-Daphne Sucrose-

“Hahaha! So Daphne Sucrose of Super-Sweet Valley is stuck with greenhorn duty!” laughed the barrel-chested meathead Johanson before downing another pint of sweet ale. He was really starting to get on my nerves. Maybe I should stab him with Sugar Scorpio some. He’s a hardy blackzone manager, he could probably survive a few spear holes.

“A new Flasaporium Enigma, how interesting. Do you know what theme they choose?” inquired Reagan as he sipped his own beverage, the enchanted gears on his cloak spinning to their own quiet tune.

“They are dessert-themed. And why the hell are you here, Reagan? You aren’t even a Flasaporium blackzone manager! That goes for you too Ike! Go back to your freaky stupid robo-bugs!” I replied to Reagan, aggressively pointing at him and his Mechacorian companion. I swear they could be more pesky than spellmen or stragranted who don’t know their boundaries!

“Oh ho ho, no need to be so aggressive here. We’re all comrades, even if some of us are from other hubs,” quipped Reagan with a snooty smile. “Besides, isn’t it about time for you to head out and meet our newest friend?” I hated when he was right, but god damn it, he was right. 

“Yeah, I know. I’m going to head out now,” I sourly replied, downing the rest of my parfait’s sparkling soda and then jumping off my stool. “Oh, remind me to send a horde of poison apples your way later, Reagan.”

“Don’t worry my sweet-and-sour Daphne, I will. Your invasions are always the most fruitful.”

“Have a fun time showing that greenhorn the ropes, little miss prodigy loli!” followed up Johanson with a stupid grin. 

“And stop insulting my monsters! They aren’t freaky or stupid. They are amazing.” called out Ike, finally mustering the courage to say anything to me as I left the all-ages pub and walked onto the mist-covered sidewalk. Scratch that, I’m going to send hordes of poison apples to all three of them, and throw in some Heavy Sugar Drillsmen for extra measure. I mentally told myself as I started to pull mana out of the aether and fuel the Enigma transportation spell. 

Why did the blackzone gods have to give me the body of a cherry red-headed loli? I wasn’t even born with a girly personality! So frustrating, those guys always got under my skin. I just needed to focus on my job and teach this greenhorn of a blackzone manager how to run an Enigma. Then I could get back to my own Enigma and relax with Candy. The place is called Historie Pastoria Sweets… Please don’t let this greenhorn be another snooty snob like Reagan.

Feeling the Astral Horizon, the Dimensional Folds, the Leylines all bend to the will of my spell, I activated the glamouring subroutine so no one would notice me teleporting away. And, as quickly as it took me to cast the spell, I disappeared and was shunted through the Dimensional Folds and spaces between worlds to my destination. 

After arriving within Historie Pastoria Sweets with a silent thud, I took a quick look around. Suburban environment with urban terraforming, undersized displays of both gourmet and historical variety, and an abundance of train tracks. Why were appropriated blackzone managers so boring and straightforward? Where were the impossible structures made of materials that shouldn’t work? The warped non-euclidean spaces that hide treasure troves and traps? The floating outcroppings of mana-infused rock candy that you could mine away at?

“Sch, looks like he finally noticed I’m here,” I commented out loud, feeling the subtle distant gaze of a system assistant and a blackzone manager. Now I just need to wait and see how long it took for this greenhorn to ask his system assistant the right questions and appear before me. “Might as well kill some time and see what all this greenhorn’s got.” 

With a small stretch, I drew in low-attribute mana and strummed up the incantations for a simple radar Auxiliary macro. Almost instantly I got the first hit on the radar as shaped mana subtly pulsed out of me. Is that a… flan? I thought with a perplexed but interested half-smile as I looked at my mark.

The jiggly animate thing was obviously a flan of some sort with a mildly off-putting wavy streak of colours in its middle, and a spherical core that idly moved around within its semi-translucent custard body. As I maneuvered closer to it, the flan started to react to my presence and created a pair of tentacles. Good sense of awareness, but fodder monsters were still fodder. 

Sidestepping a tentacle lash, with a single unpowered swing of my Sugar Scorpio I cleaved off a good third of the monster’s body, killing it instantly. In its death throes, the flan’s magical core cracked and fractured as a small cup of packaged flan appeared. Are they going for produced drops over physical drops? Or do they just have no clue how easy it is for magical cores to break apart on death without reinforcement? I pondered as I casually picked up the cup of flan.

After taking a small spoon out of one of my personal subdimensions, I peeled off the packaging and took a small bite. Sweet and creamy just like flan should be, not high quality but definitely better than the average store-bought brands that I saw delvers bring into my own Enigma. No vitality gain or special benefit from eating it though, just a very mild infusion of miscellaneous manas. 

“Nothing special. I guess fodder really is just fodder” I noted that more of the flan creatures were already grouping up. Wasn’t much variance in them; it looked like they were all about two feet tall and had roughly the same creamy crud colouring on their streaks. Could you seriously not be bothered to even make variants? I groaned before making quick work of them.

Running a quick tools-of-the-trade spell, I collected a bit more information on these fodder: Living flans, weak and expendable, prone to group tactics and swarming, primary drop is designated as tasty refreshing blackzone flan. Talk about fodder! Although I couldn’t really fault the greenhorn on making something like this, my choco-goblins were similar. 

Minutes of waiting stretched on much to my frustration. Seeing that the blackzone manager of this place still hadn’t figured out he should be coming to me, I decided I should do a little more exploring and see if this greenhorn at least knew what he was doing in other matters. And it didn’t look like he was good at anything!

No traps or defense anywhere. Not to mention he only made two other types of monsters from what I’ve seen so far: a trick type of monster called gingerbread commuter that wouldn’t attack you on sight but would if you built up enough animosity from staying in the trains and then a demented looking rare type of monster called deviled humpty dumpty that threw fey mana infused eggs, had a deceptive amount of defenses and regeneration abilities, and had a low chance for dropping Protean Shell and Homeostasis Silk. 

Low marks on everything except drops, having such rare materials like Protean Shell and Homeostasis Silk drop from a rare monster was a smart idea for a newly born blackzone, I thought to myself as I finally got fed up with waiting. If this greenhorn wasn’t going to come to me then I’ll just go to them and beat some sense into them. Scratch that, a lot of sense. I mean seriously! This place had no variety or economy. Did this blackzone manager seriously think he could grow his Enigma with such a stagnant and resource-hungry environment?

“Okay can you come out already?” I shouted, entering the lobby of a cake-styled skyscraper, obviously this place’s ground zero. “This is seriously starting to get on my nerves!” Emphasising my annoyance, I channeled a dual dose of poison mana and radiance mana into my Sugar Scorpio before plunging it into the soft floor. Ichorous lavender light scattered from the cracks in the ground as I grinned. Always felt nice to make little displays of power like that.

Surprisingly the Enigma responded with the sound of cascading sprinkles. Turning my head to what probably was the stairs I was greeted by a flying scattering swarm of sugary hundreds and thousands. Looks like this greenhorn wasn’t stupid enough to forget to make a boss monster to protect his first core, I mused, taking note of the multiple magical cores of various sizes inside the swarm of a monster. I could probably take it on all by myself but I knew I didn’t need to do that.

“Hey system assistant, get your idiot of a blackzone manager down here,” I told the swarm of hundreds and thousands, or rather the system assistant currently controlling it. The swarm did something I think was a nod and flew off. After a few minutes of waiting, the green horn showed up. He looked like your normal young adult human, I mean he was almost painfully normal: shortish crop brown hair, brown eyes, palish skin, average height and physique, and literally no defining features.

“You’re…. You’re a blackzone manager?” he cautiously asked. The guy obviously wasn’t an ex-mage or delver cause he wasn’t even attempting to draw in mana from the aether. 

“Yes I am you idiot. How did you think I got in here while your Protean Shell barrier was still up?”

“I don’t know… it’s just… you look like a little girl with an oversized candy spear you know?...” Once again with the stature talk! Not being in the mood for this idiocy, I got to work. Drawing in a good chunk of mana, I lined up a complex mandala diagnostic spell and fired it right at the greenhorn. He didn’t even put up a fight and instead collapsed to his knees under the invasive gaze of my spellcraft.

“I may be technically younger than you. But I am very much your superior. Also: Constitution, Fey, Mold, Time, Aberration-Familiar, Hunter-Gatherer Tech, Iogem Glyphs, and Sweets Cast,” I replied with a snarl, listing off the class specialties inscribed into his eight most center mandalas. I could have investigated his other fully-formed mandalas but I figured I shouldn’t bother with it; he could just ask his system assistant later about them.

“Wait… what?”

“Constitution, Fey, Mold, Time, Aberration-Familiar, Hunter-Gatherer Tech, Iogem Glyphs, and Sweets Casts. Your eight class specialties. Don’t make me repeat them again, they’re a mouthful to say.”

“But how? How did you know them? It takes tens of thousands of dollars to get examinations to determine what those mandalas are attuned to.” 

“Sch, relying on unenlightened common folk tech on something like analyzing mandalas? Get with the program! You’re an advanced race! A blackzone manager!”

“Okay…”

“Now hurry up and tell me your name.”

“It’s Robert.”

“I’m Daphne. The blackzone gods sent me to beat some sense into you so you don’t die to your first delving party. Got that?”

“Yes!” 

“Good, now get up and follow me,” I ordered before turning around and heading out of the building, letting him scramble after me. “You have four types of monsters, correct? No variants?”

“Yeah… I’ve just started on them like half a week ago…”

“Geez. Okay do you know about colour theory and the basic elements?”

“Vaguely… I didn’t really study the Five Powers a lot in school.”

“Sch, okay look. There are forty supergroups of mana but you really just need to know the ten chromatic groups for them. There’s low-attribute which is just low-attribute. Yellow for positive and domain of faith, black for negative and domain of others, red for fire and domain of science, white for air and domain of shamans, blue for water and domain of mystics, green for earth and domain of nature, violet for mind and domain of all, beige-steel for body and domain of null, and finally orange for soul and domain of elements. Did you get all of that?”

“Yeah, yeah I did.” 

“Good, cause a good blackzone always has at least one type of monster for each colour. Plus some actually, I suggest the non-chromatics cause I’m pretty sure root, grand, outer, and inner manas are all currently out of your league. Usually just variants of your standard fodder monster, like those living flans of yours.”

“One of each… okay got it. But what should I specialize in?”

“Your Enigma’s theme is food based, so white and green. Constitution is also good; not just any beige-steel though, has to be wellspring constitution. And beyond that, eh, just go with your class specialties. You can’t go wrong there.” This Robert was definitely an idiot of a greenhorn, but at least he was attentive and seemed to be a fast learner.

As I had him go through the paces of creating the different elemental variants of his living flans, one of each chromatic and then two more for the non-chromatic twin integrals of chronos and source-mana, and drilled into him the importance of monster ecosystems. Having your Enigma do all the monster generation was just a strain on your resources, you have to make it so that the monsters could reproduce on their own and were receptive to evolutions and mutations. And you couldn’t do that unless you had them eating actual material and absorbing mana from sources other than your Enigma; you had to have prey and predators outside of them just trying to kill humans. Not to mention you’d need a robust ecosystem to handle rogue monsters like sugar eaters that drifted in from the connections to the hub.

“Wow… this is actually amazing Daphne. I didn’t even know the Monster Creation Menu could do this,” commented Robert as he finished up creating the last elemental variant of his living flans, a living body flan.

“Just don’t go overboard on variants okay? An Enigma can only possess so many different types of monsters without straining itself.”

“Okay, I’ll keep that in mind. Hey System Assistant, make sure to tell me when I’m getting close to the limit of monster types okay?” There he goes again with just calling his system assistant ‘System Assistant.’ He really did have no clue what he was doing before I got here. I knew I had to tell him about that before I left or else the blackzone gods would probably chew me out. 

“You know you’re supposed to name your system assistant right?”

“Wait seriously?”

“Yeah. It won’t develop if you don’t.”

“You mean?... Agghh! System Assistant! Why didn’t you tell me that?” Total idiot, he better not die when he goes public.

“Just, figure out a name for it. Okay?”

“Oh I will, Daphne. I will.”