-Robby Fayn Beta-

Reinforcements, finally, I internally sighed as I watched not only Robert’s system assistant, Sous, appear but the alt-rhi of Wes, Wesley, with two other spellmen. No clue what their names were, just that they were from some Place of Learning called Nierelf, but I wasn’t going to complain: I wasn’t exactly in the loop about these Nierelf spellmen but at least I knew enough. Plus geez these ceramic people were getting frustrating, we kept mowing them down and they kept coming and now we were dealing with this pair of assholes with their magic staff and drones. Why did I think picking Covert Ops for my kit was a good idea? Getting just a handgun did not make up for an anti-radar cloak and infrared & UV goggles or the fact of trying to use any of my normal magic was pretty much impossible without a stupid amount of pain and struggling. I’d rather be able to use, I don’t know: my vending machine, Hundred Velo, or even my vampire claws right about now.

“I call the staff user!” shouted the tall guy with the spear before sticking his weapon into the ground and using it as an impromptu vaulting pole as he lunged forward, landing next to Daphne and whacking the ceramic person in front of the staff user and shattering it.

“Seriously Thad? Okay, fine, I’ll back up Robby. Nicole, you help clear up all the RTSes I guess,” followed up Wesley as he maneuvered himself next to me while the hispanic girl they were with nodded and hurried over with a dashing motion to help Lucilla and Sous as they dealt with the mass of ceramic people behind us. So they’re called RTSes huh?

“You guys actually have dealt with these before?” I asked as I fired off a clip, tearing through two of them and getting hit by return fire: felt like getting hit by really painful BBs cause these guys were clearly meant for quantity and people way lower tier than us. At least we were able to leverage our tier here even with how restrictive things were.

“Nope, but Thad know what they are.”

“Great, well let’s just focus on this drone-using asshole.”

“Fine by me,” replied Wesley as he shifted himself between me and the secret worlder with a half dozen helicopter drones with mounted guns that would rapid fire more of those annoying half assed bullets in volleys. Seriously what was with these guys and low damage output?

With the burly alt-rhi as cover, I went focusing on the secret worlder; it didn’t even take a full clip of focus firing to make him yelp and start to backpedal away from us. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw more of those RTSes appearing from circles in the ground as the drone using secret worlder rapidly shouted something. Great, so they can just summon more? What kits do they freaking have? They have multiple ones don’t they? I groaned as I went to reload my handgun, grabbing the clip that was already appearing on my belt: my tier forcing my kit to work faster than I’m pretty sure it was supposed to.

“Likely multiple,” interrupted Chef as Wes rolled around out of the way of another volley of annoying projectiles from these so-called RTSes, forcing me to awkwardly follow with a low sidestep.

“No one asked you,” I groaned before going to destroy the newly formed RTSes, hearing the same being done to the ones behind us by Sous, Lucilla, and Nicole.

Another series of volley from the panicking secret worlder as he shouted something that Chef’s translation spells failed to catch as I managed to get peppered with more shots along with Wesley. Getting pissed off and frustrated with all the pain and building tingly sensation, I went to aim at one of the drones: after emptying half a clip, I finally managed to snag it and watched as it exploded into a dark noxious-looking gas. Okay shit, that can’t be good, I muttered to myself as I watched as the secret worlder turned around and went into a full on sprint to flee. 

Looking at Wesley, I just sighed and lowered my handgun a bit, I seriously didn’t feel like chasing someone right now today: especially not to kill them. I mean for all I know the guy was running toward reinforcements and I’d rather not have to deal with more people that knew about this Hybrid System of Warring Cores than I did. Returning my glance at him, Wesley commented,

“You’re pretty beat up…”

“Yeah everything freaking stings right now,” I complained as I noticed all the holes in my clothes and the tiny bleeding wounds that the mana passively circulating through my system haven’t managed to close yet. Clearly being double digits in both green and beige-steel colour attunements wasn’t going to cut it with this stupid hybrid system’s influence. Feeling one of them with a wince, I noticed just how slow the wound was closing and how freely the blood was tickling out. “Crap, I think those bullets or whatever had anticolanguants in them. Not like you’re having a problem with them.” 

“Beige-steel manas, always helpful for this sort of stuff.” Lucky spell-fighter, I mentally groaned with a half scowl: he must have been shot up at least twice as much as me and I could barely see any wounds on him. Just how tough was his skin? 

“Tch, did you two seriously let your guy run away?” shouted Daphne, causing me to turn around and wince at the sight of her opponent being skewered on Thad’s spear, definitely dead.

“We’re supposed to be defending, not chasing these people down,” retorted Wesley as he watched Lucilla and the others cleaning up the rest of the RTSes that were blocking our path.

“Yeah, what Wesley s-” I tried to follow up before swaying and slurring my words. Managing to keep myself up on my feet, I noticed that Daphne was swaying a bit now along with Nicole, and it wasn’t just my vision getting a bit blurry. Holy fuck, did I just get poisoned, I swore to myself as I felt myself getting hot. Well that explained the dark noxious-looking gas from destroying that drone and why all their projectiles felt so weak: they killed with poison.

“You’ve been infected,” clarified Chef as Sous’s own system assistant, Departie, audibly followed up,

“The Carbon Pharma have been deploying biological agents with their attacks, I suggest you all fall back to the base.” Well that explained why the staff user’s attacks made us nauseous when we got hit by them, I noted as felt the infection flaring up and subsiding in ways, my vampyrism messing with it in more ways than I wanted it to: even when it was helping me, it made things an absolute hassle.

“Infections? Wow, so that’s what that feeling was,” commented Thad before looking over to Lucilla, “How are you okay also? Wesley has his physique and I have my homeostasis.”

“Lots and lots of mana, couldn't ya tell?” replied Lucilla with a grin as she produced a flair of visible green mana around herself before going to help Daphne steady herself. “Now come lil sis, let’s head back and take a break.”

“Tch, fine, only cause I hate being sick,” quibbed Daphne, obviously circulating mana to try and fight off the infection. Trying to follow suit, all I felt was my vampyrism biting my ass while the hybrid system continued to screw me over in the mana generation department. I was honestly tempted to try and make use of Cheesecake Emporos-Museum’s Board of Representatives but stopped before I realized how stupid of an idea that was: if I couldn’t get a normal mandala to properly work, there was no way in hell I was going to get a Grand Key like it to work.

Seeing that three of us were currently infected with some frustrating but hopefully temporary illness by the Carbon Pharma secret worlders and that apparently Sous’s robot body was nearing its time limit, the seven of us all agreed to head toward this area’s base and at least try to help out defending there. Using Departie along with some help from Daphne’s and Lucilla’s blackzone system assistants, Candy and Jaffa, we were able to avoid the larger pockets of RTSes currently plaguing this expansion. Seriously, you’d think that a faction with such a clean monochrome look wouldn’t specialize in fucking diseases.

Taking the time now that we weren’t stuck fighting RTSes at every corner, Thad and Sous went to explaining what was going on with the Hybrid System of Warring Cores and the quest that the other me, Mita, and Ras were stuck with. On the system side of things, the hybrid system was all about creating these pocket dimensions for giant king of the hill type battles around the system-made base cores and their bases and made use of these kits, allowing you to get more kits and equipping more of them at a time. Big bonus is the hybrid system had a system insurance; downside it was stupidly expensive so it wasn’t worth being reckless with if you were in your real body. As for the quest side of things, basically Historie Pastoria Sweets had to protect four system-made base cores and win ten battles before some vague deadline or a lot of bad stuff would happen. Making a mental note to myself, I thought, Probably should ask Teodorra if she can get an oracle report to make sure we don’t have to be wrapped up in this quest or not.

It wasn’t until we were halfway to the base that Departie suddenly had us stop in our tracks. Before I could ask, I heard a giant crash in the distance and jumped back a little bit. On instinct I tried to cloak myself in advanced mirage mana but ended up suppressing the urge to vomit as I got hit by cross-karmic retribution. With a tinge of urgency in his voice, the system assistant explained,

“There is a powerful invader coming in from the west, the gingerbread urbanites are currently trying to intercept it, but they need reinforcements.”

“Wesley and I can go help,” suggested Thad as the sound of another crash rocketed through the street.

“I can help too also… I’m feeling better,” chimed in Nicole, looking like she already sort of recovered compared to me and Daphne: I couldn’t tell if it was cause she wasn’t hit as much, if she had some sort of passive spellcraft to help her out, or if it was some stupid trick that spellmen naturally had. God knows Teodorra and Christopher always made sure I was aware how many things they could because they were spellmen.

“Then I will provide support also, this body is disposable and I would like to aid you three since you are assisting in such a hectic cooking environment,” noted Sous with a curt nod. That was perfect, they could go fight some crazy secret worlder and I could go recover from the relative safety of the base with Daphne and Lucilla.

It wasn’t until when Daphne, Lucilla, and I finally reached the base that we got notification that the invasion was concluded, Goldenrod Compita-Phantasm winning. Entering the base as I felt the infection already wearing off, I decided to check the statistics of the fight since that was an option; scrolling down through a few pages worth of random information, I paused before shouting,

“What the fuck?! Wesley got a quest reward?”

“Oh hey, he did, whatcha know,” confirmed Lucilla as she peered over my shoulder.

“No one say anything about people getting quest rewards from winning these battles.”

“Well that’s cause it’s only for people connected to Historia Pastoria Sweets ya know? And it’s not like you’re a sweet tooth.”

“Oh come, you’re kidding me,” I moaned in frustration, honestly thinking about becoming a sweet tooth to try and get a mandala or even system slot or facsimile from a quest that wasn’t completely cursed, tag and all. Why did the other me have all the luck with quests?! He has no excuse to hate these quests, he keeps getting good shit while I’m stuck with vampyrism and diminished lifespan issues! I internally raged as I continued to stare at the screen showing the post-battle report.