Chapter 68 — Y3: Panic, Without the Disco

Ooooh, this is gonna be a fun one, let me tell you.  Hehehe~

Hm?  Oh, no, ignore those, just --

-- look, the clothing and fabric swatches are not important, and --

-- argh!  Look, they’re not relevant right now!  I’m super pumped for storytime today, so we’re going to get to it!  Okay?!

Good!

Let’s go~

Have you ever been mentally overwhelmed?

I don’t necessarily mean emotionally, though it certainly can be that.  It's not about crying and expunging your emotions.  You just need time to process.

Like the world has suddenly decided to move too quickly.  There are too many facts, too many things happening all at once, too many realizations -- like your brain is a record with a scratch.

It just keeps on jumping back.

On repeat.

Trying to get to the end of the song, but it can’t.

You end up freezing, and what you need most of all is time.  Time to process.  Time to comprehend.  Time to understand.

And you feel, you know that you don't have enough time, so you fritter away what little you have panicking and accomplishing nothing at all.

Like a computer that suddenly started chugging along, that’s what I felt like the moment my brainwashing broke.

From a month of mindless obedience, I suddenly had more than a month’s worth of revelations, in a single moment.

My panicked thoughts were split into two rough categories:

My new blessing, and my old plans.

For my blessing, it was -- it’s hard to explain just how utterly panicked I was.  I’d never even heard of something like that in the Alchemical Corruption series.  A blessing named Error?  The suggestion of a god that was, somehow, ‘below’ all the others?  I’d seen error messages before -- the very first Alchemical Corruption was unduly fond of them -- but nothing like what I’d seen.

The suggestion of there being not twenty seven gods, but twenty eight besides the Chief God… I had no idea what was going on.  My only thought was that it could be the Evil God of Chastity and Purity.

It was the only other ‘god’ that I knew of.  It resided below the crust of the earth.  It was, in a real way, weaker than the other gods.  The blessing snapped me out of my lewd brainwashing, and it hates everything erotic.

But that didn’t make any sense.  The Evil God of Chastity and Purity hated everything in MISSY.  It wanted to return it all to nothing.  To the formless void in which only Axiomanagers can live and exist.

And I highly doubted it even had enough awareness of the world to know when to grant a blessing.

Not only that, I remember how the cult that my ex-Master was part of referenced a ‘twenty eighth goddess’.  I knew for a fact that the Evil God of Chastity and Purity would have never given them anything that could brainwash maids like they did.

Those deductions and worries were just from getting the error blessing.

Then there were my old plans.

Those were… just, wow.

Those were fucked.

I couldn’t get [Technosymbiosis] using the Empirical Empress.  I couldn’t drag her to the center of the landmass to ‘save’ me -- this meant I couldn’t have her fight off Kaiser and Big Bull, which meant I wouldn’t obtain [Romance Obsessed] or [Easy Prey].

On top of that, [Romance Obsessed] and [Easy Prey] needed to be obtained in the same time slot, and I had no knowledge of any other event that could grant them both!

Then there was the fact that my plan with the kings required me to bring the Empress out of her domain.  She needed to be taken care of, and she was, almost always, a craven coward… she wouldn’t leave her palace unless she felt she had to.  And it was much, much, much harder to take care of her when she was in an entrenched position.

Oh, and on top of that?

She had fucking brainwashed me into being her drone slave!

I was both terrified and pissed off.

…To be honest, I get shivers when I think about it.  Bad ones.  It's a lot worse now than it was then, funnily enough, because as I am now, going a month without cumming once sounds -- just -- brr.

Modesty's work does a lot to make things easier, but -- yeah.  She can't make everything feel okay, not when it's that not-okay.

So.  I felt I needed to move, to do something, but I had too many thoughts rattling in my head to even begin to figure out what to do.

It was then that Sumiko once again proved her worth.

I joke about her a lot, I know.  She gave me full approval to!  …Because she gets off on it.  But so long as her kinks aren't on the line, she’s smart and she’s capable.

She happened on me while I was standing still, my mind racing, decided to take a chance on seeing my more human reactions, and gently moved me to a small side room.  I didn’t realize what was going on until she removed my helmet.

The fresh air on my face was more than enough to startle me out of it… but I was still panicked.  Everything was falling apart.  My knowledge had become less and less useful, and now, it was completely invalid.  The Empress never turns a character into a drone!  That doesn’t happen in Alchemical Corruption Twelve!  I didn’t know it was even possible!

I tried to explain what was going on to Sumiko.  My words were tripping and tumbling out of my mouth, as if trying to race each other out as fast as they could.  I was trying to say three things at once and what came out was a massive mess of syllables and noises.  Sumiko waited patiently for me to finish my babbling.

…And when it was clear I wasn’t going to, she pinched my nipple through my latex suit.

That startled me out of my panic.

…Shut up, this storytime is serious storytime!

I remember what she told me.

She said, “Look.  Stop.  Just -- stop.  You’re smarter than the average moron, sure, but the biggest thing you have access to is information.  So you don’t know what’s going to happen, so what?  Not even Yuki does.  Focus on what you know and make a plan from that.  Like, you know.  Everybody else on the planet.”

That did not help me much.

What did help me was when she finished with, “The reason why we all go along with your crazy plans is because we all believe in you.  If you quit here, we’re all just going to follow Takeo, instead.”

…That snapped me out of it.

My annoyance with Takeo was mostly a joke by that point, but the belief in me -- it reminded me that I had friends and allies.

So I took a deep breath, and I started to think.

There were three things to keep in mind:

The current situation, my allies, and my tools.

The current situation was fucked up.  I was still in most of a drone outfit in the middle of the Empress’s palace, and I just knew that the moment she realized I had broken out of my brainwashing, she was going to kill me.  Because she was a murderous tyrannical warlord, and this being porn-world didn't change or soften that.

I had Kaizer and Big Bull mostly on track -- both liked and wanted me -- but the Empress hated me.  Sumiko was here, right in front of me, but that meant jack shit if the Empress decided to kill me.

There’s a fun thing about all three rulers in the third year of Alchemical Corruption Twelve.  They didn’t have time slot limits when chasing the player or his team.

I’d tested it repeatedly once I found out about it.  You can go to literally every area on the third land mass in a single time slot, and if one of them was angry at you, they’d show up a third of the time.  Regardless of how many times they’d shown up previously.

How do you get them angry at you?

Typically, by stealing something they desperately valued.

The star-stone that made Kaizer’s lake the miracle that it was.  The power crystal at the heart of the single generator powering all of the Empress’s palace.  The skeleton key for every building in the Farmlands, hidden in Big Bull’s closet.

So.  That made me realize something.

If I couldn’t get the Empress to like me… I could get her angry at me.

I knew that was going to be deadly.  And I had a lot of things to do while she would be angry at me.

So.  How could I survive her wrath, and how could I get everything done that I needed to do?

For the first question -- my allies.

Takeo and Shimizu.  Omori and Yuki.  I could use all four of them to wreak havoc in the right areas.

I couldn’t tell them precisely where to be and when.  I needed to run away successfully just to reach them.  I had no idea how this chase would turn out.  …I’d just have to trust them with some vague guidelines.

But then… how do I keep on running?  A plan was forming, but it would require me to run far farther and far longer than I currently could.  I didn’t have nearly enough potions to manage it by abusing them.  Potions that increase what you can do in a time slot are expensive and hard to make; we only keep a few of them for emergencies.  I could maybe tug on the kings to get what I needed to help, but I wouldn’t get what I needed in time.

…I only had one thing that could help me here.

With the basics of a plan forming in my mind, I turned to Sumiko and said, “...Before I do anything else, I need you to get me my best pair of heels.”

…Due to how poorly worded it was, she assumed I was still brainwashed, but I did manage to convince her I wasn’t asking for that just to look my best during what came next.

Being sexy was just a pleasant side effect!

After relaying my plan to Sumiko, I had to wait.  She had to get me my heels, and she had to do it quickly.  Stupid time slot system to the rescue!

She ended up getting them to me in very short order.  Along with, thankfully, a better pair of clothes than the drone suit.  I'd made sure that all of my good outfits were properly enchanted to be acceptable defense options~

Don’t get me wrong, the drone suit was hot, but I’d rather wear something a bit more -- mmm -- femme-sporty, you know?

…Why would heels take away from that look?

Ugh, not important, moving on.

I told her I’d wait as long as I could, and that she had to inform everybody else about my plans as fast as she could.  And then they’d just have to -- wait.

I didn’t know when the Empress would realize something was wrong.  But when she did, it was time to move.  We had no way of communicating with each other that wasn’t stupidly risky.  The first sign anybody would have that they needed to act would be me charging into the area with the Empress on my heels.

I quickly slipped into the core of the Empress’s palace, and, stripping my drone suit, got changed.  A lovely miniskirt and blouse combo, along with some proper stockings, some makeup -- and, of course, my platform high heels.

Do you remember those?  I used them only once in the first year; they’re the ones that let me go to as many areas as I want in a single time slot, in exchange for decreasing the length of my tendons.

They were also, thankfully, the most comfortable and stable pair of shoes to walk in in all of MISSY.

Bullshit god magic.

But my bullshit god magic!

…For the time being, at least.

So.  I stood in the center of the palace.  A circular room, with a crystal the size of a person socketed into some kind of… plug, almost, in the center.  Energy pulsed from the crystal to the edges of the room, and from there, to the rest of the Palace… and the rest of the Robolands.

And then I waited for the Empress to show up.

…And, uh.

I realized that I drastically overestimated how observant she was.

Because she took a full goddamn day to show up!

A full day!

I waited in that room for six time slots waiting for her to show up, when I thought that she would appear in one or two!

I had told all of my friends that I might be showing up at any moment, and it took a full day!

…But appear she did.

She stalked out of one of the entrances, standing tall, and with narrowed eyes.

…Narrowed eyes that widened when she realized that I was standing right next to the crystal.

I was hungry, by that point.  I had only had the snacks Sumiko brought me, not enough for a full meal.  I had slept poorly, as there wasn’t exactly a bed in the brightly lit power room.  The room was constantly humming with noise and energy that set your skin on edge.

But it was finally go time.

And I had one, massive advantage.

I knew the Empress's palace better than she did.

With a single motion, I twisted and unsocketed the crystal.  The humming noise ceased as the entire room was bathed in a dull red color, an alarm suddenly ringing.

As for why I waited for the Empress to show up -- well.

There are certain weak points in the Empress’s palace that appear once the crystal is removed.

As the Empress darted forward, I shot a bolt of fire straight up into the ceiling.  There's a fracture point there -- one that’s normally fine… except for when the power turns off.  Certain magnets are turned off and start to switch to low power mode.

You normally learn this by stealing the blueprints to the palace, but why bother doing that when you already had it memorized?

I darted towards the one exit that I knew would remain free from debris long enough for me to leave the area as the Empress was slammed with a massive chunk of debris.

See, the crux of my plan was quite simple.

If I was the only one panicking, I couldn’t get anything done.

But if everybody was panicking, then I could get everything done!

It was time to break this stalemate in the most chaotic way possible.

…I just had to hope that all my friends and allies were ready for me, and… whatever I’d end up bringing with me.

I just had to trust that they were used enough to my own kind of chaos that they’d thrive in this and carry the day.

Fortunately, they did.