Preparing things ahead of time was great. I was getting better at setting up wards every time, and the whole process was smoother. Now that we knew the divine attacks were stronger with more people, we limited ourselves to two individuals at once. Since we were tiring ourselves out for the rest of the day regardless, it was better to get two. Three might be pushing it, and was quite unnecessary.
If there was an actual god trying to stop us from messing with the curse… they were stupid. Or extremely limited. I had put so much effort in making sure the Energy Ward covered the whole area, even taking account of the possibility that it would try to form inside the ritual area and strike from beneath the ward. But it always attacked from directly overhead, and at the same time.
At first it seemed like we were being lured into a false sense of security, but the thing was… we’d already succeeded with everyone I cared about. Yeah, New Bay wanted the rest of these people to come back, but we were working on that. It only took us a week to run out of heroes we had access to, and that was with a few more being brought in. Obviously Graciana and Meter had been part of the early returns to Earth.
After that, I attempted to Scry some of the various missing people. We recorded what information we got. We didn’t have a perfect list of who had been abducted in this way, so we got a few false flags. A couple people had actually been found and nobody properly reported it. Some others just left New Bay without telling anyone. It wasn’t my job to figure out what to do about that- though the answer was probably nothing, since they weren’t missing anymore. It was pretty awful to abandon family and friends, but I didn’t know their reasons and it wasn’t something that needed to involve mercenaries.
I could get decent information from Earth, but we had to record stuff to show to the king and queen, which wasn’t ideal. Eventually I just asked if they had a really nice mirror.
They had a lot of them, actually. Nothing would hit the quality of Vilhelmiina’s scrying orb, but being in the right world would mitigate some of that loss. Most relevantly, however, I could get real time commentary on the locations of people.
“Ah, that’s Rocha,” The King nodded. “I recognize that architecture. Looks like they still have… five heroes.” He turned to Riala. “Has there been any report of heroes from Rocha?”
“There were some probing attacks,” the queen commented. “But no conflict with anyone that appeared to be heroes.”
Now that we’d found that group, we could at least confirm who had actually been abducted. Since it happened in groups, witness testimonies about people they had seen together led us to figure out the sixth and final member’s identity. I pulled up an image of the man as I attempted another Scrying.
Nothing. No resistance, either. That meant…
“He’s dead, probably,” I said. “I’m not getting anything.”
“Shame,” said The King. “They always rush things with the heroes. It’s not like I’m ever going anywhere.” His purple eyes landed on me. “Do you want to get paid to monitor their movements?”
I made a face. “Sounds awful. Get someone else to learn Scrying. Do you not have that here already?”
“In different forms,” Riala commented. “This version appears to be more powerful. Though… inefficient.”
I shrugged. “The focus really makes up for a lot. I bet both of you can learn this just fine. You just need to be experienced with flexible casting.”
Unsurprisingly, The King got it on his first try. He had seen it multiple times, and he clearly had a strong sense of mana. He also had more experience than Riala with flexible casting, I thought. Or at least more power to throw around and try things out. Eventually, you got good at it.
“Ugh,” he said. “I can’t believe I’m viewing a smaller area than you. No offense, but I don’t often get outdone.”
I didn’t have any exact measurements, but I was pretty sure the viewing area was already larger than standard. I knew he probably didn’t have actual upgrades for spells, but it implied some amount of overlapping proficiency. Or he’d instantly improved his first attempt.
“You’re already better than a regular first success.”
He nodded. “I’ve also tried to replicate that other spell… Explosive Meteors Fall from the Sky, wasn’t it?”
That was the meaning I had infused into my translation of Meteor Swarm. Relatedly, with a couple weeks of actually speaking to the Many-Colored regularly I was really starting to get how that worked. It was absolutely a thing that was impossible to do with normal vocal chords. Overlapping sounds, spoken in a way that the sounds didn’t clash and distort each other. There might have been the tiniest bit of mana involved in simply speaking. Not a relevant amount with the natural quantities in this world, though.
“How did it go?” I asked The King.
“I only saw it once,” he said. “And I couldn’t tell if you were creating something or calling it from afar. So I’ve only managed to replicate something similar with perfectly normal fireballs from afar, which just isn’t the same.”
“Well, I’d be surprised if you got it the first time. That’s the limit for how powerful spells get in my system of magic.”
Riala frowned. “That doesn’t seem right. You’ve used more mana for things.”
“That’s just casting things multiple times in parallel. It’s different,” I said. Had I actually used more than twenty mana on a spell in front of Riala? I couldn’t remember. I might have. “Well, it’s still possible to push individual spells to a higher tier. But that’s not the norm.”
I didn’t intend to explain everything about my world’s system of magic right away. At the very least, we needed to finish resolving this whole issue and then we could do a safety assessment.
“Gate was harder, I think,” The King commented suddenly. “I couldn’t even start it forming. I suppose I don’t really know what I would be connecting to, though.”
“... I’d be careful about that,” I said. “There are a lot of places that are… bad.” I wasn’t sure what planes they had local to this universe, but if he opened a Gate on a planet without atmosphere it could be a serious issue. I should know, because I’d done something similar on purpose. Then tossed part of a Bunvorixian tower through it.
Extra wasn’t going to like the possibility that this guy might learn Gate. Personally… I thought it was fine. None of the Many-Colored seemed completely unreasonable. And though I couldn’t defeat The King alone… I was fairly confident that the Power Brigade could put together a modest team to take him down. At least, if we weren’t fighting him in his volcano fortress city.
-----
Just because the last of the people from Earth weren’t yet safe didn’t mean my work was otherwise done. Because this was only half of the project. Specifically, nearly half of those abducted were already dead. We could wait for The Six to summon more of them and then try to capture them, but there was a better idea.
Just curse other people. Specifically, people from Earth.
Volunteers, of course. They weren’t that hard to find, though.
Evija was our first volunteer. People from Extra would be our first pool of people to consider, because they had already been to this world. They understood what was going on… and any exposure they had to magical powers was already done.
“I wonder what sort of talent I’ll unlock…” Evija commented. “I hope it’s magic related.”
I frowned. “We’re not certain it works like that,” I said. “Maybe already being exposed to magic and this world will mean you just get…” I waved my hands vaguely. Honestly, the curse wouldn’t do much but take up space in the celestial ledger that decided each of The Six couldn’t abduct more than six people at once. Since we would obviously be keeping out the part that involved not being able to leave the world, it might end there. But it might also come with revealing talents or granting them.
“Don’t rain on my parade,” she said. “Let me dream of magic.”
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
She already had magic. And, theoretically, she could get as good as Yalith. Though… maybe that took more than a human lifespan. Either way, she could still get good. I would happily continue to train with her.
Everything was ready. Extra wasn’t super enthusiastic about what was happening, but it would ultimately make the most sense for their agents to fill in the gaps, protecting the people of Earth. It really was just basic to put the people in another world where they couldn’t be touched. Oh, that was another good reason for The King to not develop his skills with Gate. Someone could steal it, maybe. Not that I actually cared that much.
Cursing someone with a ritual was different. It took us a few days of practice, since it was far different from simply modifying what already existed. We included a few scraps of knowledge about how the actual summonings went- obviously The Six kept the details on lockdown. They wouldn’t easily give up their greatest national secrets.
I was able to witness how powerful and determined The King was. Because you see, he forcefully channeled the rather unfriendly divine power through himself for the process. Whether it was actually a god, he certainly arm wrestled a divine force into submission. It was only momentary, but it was enough for the other five of us to manage to form the necessary structure we had practiced.
I couldn’t say the process went perfectly. At the end of things, The King was bleeding from his nose and some blood was dripping out of his eyes. But… Evija was fine, and I was pretty sure we’d done the thing we wanted. I could still only faintly sense the curses, but I could feel it was properly there. Actually, was it even a curse anymore? I wasn’t sure if it was restrictive or negative in any way without it limiting the ability to depart from this world.
Honestly, I was surprised that it didn’t force people to try to kill ‘the demon king’. Maybe that sort of mental influence backfired. I could see it making people unstable and less able to train. I really couldn’t see the people who did this to us in the first place caring about other consequences.
Immediately afterwards, we took Evija to the talent sensing platform. It was agreed by all that it was possible this curse would still grant or reveal talent. The summoning process might also search for people who already had talents and pull them through, with the curse being separate. That was why I hadn’t wanted Evija to get too excited.
“So… what’s all this master and advanced stuff?” Evija asked as she looked at the device. I couldn’t see because I did agree that powers were private to some extent. For example, I didn’t want villains getting a detailed list of my capabilities.
“Those are talent levels,” I said. “It’s entirely possible that Translate is using my own wording. It might not match my own system, but basic would be the least prominent, then advanced and finally master.”
“Advanced was the level that the kids had, right?” Evija suddenly looked excited. “I got a talent that matches them! And in magic! Well, spellbreaking. That has to count though, right?”
“There’s only one way to find out,” I said.
I found out far later that she did also get a Master talent and just ignored it because it didn’t have anything to do with magic. I couldn’t blame her because magic was the best, but it was still useful to develop diverse abilities.
-----
Spellbreaking was magic. Specifically, it seemed to include both things like Dispel Magic and actively countering an enemy spell with the same one. The latter was more difficult than it sounded, because you couldn’t just throw a Fireball at another Fireball. That wasn’t a counter. That would just cause a big explosion in between, assuming you hit. Most likely they would hit right in front of your own face.
Instead, it involved disrupting spells with an equivalent manipulation of mana. Or sometimes an inverse form of it. There were apparently different schools of practice.
All of this we learned from Aidura, because they were still being quite generous with knowledge. Riala specifically was still paying back Evija for almost killing her when she didn’t deserve it. She didn’t limit herself to what she had already promised, but happily provided additional support. Then again, I got far more access to random things I was interested in than I thought was reasonable. Not that I would complain. I’d already learned more about magic here in a world where the magic system was different than in my own.
Though that wasn’t quite fair to Master Uvithar. I would have learned a lot more under his instruction if I could make practical use of more spells. Though he did keep the worldwide secrets, I had access to basically everything that people would share.
It seemed that spellbreaking came with a lesser secondary proficiency in magic in general. Either way, she had a notable increase in her learning speed. It probably helped that she seemed to be growing in power generally, and thus something like level. At the very least her fatigue limit improved over the next couple weeks as we trained regularly. With the mana recover speed in Aidura, we could exhaust her a couple times per hour and then let her recover fully.
Evija wasn’t throwing around anything much more impressive than a Shocking Grasp or a very minimalist version of Dispel that the local magicians had put together, but she was able to consistently cancel my lower level spells. When I didn’t fight her too hard. It wasn’t all that much harder to resist her than it was to cast spells in negative mana… but she was also just beginning. And that meant it wasn’t trivial.
“You should be careful,” I said. “If you only partially break a spell, you might get unpleasant or unstable results. It’s more likely to be closer to the caster but if there are civilians around…”
“I’ll shoot them with a stun blast,” Evija said. “Or someone else will from a better angle.”
Fair point. Extra agents were also not involved in hostage situations all that frequently. Their job was to prevent people from getting a foothold, not to handle already established villains. Obviously sometimes they had the best expertise so situations were flexible, but usually heroes got those jobs. Or mercenaries, but New Bay was officially focused on heroes. Even if Mercenaries probably did more jobs.
-----
Other agents from Extra did get talents unlocked or revealed, but most of them seemed to be lower than Evija’s. It could have been random chance or the fact that she actually practiced magic beforehand. I would have personally tried to science it out, but Extra wasn’t really in this for giving supernatural ability to their agents but instead to finish resolving this problem.
About the time we were getting the last couple people properly ‘cursed’, The King himself retrieved the last five people.
“This ‘Sleep’ spell is good,” he declared. “It’s amazing to just take people down, then if you’re quiet and don’t do too much magic or bump them around too much…”
At some point, the topic of how we’d dealt with the knights had come up, and thus that spell. Relatedly, Extra was agonizing over what to do with our captives. I was thinking about dumping them in one of the towns we had passed through. Nobody wanted to interact with the leaders of Zuresh at the moment. Inasyah thought they would probably infuriate Malaliel, and Extra really wasn’t trying to interfere with the local situation too much. We just wanted our civilians back.
Would our methods drastically change the local situation? Probably. But it was still the most efficient way to do so compared to trying to negotiate separately with six different countries of kidnappers.
The only reason that the five remaining heroes were captured so easily was that The King was strong, and knew who to look for. He would probably be a menace with my world’s form of Scrying. Frankly, The Six deserved whatever came to them.
“Want me to destroy the castle in Zuresh?” The King asked after we spent the last few days getting the five remaining individuals back home. “I can’t guarantee it will be soon, but I might get out there in a year or two.”
“Eh,” I shrugged. “If I wanted to do it I’d just go do it myself. And the staff there were totally fine.”
He made a face. “Good point. Civilians made all of our previous counterattacks so much harder. We couldn’t just level the forts. Well, it’s better to force them to flee into the surrounding areas anyway as it occupies more resources.”
I nodded. I couldn’t comment much on the local situation. It would be pretty hypocritical of me to say he shouldn’t fight them. Even if he said he was going to destroy The Six, I couldn’t say they weren’t trying to do the same to his people. “So… what are your plans for the future?”
“Hmm. That depends on how long it takes them to figure out that there are no more heroes. Could be a few years. They’ll probably start sending in armies after that, but it’ll take them some time to train up. We’ll monitor the situation as it evolves. I’ll probably get involved with exterminating the land ravagers for a bit.”
“And the disembowelers?” I asked.
“Nah,” he shook his head. “They’re not all bad. We try to keep their numbers low enough they aren’t a threat to our civilians, but they’re a nice buffer against the humans. Besides, there’s no way we exterminate all monsters. Not unless they actually leave us alone for half a century.”
“... You know the humans think you send the monsters?” I commented.
“Eh. Figures it would be like that. But they just live here, you know?”
Having determined he wasn’t planning to go on a campaign to eradicate the surrounding countries for at least a while, I figured that was good enough. Sure, his plans could change… but I wasn’t responsible for inter-world diplomacy. I just wanted to make the people at Extra feel better about things.
That way, I could get paid. This whole project had been tough on their budget with weeks of hazard pay for quite a few people, so I was planning to ask them for something I wanted more than money. Future leeway if I gave other people powers or something. Since I was going to be even for the whole thing with Thiziri on the day I got isekai’d, I figured I should have the leeway for two or three incidents easy with the over a month of work I’d put in here.
