It was quite possible that we would have been able to continue altering the curses in the same way with only minor precautions, but I had the feeling that Malaliel’s injuries would have been far worse on anyone else. Since we couldn’t exactly ask her to sacrifice herself over and over, we had to be ready for some nonsense from the sky.

  I sighed. “This whole place is a rollercoaster.” I had been led to believe those went up and down a bunch. “First we come up against an undefeatable foe in The King of the Many-Colored. But we don’t need to defeat him.” Midnight listened as I complained. “Then the sky tries to kill us!”

  “Some local god,” Midnight commented.

  “You can’t prove that!”

  “You were the one talking about countering divine energy.”

  I shrugged. “Divine energy could come from a lot of places. Even Spot. Or Bandage.”

  “Powerful divine energy, seemingly of a similar wavelength to angels but still enough to hospitalize Malaliel. That sounds like-”

  “If it doesn’t have a face it’s just a dumb natural phenomenon. Anyway…” I shook my head. “We have to deal with it.”

  We basically had the same setup as before, minus Malaliel. Aidura probably had more powerful individuals, but they were focused on things like protecting the border. And potentially grabbing the rest of the heroes. That wasn’t a solved issue just yet.

  For now we had to focus on what was in front of our face. And what would be raining divine lightning upon us.

  -----

  I stared at the ritual setup. “I don’t understand how it’s a sphere.”

  Riala shrugged. “A sphere is the easiest shape to form.”

  “But these pillars! They’re almost tangenting the top hemisphere!” Shouldn’t wards at least vaguely follow the shape of the structures they came from. “It should be a cylinder.”

  Riala made a face. “And take direct force from vertical attacks? Absolutely not.” She was the one helping me with this because The King was busy. Also probably tired. He had been taking care of the majority of the power for the ritual before he had to fight off the divine lightning. Afterwards… he no longer felt quite at his peak.

  It was probably some kind of taboo to mention that he had seemed a little bit tired, so I didn’t say anything. Either way, we had to check out what we could do with enchantments and determine whether we needed Malaliel. It would be preferred to have her as a backup, but hopefully not necessary.

  Apparently, Extra didn’t have any equipment rated for defending against high ranking divine power available. Whether that meant we couldn’t have it here in this world or they were still trying to figure out how to produce such a thing or that other branches wouldn’t share with New Bay… it was difficult to say. I knew that New Bay was quite influential because it was one of the hotspots on Earth, but this wasn’t the only thing going on in the solar system.

  I didn’t know if Mars had much in the way of weird extradimensional intrusions besides sometimes me, but they were heavily involved in the extraterrestrial stuff. Extramartian? Eh, the word was probably different between languages. Aliens from a different system. Many of them were not friendly and had to be appropriately handled.

  I thought about space age materials and which ones might work… but ultimately I just needed to make what was already here have more to it. “If I’m understanding this right, it’s mostly focused inward.”

  “That’s right,” Riala said. “We weren’t expecting to be attacked. Obviously we’d notice an approaching army, and there aren’t any people that can slip by our wards. They picked out all of you properly.”

  “... Did Fort Seire have anything like that?” I was just wondering how quickly we had been compromised.

  “It would take too much energy. The wards here are mostly powered by the volcano.”

  “Ah…” I nodded. “That might actually make things easier. If I can draw on that, we probably just need a few materials to add on to hold the spell. Something divine, maybe?”

  “That won’t be easy,” Riala said. “Maybe The Six have something. They have to catalyze their summoning somehow. But…”

  “Did Malaliel drop any feathers when she got hit?” I asked, looking around. They could have easily blown away into a corner. A little divination should answer the question if there was anything around here.

  I didn’t need a fancy catalyst but I used my phone out of habit. A compass appeared on the screen, though it wasn’t pointing towards anything magnetic.

  “Aha!” There were some. Burnt around the edges, yes, but still quite angelic. “Hmm, this would be enough for once, but I don’t think these are reusable.” They’d be more of a consumable than a focus, which meant we’d need… thirty-five times this much.

  “Hmm.” Turning towards Riala’s noise, she answered my implicit question. “Your magical tools are strange. I can’t even feel anything from them until you activate them. Actually, there were some of the other things you had that I never felt.”

  “These ones aren’t magic,” I pointed out. “They wouldn’t remain functional here for long, though.” Not without a charging spell of some sort. That would be very specific, though. “Also, I mostly just used a spell. I used this,” I held up my phone. “Because it’s reflective.”

  “So you’re saying… that you simply had a spell to find angel feathers.”

  “Don’t be silly. I improvised.” She didn’t seem to believe me. “You’ve used flexible magic in front of me. I’m sure you could do it with practice.”

  She still seemed a bit doubtful. “If you say so. I don’t mean to pry too much, but do you have multiple strong talents?”

  This, I could answer… sort of. “The humans said I had an advanced spatial proficiency,” I commented.

  “Ah. Thus why you were interested?”

  “Those are unrelated. I’m just aiming to improve in various fields. Anyway, I don’t know if it was right.”

  “... why wouldn’t it be?”

  “Because,” I said. “I’m pretty sure it wasn’t reading talent. Or it’s a huge coincidence. Do you happen to have better detection options? Because the humans couldn’t even determine the kid’s secondary proficiencies.”

  “Ah… that’s probably on Zuresh,” Riala commented. “It’s likely they grew complacent with their mediocre summons over the past couple of generations. Some of the humans have better options. And of course, we do as well.”

  “Can you show me?” I asked. “I have a theory.”

  -----

  “This will be the first time we’ve tested the talents of a cat. A feline,” Riala corrected herself before Midnight could. “Why is Deepest Night going first?”

  “Because it’s a test,” Midnight commented.

  Midnight got it. Best to start with the weird option so that it couldn’t adapt and repeat the same results after me. Would it do that? Probably not.

  Rather than an orb all on its own, Midnight stood on a small platform that was connected to some sort of platform with a slate. It looked a lot like a display.

  Riala activated it, and then…

  “I can’t see it,” Midnight said. “What does it say?”

  Riala gestured for me to step forward. “It’s a bit rude to pry into people’s personal details.”

  I wondered if this recorded the results so she could snoop later. It was fine if it did, because they already had seen most of the things I could do. Including Gate. I doubted I was going to defeat their king with the Knock spell.

  Though maybe that would be good for sieges? I could probably unlock a portcullis, but it probably wouldn’t lift it up. Based on that one time, though, I could open a bunch of nearby locks.

  The readout was underwhelming, but informative.

  So it only went up to the third, huh?

  “Does nobody have more than three affinities?” I asked Riala.

  She shrugged. “It’s not worth trying to look deeper. They’re ordered by prominence.”

  “... Yeah, that’s probably true if nobody has prior training.” Riala looked curious. “I don’t mind if you ask.”

  “I do kind of want to know what it says.”

  I shrugged. “Same thing as our status windows. Advanced Spatial Magic. Advanced Energy Magic. Grease.” I could finalize the results if I brought Jerome… or one of the Portal Squad. But first we kind of needed to resolve stuff here.

  Riala frowned. “Is Grease… a school of magic where you come from?”

  “Hah!” I waved my hand, gesturing to the corner of the room. It was coated in a black substance, clinging to surfaces and yet slick at the same time. “Not at all. This is the third spell I learned.”

  “The third spell…” Riala made a face. “So you have two affinities, and then…?”

  I shook my head. “No. I thought you’d get it, because your device here doesn’t say it. These aren’t talents. This is just… a description. I might not have any talent.”

  “... are you sure?”

  I stepped up to test the device on myself. It wasn’t difficult to use once Riala had activated it. “Hard to say. Maybe our kinds of abilities just confuse it. It’s quite possible.” I of course got the same results as Midnight. Our magic was the same, after all. “It’s the same. I was kind of hoping it would see all the way to Familiar Bond. But this is enlightening enough.”

  The reason I wanted to see that was because Midnight didn’t have Familiar Bond listed normally. But if it was just showing the first three, it would require quite a lot of work to get to the 9th spot.

  -----

  I still had to practice for the ritual even though we’d already done it once. Perfection was better, especially given the troubles last time. I did split my time with learning other bits of local magic, though. It was just so interesting. And it allowed me to get my hands tired in different ways.

  Then came time for the second attempt. Midnight and I enchanted the ritual area the day before, securing the few angel feathers we had to it. We put as much mana into them as we thought they could hold, which seemed to be quite a lot. But even with the fast mana recovery of this world, we still thought it best to wait for the next day. Running out of mana wasn’t the only relevant sign of fatigue.

  Malaliel was recovered. Or at least, she was standing. I seriously doubted she was fully recovered, even if she had some innate healing magic. Extra had access to other sorts of healing as well, but the damage Malaliel had taken was the sort that would be hard to heal. Probably. Maybe I was wrong about that, but I did recognize people trying not to look like they were in pain.

  Hopefully the enchantments would be fine.

  The first part of the ritual took less time. Having done it properly made the more complicated mana weaving a bit less ponderous. We were also more certain that it wasn’t going to hurt the subject. Just another hero that had been captured. He was eager to go home, and we still weren’t sure about the teens. We’d get them next, if this worked. That was the plan.

  Whatever empowered the curse and the interdimensional kidnapping wasn’t happy with us. I also wasn’t happy with it. There were probably literally millions of people that wanted to be kidnapped to a magical realm, but it took people who just happened to be standing near each other and then The Six sent them to their deaths. Well, what would have been their deaths if the Many-Colored wanted them dead.

  They probably would be dead if keeping them alive didn’t have benefits. The people here didn’t strike me as saints. Killing soldiers in a war was pretty normal, and they must have done so many times for both heroes and armies of The Six.

  We weren’t as surprised when the wriggling energy appeared, though it was a bit earlier than I expected it even relative to our faster progress. Maybe it was impatient.

  It blasted down towards the guy. The King momentarily stopped his efforts to once again throw a volcano blast… but by the time his magic arrived it was already over. Energy Ward was pretty efficient at absorbing one particular kind of energy… and powered by a bunch of mana and then the volcano itself the whole thing winked out in a moment.

  The guy who was sitting in the middle of the circle still startled at the sound and light. The angel feathers also disintegrated as their potency was used up. Still, it worked.

  -----

  The King was around for our following discussions.

  “We can’t just pluck our angels bald,” I said.

  Inasyah frowned. “Actually, would hair work?”

  “I-” It took a moment to analyze her hair. “We’d probably need half of it for one round.”

  She shook her head. “Eh. Pass. Too bad we didn’t preserve all those guys that died. They’ve probably rotted away by now.”

  At the very least, it would be gross to dig up a bunch of angels. Graverobbing shouldn’t be done casually.

  The King had some suggestions. “We could raid The Six and snatch stuff from their temples. But that would take some time to set up. Still, if we had a large number of blessed diamonds…”

  Midnight and I might be thinking the same thing. I spoke first. “Bandage might be able to bless things.” Her time would cost more than a pile of industrial diamonds, but Extra might be willing to go for it. Or she could donate her time for the kids. Or maybe the city would pay for it? “Do you think they need to be high quality diamonds?”

  Nobody had a solid answer for that. So we just had to try.

  -----

  “We need bowls,” I decided. “To hold the diamonds.”

  Riala just gave me a look. “I understand that this organization you work for is quite powerful, but to think you could get this many diamonds…”

  I shrugged. “Someone just made them. It’s fine.” I wasn’t going to even mention the meter cube perfect diamond that had been made as my Scrying Orb. That would get us off track. “Diamonds are just carbon.” I set handfuls of uncut industrial diamonds on each pillar, just enough so that the angle of repose didn’t topple too many off.

  I was pretty sure that the Many-Colored were paying for some of this. They did have a significant interest in handling the curse and thus the ability to summon more heroes, after all. A few chunks of gold could pay for quite a bit. Personally I thought their knowledge was more valuable, but probably not to New Bay as a whole given how few magic users we had.

  “You have strange knowledge,” Riala finally said.

  “You should have seen him learn that diamonds could be made,” Midnight said. “He bought so many.”

  Hmph. I hadn’t even spent a single paycheck on it.

  -----

  When we determined that the enchantments were holding steady in the diamonds, holding significantly more power than the angel feathers, we decided to go for our first double.

  It would cost more mana, yes, but the main strain on both of us wasn’t quantity of mana but time. The King would have to handle it, but I was confident he could manage. It would also be useful to see if the feedback was doubled or not. And Malaliel was watching like a beakless hawk, prepared to throw herself over the teens to save them.

  Ramen volunteered to go first in this batch. “If the sky tries to kill us, a real man must stand up against it!” He shook his shield. I wasn’t sure he was a ‘real man’, or when he started caring about that… but good for him.

  Ayat was the second with the theory she might be able to dodge any attacks. It was true that those in the ritual circle didn’t have to remain perfectly stationary, as long as they kept to the central portion.

  I did note that the Many-Colored had a few extra people hanging around. They would probably have had more if this weren’t a secret operation. It could have been due to the risks of doing two at once, but I chose to believe it was because it involved kids. And the teens were kids even if they were on the older end of that spectrum and would prefer not to be called that.

  There had been great tension the first time, and then surprise danger. The second time, I was confident in my ability to discern what sort of energy had tried to kill us. It was a bit harder to hold the strands of the curse steady for two people at once, but even though I didn’t have an actual skill for whatever this was I was certain I had gotten better. And being nervous wouldn’t help. Plenty of other people were already tense, like Midnight. I helped balance him out.

  Tension might help people react if they needed to, but someone had to be steady. But mostly, I just believed things would be fine and truly wasn’t worried.

  The bad news was that two people’s worth of curse feedback was more than twice as powerful. The good news was that we could just get another few pounds of diamonds. It wasn’t exactly cheap, but it was achievable. Probably half of this batch could be salvaged, but that didn’t mean we were going to make the attempt with just half.

  -----

  There was a tearful goodbye between the teens, as if they were going so far away they could never meet. Instead of just going back home a few days before the others.

  True, it was literally the furthest way any of them would have ever been, but the group had only been at the level of ‘pretty good friends that hung out after school’. You know, until they were abducted to another world and fought alongside each other against dinosaurs and knights. They hadn’t participated in the most dangerous events, except from a distance.

  “Are you finally ready?” I said. “Remember that once I open the Gate you have one minute to get through.” I could hold it for over a minute and a half easily, actually. This world was easy to get back and forth between, if people weren’t bound to one. But I wasn’t going to risk anyone losing limbs. Then I’d have to bug Ceira, and she was still the most popular option for Regeneration type stuff even if a few more people had started being able to do it.

  Ayat nodded. “We’re ready. Thanks, Mage.”

  I sent them through. We could have had them wait a few days, but everyone was eager to get back to their families.

  -----

  Midnight was talking with me afterwards. “You know they’re going to post about you all over social media? I mean Mage, of course. I doubt either of them are so ungrateful as to break your thin veil of anonymity.”

  I shrugged. “Will it make any difference?”

  “... it might. I only saw a little bit from the two who went back already, but New Bay is pretty hyped about the ‘isekai abductions’ and the rescues."

  I made a face. “They’re not going to be happy about the people that are already dead.”

  Midnight nodded. “Good thing The King won’t be hearing what stupid people say about his people.” We knew they really tried not to kill people from Earth. I’d personally witnessed some deaths to monsters. But people would be upset.

  “Maybe you should stay off of social media for a couple weeks after we get back.” I already did, as a general rule.

  “Hah, maybe.” Midnight probably wasn’t going to. He was protective of me in that way. At least I could come snag him if he was having trouble, though. It was easy to tell when he was upset, and he was just across the hall.