“So this is going to be the final push? All or nothing?” I asked my other self, looking at all the gingerbread urbanites set up ready to fight. Borolio of the Plague Clouds was only a few weeks away and Robert still hadn't managed to finish up the quest so he was going all out with Mita and Ras: six frontal assaults all on different bases hoping that they could secure the final three needed victories. Granted I wasn’t really going to get anything out of this, but I already bothered putting in the effort to get a stratum 2 multi-system slot to power-link to Cheesecake Emporos-Museum’s Board of Representatives  and this was a good chance for a few of my own Enigma’s sweet tooths to grab some quest rewards due to a loophole in the system.

“Yeah… honestly this would have been so much fucking easier if we had a head start, you know, not have to deal with Carbon Pharma,” replied Robert as he fiddled with his proxy body and a sort of ominous black sword: looks like I wasn’t only exploiting loopholes. I didn’t expect my other self to make use of service-sharing to use more of his portfolio of mandalas while a proxy body. Then again I was pretty sure he got it as part of one of his quest rewards.

“Well yeah, a lot of things would be better if we had a head start on things.”

“Hopefully we’ll manage to get everything we need and plus some so we can just have everyone else actually handle the herald and end of days.”

“We all know that’s not going to happen,” suddenly interrupted Daphne, twirling her spear as she continued, “Everything is ready. It’s time to move out.”

“Let’s make a quick meal of this,” quipped Chef from the back of my mind as I conjured my handgun and started heading out with the others. The second we left the base, I made sure to equip my enhanced anti-radar cloak: it wasn’t my brightest idea to grab an advancement kit for it but it was one of the easier ones to grab with a multi-system slot and the insta-conjure dagger and handgun that came with it were useful. You had no clue when a surprise weapon would help you turn around a fight. Or when a last second ability to turn teleport and blink away could save your left. Not to mention I could draw on all the manas reserves from the Board of Representatives now. This should be easy, and if everything goes to hell, hopefully we won’t be affected by them, I thought to myself as the three of us made our way out of the base into the pocket dimension’s cityscape. 

It didn’t even take us a few hundred feet to start encountering the first RTSes and drudges from Carbon Pharma and skirmishes with our own RTSes, gingerbread urbanites, and secret worlders: you’d think with the end of days making a beeline for the Endless Strip would make people think to bunker down and prep… then again I guess you could bunker down and use proxy bodies.

“Do these people have nothing better to do?” groaned Robert in frustration, taking cover behind a building before peeking out to shoot a few RTSes in the chest with his own handgun.

“Probably. Probably also insane fanatics who want Borolio of the Plague Clouds to cause even more of a pandemic,” followed up Daphne with a scowl as she didn’t even bother slowing down and went to plow through the RTSes with her spear.

“I fucking hate Carbon Pharma, let’s just get this over with.” You and me, both, I mentally noted before following behind Daphne: we had an entire pocket dimension to traverse to reach Carbon Pharma’s base and hopefully there would only be RTSes and the occasional drudge. 

It wasn’t until the halfway point the three of us started to see serious fighting going on. The middle of the pocket dimension was basically an urban warzone overflowing with RTSes for both sides and for everyone gingerbread urbanite and assisting secret worlder from either of our Enigma or elsewhere on our side there were probably 2 drudges and an extra 4 RTSes on Carbon Pharma’s side.

“They really want to hold this base don’t they?” commented Daphne nonchalantly as she weaved through haphazard beam shots.

“Yeah and it’s annoying, why couldn’t they just give up and let us complete our quest,” replied Robert with a scowl, obviously pissed off by the fact this pocket dimension was in Historie Pastoria Sweets and not elsewhere in the Cesire Babel. Couldn’t blame him, I would be pissed too, especially since these Carbon Pharma psychopaths could use this pocket dimension to strike the remaining two bases he had to defend to complete the quest. “Crap, and it’s about to get even more annoying…”

Before I could even ask what he meant, I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye and saw what he meant as a giant drudge rounded the corner. And of course Carbon Pharma just had to go the most grotesque route possible: a humanoid that was easily two stories tall and made of what looked like loose spooled bundles of intestines barely wrapped together with black and red veins. I didn’t even have time to say anything before I started gagging from the stench of infected flesh and feeling my system circulate with mana to try and counteract whatever it was trying to infect me with and a strange tugging sensation.

“You got to be kidding, that’s just fucking disgusting,” proclaimed Daphne with a look of absolute hate and repulsion as she readied her spear again, this time looking like she was actually going to bother Scorpio. “I can’t believe they actually went as far as conjuring a drudge that is anti-Flasaporium.” Wait seriously?!

“It seems like just that, I’m sensing a putrefaction aura that is laced with both anti-Flasaporium hub and anti-Veiled Country spellcraft, it’s absorbing it and rendering it inefficient,” explained Chef from the back of my head as most of my spirits cringed in their personal spaces while the gingerbread urbanites in front of started to fall back. 

“Should we just move around it?” I asked, gripping my handgun as I started to look for an alternate route to the Carbon Pharma’s base: we were in a cityscape that we were more familiar with, might as well exploit it.

“And let all your gingerbread urbanites fall apart? No, we’re going to have to kill this thing,” shot back Daphne with a scowl. Yeah go figure, the last thing we needed was Carbon Pharma taking our base before we took theirs because of a countermeasure like this. Shifting into gear, I went to insta-conjure my other handgun and felt my kits help adjust my grip as I channelled mana into both of my handguns: still would have preferred to have access to my normal magic without a hassle but hybrid systems were a bitch.

Surprisingly the first one to move into position was actually the other me instead of Daphne as he moved toward one of the fire escapes to get a better vantage point. Following behind him, I watched Daphne go in to support the secret worlders that didn’t have to fall back due to the putrefaction aura and shuddered a bit. Who would even think of making that sort of spellcraft.

“God it smells terrible even up here,” groaned Robert as we reached the ledge of the roof and instantly recoiled as both of us were hit by a visible wave of nauseating odor out of the blue. Clenching my stomach I felt my breakfast curdle a bit as my system tried to fight off the sudden spellcraft. Yeah I was starting to see why someone developed this spellcraft: it was fucking effectived and underhanded. 

Keeping my mouth shut, I went to taking aim and firing two volleys of mana-infused bullets: entire bundles of intestines were sheared off the colossal drudge only to have most of them rapidly regenerate themselves as another blast of sickness-inducing odor rippled off of it. Following up, Robert released a volley of his own bullets and ripped through what looked like an arm on the drudge, his actually leaving damage as an inky rainbow-tinged darkness clotted the wounds.

“What the hell was that?” I asked, taking a step back to reload so the drudge couldn’t side swipe me out of the blue.

“Something that Fayn Weaver did, she is amazing at splicing together spells but the backlash… yeah it’s something else,” he replied with a slight cringe as he went to reload also, his sword and the makeshift elemental mote phylactery on his belt feeding mana and magics into cartridge he conjured up.

“Yeah spell splicing is real bitch, even with the high,” I nodded in agreement as I went to pull out my own big guns, well the best I could use here without crippling myself with cross-karmic retribution. Reaching out of Hundred Velo and Dux, I drew on their unique styles of spellcraft through Cheesecake Emporos-Museum’s Board of Representatives and poured into my own freshly conjured cartridges. Pushing the rush of spellcasting like this aside, I waited for the disgusting drudge to release another wave of odor after Daphne tore into it to strike again.

Two solid streams of magic launched out from my handguns and bore through its chest and eviscerated whatever defense it had against the Obscurus System and Veiled Country-sourced magic. An overly wet squelched of a roar as the drudge tried to heal itself, flailing madly before suddenly lashing out with a bundle of intestines at us. Robert was able to get out of the way in time… but I was still focused on suppressing any potential backlash from using a full blown Grand Key.

“Dammit Robby!” shouted Daphne, catching the sight of me being flung off the building and rag dolling to the ground. Everything hurt, but I was still conscious and my passive spell shield was managing to hang on by a thread. That’s smarts, I internally moaned to myself as I tried to pick myself up only to get manhandled by the blackzone manager as she pushed me out of the way of another thing of intestines.

“Crap! I’ll cover you!” yelled Robert from the rooftops as he went to peppering the now berserking drudge with the support of the remaining secret worlders who weren’t stuck dealing with all the RTSes and other drudges still funnelling into this part of the pocket dimension. Wincing a little bit, I went to lean against a wall for cover and went to pull a soda potion from my personal subdimension while Daphne just scowled at me before getting back to work. 

We found a decent enough counter for that oversized drudge if they had more of them, but damn it was exhausting to use. At least I get a bit of a buzz from doing it…. And mandala cramps… yeah I’m going to need more potions for that, probably some bottled flowers too, I told myself as I felt my vampyrism and scar start to itch from all the damage I was taking.