Feeling the ripple of fey and Asset System-altered spatial magic, I watched as we were placed in a pocket dimension. Now we didn’t have to worry about a stealthed ambusher or this conjurer escaping… but it also meant we had to now deal with the conjurer. Well this was the plan anyway, I thought to myself as I felt the secret worlder's manalogical aura: it was potent and practically cancerous with the way it pulsed, growing and shriveling in waves. Whatever a villain-card actually was, it was definitely on par with herit crests and the fact it was using a heretical magic made it even more dangerous: it didn’t happen that it kind of felt like what talents did but without all the extra bullshit. A upward swelling of mana as the secret worlder took a half step forward, commenting,

“Trapping me in another pocket dimension? Do you not understand the power of the Replica Conjure sixth power?”

“Honestly, not really,” I replied as I instinctively pushed myself to summon Bear, allowing the sentient mass of mana, manalogical forces, and gaseous extra-periodic chemicals to form. I could feel Eagle scowl a bit from the back of my head while Bear asked,

“Two of us at once?”

“No herald or end of days, simply a lot of enemies we have to deal with,” clarified Eagle from outside of the pocket dimension.

“A herit crest… how rare, but it is weak compared to my Skyfall’s Black Mangrove,” proclaimed the secret worlder as the weird black wires coming out of her continued to channel mana. Herit crest? Rare? How different is Crestier? I mentally muttered before losing my train of thought as I heard a wet splurch: another one of her pods snapped to make another inky clone.

In the span of seconds, more and more of the pods fell to the ground until there were nearly a dozen clones between us and her. Her genesical magic was fast acting and it didn’t look like it was draining her. Not wanting to wait to figure out if she was resistant to the heretical magic backlash or just had some vitality reserve to exploit, I sprung into action with Bear and Margaret. 

Pushing eclipse and gravity mana through my oversized tomahawk to let out anti-matter rending magic at the nearest inky clone: the conjuration didn’t even attempt to evade it and instead just died and exploded into a hissing mass of black liquid. Yelping in shock, Margaret quickly followed up with a few pot shots that managed to pop two more of the clones while Bear tore through a fourth one. A tinge of pain from Bear as the black liquid got on him: acid. You’re serious? And he’s supposed to be the tanky one! I shouted in frustration as I felt my mana get drained from both my Wampum Summoner kit and mandalas to help repair and fortify the herald busting summon.

“Nothing can stop my villain-card, you might as well allow me to kill you so I may go back to slaughtering your faction,” callously chimed the secret worlder as she made more pods splatter against the roof to reveal enough clones to replacement the ones we killed plus some.

“Seriously, just because you use heretical magic doesn’t mean you have to blab about it,” I shot back, already flinging another thing of magic in a wide arc and catching two of the clones, destroying them both. At the rate we were going, this secret worlder was going to make more clones than we could cut down, and we didn’t even know if that was her only gimmick or not.

It didn’t take long for me to wish I didn’t have my girlfriend pull out Octeron’s pocket dimension ability. This conjurer was someone we should have been trying to ambush, not locking ourselves up with her in a pocket dimension with no cover. 

“Fill or Kill!” chanted Margaret, firing over a glittering bullet: as the secret worlder's eyes widened in shock from how powerful the Asset System cast was. Quickly swiping her arm, one of the inky clones jumped in the way to take the bullet, violently exploding from the potency of the bane and splattering backwards. “You got to be kidding me! That was thirty bucks!”

“What in the ten moons was that magic?” hissed the secret worlder, drawing in mana from the Greater Aether Veil’s aether and ambient to refine it and convert it into more clones. 

“You don’t have fairies where you’re from? You’re missing out. Fill or Kill!” Another bane-filled bullet and this time around two inky clones taking the blast. I know Margaret’s bane of a fairy-based was potent but there was no reason to throw even more clones at the second bullet. Unless… she knows what it does know and is scared shitless by it, I suddenly realized that of course there would be some sort of feedback or connection, that secret worlder’s conjurations were clones of her after all, just all weird and inky. 

“Margaret, how many more Fill or Kills can you do?” I called out, moving toward the secret worlder and directly cutting into one of the clones; the sizzle of acid against my passive spell shield and skin forcing me to wince. All I had to do was give her a clear shot, a few acid burns would be fine.

“A whole bunch, but you’re fitting the bill,” replied Margaret, only firing off another Fill or Kill and forcing two more clones to take the blow. Taking the opportunity, I commanded Bear to barrel forward, taking out even more inky clones and forcing me to give him even more mana.

Panicking, the secret worlder forced even more mana into her villain-card, causing the pods to rapidly be made and hit the ground. She was barely showing the signs of heretical magic backlash still and it was frustrating. At least we managed to turn the tables for now and put her on the back step.

“Spirits, are you ready?” I telepathically asked into my wampum belts, cleaving through another inky clone before throwing another anti-matter rending magic again, make full use of my Tearing Pulse lesser spell specialty and Vox System Tearing Axe greater spell specialty. I could feel my kits and mandalas starting to strain and I ready myself to hurt even more: I was definitely going to be sore in the morning.

“Are you going to use a herald busting token now?” asked Eagle as he continued to track potential targets and take out RTSes. Nodding I started to activate one of my herit crest’s charges.

“I’ll have enough time to regain a few charges before Starving Pillars Limos arrives. Cause crap we have now bad how it will be”

“You’re summoning Snake?”

“That’s the plan,” I replied as a tendril-like wisp of mana, manalogical forces, and gaseous extra-periodic chemicals slipped out of one of my wampum belts to form the stealthy Snake.

“Who's my target?” silently hissed Snake, watching me as I weaved in and out of frenzied clones and taking glancing blows that wore away at my passive spell shield.

“The conjurer, try to distract her as best as you can.”

“That should be easy enough.”

“Hurray and just get shot! Fill or Kill,” shouted the sweet tooth in frustration, firing microflation after microflation.

“Never! How dare you shoot me like this!” yelled the secret worlder back, pointing both her arms at Margaret and directing the swarm of inky clones that hadn’t died yet to dash at her. Crap, not good, I thought as Bear and I went to guard her and getting clobbered because of it. 

Being forced closer and closer to the edge of the root as the conjurer went into overdrive, the sound of a high pitched scream as my stealthed summon finally striked. All the inky clones instantly halted and turned around for a split second.

“Bear! Now!” I yelled, forcing out as much mana as I could to send a giant wave of my anti-matter magic, leaning fully on my Lumberjack (Tearing Pulse) kit so I wouldn’t get hit by cross-karmic retribution.

“On it!” roared Bear before barrelling forward to clear out the rest of the inky clones that my supercharged Tearing Pulse didn’t finish off. 

“Finally! A good shot! Fill or Kill! Fill or Kill!” shouted Margaret in excitement, firing off Titanala’s microflation twice in a row as fast as she could. Still screaming from Snake coiling around her and biting, the secret worlder took both bullets straight to the chest but only stumbling slightly as her black wires swayed.

  Stumbling as she became more spontaneous and predictable, the conjurer went to recklessly making more of her inky clones with no regard to how much mana her mandala’s had left or the building heretical magic backlash. This time around it was easy to time the black pods and where they would drop. Rushing forward with Bear, I went for the arm while Bear went for the chest.

The sound of flesh being rended apart as a mixture of systems influenced my Tearing Pulse-coated tomahawk and amplified it. Between my oversized tomahawk, Bear, and Snake, the conjurer was going down before her inky clones could even try to pry us off. Gasping in relief as the secret worlder fell, Margaret pointed out,

“Holy shit that was crazy.”

“You’re telling me,” I replied, almost dropping my oversized tomahawk as I went to prop myself up with it. I didn’t even have to ask for Bear and Snake to dispel themselves.

“That was exciting,” offhandedly commented Snake as she coiled herself in her personal space.

“And a bit too intense for my taste,” I telepathically replied as I took some mana soda potions from my Proxy Inventory. Thank god the Hybrid System of Warring Cores allowed use of them even without proxy bodies or real-to-proxy transformations. 

“I have already found the next worthy target, this one seems much more manageable,” followed up Eagle from the back of my head.

“Give us a few minutes to recover,” I sighed before telling Margaret, “Eagle’s found someone else for us to fight.”

“Can we take like… five? Ten minutes maybe?” shot back Margaret between long gulps of her own mana soda potion and dispelling the Asset System mini-pocket dimension made with Octeron’s help. “I know we are in a huge fight and all, but I’m pretty sure we just took out a huge member of Midnight Parlor.”

“Yeah we can take a break… I’m pretty sure this fight is going to last a while,” I replied, looking over the roof’s edge to see all the fighting still going on. Midnight Parlor was fighting back but with Glyirian military lending more than a helping hand, we should have this in the bag. Which meant I also had getting MVP in the bag as long as I took out a few more secret worlders regardless of how strong they were. Let’s just hope Margaret can get MVP also, there should be four rewards from this win.

Of course even with the Glyirian military’s help, it took us longer than I wanted to resecure the system-made base core but I still got the MVP along with Margaret after dealing with a few handfuls of RTSes and sort of strong secret worlders. Opening up a translucent screen to get my rewards, I realized… it was just two crystals for Robert to get quest rewards: nothing for me. Really? Nothing? I sighed as I looked over Margaret as she opened up her own translucent screen to reveal she got a trio of system-forged attunements, one for each of her fairy GD-Summons along with a synthesis one that allowed them to more easily become High GD-Summons. Well, at least my girlfriend got something good out of this.