria Sweets; the plague and one of two great threats was definitely Borolio of the Plague Cloud; as for everything else it was just conjecture and confusion. So we now had the aftereffects of the Realigning, the fact that Historie Pastoria Sweets was now a super distortion, and a quest to deal with. This would be a lot easier if we could just handle things one at a time, or not deal with all the quarantines from the plague clouds.

“And now we have to deal with the fact that the divergent distortion side of Historie Pastoria Sweet ended up kidnapping a bunch of people and converting them into witch-cursed.”

“How bad is it?”

“Bad, apparently none of the system assistants were able to stop themselves from doing so. And since these witch-cursed are a different type, they need the divergent distortion…” explained my half-brother before trailing off and going to find a sheaf of pagers and handing it to me. Glancing over it, I saw it was a list of everyone who was converted to this new type of witch-cursed, taffy twined: 10 Alihi’a’Poungians, 10 Rimmulians from Sins of the SteelStar, 10 Witch Sythnians, 10 Netro Roaders from Starport Cyber, 10 Las Vegans, 20 Glyirians, 20 Sugar Hill residents… and Margaret Mont-Bismuth. By the saintesses, how the hell did someone my age be able to attract this much trouble? Not only did Robert have to worry about people looking into his Enigma again but now his cousin was a witch-cursed. “There is no way Robert or Mita will allow us to destroy the divergent distortion now, not like we could safely do it in the short term to begin with.” 

“At least the psyche reports show they are all safe to keep around,” I pointed as I flipped through the sheaf. Then again, it’s the PR that’s going to be an issue, not the new witch-cursed. The purist faction is going to have a field day, I internally muttered to myself, already imagining how the Glyirian government was going to react.

Worry not! Your Uncle Ester has plenty of connections to the expansionist faction and the mercantile bloc to remedy the situation!” roared Editon from his personal space in reassurance.

Yeah Uncle Ester can probably help us, but I don’t think anyone wants to be stuck between the factions and the blocs.

“Ahhh, Saintess Van Valiry, this would have been so much easier if the Vox Phantasm didn’t thrust this upon us,” complained Ras before taking a deep breath. “I’m starting to understand why Robert is so keen on delegating everything. You think you can go check up on Sous and Umi, they’re setting up the divergent distortion Subdungeon.”

“They can do that? They aren’t spirit kings or realm conquerors, not even impostor rulers.”

“It’s a work around using their mirroring Grand Key with Robert. It works for me and Mita too, along with Daphne and Lucilla.” 

“Well that’s good to know, I’ll go check things out for you,” I replied with a wave before heading off. With Isabella and my cake-eye-balls in tow, I quickly want to grab some gel-covered vitamins from my apartment before heading over to the nearest teleportation pad; luckily despite everything going on they worked just fine. Feeling the pull of the magics in the pad as circles of light rose up from it, I allowed myself to be whisked away to the library in Historie Pastoria Sweets Proper. 

Walking out of the building, I looked up to see the giant barrier of Proto-Ideal Carapace in all its splendor, swirling with an oily iriscendent sheen. Luckily this time around though, it wasn’t cutting off the Enigma from Sugar Hills due to an intervention of Sous and the others using Robert’s new Grand Key. Once that barrier collapsed, all that would be left to tell you this place was also a divergent distortion would be the thick brightly coloured cords roping between the skyscrapers and the abundance of root and grand manas in the ambient. At least it’s keeping out the plague clouds for now, I noted as I made my way to Final Cut Caketopia.

Look Terrin! The new Subdungeon!” pointed out Isabella, flitting past me and staring at the new skyscraper standing just west of Final Cut Caketopia, connected to it via a series of sky bridges and thick cords: a lot had changed in three days. 

I see, I guess they’re keeping with the skyscraper theme huh?” I replied as I noticed the familiar pair of Minerva and Wes fighting a group of monsters in front of the new Sub dungeons lobby. Getting a closer look at the monsters, I realized they looked sort of like Robert’s spirit form but instead of seven different masks it was eleven plain yet colourful ones and instead of flesh they were made of coiled bands of colourful licorice. Feeling out their mana and movement as Minerva peppered them with continual volleys of magic missiles, I could tell they weren’t rogue monsters or something that Sous or Umi whipped up and instead something made by either the first lodestone that was fused into the first core or the secondary lonestone that was just used to make the Subdungeon.

Whipping an arm out with a weird curling arc, one of the monsters found its strike being blocked by Wes’s floating buckler before being grabbed by Wes himself. With a grunt and a contained surge of beige-steel manas, the sweet tooth violently twirled the monster around and launched into a clustering of its brethren just to have Minerva’s cake-eye-balls finish them off. Who would have thought he would change so much only after a month of training in Witch Synthia. He was leveraging his sub-featured enhanced strain of primeval man and passive beige-steel manas with ease now.

Figuring it would be fine to lend a helping hand, I conjured my Bow of Glyiria and joined the fray: firing arrows at the outermost positioned monsters while Isabella drove in with an icicle skewer and a growing trail of freezing mist and magical miasma. Seeing that I could the two’s attention after the monsters started to drop like malnourished slimes, I called out,

“What’s with all the monsters?”

“No clue, Departie and Anlola just told us to clear them out,” explained Wes, aiming his handgun at one of the straggling monsters and firing a few bullets into it.

We accidentally triggered a natural defense mechanism of the personal divergent distortion. Umi has managed to deactivate it, but these prisma-liquowraiths were already spawned. Do you think you can help clear them out?” sweetly asked Umi’s vox system assistant, Anlola, from the back of my head. 

I don’t see why not,” I replied as I activated my latest 2nd generational feature mandala, Allies of Isabella (Grace), to quickly summon Sora, Teresa, and Indexia to aid Isabella. With the added support of the additional three spirits, we were able to clear out the rest of prisma-liquowraiths with ease and hand into the new Subdungeon’s lobby with ease before my mandalas started to feel strained.

“You know, I didn’t expect to come back home to find out I had an alt-rhi and that Historie Pastoria Sweets was now also a divergent distortion. Although, I guess this shit is par for the course now isn’t it?” commented Wes, catching his breath while I quickly dispelled Sora, Teresa, and Indexia so they could rest and chat in their personal spaces.

“No kidding.”

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