-Louella Barclay-

This should be enough to capture a base, we should be fine, I contemplated to myself as I sized up our forces of roughly fifty people before walking to join everyone else. Nearing the other group of individuals, surprisingly the first person to notice us was actually Yokum. Waving a transformed arm, he shouted,

“Hey Micah! Check it out! This chick has Silent Reader also.”

“Who cares? It’s not like it’s rare or anything,” shouted back Micah sourly as I noticed that Yokum was also pointing to C-Anita, one of the two commanders that was leading this raid. Looking over to the double witch-cursed enlightened entity, I could tell she wasn’t exactly enjoying Yokum’s attention: using her thick mousy brown bangs to partially block her view of the spellman. I couldn’t blame her, she used Silent Reading along with a few other particular mandalas provided to her via facsimiles and race advancements to work around her hardness of hearing and then some.

“Still pretty cool, she totally beats you on the sensory stuff,” remarked Julien, “and she is actually deaf.”

“Hard of hearing actually,” corrected the other commander, D-John, before looking over to me and saying, “It’s good to know that you were able to come out and able us, Louella, and it’s great to see that you brought more friends.”

“Thank you, D-John… is this just a gingerbread urbanite only invasion? I don’t see any sweet tooths or taffy twined,” I replied back, noticing that it really was just us and gingerbread urbanites. Weren’t they trying to better integrate the other residents?

“Yes, it’s just us since this was a relatively last minute decision by C-Anita and myself. B-Mike and A-Eris are back in the Enigma helping out the witch-curses with strengthening defenses and stocking medical provisions for the next few waves of plague clouds.”

“I see, fair enough. We can’t put everything in one basket.”

“Hey, Louella, who are these baskets of people anyway? Introduce us,” interrupted Jean with a smile that was barely hiding the fact he was craving cookies.

“Let me introduce you two then. Micah, Jean, this is D-John and C-Anita, one of the people who are in charge of the gingerbread urbanites.”

“Are they underling blackzone managers also?”

“No, we’re not, simply we are the strongest of the enlightened gingerbread urbanites and became the commanders because of that” answered D-John, twirling his sugary rope of an extra appendage. “It’s a pleasure to meet you too. As Louella said, I’m D-John C, martial arts and whip combat specialist.”

“And I’m C-Anita, silent communication, stealth bestowal, and now also group sensory expansion,” followed up the other commander, signing out everything and having her magic speak to us telepathically. Nodding, I watched as both Micah and Jean started to ask her a slew of questions, including the specifics of her quest reward, an artificial attunement with domination, system-forged, and sigillum tags. It was interesting to hear that not only had she already permanently bonded to it via generic facsimile but had also made a new multi-system slot to power-link it into her system slot’s connection to the Hybrid System of Warring Core to further improve its effectiveness and ease of use. 

It’s a shame I can’t team up with her for this raid, I mused to myself, wishing I could actually experience her special magically-enhanced means of communication that wouldn’t be jammed or intercepted by normal means or her unique stealth boon that countered most common radar abilities and now group-shared tremor sense boon. But of course she had to take special care of who she worked with to stay effective and that list of people currently only included other gingerbread urbanites. 

“You can always ask her to train you later,” suggested Iris from the back of my head as we worked out the logistics of our raid: four groups of thirteen.

“I will, but later when we actually have the time, once this raid is done I’m going to have to send a report to the Goltinium Guild and go back to blackzone management tasks,” I replied as D-John assigned a group of gingerbread urbanites to me, Jean, and Micah while C-Anita did the same for Yokum and Julien. If everything went according to plan Yokum and Julien’s group would work as support for mine one while D-John’s group overtly flanked and C-Anita’s did the same but covertly. The logic was simple enough: Carbon Pharma was also a faction made mostly of trapped subraces and enlightened entities and they would naturally hone in on us spellmen which gave our actually more experienced forces in terms of the hybrid system a clearer shot at the enemy’s base. If this is a success, Jean or I will likely end up with a quest reward even without striking at the base, I noted as we began to move out: not counting D-John or C-Anita, there were only fifteen enlightened gingerbread urbanites split between my group, Yokum and Julien’s group, and D-John’s group, meaning only nineteen possible recipients of the quest rewards.

Walking through the griger-esque buildings that ranged from squat labs to full blown skyscrapers under the grey omnistructure ceiling of a sky, we waited for the secret worlders and created monsters and RTSes and drudges of Carbon Pharma to make the first move. It wasn’t until both my group and Yokum and Julien’s group found ourselves under fire. With a hail of projectiles that I knew were called beam shots, I sent out the strongest surge of elemental advanced lightning as possible from the bracelets of my Improved Electrokinetic advancement kit.

“Shit, did they bring a small army or something?” cursed Micah as the projectiles bursted a hazy green against my impromptu lightning barrier as the gingerbread urbanites behind scattered into their various potions. As the sound of weapon and spell fire rang out to the left of us where Yokum and Julien were, I could only nod and throw up another surge of elemental advanced lightning to block the second volley as a stray shot struck my shoulder. I heard that Carbon Pharma employed quantity over quality with their RTSes and newfound drudges, but this was a whole different level.

“Time to get some barriers up!” shouted Jean as he activated his own kit, Bunker Maker’s, ability to force the ground beneath to shift into a rudimentary bunker of a crevasse before we were overwhelmed by beam shot. Patting the spots where beam shots landed on him, the masked procyon laughed, “And no need to paws for effect.”

“That was a horrible joke, and god damnit this stings,” hissed Micah, wincing as he felt where one of the projectiles broke skin enough to cause a notable trickle of blood. “We turn one corner and boom, shooting gallery central.”

“We are trying to storm an enemy stronghold,” I pointed out as I looked around to see the gingerbread urbanites starting to engage in smaller skirmishes on the adjacent roads and buildings, leaving us locked down in Jean’s bunker of a hole. We could push forward since the attacks were relying on the number of RTSes and gun-toting drudges and rate of fire but given the infectious nature of the beam shots we would likely be looking at a pyrrhic victory. 

“It be a lot easier if we had our normal spellcraft, shit even our school mandalas would be useful right now,” quipped Micah as he picked his rifle over the edge of the cravess and fired off a volley of his one, managing to wipe out two or three of the summons. 

“Of course it would be easier, but the systems and wills of the metaverse aren’t going to cater to our every whim. We’re out of our field of expertise so we have to do what we can, even if that means being decoys.”

“Yeah well I didn’t spend two years of dealing with Goltinium Guild’s secret spellman training to be a decoy.”

“I’m with Micah on this one, I mean there is only like fifty of them,” chimed in Jean, sending out a wave of Halo System-altered mana from the halo on his clawed gauntlet, taking a few beam shots in the arm and chest from doing so. “We can probably rush them.”

“You mean we can definitely rush them,” retorted Micah before looking at me and continuing “Louella, you think you throw up another barrier but push it forward this time?”

“Yes, but we’re getting to be taking even more hits if I do so,” I replied as I half-focused on circulating yellow mana through my system to ward off the infection of the beam shots. This system is all about its chains isn't it? I mentally muttered to myself as I felt my mandalas strain under the hybrid system’s influence, even with the power-link to my elemental advanced lightning class specialty mandala.

“We have like three different layers of insurance for reviving, we should be fine.”

“Alright…” Channeling mana into my bracelets, I crouched down with Micah and Jean behind me. Timing my discharge with a momentary lessening in suppressing fire, I bolted out of the bunker and released the elemental advanced lightning, this time focusing the surge into a thick line. The fragile RTSes in our path quickly were electrocuted to the point of destruction as we moved forward, fully exploiting the ceramic soldiers’ simplicity: the various drudges weren’t much stronger, most of them barely even tainted by heretical magic.

As the surge dissipated, I strained my bracelets and sent out another wave of elemental advanced lightning to crash into the remaining RTSes and drudges, now only meters away from us. In sync, Jean brought his claws down and created another bunker-like crevasse while Micah fired off shotgun round after shotgun round. Slinking into our new defensive position, I looked over our wounds: it was less than what I was expecting but still not mild.

“Oh my mask, they just keep coming don’t they?” asked Jean before leaning fully against the side of the crevasse.

“Yeah, cause they’re freaking throwaways,” growled Micah, obviously frustrated with how ineffective we were currently being and how poorly he was handling the infection running through his system even with his spellman nature.

“And we’re beginners with this very restraining system, trying to blaze down a main road into a literal barrage of gunfire,” I pointed out as I felt my bracelets overheating and crackling with energy from being pushed so hard. As weak as the RTSes and drudges and their guns were, gunfire was still gunfire and when we couldn’t fully draw on our body augments from our tiers and pinnacle of mages status, that was an issue for all of us except for maybe Jean and Yokum.

“This is a stage 0 pocket dimension, shouldn’t we be dealing with mostly other new secret worlders also?”

“No, just people primarily with system slot’s connections and multi-system slots that are only stratum 1.”

“Well, that’s just great.”

“We just need to hold out for a bit longer and then we can try to push again,” I tried to reassure my frustrated housemate, glancing back behind us to see that the gingerbread urbanites were able to make some use of our forward push. Before anyone could say anything else, a pinging noise drew our attention to a small screen appearing in front of each of us: a message from C-Anita,

“Hold your ground, my group and D-John’s are in position and you are getting back up. Wesley and Co.” Wesley was here? Well that’s a relief.

With the message read, Micah went silent as he went on the defensive: taking shots from as much cover as possible. Jean and I followed suit the best we could with Jean throwing out his ranged strikes whenever possible and me leaning back on the rings from my Electrokinetic kit to fire off normal bolts of mana-infused lightning. By the time our support finally arrived, the number of summons had swelled to twice the size they were originally. Did they bring in reinforcements? I muttered to myself as something swooped into our bunker-like crevasse from the secured side behind us.

“Oh my mask!” yelped Jean as I turned around to see a strange woman made of translucent sponge-like in a sort of plague doctor’s garb, already radiating healing magics. As I went to thank the woman, Wesley slid into our defensive position before I could ask her name. Then suddenly a much more corporeal version of her in nurse garb, the original most likely, followed suit under a hail of beam shots: another translucent version of her acting as a makeshift shield. Looking at Wesley and what I could only assume was one of his housemates, Micah quipped,

“Hey, Jean, Louella, looks like our cavalry is finally fucking here.”

“Yes we are, now let me mend your wounds,” shot back the nurse before taking out some syringes and sutures to start healing Micah.

“Hurray! Healing!” laughed Jean as he swiped one of his claws through the air, sending out a wave of shaped mana.

“You guys were really cutting it close weren’t you?” asked Wesley, keeping his head down for the most part.

“Yup, we had no idea the place would be this restrictive! Usually we rely on our schools, passive mana circulation, and potions when things get that bad. And haha that’s pretty rare for us.” 

“Yes, the nature of this hybrid system was unexpected, our usual measures and tactics don’t work here currently,” I explained before sending a small surge of elemental advanced lightning to make sure that none of the RTSes and drudges got to close now that our bunker was much more filled with potential targets.

“So none of you are sub-surveillance or self-sufficient here?” inquired the nurse, continuing to work on mending Micah’s wounds and cleansing his infections while her two other selves did the same for the rest of us. Hearing the terms ‘sub-surveillance’ and ‘self-sufficient’ made me pause for a half second before internally chuckling at that: they were working by the book in their composition. Eyeing the surrounding fights and gauging the situations, I went to reply, 

“Guild-style roles? Been awhile since we focused on that, but yes, we’re without sub-roles right now so to speak. But since you all are here now, we can finally attempt a final push.”