-Daphne Sucrose-

“So that's the last area that needs to be made?” asked Robert’s alt-rhi, Robby, as I exited my latest Phase, Faux-Valley Metro Confectionary, and entered his Phase, Cheesecake Wing of Stars.

“Yeah, now Reagan and Lucilla won’t be bothering us for a while,” I replied as I looked back the valleys made a giant technicolour abstract superbuildings that filled my Phase: it was interesting how my Enigma interacted with Starport Cyber but I couldn’t say I hated it. Besides hating it was besides a point, with this area, Super-Sweet Valley, Treant Orchards, Historie Pastoria Sweets, and Cheesecake Emporos Museum. In the back of my mind I could faintly feel my black system assistant and vox system assistant, Candy and Coco, working on making sure everything was squared away. Making it so Coco could act like a blackzone system assistant so was the sub-feature mandala, especially with Robert’s Enigma requesting aid now that it was a super-distortion and only a limited number of people, myself included, could manage its divergent distortion side accordingly.

“Neo Hollo Oceania, Miriam Port Slums, Witch Synthia, and now Starport Cyber. We’re seriously getting wrapped up in Robert’s shit aren’t we?”

“Yeah, but at this point I don’t exactly mind, he can be annoying but at least his connections are making these areas secure. I guess your connections also help.”

“Help? If anything mine are the reason why they are so secured, no one wants to mess around with the Enigma that is the sub-blackzone of three different Grands and three giant ass blackzones with legendary tier mages as their heads.”

“Except for sentient-bashing magist criminals, like those Vraglix bashers,” I quickly pointed out, scowling at the thought of having to potentially deal with those idiots again.

“Those guys are more magi-elitists than anything, but touche,” replied Robby as he tried to lean on semantics: all that meant where they were more nuanced and also racists, which still meant they were still assholes. “Anyway, you think we might be able to get areas on the Endless Strip now?”

“Maybe, but that might just be wishful thinking.” Just because Robert was technically a part of its resort union didn’t mean it would be safe for us to try and encroach that monster of a nation: no normal dungeon-like distortion could survive that place if they were slated to be trimmed… that was the annoying fact when a nation had legendary and higher tier mages in the triple digits, enough to equal an entire world’s worth depending on where you looked. Were talking about at least a dozen people involved with ruling artificial world clusters like Regan and people who are actually mythic tier, I noted to myself as I shook my head: only way we would be able to get in with our current styles of Enigmas would be if the gods intervened again or we sucked it up and made resorts ourselves, probably both. 

“I know Donnivan would love for me to have an easy route to get into the Endless Strip from,” noted Robby as we started to drift toward the route to Historie Pastoria Sweets.

“Donnivan? One of Reagan’s friends?”

“Yeah, tier 16.6 dude who runs a giant Encroachment over in the Boundary universe group, has major areas in all the central Link Bridges.”

“Haven’t heard of him.”

“He runs the Asuric Atman New Wave, pretty sure you heard of them”

“So you work with oldmark-loving cultists?” I questioned, realizing this was another of those key differences between Robert and his alt-rhi: Robby was in bed with a bunch of different cultist groups and Robert was stuck repelling other cultist groups.

“Honestly cultist might be bit harsh for them,” sighed Robby as he scratched the back of his head awkwardly, “They aren’t Harbingers of the Black Skies or the Soldiers of Clay, they’re just really into asuric atmans and sort of religious about the whole ‘ascending your flesh and awakening your inner selves’ thing.” 

“They’re still crazy.”

“I won’t deny that, but they have some nice magic.”

“Do you use any of that magic?” I asked with raised brow, I’ve only ever seen him use his bullet-based phantasma and vampyric claw up to the point but I knew he had more going on: his mirroring Grand Key was too big and varied for just the ten spirits, voting system, and mana sharing.

“Yeah I got an outer genomes facsimile for it, only have the one asuric atman installed in it that’s iogem based,” answered the alt-rhi as he made his skin turn an amber hue with a weird layered undercurrent of visible manas before turning back to normal. “I rarely use it though cause it fucks up my mana generation.”

“But it’s a part of your Grand Key isn’t it?”

“Yeah, the third branch, schools and features for combat techniques, iogems, and mana manipulation and storage. The specifics are honestly still a bit beyond since I haven’t really bothered studying it. I just use it and its components when I need to.” There it was again: Robby acting like Robert. At least this version of Robert is sort of competent in fighting, actually sort of worthy of being tier 3.9, I noted as I kept my eye out for any monsters to casually kill. Of course nothing was getting close enough for me to even bother it, then again it wasn’t like Robby’s Enigma’s outer areas had high tier enough enemies to interest me.

“I still can’t believe you have over a hundred mandala inscribed and you barely know how to even use half of them.”

“Hey, isn’t it the same with the other me?”

“Yes, but most of his stuff is either passive or mirroring,” I shot back before pausing and continuing, “Sch, when it comes down to it, both of you two are still idiots.” 

“Idiots who you got the idea for your third Grand Key from. Chef and the other system assistants have been talking about it. What is it called? Chimeric Dragon’s something?” quipped Robby with a verbal sucker punch as we crossed over to Robert’s Enigma. Trying my best to ignore that jab, I focused on the huge shift between ambient mana and noticing how it was less than before as time and the fact we were circulating ambient mana with Interconnections from my own Enigma and Lucilla’s to Cheesecake Emporos Museum. Of course I wouldn’t be surprised if the difference in compositions changed again now that Historie Pastoria Sweets was a super distortion: I could feel the tug of its divergent distortion side through my mirroring Grand Key with Robert and Lucilla.

“Chimeric Dragon’s Entourage and it was more Louella’s idea than anything. She kept pestering me to make a budget one for all my spirits.”

“It is a useful tool that helped you reach tier 5.5,” audibly chimed in Candy, pigging back off of Lucilla and Jaffa’s 2nd generational feature, Mass Organic Com Array.

“Sch, no one asked you,” I scowled at my system assistant before forcing her to change the topic, “What’s the progress report of re-installing Pumpkin Spice Mines?”

“It’s underway, Casey is working with her underlings to make sure it should last until Thanksgiving this time around.”

“You seriously go through a lot of Subdungeons don’t you?” asked Robby with a weird look on his face, like he wasn’t familiar with trimming. Actually knowing his pampered ass, he doesn’t have to worry about his Enigma getting trimmed like mine.

“Well duh, delvers and the FDA are always on my ass. I have to rotate through my Schemas for Subdungeon cause how often they get trimmed.”

“Couldn’t you just use autonomous blackzones with some Aux cores?” At that I just glared at him and he got the point: it wasn’t like I didn’t use them, they just weren’t exactly efficient unless you had a lot of Aux cores for them or were just a giant enough blackzone to have the excess dungeon-mana reserves that had to go somewhere. Only reason why I bothered with them was because Max got the Aux cores for them and they helped with diversification.

Glad to have some silence, I made my way to the nearest teleportation pad and made my way over to Sweets Progressive with Robert’s alt-rhi in tow. With the installment of Faux-Valley Metro Confectionary done, all that was left for today was observing the creation of the latest area for Historie Pastoria Sweets on the Endless Strip and getting an asset for the El’Vega hub to make a mirroring synthesis with Lucilla since neither of our assets, Oaren and Posha, worked well with its instance of the Asset System.

Arriving in Sweet Progressive’s faux-World Bridge, I stepped outside of the miniature teleportation pad station and looked at the inner city-styled skyscrapers and grey stone ceiling of a fake sky. I could feel the influence from Poor Gambler’s Sinchance and its blackzone managers, impostor variant and actual, made of partial-magi-sentients, partial-jiyu-sentients, and partial-neo-sentients. But unlike the idiots I heard made up a bulk of the resort unions members, I knew not to understatement them: these were people who bothered to amass enough manalogical sentience based status designations within their portfolio of mandalas to have more mandalas, system slots, and Inner Trascendations that what their manalogical sentiences would otherwise provide. 

Nathan Rosenberg himself was only partial-jiyu-sentient and partial-neo-sentient but because of status designations and related status awakening had a portfolio of mandalas equal to someone who was actually jiyu-sentient, neo-sentient, and partial-magi-sentient. And to make things even more deceptive, he had invested in the expansion procedures possible for him from being six different types of pinnacle of mages: unlocking their full potential beyond what was given up front. People like him are why you can’t always trust tier, I sourly thought to myself as I walked toward the main tower with Robby to meet up with Lucilla. It was one thing to be able to hit above your weight class cause of well-crafted spellcraft and portfolios of mandalas when needed, it was another to be able to consistently do that without breaking a sweat.

“I have located Lucilla for you, she is currently at the base of the central tower,” commented Coco from the back of my head as she conjured up a small translucent screen of a map for me. Seeing that we now had a definite destination in mind and didn’t have to ask for Jaffa or Bosch’s aid, Robby and I took a beeline to the central tower of Sweets Progressive. After a few minutes of jogging down roads with middling but consistent traffic, we hear Lucilla loudly calling out to us,

“Daphne! Robby! You made it!”

“Yeah, we made it. Do we know where the new expansion is going to be?” asked Robby as he waved to the busty blackzone manager.

“Yup! It’s in Cesire Babel ya know? Apparently one of its Architects, Architect Compita, decided to petition for Historie Pastoria Sweets to have their expansion there.” Architect Compita, the Architect of crossroads… I mused before muttering,

“So the gods are intervening again.”

“Hahaha yup, they just seem to love messing around with Robert,” answered Lucilla with a laugh as the ambient mana started to shift and turn. “Oh look, whatcha know? It’s starting!” As I felt Robert’s Enigma swell in size, gaining another expansion, forcing me to feel a little bit mana-drunk since I was one of his underling blackzone managers like he was for me in return. It wasn’t until the amount of mana flowing in through the Greater Aether Veil started to swell past the point of one expansion being added that I realized there were more areas being added… and something was wrong.

“Robby, shroud us,” I gasped, fighting back the increasing mana-drunkenness as a second faux-World Bridge appeared, releasing a flood of mana.

“On it!” he replied, generating a rudimentary cloak of advanced mirage and wrapping it around us as he sensed something was wrong also even without being an underling blackzone manager for Historie Pastoria Sweets. What the hell did you do this time Robert?