Phon went to lay on her bed. It wasn’t even lunchtime yet, so sleep wasn’t what she had in mind, but she needed somewhere to leave her body for a while. However her Curse had changed, Phon could immediately tell it had to do with the Phonscience side of things rather than the visual aspect. The little mental version of herself had been pestering her with that idea all day.
Kada and Xard had already been off figuring out how their ascensions worked. Earlier that morning, she’d heard a full-on ruckus coming from the normally sound-proof training room beneath the mansion, and not too long ago, she’d heard what sounded like a tsunami off in the distance. Both sounds stopped, and there were no reported issues, so they hopefully had their situations handled.
Sadly, it’d probably be a while before Drim got a chance to experiment. She expected he’d be in meetings all day given how many people had reached out to him. Just now, she’d finally finished with all of the meetings she’d been dragged into.
Their original idea for the division of labor hadn’t been working out quite like they planned. Even though Drim was the leader of the group, handling the business side of things had always been Phon’s duty. The idea was to allow Drim freedom to explore the other facets of his plans.
Even she, though, wasn’t privy to every detail and design of his grand scheme. She liked to believe that he confided in her with everything important, but more than once had she been caught off guard. Now, there was plenty that only Drim could do, meetings only he could attend, but she’d still do whatever she could to assist him and take responsibilities off of his plate.
Truthfully, there wasn’t much left for her to do on the business side of things these days, or rather the administrative side that she used to be in charge of. Deborah had gotten quite proficient at assigning job difficulty ranks on her own. Only on occasion did Phon receive a message requesting clarity.
Deborah had also taken over the financials and payment collection to an extent. There had been a time or several where Phon had been asked to help persuade a client to pay their dues. That was work she honestly didn’t mind—being the dark face of the organization.
Due to her newfound flexibility, Phon had been taking more missions than ever. However, the percentage of unsavory jobs that most of the other members wouldn’t want to take had also increased in scale.
There were a few members who didn’t mind getting their hands dirty like Roque and Chorus, and even Niloy and Itsy on occasion. Xard could also be relied on to cross the line if the situation required it, his sense of justice twisted by convincing enough words. And of course, if a really bad person needed disposing of, Kaizu could be let off her leash.
But ultimately, it mostly fell to Phon to do what needed to be done when no one else wanted to do it. She had bigger issues with missions if she thought they were going to be boring rather than any sort of mental implications. It was a weird hole she found herself in, almost feeling somewhat isolationist from the rest of the group. But things needed to get done, and it was better for Drim himself to stay more virtuous in the public eye for their plans ahead.
Right now, her own melancholy didn’t matter, and she needed to figure out what was going on inside her head. It was somewhat unsettling—not being entirely certain what she was capable of. She hadn’t experienced anything similar since being trapped in an underground cell in Zjiksa which certainly didn’t bring back pleasant memories. Hopefully, this new power would prove useful.
Phon wrapped her ribbon around her eyes and let the world fade around her. It had been quite a long time since she really entered her mental space with her full consciousness. Phonscience had been getting better at doing things on auto-pilot, so Phon hadn’t felt the need to take her over and operate the space manually.
The same black void greeted her as always, but so did Phonscience. Normally, the alternate identity vanished whenever Phon actually entered her own mind, but the more timid version of herself remained. There was no need to exchange words, since the two of them could communicate through intent and emotion alone.
Phon understood immediately that there were now two wholly separate beings, and who she was currently inhabiting was not the usual Phonscience. This mental stand-in served an entirely separate purpose, and could operate independently of Phonscience, who would remain in charge of teleportation and observation. She’d need to give this new entity its own name later.
Right away, she understood that this one's abilities were different. She couldn’t teleport people, but could still summon a viewable replica of the world around her. However, the instinct she got was not to look around, but to think of a specific person. As if there was a tutorial from a game in her own head, her mind urged her to think of herself.
『Phon Drazah』 the name lit up before her on a floating screen. Next came a slew of information. Her gender, her birthday, her height and weight, hair color, eye color—like she was reading the Discoverance article on herself. It went into even more intimate detail: her blood type, favorite foods, and fears: ‘losing her brother’.
For whatever reason, as she scrolled down the screen, the information seemed more random and sporadic, like there was no thought behind the organization after the extremely obvious stuff. This is dumb, can’t it just show me stuff I care about? With that thought, a new status popped up 『Reconfiguring』
Now that was more like it. The screen now showed more legitimately useful information. Location was a big one 『Generals Mansion - Fiends For Hire Compound』It seemed the exact spot wouldn’t get more specific then that, meaning it didn’t label it as her being in her own room. However, she could toggle the location to general coordinates as well.
Mood was another interesting one. For her right now it had her listed 『Studious, Intrigued, Relaxed』That was oddly specific, and not the most useful thing in the world, but it still gave a glimpse of what she could be doing.
Curse was what drew her eye next. It was interesting to finally learn the name of her Curse. She’d never actually known it like so many other Fiends had, and she couldn’t deny that it did make her feel a little left out in that regard. What she wasn’t expecting was that there were actually two listed. 『Fiend: Tactical Advantage
| Greater Fiend: Overseer』
The world’s populace had come up with the name Fiend, and Phon herself had come up with the name Lesser Fiend as a jab at their inferiority. It seemed this new system in her head had followed that same naming convention and decided that Greater Fiend was the next step in their evolution. She scrolled down a bit further and found 『Species: Greater Fiend』which confirmed it.
Phon scrolled back up to her Curse listings since there’d been something more she’d wanted to investigate. There was a + symbol next to each name, so she clicked on the one for ‘Tactical Advantage’. A description of the Curse appeared, or at least that’s what she thought it was.
『With the Curse ‘Tactical Advantage’, the user, Phon Drazah, who shall henceforth be known as party A, when met with other living beings, who will henceforth be known as variables A, B,』She couldn’t read anymore of that zjik. That was only the beginning of dozens of paragraphs and it hadn’t even said anything yet. Can’t it be more simple?
She got her wish『Part 1. Lets the user see around her in a more tactical view. She can see in all directions and without restraint up to the limits of her mental capacity.』
『Part 2. Lets the user pick up other living beings like they are figures on a map. Wherever the user moves these pieces, the corresponding person will be transported to that location in real life. The piece being moved must touch a solid surface to be considered ‘placed’. The user’s mind must be focused enough to use this aspect.』Still a bit wordy, but it was a lot simpler. The last bit must have been referring to how her eyes needed to be enshrouded in darkness.
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Phon moved on to the next one for Overseer 『Lets the user research and understand all conceivable information about a person within reason.』Within reason, huh? The rest of the description had been perfectly clear, but what exactly did ‘within reason’ mean? She guessed she’d have to figure out the limitations of her Curse through active use.
It didn’t take long before Phon got bored of herself and, of course, moved on to Drim next. She absorbed all the information presented to her, making sure to read each line thoroughly in case there was something she didn’t know or needed to reaffirm.
There were a few minor details that were new to her, such as the average amount of sleep he was getting each night—worryingly low. Apparently, he’d also had an increased hankering for Crabster dishes lately. It was the kind of thing he’d have whims about but never actually request. This sort of information was useless to anyone else, but she could surprise him with a meal. It was almost like having a cheat of always knowing what he wanted to eat—information Mallea never needed to find out about.
She only came across one weird oddity in her scrolling. For ‘Species’ it was still labeled as ‘Fiend’. But that wasn’t all, there was some weird artifacting around it, like the word itself was glitching out. Phon tapped on it and was presented with an error message. 『Information corrupted. Please input corrected information.』
How odd, but it seemed this system worked based on her own perceptions. Perhaps she just hadn’t recognized Drim as a Greater Fiend yet, so the system was struggling to recognize him as such. She thought about the change and it appeared on the screen. There was no more glitching, so she moved on with her scrolling.
『Fiend: Nature Recycle | Greater Fiend: Life Recycle』were the names of Drim’s Curses—pretty uninspired, but fairly informative just from the name at least. The description for ‘Nature Recycle’ didn’t have any surprises.
Life Recycle was labeled as 『Allows the user control over Life itself. They can absorb Life from any living being to bolster their own Life or pass it along to another being or suitable vessel. Can be combined with other energies.』A pretty interesting power that seemed basic enough at a first glance but probably went much deeper when paired with a creative person. Phon wouldn’t tell Drim about his power just yet since he’d undoubtedly want to figure it out himself, but she’d nudge him along if he got stuck.
『Mood: Tired, Antsy, Inspired, Attentive』Phon had a good guess what he was up to but still wished there was a way to confirm. If only she could find the exact information she wanted on demand.
Hearing her wish, a search bar appeared above everything else. It was accompanied with the prompt:『What would you like to know?』
“What’s Drim up to?”
『He is in a meeting.』
“Who’s he meeting with?”
『Nathym Cyper』His name was highlighted similar to a computer. Phon got the impression that she could click on him and go to his profile if she wanted.
“What are they talking about?”
『Unknown』It seemed that this was the ‘within reason’ aspect her Curse had mentioned. She could know where someone was, what they were doing, and what sort of state they were in. However, she couldn’t tap into any of their senses or actual thoughts.
Looking back at his mood, she wondered, is there any way I could be notified if it takes a turn for the worse? I’d love to be there as soon as possible if something happened. A new popup appeared 『Enable Tracking?』Of course!
Phon then probably spent way longer than she should have querying everything she possibly could think of for Drim but eventually ran out of ideas. That said, her Curse had far from reached its limit, since when asked if there were any restrictions on who she could look up, she was only told that she must have a vague idea that they exist or have a connecting thread that leads to that person.
There was plenty to experiment with, but there was something she needed to look up before anything else, something that had been bothering her for months now.
『Itsy Humdiddy』Once on Itsy’s page, Phon did an immediate search on Itsy’s Curse. Had she met with another glitch, or was the world just so cruel as to not give her the answers she sought? 『Curse: 🔒Locked』 There was no name, just a grayed out ‘Locked’ message with a matching icon.
Phon tapped on the icon and was given a new error message 『Unlock condition not met』For her Curse, or for me to know what it is? The message then updated 『Unlock condition to activate the user’s Curse has not been met.』
“Okay, can you give me any hint as to why it’s locked?”
『The user has not yet met the conditions to unlock the Curse.』While it was basically the exact same sentence in a different order, it was still more helpful than nothing. Itsy had to be the one to do something to trigger it, or something had to be done to her.
Some Curses didn’t innately activate when obtained and required certain events to transpire before the user could understand them. For Xard, it had been when a train was barreling at him. Phon herself was a great example, only learning about the second part of her Curse when she was enshrouded in complete darkness. Another fault of this new power, though, it couldn’t tell her what wasn’t already known by someone else.
Phon would save the rest of Itsy’s information for later. While the woman was an oddity, and there’d surely be plenty of more interesting things to dig up, Itsy was low on Phon’s priority list. There were also a few more aspects she wanted to test the extent of.
Next on her list was a search for ‘Jaid Sparka’. Phon purposefully gave the system a wrong name and it still pulled up Jaid Luciri. It was hard to know if the system self-corrected on its own or only did so because Phon knew that fact about her already.
An interesting tidbit right out the gate was in Jaid’s affiliations section 『Central Peace: Captain of Private Army』was to be expected. However 『Fiends For Hire: Member - Rank 9』was still listed. In a way it made sense, Phon acknowledged.
While Jaid’s security clearances had been revoked and she’d been blocked by the barrier, she was still technically registered as a member. When Drim had been asked about removing her, he said he’d deal with it at a later date.
『Location: Central Peace Headquarters - Below Ground. Floor -39』To be expected.
『Mood: Tired, Bored, Confused, Agitated』
『She’s in a meeting.』The system answered when asked what Jaid was doing. Guess it’s a day for meetings. Jaid was probably caught up in the CP deciding what they were going to do about the mysterious voice. Phon definitely didn’t envy her on that regard, but didn’t exactly have any pity for her either.
When asked who Jaid was meeting with, Phon was given a bunch of names she’d never heard of. They all had links to their profiles, so that gave more insight on her not actually needing to know a person—the connective thread it mentioned. When she was trying to decide the best way to keep notes on all these people she needed to investigate later, the system asked her if she wanted to keep a list of them.
Phon quickly lost track of the time moving forward. She only returned to reality very briefly to text Drim about her Curse’s changes and send Kada and Xard the names of their Curses. Kada’s were 『Fiend: Water Water Everywhere | Greater Fiend: Can’t Stop The Flood』 and Xard’s were 『Fiend: Back At You | Greater Fiend: All Your Burdens』
She spent most of the time doing a check on all current Fiends For Hire members. Not that she had a reason to doubt any of them, but making sure that none of them were spies or had weird connections could prevent any future incidents.
Roque and Chorus both had plenty of shady relations, which led Phon down a considerable rabbit hole, but it ultimately turned up nothing. Crucion of all people actually had a Central Peace connection, but it was more of a social worker that checked in on him now and then since the death of his parents. Phon had a vague recollection of him disclosing it before, so it didn’t raise any alarms.
No spies were found, so Phon went back to digging into Central Peace members. At this point, over a day and a half had passed, and she hadn’t slept or eaten—completely oblivious to the passage of time. She didn’t really feel the effects in her mind, but when she returned to her body, they all hit her at once.
Phon was exhausted and hungry, now getting a slight glimpse at Ahvra’s usual lifestyle. She’d only actually returned to reality since she’d received a notification from her system. 『Drim Drazah | Mood: Terrified, Distraught, Confused, Nihilistic』