-Robert Fayn-

Walking down the street, I couldn’t help but feel sore: feeling my spirit form chafing over my real body as Surcia-Robert, Driscoll, Sal, and even Arch, through Sal’s instructions and guidance, managed to keep Liquid Sugar Cowl and Candyman Form active. Of course twin lesser spell specialty use was only auxiliary to the group summoning between Harvey, myself, and Sous in his crystalline mote form. I could feel my mandalas ache from drawing in and cycling so much mana on overtime and my Sea of Phenomena cramping up slightly from the complex instances of spellcasting going on: if a fight went down I would be 100 percent screwed. At least I wasn’t feeling unlucky or sensing any bad luck and I wasn’t suffering from the trace amounts of dimensional miasma in the surroundings. I really need to see how feasible astral projecting here is… I mean I should be able to use an astral body here cause of its connections to habitable quarter-worlds… right? I thought to myself with a tentative half-test, grimacing a little bit as I felt the strain from even attempting to try that.

“Still feeling okay?” questioned Harvey, completely in civilian attire with none of his usual streamer gear.

“Yeah, I’m doing okay enough, Blaze- Harvey,” I replied with a slight stumble: you’d think I’d be used to using his real name by now with how surprisingly often he summoned my replicas, even with Surcia-Robert, Driscoll, and the replicas own built-in secondary consciousness being ones that piloted them, I was getting a lot information bleeding through. God knows I was still getting used to glimpses of people’s thoughts through their spirit contracts with me. Seriously, how do Sous and Umi handle this stuff?

“With subconscious responses,” noted Sous from the back of my head as his crystalline mote form idly floated next to me. “You’ve already been doing it with others, but still haven’t got past the instinctual barriers of controlling it like a proper head chef.”

“I know, I know, it’s like I’m not a born spirit like you guys. Having pieces of me being in other people’s mandalas and system slot’s connections is still weird to me.” I mean for the most part I did suck at magic, so of course I wouldn’t be good with you know, magical mental multi-tasking that I literally wasn’t born wired to do. And honestly with all my connections to others on top of my spirits and familiars, even mental barriers were getting a bit too complex for my taste.

“Well you don’t feel okay,” pointed out Harvey as we turned the corner, his brother, Percy, nodding in agreement.

“Crap, is it that obvious?”

“Yup, I can feel it through the group summoning.”

“And your gait is off,” followed up Percy before suggesting, “How about we take a break and get something to eat?” Looking around, he quickly pointed out a deli with his sugary rope-coiled arm. To freaking think that Percy would end up becoming a taffy twined, and to top it all off: Harvey wasn’t mad at me about it. Well, at least it didn’t feel like he was mad at me from what I could pick up from the spirit contract or group summoning.

Figuring that it wouldn’t hurt to get something to each since we already exchanged some mana crystals for the local currency, the three of us headed inside. Checking out the menu written in chalk, I sighed in relief as I saw that Sous was able to use my translation magics on it. Thank you Earth Romance roots, I mentally commented to no one in particular, feeling faintly just how the translation macros were heading the writings.

“Is that Spanish?” asked Harvey with a confused look on his face: his own translation device failing to pick out the nuances from Earth Spanish from Dragon Country’s own alternate version of it.

“Something like that,” I answered, eyeing the menu and noticing just how many types of draconic meats were being sold here.

“Looks like I’m going to have to get another translation device.”

“Don’t you already have a bunch? Including a general purpose one.”

“He has eight, including the general purpose one,” answered Percy, pulling out his own boxxy translation device and fiddling with its interfaces. “I didn’t think artificial world cluster languages would be so tricky.”

“Wow, that’s a lot but yeah, apparently its common for these languages to be a blend of two or more with some alterations to them.”

“Must be nice to have an entire blackzone’s database helping with your translations.” With that Harvey laughed a little bit as I awkwardly scratched the back of my head. He wasn’t actually wrong, although honestly probably the only reason why it worked so well because my Enigma was located on so many worlds and I have a sub-feature dedicated to making Sous a supercharged translator. Putting translation talk aside, the three of us went to deciding our orders with me pretty much having to explain what every option was. Definitely going to need to see if we can sneak some translation devices and mandalas into the generation protocols.

“I’ll put that on the docket,” chimed in Sal from the back of my head before going back to focusing on managing my spellcasting and coordinating with the other system assistants.

“I think I’ll have the basilisk carpaccio and sweet blood tea,” proclaimed Percy with an interesting look on his face as we went to place our orders. Watching as the cashier went to grab our drinks, I glanced over at taffy twined and internally sighed at the fact that both of my Enigma’s witch-cursed had the weird dietary restriction of increased sugar intake. Between the taffy twined and the sweet tooths, the food being developed in my Enigma was just going to get more sickly sweet. Thank god we have people like Tabitha to help keep things sort of in check.

 After a few short minutes of idling waiting and chatted, the three of us finally got our lunch from a muscular waitress that probably moonlight as an airship sailor or mechanic: Percy’s basilisk carpaccio, Harvey’s wyvern tail sandwich, and my demi-dragon steak & draconic magical beast marrow tartar. Salivating a little bit with my real body, I went to indulging my foodie side a bit and absorbing the tartar through my mask of a face in small gulp-like motions. The light but vivid draconic unami coated my mouth and throat, finally giving me a much needed palette cleanser from all the potions and sweet foods I’ve been eating. Sweetness was nice and all, but it was good to have meaty dishes every once and awhile, especially when the taste of mana was so perfectly blended in with the fat and protein.

It wasn’t until half way through our meal that Sous discreetly mentioned to me that my cousin was headed our way. Margaret? How the hell did she know where I was right now? And why was she here in Dragon Country? Wasn’t she still moving into her new place in Rainbow Rope’s Caketopia? Focusing on my telepathic connection with my blackzone system assistant, I discreetly asked back,

“You’re kidding right?”

“No, I am not. Why you were enjoying your tartar, the gingerbread urbanites requested your location and like a proper sous chef I gave it. She is currently on route with B-Mike,” shot back Sous with a slant tang of jealousy that I could feel was because he currently wasn’t able to eat any draconic meal.

“Shit, well can you tell them to meet us somewhere nearby? Kind of want to finish my food here before dealing with Margaret.”

“I do not know of any location that is nearby. Might I remind you that it is not just the ingredients and dishes of this city that I’m unfamiliar with.”

“Avarawacky Park should be nearby,” suddenly suggested Driscoll out of the blue.

“Avarawacky Park?”

“It was a park dedicated to me when I was still alive.”

“Sounds good enough to me, tell Margaret and Mike to meet us there,” I proclaimed before popping the question to Harvey and Percy, “Hey guys, my cousin wants to meet up. Do you guys want to meet up at Avarawacky Park?”

“Model’s here? Of course!” laughed Harvey, polishing off the last of his sandwich as Percy agreed to heading over to the park.

Following Driscoll’s vague directions, we weaved through the city with the help of locals giving us clarifications until we finally reached a large park on an elevated part of the city ringed with a dark brass fence. Walking through the main entrance, I felt waves of nostalgia from my connection to my alternate personality-slash-sapiance as I saw the giant bronze statue of Driscoll’s likeness. Instinctively rubbing my Driscoll, I couldn’t fight off the nostalgia and just ended up feeling weird: I mean this place was basically a memorial for one of my alter-egos at this point.

“Robert! There you are!” called out Margaret as she entered the park just a few minutes after us. 

“It’s good to see you, Robert, Percy,” followed up the houndmaster of a double witch-cursed, his group of lebukhen wolves and black liquorice orthruses trailing behind him. The second that Harvey saw all the lupine wolves, he quickly went to conjuring his camera-balls to take some pictures while Percy returned B-Mike’s greeting and struck up a small conversation that quickly dragged in my cousin: leaving me with my other personalities-slash-sapiances and system assistants. Surprisingly the first person to ask why Driscoll he suggested this spot wasn’t Sous or Sal but Surcia-Robert with a half-growl,

“So why the hell did you pick this spot? It’s obviously a sore spot for you, and you know that means its a sore spot for us.”

“I… just wanted to see what had become of my legacy,” softly explained the sapiance as extremely fragmented memories shot through my mind’s eye. It didn’t take any innate fi magecraft to tell that he was feeling off because he was just a replica of a fragment of the original Driscoll Avarawacky, which was a big deal cause he was one of the founders of this artificial world cluster.

“Did you ever think to just ask for us to look into it? Plus you were only dead for like what? Two hundred-three hundred years?” I half-complained as I looked over at the others chatting before audibly sighing and continuing, “I mean seriously it wouldn’t be too hard to ask, we already have people like Mike looking into this sort of stuff for us.”

“The thought did cross my mind but I did not want to slow down processes or potentially learn of any bad news.”

“Geez, are you seriously being a pessimist right now? That’s my job, not your’s. You’re supposed to be our anti-heretical magic expert here.”

“I wouldn’t call it pessimism, even I understand how much time can change things,” sullenly replied Driscoll as he conjured up some of my cake-eye-balls through me so he could get a better look of the rest of the park.

“Yeah well I don’t think we’re going to lose access to Dragon Country anytime soon,” I pointed, looking up to see the sky full of airships and dragons. I mean no way I was going to give up a conquest into a place like this that actually had high quality high cuisine with an abundance of meat dishes for cheap. “Besides, with this stupid fucking quest, we’re going to have to stick around for a while anyway.”