This is a bit late but- shout out to @MangaStoryFan (not sure why the tag isn't working-) for the sketch of Karia above!

Last chapter, the crew discussed their plans once more now that there's no way for them to win the ticket to Dalkan. With the help of Elio, they created a path that they'll follow through the Casino to get to the teleporter to Dalkan, AKA the "ticket to Dalkan".

They also started to bring out the weapons and gear they had stored in Quilline's pouch as well, for their battle with the Hopian Army that "William" promised would occur.

And finally, after their initial planning- the crew ended things off with a toast (courtesy of Quilline buying them drinks from the event's lobby bar).

Meanwhile, on the planet that Prósopsi plans to fight Metallic on- far, far away...

Head Commander Prósopsi's P.O.V.

"I'm right behind yoooou! YASHASHASHA!" Aphrodite annoyingly mocks me with King Metallica's laugh, as she's trying to catch me in our "game" of air-tag as I'm flying away from her. More specifically, we're flying over a foresty area of the breathable earth-like planet the Hopian Government set a teleporter up on a decade ago. Which isn't anything new, since I've been coming here for almost a week to train. But anyways-

"Don't use that freak's laugh!" I shout back at her, then take a sharp near ninety degree turn to the right- and try to increase my flight speed even more. This is REALLY testing the limits of the control I have with flying now...

"...Damn- still can't go past 300 km per hour even after my extra training last night. Lost all that sleep for nothing!" I grit my teeth, and reluctantly start to slow down before I end up crashing through the air- since I'm already getting shakey.

"Enough flight training, let's switch things up!" I command after bringing my speed down to 0 km per hour in a split second- leaving me hovering in the air below the dark, green tinted clouds above us. As for Aphrodite- she flies above my head, stops there instantly, and starts floating in front of my face a second later as she hangs upside down.

"A bit hard to get used to you giving the orders, you know that right? After this is all over-"

"I know, I'll "fuck your brains out" or whatever you call it. Put it on my tab if I survive the next few days- for now I need to train." I say which makes Aphrodite frown.

"I was going to say-"

"I don't care-"

Before I can finish interrupting her, Aphrodite slams her fist into my face which leaves me disoriented and flailing through the air. And of course she follows up on her punch by launching a kick into my back before I can recover, sending me straight down towards the forest before I can even wipe the blood off of my face.

"Herc." I activate the strength of Hercules I have access to as I start crashing through some trees- which makes the actual impact of hitting the ground just hurt a lot, instead of breaking my bones.

"...R-really?" I ask after coughing out some dust, forcing myself not to get any madder so that we can get back to training ASAP. Have to hope she heals my face up as well, since I'm also having trouble seeing things after that punch...

"I was going to say, I hope none of us are really giving each other orders after this is all over. Obviously going to ask you for some favors still, but I don't want to force you anymore like I mentioned a few days back." Aphrodite says as she floats in the air right above me, which makes me feel a bit bad now as I'm still lying on- or in the ground more like.

"Right. Forgot you said that stuff to be honest, shoot. My bad Aphrodite, my head's been a mess lately. Now I'm begging you, can we please get back to training? We barely have any time left as is since I have a patrol to do right after this to keep the protests down, then the meeting about King Metallica, and then defense planning with the Commanders-"

"I know. And yeah. Don't be dumb and lose your mind of stress though, k Prósopsi? Chances are King Metallica's gonna take advantage of any weaknesses you've got, mental or physical." Aphrodite says with a frown, which makes me feel even worse. Since yeah, I've been chugging energy drinks like water to make up for my lack of sleep- which is leaving me on edge to say the least.

Silver lining though- Aphrodite just healed me, so I guess she accepted my apology at least. Doesn't make up for how tired I am overall- but it's still something. And so with my injuries healed and a bit of a motivation boost, I slowly start to push myself up again.

"Will do. Now, would you be cool with helping me with some teleporter blocking practice?" I ask, which thankfully makes Aphrodite nod and float down behind me. Then she grabs my right arm, so that she can help with my aim for this next "attack".

"Let's try floating when doing it this time, hm?" She suggests, and after a second I agree and start floating up into the air- with Aphrodite floating behind me as she keeps hold of my arm.

After floating up about 20 feet into the air above the tallest trees, I stop while Aphrodite quickly adjusts my arm as we hover in the air. Then she taps my arm a second later to signal me that my aim should be set, and so I start flexing my outstretched palm- like I'm trying to crush an invisible massive stone in my hand or something.

The hand gesture helps me use the powers of Gaia, more specifically to get a feel for the dirt and rock underneath the planet's surface. Aphrodite's hold on my arm is helping me keep the attack-range I'm aiming for limited as well, with the range of course being a massive circle that should be about 100 feet in front of me...

And after I have a good enough feel for the materials I'm trying to control, I fully clench my fist and swing my arm up.

...And with a painfully loud "roar"- my simple (but cool) hand movement causes a massive mountain of dirt, rock, and even tougher shiny metal to launch up from the forest's surface ahead of us.

"Not bad. Tempted to make a phallic joke here but- anyways. Not taking our floating into account, I think that move only took you like 5 seconds tops." Aphrodite says as I catch my breath, with both of us floating in the air and just staring at the roughly 100 foot tall landmass I just made.

"Thanks, now let's see how sturdy it is." I say as I gently take Aphrodite's hand off of me, and she follows behind me as I fly forward at full speed- with my right fist clenched and outstretched in front of me. The plan is to launch myself straight into the mountain like a living missile- since I imagine that'll be what King Metallica's physical strength is kinda like... if he isn't even close to his full strength at least... ugh.

Groaning aside, to save energy I activate the power of Hercules the instant before my punch hits the rock-

*BOOM!*

And the punch itself leaves a decent sized crater in the side of the mountain, but in the grand scheme of things it's barely even a scratch.

"Nicely done, doubt the bot would be able to break through that mountain easily if even you can barely get through it. Now BURN IT ALL DOWN MY APPRENTICE!" Aphrodite says from behind me, while mimicking the voice of one of my favourite villains from the "Dimension Frenzy" comic series, the old geezer Palpashine.

"Right." I say back to her with a small smile while hovering backwards and up to get a safe distance away from the mountain. And a few seconds later I stretch my hand out- and blast a massive wave of flame out of my palm that engulfs the entire mountain below us.

I wait for Aphrodite to grab hold of my arm again to help with my control, and then turn up the heat- which turns my flames from a blazing orange to a blinding blue.

...

And after a little bit of waiting, I turn the flame off with a simple mental command- letting us see the devastation below.

"Wanna join me for a swim?" Aphrodite jokes as she hovers down a bit and dips her finger into the molten rock- or lava- whatever it is, that's left of the mountain after I melted it all down.

"Hopefully no small critters were down there..." I think to myself with a bit of guilt after noticing that I also incinerated a big portion of the forest surrounding the mountain I made... think our scientists said that some tiny mammals and insects are still living on this planet after all...

"Right right I know, training's over right?" Aphrodite interrupts my thoughts as she hovers back up in front of my face.

"Yeah. Thanks for reminding me." I mumble as I turn around and start flying towards the general direction of the portal we came in through, that'll bring us back home to our own hellish planet.

"Sheesh! You'll be fine, alright? I can't fight King Metallica directly since I'm kinda a ghost, but don't forget that I'll still be there to help you a lot. Like if the bot somehow manages to kill you- so what, I can heal your corpse and chuck your soul back into your body easy-peasy. Takes a lot of energy for me to do, but that's just a last resort anyways." Aphrodite says as she's casually "flying" in front of me without even looking at where she's going.

"...Assuming you get to my body in time to recover my soul." I reply over the intense winds blowing against us.

"I will! I'll be hovering behind you the whole time. I'm way faster than you anyways, so it's not like you'd be able to get away from me. And on that note, YOU CAN FLY! If you want to get away from the bot, you just fly away. Annnnd besides, we also have the last resort power-boost too-"

"And that 'last resort power boost' ages my body up a few years every second, if I'm remembering what you said right. If he manages to run away from me while I'm using that boost for even 20 seconds, I'm dead. Sorry- can we not talk about this? I appreciate you trying to cheer me up but, I've already thought of all of the odds of me winning here. This is just distracting me if I'm being honest." I say while trying to stay respectful, as I can see the blue rimmed portal unnaturally floating just below some ominously dark clouds in the distance. There's probably going to be a ton of rain soon I bet, it normally never gets this dark here.

"Jerk. But sure I guess, I'll shut up for now." Aphrodite scoffs... oh well- I'll make it up to her later. Or not if I don't live long enough to.

***

"Wow. William really wasn't playing around when he said that he's got a lot of tech... how in the world did his company stay relatively unnoticed by us for so long?" I think to myself while floating high above a crowded street, that's just in front of one of our biggest conscription offices on the Hopian Continent.

I expected it to be swarmed, vandalized, and maybe even overtaken by protesters at this point. But instead there's at least one hundred tall, black painted, humanoid robots surrounding the building instead- which are keeping the crowd of protesters back. Plus there's still probably like human 20 soldiers standing guard too, it's nice to see that not everyone is defecting at least.

"They even have a path open to the office as well!" I whistle as I notice that about 20 of the robots are specifically standing in a pattern that leaves the entrance to the front door cleared of any protesters.

And creepily, my near indestructible personal cellphone begins to ring. I take it out of it's pouch, and answer it without even looking at the screen since I already know who this is.

"Hi Taylis."

"Hey Prósopsi. Assuming you're happy with how me and my husband handled the protest at the Helshin Street Conscription Office? Did arrest a good amount of people who were getting physical with army members coming and going, both at the place you're at and at other spots as well. Some protesters were even attacking bystanders too... awful to see." Taylis says over the phone.

"Yeah, this is great. Thank you, to the both of you. I have a lot of questions as to how William has so many resources, especially if you did this at multiple locations but- I'll save that for later. If you have the protests under control like this in the other major hotspots as well, I'll probably make my way over to my next meeting early. Anything else you want to mention before I go?"

"Nope. See ya. Oh- actually, William wants me to tell you that we do have drones patrolling the areas around the protest hotspots as well. So yeah, any surprise attacks from especially dangerous criminals are pretty unlikely." She continues- which does makes me feel better at first. But... her mentioning the drones brings up another worry of mine... since it seems like William has incredible surveillance capabilities that are kinda terrifying.

"I see. That's good to know. But speaking of which... I'm just going to assume that you and William have been using drones around the Hopian Continent before you met me. Right?" I ask, while starting to slowly fly across the city skylines to make sure I get to my next meeting on time.

"...Yep. Why?" She asks while sounding genuinely confused.

"And I'm guessing you have a lot of recordings of me over the years then?" I ask again, struggling not to cough as I accidentally pass through the smoke of an old factory's chimney that I just flew over.

"Recordings of when you were out in public, sure. Again- why ask this now? Sorry for being blunt, William's nagging at me to make this quick. What? Don't get mad at me, it's true." She says to me- and then to her husband near the end there.

"What I'm going to imply here is extremely private information, by the way. But my concern is- you either think I'm schizophrenic, or... um... that I talk with... a hidden person when I'm outside... when no other people are around me." I struggle to say, both out of embarrassment- and also because I really don't want to give the secret of Aphrodite away. That is if Taylis somehow hasn't overheard me talking with her through William's drones, at least.

"...Ohhhhhh- that's what this is about. William! I can tell him, right? ...Ok. We're good. But yeah. We know about your "ghost friend" Prósopsi, and that she isn't just a figment of your imagination. William just didn't want to mention it earlier- since he wanted to see how long it would take you to realize we knew. I know you're not crazy, even if I can't see or hear her like every other human." Taylis says in a way that's so casual that it kinda scares me.