It seemed that Zuresh wasn’t so stupid as to give their knights better food supplies than their ‘heroes’. Unfortunately, they were stupid enough for them to be generally bad. I couldn’t believe a world with magic had such extremely bland trail rations. I was pretty sure this country was just cheap.

  The kids were nervous because we were going to fight monsters, but they could only keep that up for a couple days. At some point, they just grew bored.

  The knights escorting us weren’t very talkative, so they didn’t help the situation much. As for me, I was in disguise as someone that was boring. I could only demonstrate the same magic that Meter knew, and I had to be cautious to not perform too much of it. Inasyah had a bit more leeway because nobody knew how much magic she was supposed to know. Still, she could probably use too much dark magic. I gave her a look once I felt she was around the ten mana range. The teens were basically level 0 still, so they probably had half that much.

  Assuming there was some consistency with how strong people were starting out, which I couldn’t guarantee. Especially since heroes were probably supposed to be stronger. But Yamaha didn’t seem to think Meter should be doing better than he was, so probably it was just potential and not level or immediate power.

  Whenever we found opportunities- usually when stopping in towns and a proper inn instead of camping on the road- the three of us who knew what was going on strategized. Unfortunately, there really wasn’t too much we could plan.

  “We’ll have to improvise,” Inasyah commented.

  Midnight nodded. “I trust all of us to support the other when we take initiative.”

  “Right,” I agreed. “We can manage that.”

  -----

  We were camping out for the night again. I couldn’t sleep. It was a shame I couldn’t cast Shelter without giving things away. This bedroll was either too cold or too hot and never in between, and there had been so many rocks where I was sleeping until I put them all in Storage. Real Storage, not bad local-world Storage. I shuffled around, hoping that the ground would smooth out.

  As I started to finally drift off, a spike in emotion, not so strong as if we were under attack, was my first warning. It caught my attention, and the mana that Midnight was channeling formed into a spell that I understood well enough.

  Sleep. Which was precisely the reason I should not be doing that. I sat up slowly, doing my best to avoid startling the boys. It was a good thing I could see well in the dark, or I might have kicked one while I slipped out of the pup tent.

  I felt Midnight casting another Sleep spell. A knight resting on a log slumped, and I stepped forward to catch his shoulders. Then I gently let him down. Sleep was magic, but it was also low level.

  Midnight whispered, his voice being called to my ears by the arcane power of modern technology. ‘Radio’, maybe. Or something about teeth. I hadn’t actually cared too much about the details of Power Brigade comms.

  “You should overjuice a Sleep spell just a little in the knight’s tents.”

  I didn’t ask why. If we were knocking out the knights, that was what we were going to do.

  Just a little… 10 mana maybe? That was somewhere around triple the base. It wasn’t so much I was worried about putting people into a cursed slumber lasting for an eternity. If necessary, we’d slap them awake.

  I had to assume that keeping people sleeping was pretty easy, so I didn’t have to worry about the quantity of guards in the squad. I did focus on the knight captain, though. Captain Grumpypants should have a bit more willpower than others.

  As I felt my power disperse over the area, I also noticed movement from the most magical companion we had. Inasyah slipped out of her tent. “What’s going on?” she asked as she got close. If we’d been expecting to get abducted to another world, we would have given her a matching comm. Instead, we were just planning to be walking around city streets.

  Midnight returned to me after getting the last of the guards watching the perimeter of the camp. He climbed up on my shoulder so we could put our heads together conspiratorally. “The guards mentioned that we were close to the border with Demon Lands. They thought we might encounter monsters tomorrow.”

  So why…? Oh right, we were going to send the kids back so they didn’t have to fight monsters. They needed at least a proper course of self defense training, not just a few days and then self training during a journey. At least everyone had been doing self training.

  No way Meter was going to take down a monster, though. Unless it was the most pathetic thing in the world. He didn’t even know how to swing a staff. I knew, because I saw him hit his shins five times. Us space mages hadn’t been taught how to fight. Instead, we had snacks. It was just that the snacks were bad.

  “I guess we’re leaving, then?” I said. “I’ll try to quietly wake the boys up.” Better to not test the limits of the Sleep spell.

  Inasyah nodded. “I’ll get the girls.”

  I walked back into the tent and put my hands over the mouths of Meter and Ramen. “Hey, wake up. Special nighttime mission.” Grumbling, flailing, and people trying to bite my fingers. It was a good thing I had Force Armor or that might have hurt. “Just stop trying to yell and I’ll let go. Breathe through your nose.” Once they looked like they weren’t going to yell, I let go. “Come, up.”

  I half-dragged them towards the middle of the camp. The girls were looking dazed, but they were already there.

  Ramen was looking around. “What’s going on? Should I grab my weapons?”

  “No need,” I said. “We’re going through a portal.”

  “Wh-”

  I finished casting Gate. I heard a gasp. “Everyone through.”

  “I knew it!” Ayat said. “I knew you were-”

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Through the portal,” I said, gesturing. “Extra can take care of you from there.” I waved my arm through. Ayat stepped forward and… was rejected. It wasn’t a solid impact, but instead more like she ran into a padded wall. She staggered back, looking confused. I stepped through the portal, then back. “Hmm. Midnight, Inasyah. Quick.” They were fine. “Meter.”

  “It’s Mile.”

  I grabbed his arm and shoved him towards the portal. It didn’t work either.

  There was no good reason for this to be. I was sending people back to their home planes. It was practically impossible to lock them out, and Extra’s teleportation hall was an extremely receptive location. Plus, there was no way it worked for just some of us.

  “Change of plans,” I said. “Start grabbing the knights and toss them through.” If this wasn’t going to work, we at least had to rid ourselves of some problems.

  Inasyah was quite happy to help. She was just as capable of grabbing those in armor as I was. I actually only tossed the first one to test something, but once I was sure they knights could be thrown through the portal I wanted all of them gone.

  “What’s going on?” Lana asked. Ramen looked pretty confused too, but at least nobody was yelling.

  Ayat grabbed them and whispered something which seemed to calm the teens down quickly. Not that I had much time to pay attention. Gate only lasted so long, and there were a lot of knights to toss.

  “Arrest these guys,” I said with my head poked through the Gate. I pulled out my badge real quick, though I wasn’t sure if it was necessary. There weren’t a ton of orcs that came through the teleportation hall. The guards nodded, striding over and beginning to secure people. “I’ll open a second one in ten minutes for the standby squad we asked for.”

  At some point, Ramen put in the effort to toss one of the knights through as well. Meter couldn’t even drag one of them. Ah well, such was life. I was carefully monitoring the stability and perceived remaining time, and the camp was small enough that with two of us working quickly we’d get all of them through before it was too late.

  “Alright, that’s it. Everyone step away from the portal,” I said.

  At the last moment, one of the knights twitched. He was lucky he only lost part of his boot and not any toes. The portal sealed up.

  “So,” I said to those that mattered. “What’s next?” Confidence was key. Telling a bunch of concerned teens that it was weird that they couldn’t go through the Gate wouldn’t help them feel better. I was so nice and full of empathy and bad jerky.

  “What’s going on?” Ayat exclaimed. “I don’t…”

  “Well, we threw those guys through a portal,” I said.

  For some reason, that made her mad. “I know that! I’m talking about everything! Why are we here? Why are you here, Mage?”

  “Oh, you recognized me?” I was quite certain I didn’t know her before, but there was no point in hiding it anymore anyway. “I’m here because we were investigating people being magically abducted,” I gestured towards Inasyah. And Midnight.

  Lana looked upset. “What do we do?” She asked. “How do we get back? The portal didn’t work!” She was way more upset than before. People weren’t happy, sure, but they seemed fine. “Are we going to die here?”

  At least I could confidently answer the last one. “Of course you’re not going to die. I can fight anything.”

  Silence. Was that good?

  “Anything, huh?” Ramen said dully. “Even the Demon King?”

  I wondered how he heard about that. “If we have to, yeah.”

  He blinked. I wasn’t sure what could have surprised him there.

  “I don’t think that’s something we should have to do, though. We just need to figure out why…” you guys are stuck here, “... why your magic doesn’t want to leave yet.”

  Lana made a face. “I bet we’re cursed.”

  Oh dang. That was a good bet. Maybe I should remember her name.

  “If you are, I can fix it.” I didn’t know Remove Curse, but I could. “It’s about time for that second portal. Let’s get our backup.”

  And so, a minute and a half later, we had a small squad of Extra agents. And Malaliel.

  “Do you sleep at work?” I asked.

  “I don’t sleep,” she said. “Also, do you think we don’t have access to people with teleportation powers?”

  “A fair point,” I said. “Glad to have you. It would have been nice to have you around at the start so we could have known if we needed you to chop the head off a princess.” I turned to the teens. “Teens, this is Malaliel. Angel. Head of Extradimensional affairs.” I think that was the correct name for the part she led. “And Inasyah’s boss.”

  “... Who?” Ramen asked. I couldn’t believe so many people didn’t know the names of public servants. With cool swords. Ayat knew, though.

  “I’m Inasyah,” Inasyah said. Even though it was obvious. Oh, wait. She reached up, then shook her head. The fake hair color and fake everything else faded away as she did so, almost seeming to peel away into nothingness. “I gave a fake name to fool the locals.” Her wings came out. “Do not worry, you were in good hands.”

  “And paws,” Midnight said.

  “Holy crap a talking cat,” Meter’s eyes widened.

  I began to speak, but was cut off. “Midnight isn’t-”

  “He’s not a cat,” Ayat said. “He’s an alien prince. And their people are building an embassy in New Bay.”

  Meter bit his lip, sheepishly looking away. “Sorry.”

  I was getting tired. This world had great mana regeneration, but it wasn’t endless. I could probably manage one more safely? Yeah, that seemed right. “Okay, next step. One more Gate for experimental purposes.” I was certain Malaliel wouldn’t be mad as long as we got these kids home.

  I opened up a Gate to my world. If they were stopped just from getting back ‘home’, we could get some distance first. And they had magic, so it should work. “Put your hands up against here,” I said to the teen heroes.

  If it wasn’t solid, they’d go through. It was the pillow again, but I could tell it was quite firm and not something easily overcome. I didn’t need to make a better portal, but instead I needed to fix something with our little residents. But the experiment was valuable for another reason.

  “See if you can pull up status windows now,” I said. Malaliel looked grumpy. “They already got access to magic here.” I was betting on power exclusivity, but there might be some compatibility.

  Ayat was quick, and not because she was a swashbuckler type. But instead because she paid attention. “What the heck is Fast Hands affinity?” She made a face. “How did we not hear about a second one?”

  “I can answer that,” I said. It was speculation, but I would state it as fact. “Their affinity sensing device sucks. Probably because locals only have one affinity or something.” Surely there had to be other advanced affinities among their population. They wouldn’t put in the effort to yoink people from another world and maybe curse them to stay for fun. Though I was only certain of that because nobody looked like they had been having any fun.