Harvey’s de-facto raid group didn’t even have enough time to fully disperse into smaller groups before Brandt Rental & Repo’s forces striked: a small concentrated hail of blue metallic spears. Reacting on instinct, I threw myself in front of Lens-P before tossing a pair of supercharged exploding mana potions to destroy the spears heading toward us. Glancing to the side, I noticed that Robert had protected Harvey with his shield, empowered by our phylactery to create an elemental barrier of sorts.

“Thank you, you have allowed me to protect others instead of myself,” commented the asset with its fake voice, six of its drone-like camera-balls returning its orbit after protecting our allies. For such a large slow-moving asset, its analytical support and defenses made it a great ally.

“You’re welcome, I’m just glad that someone around here trusts my instincts,” I offhandedly replied before readying myself for the next volley. Before another one could occur, A-Eris had some of her non-contracted underlings throw up barriers and fortifications around the portal, giving me the breather to look around at everyone. Practically everyone else, spirits included, saw me as a sentient bundle of instincts: Driscoll wasn’t too bad though since we came into existence at the same time and passively worked together a lot, Harvey was also rather understanding which helped me realize why Robert liked him so much, but Lens-Pro and Rom in their mechanical natures surprisingly more than cooperating and amendable.

I just need to protect Lens-Pro and stay near Harvey and Robert so I don’t get weakened, I told myself as I looked back to see exactly how damaged our forces were: only some of the RTSes and other summons, mostly drudges, along with the weaker secret worlders were injured or killed, we would be able to easily heal, revive, and resummon them before moving on. Taking the time, I went to conjuring up some health & mana potions to hand out since I could feel that’s what Harvey wanted: I didn’t mind the strain and it wasn’t my mana being drained, it was Harvey’s and Robert’s and surprisingly to an extent also Mita’s and Ras’s. Robert’s innate fi magecraft must be bleeding through his Phylactery User (Swarm) kit.

Partially hijacking Robert’s magic, I could feel the connections between us and everyone’s spirit contracts to us through the various Strange Man’s Working Contracts plus the cursed system slot’s connections of Strange Man’s Aspect of World, Strange Man’s Aspect of Restrictive, and Strange Man’s Aspect of Obscurus. Harvey and Robert didn’t have a mirroring mandala, but I could leverage this connection to temporarily forge a mask from the aspects.

“You really want to use an aspect mask?” asked Driscoll from the expanse of blackness. “Only Robert and Terrin have managed to manifest one with a group summoning.” A pause as he realized my intentions. “You’re going to exploit the phylactery and fully patchwork stratum 2 multi-system slot to generate and process enough mana aren’t you?”

“Yeah, Blackzone Manager’s Curcumedioia-Style Phylactery means I can draw on Robert, Mita, and Ras, and the multi-system slot means I can have Harvey process everything.”

“I’ll help with the spell processing when you manifest one to make sure you don’t accidentally break Robert’s proxy body.” 

“The portal is secure, everyone who is moving out, move out,” called out A-Eris as she sent out her summons to secure the perimeter and aid the different groups heading out to take down the enemy base. With that, the double-witched-cursed’s two contracted enlightened gingerbread urbanites, S-Sirius and M-Marybell, made their way to our group; I could tell they weren’t using replicas or fully deploying their own system slot’s connections, but then again they were currently summoned. Injury and death were currently much easier to reverse for them right now, even though the two of them partially separated from the Enigma’s protocols and partial-neo-sentients.

“So it’s the eight of us that are going to be striking the base? What’s exactly the plan?” asked S-Sirius, gripping his hand-held railgun and raising a fleshy eyebrow that looked vaguely like a piece of gingerbread.

“We’re going to take the scenic route and take what fights we can handle until someone finds the base for us,” replied Harvey with a smile as he pointed his gunlance upward to the overly tall cubist skyscrapers.

“That’s smart, enemies are going to coming straight at us if we try to attempt to take the spotlight more than… we already are,” commented M-Marybell as she gripped her mage staff, obviously a partial manifestation of a kit like S-Sirius’s railgun, and looked at Harvey’s and Lens-Pro’s camera-balls.

“We should be fine, let’s just begin,” chimed Aya, already heading toward a nearby skyscraper. Internally scowling, I quickly followed suit with the others, keeping an eye out to make sure we wouldn’t get hit by another volley of spears. At least with the corridors and stairwells of the skyscrapers there was less to focus on… but there were even more blindspots in return that I annoyingly didn’t have a work around for.

Reaching the lowest pair of skybridges on the twenty-sixth floor, the eight of us finally found our first obstacle. Only two guards per bridge? I mused to myself as Harvey managed to give us a look of the Brandt Rental & Repo secret worlders through one of his camera-balls. I guess they think their RTSes and ranged capabilities are strong enough… talk about unprepared.

After a quick half minute discussion from the protection of the skyscraper, the eight of us decided we might as well split up to take both pairs on at once so that they couldn’t escape. As I made me way over to the left skybridge with Harvey, Lens-Pro, and Robert, I focused inward on my connection to the Obscurus System with Driscoll’s help.

“Seriously Surcia? Now?!” yelped Robert, obviously holding back a swear, as I drew his mana to warp his mask into a cloudy reflective aspect mask of the Obscurus System. “You could have given me a heads up.” 

“Oh my Surcia! Is that a new mask?” laughed Harvey in excitement while cocking his gunlance.

“It’s an aspect mask, something he shouldn’t have been able to do…”

“But I was able to do it because you are here with the proper phylactery and it is going to help us,” I followed up with a smug feeling that I knew both Robert and Harvey could feel before releasing a burst of mist and magical miasma out onto the skybridge.

“They’re here!” shouted one of the enemy secret worlders before throwing a blue fireball into the fog bank and missing all of us. To us, the mist and magical miasma was a light obscurant, but to them it was pure white and capable of eroding manalogical and spiritual defenses. Taking the opportunity, S-Sirus left his cover and entered the right skybridge with M-Marybell and fired his railgun: a resounding explosion of noise as a projectile tore through the stomach of an enemy. Looks like the gingerbread urbanites are better at exploiting the connective nature of the Hybrid System of Warring Cores than me, I mentally quipped as I watched the secret world clutch his middle, blood pouring as he stabilized himself with magic and passive mana circulation.

“Lens-Pro, protect us. Content Curation,” casted Harvey as he moved in onto the bridge, activating his asset’s mezzoflation to supercharge it’s innate elemental intelligence shielding ability while unloading a clip into the spear and shield wielding RTSes across the way.

A flurry of movement from Lens-Pro’s camera-balls as they moved to protect us from a wild volley of spears and spell projectiles while M-Marybell created a series of translucent panels to project her half of the group on the skybridge. Controlling the fog bank, I moved it forward with our movement, letting my instincts guide me as I took the lead. Nearing into melee, I felt a spell form behind me and quickly did a sidestep to watch as Robert used our phylactery to fire off a bolt of compressed mist and magical miasma; a RTS tried to block the blow only to be spent tumbling and have its shield and shield arm smoldering like acid was eating away at it.

“Okay, I can get used to this,” laughed the other me as he continued to draw on the spellcraft I was using and modifying it to fit him. To think his innate fi magecraft and trio of system assistants would come in handy like this, the man was starting to get better at spellcraft… even it was because he had so many connections to others to draw from and other sapiences to help with spell processing.

Mentally rolling my eyes, I focused back on my target: the secret worlder who was throwing blue fireballs with one hand and had converted his other forearm into a blade made of blue metal. Getting close enough, I noticed that his blue fireballs weren’t actually made of fire but some sort of wellspring manifestation, one of the new ones from the lesser greater wills from the looks of it. A look of panic on their face as they noticed me and took a slash at me.

Feeling the blade-arm dig into my side with its weird manalogical-enhancement, my surcia-curcumedioia instincts kicked into gear and used the aspect mask’s power to turn that part of my body into mist and magical miasma. Leveraging the transformation, I had it travel through my arm as I went to grab the secret worlder's face: forcing out a scream as it burned him.

“Trying to stab a swarm elemental, you’re an idiot. Especially when you are toying with manas new to you,” I quipped before tossing him backwards for Harvey and Robert to finish off. Forcing myself further behind enemy lines with the aid of my fog bank, I went to dispatching the RTSes, fully exploiting that they were all physically inclined.

Eroding the last RTS on our skybridge, I turned around to try and take out the other secret worlder, only to see that Harvey and Robert had already taken her out. Sighing, I let the aspect mask dissolve and revert to its original potion-wreathed form of Robert’s.

“Well, that was easy,” commented Harvey, glancing over to the other skybridge to watch Percy and Aya finishing off the remaining RTSes over there in a flurry of magics-coated blades.

“It’s because they were using the new class specialties of the Realigning.”

“So they were trying things out? Good for them.”

“And better for us.”

“Haha yep,” laughed the streamer, looking up at one of his camera-balls and continuing, “Remember chat, the new class specialties may be cool and rare, but there hasn't been much research on how to use them properly. And that includes the fancy new sixth power that some superheroes and villains are using!” 

“Blazehopper, let’s move on before more people arrive,” shouted Percy from the other skybridge.

“Oh yeah Pendramug, good idea!” 

With that, the eight of us hurried into the skyscraper and started to ascend again, aiming for the floors between the top and middle sections in an attempt to avoid more enemies. For the most part it was a success with the only enemies that we ran into being small groups of scouting RTSes that were easy to dispatch. Each time we took them out, we changed routes and make full use of the abundance of skybridges the webbed the skyline. 

Taking the chance, I focused on the aspect masks of this spirit form: I could feel them exist in a sort of theoretical state that was frustrating to wrap my head around, but at least I was properly sensing them while being summoned by Harvey now. Experience and instincts, that’s all I need here, I mentally told myself as I inspected the aspect mask of the Obscurus System and noting I could probably use it one or two more times before the connection to it was temporarily severed. Of course Robert’s, our, afflictions of the connections piece of a being along with outer genomes was even hampering our replica’s options.

After a bit more than a half hour, we finally got confirmation of Brandt Rental & Repo’s base within this pocket dimension and found out we weren’t too far from it. Smiling and talking to his stream’s chat, Harvey paused to ask me as we neared the base,

“Do you think you can do that aspect mask again when we strike?”

“Yeah, but it’s not going to cover an entire base. You want to make it so other groups can help out, don't you?” I replied, already readying myself to convert Robert’s mask back into an aspect mask.

“We could do our group magic,” suggested Robert hesitantly since Harvey was able to do it with Driscoll’s mask. He was a close second to Terrin in that since the Glyirian sweet tooth could handle both my own mask and Robert’s mask, but that was cause of Isabella more than anything else.

“Oh yeah, Driscoll’s mask with that aspect mask! We could make flaming dark fog or something,” agreed the streamer. Pausing, I stopped for a split second before saying,

“Or Manic and I can use the aspect masks of the Obscurus System and the Restrictive System for a group magic.”

“Wow, wouldn’t that be like super draining?  

“Yeah, we’ll need to actually use your mana for this also.”

“Oh my Surcia! Let’s do it!” proclaimed Harvey before Robert could object.

“I’ll start preparing the spellcraft…” commented Driscoll from the back of my head as we all readied ourselves. Reaching the enemy faction’s base, an expanded section of a skyscraper with many fortifications and skybridges, I converted Robert’s mask and Driscoll’s mask into the aspect masks of the Obscurus System and the Restrictive System. Looking down at the base, I handed the aspect mask of the Obscurus System off to Robert while I put on the dark chain-laced aspect mask of the Restrictive System. Feeling the group magic ready itself with a massive rush of mana, Robert and I chanted in unison,

“The mask of the Restrictive meets the mask of the Obscurus and magic is naught but fog.” Two pulses shot out from us, creating a rippling thin fogbank of mist and magical miasma. A bunch of shouts of confusion from the base as the secret worlders suddenly found most of their magics and spells being dampened or completely dispelled. I was exhausted and already feeling the aspect mask’s connection straining, but the siege was now on.