-Ras Von Leoia-

Staring at the autonomous blackzone within Demon Candy Child’s Caketopia, Second Candy Base, I couldn’t help but feel a bit frustrated and ashamed: because of all the mana surging through the Enigma, I wasn’t able to defend it against the invaders from the ceramic faction, Carbon Pharma. Reading the report compiled by Pattissoria and my new vox system assistant, Sugiel, and tower system assistant shared with Robert and Mita, Arch, I could tell the real reason why we survived unscathed wasn’t the newfound presence of gingerbread urbanite but rather how weak the invaders were. The pocket dimensions from the Hybrid System of Warring Cores were only stage 0, meaning no unique variations or alteration to mirrored reality and more importantly: our bases had little strategical use for secret worlders who were progressed in the use of the hybrid system.

“We’ll need to grow used to this new system,” I muttered as I digested everything going on: this hybrid system would be yet another form of magic our Enigma would have to learn to be adept with. Already Historie Pastoria Sweets showed preference toward delving, crafting, summoning spirits, and using Flasaporium Hub’s Obscurus System, the Halo System, Sins of SteelStar’s Game System, and Mercury-Gardenia’s Hybrid System of Flowers; now we were adding El’Vega Hub’s Asset System, and the Endless Strip’s Hybrid System of Warring Cores.

“At least we already have some people who could be considered experts,” chimed Patissoria from the back of my head as Sugiel and Arch helped coordinate people from the Glyirian government’s department of surveying in determining the value of our new areas: the fact our Enigma was now connected to four different artificial world clusters along with a stabilized lesser world and spiral corridor made it highly profitable in trade routes and that was without the five worlds it spanned.

“Yes, the enlightened gingerbread urbanites and Tabbi and Wesley’s housemates.”

“Exactly, we should be fine.”

“We can only hope.” With everything going on, all the sweet tooths were moderately proficient with one to two different systems for their tiers; as for the taffy twined, each of them happened to be proficient with at least one system, and the enlightened gingerbread urbanites all innately had aptitude toward the Hybrid System of Warring Cores. Hopefully with the training currently being organized by Sous and the four commanders of enlightened gingerbread urbanites would increase this average by one.

Of course that didn’t solve the other issue: the expansion of the ecosystem and variety of monsters and other beings to keep up with our rapid expansion areas. We didn’t have enough collection of mutagenic experience that wasn’t harvested to reduce cost of replenishing our differences to allow for mutations and we only had the eleven blackzone managers. To think that my three years of blackzone management classes would be so ineffective, I lamented to myself as I thought back on how the past year has been so unorthodox for so many different reasons: Robert’s unique style of management, the needs of the Enigma to be safe, profitable, and respected, the invasions of multiple cults, the multiple resorts, and the quests. Two quests within a year was something already heard of to begin with and from the looks of it, things were just starting.

“Don’t be so glum!” roared Editon as he conjured himself, creating small ripples of Surge Glyphs-typed manas. “You still have your reward to use. We can turn the tables yet!”

“I know, I’m just saving it until I do other things first,” I replied, instinctively feeling the pulse of magics and mana coming from the crystal currently in my personal subdimension. I was going to have to accept it sooner or later, it wasn’t just a reward of the quest but a part of it, but I was worried about being incapitated by taking it in. I may be better at handling inscribings compared to Robert, but mass inscribings are always going to be taxing.

“Then we should do these other things post haste!”

“Yes, I should probably start working on things again.”

“Shall I bring up the Monster Creation Menu for you?” inquired Pattissoria, already sensing my intent.

“And the Magical Beast Creation Menu.” I would have also asked for the Animal Creation Menu, but animals were still beyond our capabilities even after being a super distortion. Watching as my blackzone system assistant conjured up the translucent screens, I felt my vox system assistant and shared tower system assistant taking note: once I had the free time I would have to give them sub-feature mandalas to make them more useful in day-to-day management. 

Getting to work, I started on creating the monster first: imagining a lupinalus, the two-tailed genetic offshoot of wolves native to the Flasaporium, then racking my brains for a dessert to form it around before deciding on pudding cake. Filling the translucent screens with my ideas, I refined and adjusted the monster to have a non-newtonian fluid-esque outer layer of flesh instead of fur. Moving onto habitat, I designated Demon Candy Child’s Caketopia along with Retro-Sweets District and Rainbow Rope District to give it some room to spread out and allow for an artificially diverse ecosystem once we started on creating more monsters elsewhere. As for personality, I made the lupinali loners with the capacity for group tactics when needed. Rarity would be set to relatively common as tier 3.1 fodder monsters: a good countermeasure to low tier invaders that relied too much on what kits they had from the hybrid systems.

Now for affinities, abilities, and drops, I told myself as I pulled out a piece of paper over some research Terrin did for me: information over some of the new class specialties created by the public existence of the heretical wills. Seeing that these monsters would have pudding cake-based physiologies, I decided to give them affinity in elemental mud from the A-Orib set along with elemental ooze. Combining those affinities with an ability to produce a sugary vicious fluid for both defensive and mobility purposes would allow the lupinali to be slippery relatively non-lethal threats as long their opponents knew what they were during and weren’t reckless. And as for drops, I followed Enigma tradition and had the lupinali drop blackzone pudding cake along with a chance of dropping an assortment of chocolates as there was no reason to try and fortify the magical core with its affinity in elemental mud: even with an average affinity it made it to balance out the ratios.

“Pattissoria, please formalize this as ‘Pudding Cake Lupinalus,’” I told my system assistant as I went to planning the magical beast.

“Will do. Formalizing monster. Entering monster information into Enigma’s monster generation protocols as ‘Pudding Cake Lupinalus.’” chimed Pattissoria as she dispelled the Monster Creation Menu for me. Giving her a quick thanks, I went to creating the magical beast; seeing that I just made a wolf, I decided to give it prey in the form of a deer. It’s physiology would be built around autumn pies with their savory fruit fillings, giving us the option to create variants with the other seasonal pies. As for the habitat, it would mirror the pudding cake lupinali’s while its personality would be that of a normal deer with some added aggression in cases of self-preservation. Naturally its rarity would match the monsters’ but its tier would be minor tier 2.7

Taking a recipe out of Louella’s repertoire as I moved onto its affinity: I gave it a minor affinity in systemancer nuance status designations like how the noblewoman spellman gave the candied humpty dumpties minor affinities in crafter and delver nuance status designs instead of elemental fey to make them more appealing. And using a recipe of my own styling, I went to give it two more affinities: a moderate affinity in draco-drudic and a notable affinity in beast dungeon-mana. That should make for an unique enough arc vein, I noted as I went to filling out the rest of the details: no unique abilities beyond sensitivity to system-based magics and improved attributes and drops in the form of blackzone autumn pie that temporally improved perception of system-altered manas via the manalogical sense of detecting mana, masen, and smell.

“What are you going to name this one?” innocently asked my vox system assistant, Sugiel, as I sent the information to Pattissoria to formalize.

“‘Autumn Pie-Dier,’” I explained as I felt my blackzone system assistant deftly finish the process, checking off another thing I needed to today. Looking over at Second Candy Base, I let out a small sigh: I should realistically work on documenting the monsters it creates and if it can also create entities and or magical beasts, but since we didn’t have any real control over its developmental then it might as well be trying to record all the rogue monsters that graced our Enigma or counting bees as they buzzed for their queen. That really only leaves on thing, I mentally muttered to myself, accidentally catching Editon’s attention.

“Is it time?” the spirit of the Tower asked as he grabbed my shoulders with his oversized claw mitt-like hands. Nodding, I went to take out the crystal and watched as it started to float with power the second it exited my personal subdimension. I knew that Wesley received a paradoxically powerful artificial lesser spell specialty with three tags, including a special-value one called meta-quest that came to being with the Realigning, plus a mandala with the artificial-tuning built into it to permanently bond to said artificial, but I knew this crystal would grant me some even stronger in comparison.

“Saintess Von Fortose, please let this do more good than harm,” I said to no one in particular as I pushed my focus toward the floating crystal, feeding my mana through and feeling its magic feed into me: the feeling of my number of mandalas expanding in a race advancement was almost instant. But it wasn’t until I gained more than forty mandalas that I noticed something was different: I wasn’t just receiving two race advancements in this mass inscribing, but that those two race advancements were turning me into a spirit king! 

Feeling my existence stretch in euphoric, I found myself forging a connection to a veil lord, one of the gods of the Obscurus System: it felt like my newfound connections to the Vox Phantasm and the Architect Compita but also different, it still had the same amount of metaverse-given permanence like any other inscribing but also a sort of noble contractuality to it. Gasping for breath as I felt my synthesis attunement for Rom, Mirroring Synthesis: Mechanical Chauffeur, along with my Bow of Glyiria, Strange Man’s Working Contract (Iogem Glyphs), and one of my newfound racial feature marks for being a spellmen and a new cursed anachronistic attunement were synthesized together to create new 2nd generational mandala, a voice rang out in my mind,

“Well this is interesting.”

“I know,” I instinctively replied, the voice that I was able to replace as my patron god of a veil lord, Frisylt, old blind god of saintesses, as my connection to him grew dim as he focused his attention elsewhere. Still coursing with mana and power, completely mana-drunk and gaining a new understanding why spellmen along with stargranted, realm conquerors, and spirit kings were so powerful, I noted I was now tier 4.0. Not only that… but that one of my new racial feature mandalas denoted me as a student of Noiria: not just a student of Noiria University, but a student of the Place of Learning school Noiria’s spirit king and realm conqueror campuses. Unable to help but laugh, I told Editon, “By the saintesses, can you believe this.”

“Oh! I can and it is marvelous!” laughed back Editon with a roar of approval and excitement.