-Robert Fayn-

Feeling out the proxy body I could make with the Hybrid System of Warring Cores’ derivative version, the H-D System of Warring Cores’ Staches, I couldn’t just but be a bit relieved I had more options for moving around now. This is body is definitely basic but way fucking better than my Flasaporium one, I noted as I made my way toward the nearby city of Raentir’s Reach to stress test this proxy body and see how it held up against my other ones and spirit summoning. Of course it was still a pain to think how restricted my options were while using this proxy body: all I had was a handful of weapon conjuring abilities, one of my phylacteries, and the fact this body was a proxy one with a stable enough connection to work with. At least it was hard to cause my PMF or ABS to flare up with this proxy body.

“You’d think the kits that they gave me would be a bit more useful…” I muttered to myself, mentally tugging on my Quester (Strange) and Stabilized Proxy User kits and the system slot’s connections they were housed in: both of them were basic. Basic enough I actually had to go out of the way to make a multi-system slot with them to power-link my Blackzone Manager’s Curcumedioia-Style Phylactery… which might have not been that great of an idea given how little magic I could actually pull off with the phylactery and it’s related kit, Phylactery User (Swarm). Worst case scenario… free mana battery and some fake surcia-curcumedioia racial magic, I mentally told myself as I fiddled the bubbly mass of a phylactery. I guess it also helps boost Quester (Strange)’s ability to manipulate system-made base cores too...

“What they gave us is good enough,” offhandedly commented Surcia-Robert from his corner of my expanse of blacknessness, only to be followed up by Driscoll much to my annoyance,

“Surcia-Robert is right, we have flexibility and consistency, two things that your style of spellcraft, our style, prefers over raw potency.”

It would have been a lot easier if we already had our third of honestly fourth win by now cause Ras was getting to enjoy his new spirit king nature while Mita had his layer-woven tagged herit crest in the form of a series of wampum belts that could be used for true magic-based summons and herald busting, all supercharged with something called capstone magic. The fact that Mita had herald busting in his portfolio of mandala just proved Louella’s oracle report which meant we’re just going to deal not just Borolio but a herald too. I mean seriously! Borolio was fucking over with delving Earth side and now we had to keep secret that a herald was going pop up in a couple or so months was stress inducing to say the least. I’m six different types of pinnacles of mages and connected to three different gods, four if you include the Shaytan-Brachii, and I’m absolutely screwed, I moaned to myself as I focused on my connections to them again: of course I got a tiny ping of sorts from the Vox Phantasm and the Architect Compita, but both Gaia and the Shaytan-Brachii were both inactive beyond the baseline connection.

Exiting Retro-Sweet District and arriving at the edge of one of Raentir’s Reach’s rentee colonies, I saw that Blazehopper was already waiting for me in a proxy body of his own. Waving his hand, I noticed he already had a gunlance and pair of camera-balls set up, plus a giant camera-ball with its own orbit of eight camera-balls that I recognized at his asset, Lens-P, from the one of other two main instances of the Asset System on the Endless Strip, the Vagesal one. 

“You made it!” shouted Blazehopper, jogging over with his weird floating asset in tow.

“Yeah, sorry I took some time getting used to this proxy body,” I replied with a sigh, annoyed that even with all my connections to others and innate magecraft for it, my connections piece of a being was still strained and having trouble connecting to proxy bodies. If I was going to figure out how to fix that issue I would probably going to have to sit down to figure out the different roots of magic, especially the one related to connections magic: the root of replication. I guess I could ask for some help from the Goltinium Guild… or Nierelf, I half-suggested to myself, remembering I did technically have a connection to Nierelf from becoming a stargranted in the form of a racial feature: P-Chronophasia of Nierelf & Trans-Nubian Queendom.

“Haha, that’s fine, you have a lot on your plate.”

“You have no idea. So no Percy today?”

“He’s doing an indie game stream today, how about Ras and Mita?”

“They are practicing with their new quest rewards,” I answered with a furrowed brow as I glanced around: a lot of artificial bodies, proxy bodies, and cybernetic prosthetics obviously made with both mandalas and non-mandala counterparts.

“I’ve heard they are pretty impressive, and you’re about to get one also,” chimed Harvey as he took in the cubist technic sites, waving to cyborg residents of this rentee colony. “This place is pretty crazy. And I mean wow, four artificial world clusters, the stream is really loving Historie Pastoria Sweets now.”

“It does help you're advertising them with all those restricted streams of yours.”

“Yeah, everybody is loving them, especially now that I’m getting into doing duels with the Asset System and exploring the Hybrid System of Warring Cores’s stages.” No kidding, once he and Pendramug actually started streaming about the hybrid system, Goldenrod Compita-Phantasm ended up getting a bunch of new members. Which was useful for sure even though most of them only had the one system slot’s connection or faux-system slot’s connection and were still stuck with proxy body-based kits. Would have been nice if the hybrid system wasn’t so brutal toward new users who didn’t invest in an empowerment…

“At this point we should just be grateful we have many helping hands outside of our witch cursed and gingerbread urbanites,” commented Sous over our currently-staticky connection.

“I know,” I telepathically replied as I tried to relax and enjoy the sights with Harvey before met up with A-Eris and her RTSes and contracted gingerbread commuters and urbanites and we jumped over to the local stage 1 pocket dimension for some training. Harvey was right, the rentee colony was nice and definitely wasn’t what I was expecting: no dreary slums but sort of wellkept cubist apartment complexes filled with people going on with life despite the fact that most of their income and portfolio of mandalas were tied up in rents, maintaining artificials, and paying for temporary bondings. Then again it wasn’t that surprising since Casino Nebula’s preferred styles of magic was supposedly the magic of artificials half of the root of replication along with the delver profession and artifact tag.

Arriving at the destination that A-Eris told us to go before jumping over, I was expecting a park or smallish proxy cafe, someplace casual and wouldn’t be disruptive to suddenly teleport in and out of, not a towering building bigger than neighboring apartment complexes. What was with artificial world clusters and turning common conventions on the side? Then again these worlds were more intertwined with the systems than the world where they originated from in the metaverse proper… without them they wouldn’t be stabilized and would just be destroyed.

“Talk about fancy,” pointed out Harvey, straining his neck to see the top of Jenga-block styled cubist skyscraper. “Shall we go in and find A-Eris?”

“Yeah, let’s go,” I replied before following Harvey and his asset in to see just how huge the place’s lobby was: there were stairwells, escalators, and literally floating cube offices all over the multi-floor lobby. Glancing around, I noticed A-Eris flanked by her pair of enlightened gingerbread urbanite assistants up on one of the raised pavilions and talking to a familiar face… “You got to be kidding… Gunther is here?”

“Gunther?” asked Harvey as he followed my line of sight to see the legendary tier blackzone manager talking to A-Eris, large faceted gemstones floating around him and actually attracting attention from others. “Oh my Manic, that’s Gunther Thompson! And you know him?!”

“Yeah… vaguely… we only met like once before cause he was dropping off some dungeon cores.”  

“So he’s helping you out with your quest? That’s amazing.”

“It is very amazing,” followed up Lens-P with its soft mechanical mimicry of a voice.

“I guess he is…” I muttered under my breath as we made our way toward him. Getting closer I noticed he was also using a proxy body, which definitely explained why he didn’t have an as oppressive manalogical aura as last time and probably why not everyone in the lobby was noticing him.

“Oh, Robert, Harvey, you two came at the perfect time,” commented A-Eris with a smile, waving to us to come over. “I was just talking with Mr. Thompson here about coordinating our groups within Goldenrod Compita-Phantasm to better defend our bases.”

“And as I was telling A-Eris here, as much I would love to directly protect my investments, it’s not in the cards,” followed up Gunther with a dismissive look on his face before continuing, “If I step in to make sure all the battles are wins, they become my wins, not yours. I don’t have the magic to mess around with prophecies and quests like that, the best I can do is make sure you don’t get blindsided by invasions from the stage 1 pocket dimensions.”

“Wait, you’re a part of Goldenrod Compita-Phantasm also?” I asked in confusion: no way someone like Gunther would actually bother with a small time faction in the hybrid system. Right?

“Of course I am, not only am I a major player on the Endless Strip but one of the rulers of not only this artificial world cluster but also Dragon Country. I have ties with multiple gold factions.”

“Hmmm…. so that’s why he uses so many gemstones…” mused Driscoll as a fragmented memory distracted me from Gunther talking with Harvey and A-Eris: one of the founding rulers of Dragon Country that the original Driscoll was friends with and used gemstones as both mediums and catalysts for her spells. “He is Emeralda’s manalogical heir, by two generations from the looks of it.”

“So he has an even bigger silver spoon than Reagan and Johari?” scowled Surcia-Robert at the thought.

“I think silver spoon is an understatement,” I followed up, tuning back into Gunther talking and explaining how much of Golden Compita-Phantasm was actually made up of his employees in comparison to the members that joined because of Blazehopper and Pendramug and the people from my Enigma.

“Wow, and you’re also actually the ruler of three different artificial world clusters? How do you find the time to manage everything?” inquired Harvey with wide eyes, obviously amazed with just how influence and power the blackzone manager actually had.

“A metric shit ton of delegation and a pinch of secondary self usage,” replied Gunther casually as he fiddles with one of the floating gemstones circling around him, an oversized emerald. “This me is actually a secondary self, no reason for the prime me to make use of a pared back proxy body like this.” Of course he would actually invest in secondary selves, he had a high enough tier to take the hit in effective tier while basically multilocating himself and his portfolio of mandalas was definitely large enough to house the Grand Magus-grade mandalas and non-mandala counterparts needed for the spellcraft.

“Having secondary selves must be useful. I wish I had a high tier for them to be viable for me, would be synergistic with my spellcraft,” commented A-Eris before pausing and looking at me and Harvey. “And speaking of my spellcraft, we should probably head out now. Robert and Harvey need to do some training with the Hybrid System of Warring Cores.” Hurray… more training.