“Whatta! That was amazing,” I half-shouted half-gasped in excitement, pumped my fist in the air even though I felt exhausted from having so much mana drained. Looking over to Manic and Surcia, I watched as their masks suddenly shattered, leaving Surcia completely faceless. As the spirit placed his signature polka dotted mask back on, he growled,

“Great, now we have to mend those masks… and our bodies are falling apart.”

“Oh yeah, it’s getting harder to keep you summoned.” I only had Manic’s spirit form summoned for about two hours now but it already felt like the connection was going to break if I didn’t keep the mana constantly flowing. He really is an inefficient summon, but he definitely makes up for it with his personalities, versatility, and chat-pleasing bursts of power. This would be a lot easier if I could dispel and reconjure him, I thought to myself, worried that Manic and Surcia wouldn’t be able to stick around.

“I guess we’re officially on the clock,” sighed Manic as he swapped out his pistol for his dagger before glancing over to me and commenting, “Don’t worry, I should be able to stick around… I think… I got Sal and Arch loading my voiced door and proxy pod up with connectivity materials.”

“Then let’s begin the assault,” proclaimed Murain as she started to suddenly hand all of us her katanas until each of us were holding one and explained she could use them for teleportation. Oh my Murian, I totally forgot she had the katanas for teleporting and resheathing, I thought in amazement that she was able to deploy her katanas for such a show stopper of an infiltration. Having a collection of katanas wrought from mandalas, system slots, facsimiles, and even Trascendations that were tied to four different budget Grand Magus-grade mandalas must make for a lot of cool tricks when you had full use of all of them.

Leaning forward, she drew out another katana and with a flick of her wrist went flying forward toward the base. Another second, another katana drawn and she was invisible. With that chat exploded in excitement as LandonTheMan and NMoonPheonix took the time to post a link from one of Murain’s local fans that revealed the spellman already had two system slots, three multi-system slots, and a stratum 2 multi-system slots dedicated to the Hybrid Systems of Warring Cores: barely three weeks and she had managed to mutate sixteen system slots and forge connections with their results without ending up ones with the cursed, forbidden, or pro-heretical tags. Spellmans really have system slots to spare don’t they? I noted, looking down at the katana in my offhand and seeing just how well-crafted it was: it wasn’t one of her katanas I’ve seen on the spellman magazines, so it must have been from her normal system slot’s connections.

A tug of mana as I felt space warped around me, the next thing I knew I was standing next to Murain in one of the base’s openings. As the spellman quickly resheathed all her katanas with a single magics, I dispelled and reconjured Lens-Pro and all my camera-balls to have back up and make sure the chat wasn’t left out.

“The system-made base core should be down the hall,” shouted Murain as secret worlders from both sides started to make their appearance as I had one of my camera-balls and two of Lens-Pro’s flit upward to get a better shot of what was going on.

“Got it, Pendramug, Manic, let’s go!” I replied before bolting into the base with a few of my stream’s fans and gingerbread urbanites, both Surcia and Lens-Pro in tow. It only took seconds before spellfire, projectiles, RTSes, and drudges were being thrown our way.

Rolling myself into the cover corner of a hallway, I watched as everyone ducked into their own things of cover that were scattered across the oversized hallway with some of our side creating their own protection with shimmering barriers. Glancing over, I watched as my brother threw one of his spellblades through the air before teleporting to it behind enemy lines while Surcia created a distracting spray of sugar elemental motes to hide himself, Manic, and Lens-Pro in.

Smiling, I sprayed a volley of bullets before following after them as the rest of our raid pushed forward. With a full sprint, I managed to get past the first line of defense with everyone else. There was no time to try and stick around and help out the fans and entities, we had no clue how many reinforcements Brandt Rentals & Repo could call in and we currently only had one person with a kit that specialized in breaking or swapping cores from the looks of it: Manic.

With every corner and corridor, I made sure to back up Surcia and Pendramug fending off the secret worlders popping up with their various blue-and-metal themed weaponry and spellcraft. By the time half of our allies had split off with deal with smaller skirmishes, my brother made us stop as we entered a giant open square room; pointing off to the side of the room with a weird-looking door, he told us,

“Respawning room, we should probably hold it for a second to block it off.”

“Good idea, Manic, how much longer can you last?” I replied with a nod as I looked over to the blackzone manager to see how he was doing.

“Good enough, this proxy body was built for long hauls,” sputtered out Manic as he caught his breath while the rest of our allies poured in and a bunch of RTSes came out of the door. “Seriously what is it with people and all these summons?” Gripping his dagger, he grabbed his phylactery with his offhand and created a swiping energy of mana and energy that collided into the nearest two RTSes, cutting sort of deep.

“They are cheap… easy to use… and expendable,” grunted Surcia as he sent out another cascade of colourful motes with renewed energy. Quickly feeling my connection to the spirit, I felt something external was helping maintain it and make it more efficient for Surcia to use his ability.

“We’re using stopgap methods with our system assistants and the Enigma’s resources to perform a pseudo-group summoning. Count yourself lucky that you are currently streaming from Percy’s apartment,” suddenly rang out Driscroll from the back of my head as I leaped onto Lens-Pro to get a better vantage point to shot from.

“Haha! Lucky me!” I telepathically laughed back, aiming my gunlance directly at the door in the side of the room and unloading an entire clip of high velocity rounds as another wave of RTSes and drudges emerged. The only reason why I was currently staying at my brother’s place was to help him unload the last of his stuff while I trained and streamed some extra delving. Who would have thought it would have ended up being such a boon. Talk about a miracle!

Keeping my suppressing fire up, I watched as my brother cut through the summons that managed to slip through our rapidly forming blockade with one of his cursed spellblades: its ability to temporarily deactivate non-essential portions of a system slot’s connection’s maximum literally causes the RTSes and drudges to wink out of existence as they became unusable. It wasn’t too long until actual secret worlders from the cobalt faction actually started to break through and more of our allies started to make their way into the room.

“What the heck are you guys still doing here? More reinforcements are coming!” yelled S-Sirius as he entered the room and let off an ear-shaking explosion of sound with his railgun, piercing straight through a small group of armoured drudges that Manic and Surcia were dealing with. Shaking the ringing out of my ears, I started to hear shouting from the hallway behind me: it definitely wasn’t more reinforcements for us.

“Oopsies, looks like we overstayed our welcome!” I shouted before jumping off Lens-Pro and grabbing Manic by the shoulder. “Let’s take out the core now.” Looking back I quickly sent one of my camera-balls into the air with two more of Lens-Pro’s so I could continue to show off this fight along with the one that Aya was in on the outskirts of the base.

“O-Okay,” stuttered Manic, caught off guard but quickly recomposing himself as Surcia started to help drag him down the hall while Percy and Lens-Pro held up our rear. Reaching the system-made base core’s room, we were greeted by a single secret worlder in full metallic blue knight armour with a futuristic looking tommy gun and riot shield.

“Oh damn, someone actually broke through,” pointed out the secret worlder to no one in particular as he shifted into a fighting stance. “And this is why I told the guys we needed more than one guard.”

“Hey! Language,” I retorted before moving in to close the gap, firing off a few rounds while giving Lens-Pro and Surcia a mental command to defend Manic as he tried to take control of the blocky blueish core.

A yell in some language that my system slot’s connection built in translator couldn’t pick up as the secret worlder caught the bullets with his riot shield before firing wide with his technic-style tommy gun. Right on cue, Lens-Pro’s camera-balls went to intercept the bullets with tiny shields of elemental intelligence. Exclamation points from chat as my remaining two camera-balls caught Manic sending mana and magics into the system-made base core and causing it to ripple.

“A core-manip kit? You’re kidding me?!”

“It’s a good joke isn’t it,” interrupted my brother, twisting around my side and slashing at the secret worlder with his other cursed spellblade, that one that temporarily lowered expertise with non-sword weaponry. Nice one bro! I cheered internally as the spellblade managed to slice into the guy’s armour with a flare of system-altered mana.

Keeping up the pressure to make sure that Manic wouldn’t get interrupted, I lunged forward with my gunlance to force the secret worlder's riot shield off to the side. Hitting the riot shield on its side, I felt a system cast suddenly activate and pushed myself back before it could fully hit me; a wave of vertigo and force as I went skipping over two feet, wisps of system-altered mana trailing.

“This is why I hate two-v-ones,” quipped the secret worlder as he activated the system cast again with a swing of his riot shield to push back Pendramug also. “I don’t even have enough time to call for backup.”

“Sounds like you have a bad strategy,” I commented with a grin as I aimed for his head, shaking off the vertigo before pulling the trigger.

“But I got a good load out.” Another flare of system-altered mana, this time forming a circular spell shield as he tried to make a break for Manic. A growl from Surcia as he sent out two high intensity streams of sugar elemental motes, sending the secret worlder reeling back for Pendramug to have another shot at him. This time using his signature pressured water jet spellblade and managing to thrust into the secret worlder's shoulder, forcing the enemy to drop and dispel his tommy gun.

“But not good enough though.” Gripping my gunlance like a bat, I went and swung: catching the side of the riot shield and sending it flying with a wrenching noise. Twist back a half-step, I notched my gunlance into my shoulder and let loose a volley into his chest. Another pulse of vertigo and energy and Pendramug and I went tumbling again.

Oh man, this guy must have like four different kits or something, I noted as chat filled the side of my vision with a flurry of comments while the secret worlder pulled a syringe out of a pocket dimension and used it himself. With a grunt, he conjured a hefty zweihander and pointed it at us before glancing back at Manic with Lens-Pro and Surcia, the system-made base core shifting faster and faster. Maybe more than four kits, but definitely four connections  for the hybrid system.

Another mad dash to Robert, this time barely blocked by Lens-Pro as I casted Content Curation again to supercharge his shields. Before my brother and I could move in again, the core suddenly pulsated and shifted, changing from a blocky blue core to a swirling golden one: a huge pulse of translucent washed over all of us and rippled out into the hallways and the rest of the base.

“This is why we need more guards… freaking core-manip kits,” offhandedly quipped the secret worlder, lowering his zweihander. “Good fight, I guess.”

“Thanks,” I commented back, lowering my gunlance a little bit before remembering there was a grace period before a base could change hands again. Seeing there was no reason to try and kill the guy, especially since he was a good sport and system insurance was costly to refill, we allowed him to escape.

“God that was draining,” complained Manic as he stumbled his way over to me and Pendramug as his proxy body started to show some sort of crack-like lesions. Looks like using his Quester (Strange) kit to max was the icing on the cake for it to start breaking down. 

“It was worth it, right chat?” I asked with a smile, causing chat to erupt into applause and congratulations as we went to see who the quest designated as MVPs for this fight. No surprise both Manic and A-Eris managed to get quest rewards. But to top it off! Pendramug managed to snag one of the two spots! “Hey check it out bro! You got MVP!”

“Yeah, I did, wow,” chuckled my brother as he went to show me and his own stream the rewards he got: a tailor made stratum 2 multi-system slot and two artificial faux-system slots for spellblades. “Look’s I’m going to have to stream this hybrid system a lot more and I guess pick up Fate by Twenty and Grand Fantasia Gates again.”

“I can’t wait!”

“Same,” chimed Manic from the side as he wearily took out two crystals from his own MVP reward. Looks like he was already going to get his fourth Grand Key. I can’t wait to see what he gets.