Mage Among Superheroes

Chapter 463 - 463

If one is going to try to do something subtly, it must be done correctly the first time. That was why I started with Midnight.

"Does this Sending feel extra secure?" I asked.

He shook his head. "I really don't know how to tell."

"Good point," I said. "We'd really need to know what methods people might use to intercept it."

The only real indications we had that it was possible involved people rejecting Sendings altogether. With my current proficiency in spatial magic, I was fairly confident I could forcibly contact Master Uvithar… but that wouldn't be helpful. Even if there weren't other negative consequences, I'd rather not have him be unhappy about me contacting him. And even though I was numerically very good, I still had to try. Using the default form of a spell wouldn't be correct no matter how powerful it was.

It was kind of silly to try to practice Sending with Midnight anyway. We had a Familiar Bond, so it was probably easier for us to contact each other. Instead, we had a number of people we could contact that were harder to reach and might have ideas.

I went through the list. Sir Kalman might know something, or at least he might have some allies who would know. The many-colored would have interesting ideas if nothing else, so I contacted Riala and Yalith. The King was probably too busy to be interrupted at random moments of the day, and Riala could ask him anything necessary at a proper time. I also included Comhghall, because while he might not have any knowledge of modern methods, he was likely to know something. Spellshot might know something… but Ethus wasn't likely to share any of their secrets, so it was better not to ask.

I prepared a similar set of questions for everyone, basically asking if they knew of ways to intercept Sending and how one might protect against that. To allow for greater clarity, I enhanced the spell in a way I had done previously, allowing a short chain of responses instead of simply a single back and forth. I could have cast the spell more times, but it was easier to keep track of if it was automatic.

I also asked people from the Power Brigade. Usually, Great Girl was pretty helpful about magic. Unfortunately, she was quite busy these days so I was only able to catch her as she was passing by.

"Spying on Sending?" she asked. "That's… not supposed to work. But maybe if you had flexible divination magic, that might be your chance? Or something like the Scrying anchors intercepting everything that enters an area."

She had a good point there. The question was, would Wrickle be in charge of such things? She was the one who was most likely to have the answers, but it was kind of pointless to ask her about secret contact if I might fail to keep that secret.

"I'll try to make something like that," I said. "Something enchanted to cover an area is certainly more logical than trying to toss out divination magic in the moment. Good luck with whatever you're rushing off to."

"Thanks," Great Girl said. "... You don't happen to have any actual luck spells, do you?"

I shook my head. "That's not really in my wheelhouse. Or my category of magic, for the most part. Do you actually need luck, though?" I looked her up and down. "You look more like you could use a break."

"Do you have anti-fatigue magic?"

"That's more in the field of divine magic," I said. "But I can probably help settle your brain with Enhance Mind."

"Can you?" she asked, delighted.

I nodded confidently. "I can. Don't expect the effects to be huge." I gathered mana for the spell, fiddling around with its parameters. Mostly, I wanted it to last a long time. Ten minutes or so wasn't going to be good enough. Helping her organize her thoughts should be possible. And the rest? Well, the placebo effect should take care of that. I let the spell settle. "Here you go. You should be feeling something now."

"... I am, actually. Thanks. I wasn't really ready for this sudden rise in popularity." Great Girl sighed. "And of course, the pushback that comes with it. I kind of wish I could arrest random fans of Dark Star, but unless we catch them doing something criminal we can't really tie them into anything…"

"Sounds like a pain," I said. "Try to imagine them sobbing into their pillow about how their favorite villain idol finally suffered the consequences of her hubris."

I wasn't going to mention that she might be able to get free again. It would be much more difficult with both Darkstargirl and Gloom locked up. The whole thing with Spot was going to be resolved in… wait, had that already happened? Probably good to check just to make sure. I also had a sudden thought of another thing that needed to be done.

"Oh, I should be gone already," Great Girl said. "See ya later!"

I waved back. "Bye. Remember you don't need luck."

"And to smell their tears!" Great Girl said.

I didn't quite say that… but she might actually be able to smell if someone had been crying. Huh.

-----

"Yeah, Spot was already executed," Midnight said. "I told you when it was going to happen."

I shrugged. "I lost track of time. I was experimenting with magic." Spatial Magic didn't just master itself. "What did you do with the body?" I asked.

"...why?" Midnight made a face. "If the Resistance wants it, we can send them a photo or a scan, but we're not letting them display it or something."

"Oh, well," I said. "I was just thinking that I would really prefer to avoid having Spot come back as a ghost."

Midnight put his head in his paws. "That's an option? I hate that."

"It's pretty unlikely. Handface hasn't been haunting me," I said. "But he wasn't magic. Or, well, not the right sort of magic. Clerics work with undead."

Midnight fidgeted, his emotions swirling. "They get rid of them, right?"

"Reasonable ones? Yeah. But they're also very good at making them. The sort of clerics who use death spells are more of the latter type."

"Where do you need to bring the body?" Midnight asked.

"I was going to talk to Sir Kalman. They should be able to consecrate it. Make sure nothing has already happened."

Midnight sighed. "Yeah. Alright. We'll go pick it up."

We were already pretty good at interdimensional travel before achieving Master Spatial Magic. Now it was… concerningly easy. I wondered why Wrickle would hang out in Granbold when she could go somewhere more fun.

-----

Sir Kalman could do what we wanted, but he needed rare oils that came from far off lands. But he told me about that ahead of time so I just did a little bit of hopping around on Earth. Teleport was about half as expensive as it used to be. I probably broke some laws along the way, but it was faster than getting it shipped to New Bay. Same day shipping wasn't available for everything unless I got someone else to teleport things for me. Or I could just grab some local currency and make use of Translate to grab what I needed.

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Sir Kalman looked over what I brought. "Yes, this should all be correct. And of sufficient quality. We don't really need this much, though," he pointed out.

"I wasn't sure if it would all be good enough," I said. "So what do we need to do?"

"First," Sir Kalman looked around. "We need the body."

Midnight fidgeted. "I really don't like having this in here." Then he produced Spot's corpse- from Storage. How else would he carry things?

Spot looked awful. Actually, I was pretty sure most of that damage came from me during our battle- he might even have been patched up to look better, either by Rodentia or the Celmothians. However he had actually died didn't seem to have caused much damage to his body, and Midnight swore it had been minimally painful. Not that I cared with how much pain he'd caused Zeb, but it was probably morally proper.

"Alright," Sir Kalman said. "If you were only concerned about this body being turned, it would be a simple process. But if you want his spirit to be bound to the afterlife, it's a bit more involved."

"No ghost clerics," I declared.

"Then we go to the ritual circle."

For some reason, I thought the ritual would be spooky. Instead, we ended up in the middle of a church at local noon. Sunlight streamed in through the windows. I didn't fully understand what Sir Kalman and the others were doing, though I did notice the chanting. It was mostly prayers to various gods, though, and not functional like the isekai world's chants. Then again, I wasn't a divine caster so perhaps prayers were functional. Either way, the words themselves weren't magical.

The whole ceremony was basically enchanting Spot's body- and also reaching out to do the same to his soul. No coming back as a zombie or ghoul or vengeful ghost.

That was the plan, anyway, but…

"His soul isn't accessible," Sir Kalman finally declared.

Midnight glared at me. "This is your fault for bringing it up!" Midnight said. "Now we're going to have to deal with a ghost cleric."

"Eh," I shrugged. "His soul is probably just in a different universe. Can you replicate something like that on Celmoth?" I asked.

Midnight rolled his eyes. "I'll start taking scans."

"Great." I turned to Sir Kalman. "Are you willing to come on a trip?"

He stroked his beard. "I can be gone for a few days, I suppose."

"Eh, it doesn't have to take that long," I said. "Basically just as long as the ceremony. Maybe some time to inspect their work on the circle and stuff."

"Relevantly…" Midnight said, "How important is the church around it?"

"The ritual requires access to sunlight," Sir Kalman said. "Or at least, it makes it far easier."

Midnight nodded. "Can you do it outside? In a plaza?"

"Sure thing," Sir Kalman said. "Though people don't generally like to be reminded of death."

Midnight made a face. "The tabloids are going to think I'm insane."

I pondered. "We can probably figure out a way to send a ghost after them."

"Please don't."

"We can send a fake ghost after them," I suggested.

"That's a waste of points."

"... We can make ghostly whispers in their ears," I said.

Midnight took a while to respond. "I'll consider it. If people are particularly bad."

-----

"Got it," Sir Kalman said, as he and two helpers he had brought alone completed their task. "Spot's spirit is now bound to the afterlife, whatever that looks like here."

I nodded. "Good question. I haven't tried to access anything like that. Probably people would make a big fuss over it." I tilted my head. "Huh, I'll probably end up there eventually. I'm naturalized to this universe now."

Personally, I liked a bit of mystery… but I could understand the people that wanted certainty. Though even back in Graotan, I wasn't exactly sure where I would end up. How devout did one have to be to get into one of the heavens? How terrible to end up in one of the hells? Maybe you could just directly contact a deity and ask, but I heard that could be bad for your brain.

Anyway, Sir Kalman had helped settle some worries. "Thank you so much, Sir Kalman. You have resolved some potential worries."

It was better to simply be done with a certain foe. Though I doubted that I had run into the last trouble from Bunvorixians, at least most of them would be further behind in their training if they had powers at all.

I had caused Midnight some more worries, but it was all resolved quickly. Now we could go back to other things.

-----

I had gotten pretty decent at enchantment. Practice would do that. I was far from an expert, but I could resolve many of the issues with more mana, as long as I didn't care about the longevity of a particular project.

Testing how Sending could be interfered with, the easiest result was to capture the Sending and disperse it. It felt like when it failed to be returned- like an interplanar failure. That was good to know. Relevantly, that method didn't end up with the actual contents of the message anywhere. Maybe I could enchant a recording device to replicate the message, but the transition from mental message to digital was… outside my realm of expertise.

So the next step was to have someone manning the 'station' that should receive the Sending. It took a few attempts, but it worked. The result? They became the new target and could respond- but at least with my methods it wasn't something someone could use deceptively. Sending carried the voice of the people involved, so it was obvious when you got a response from the wrong target.

Most likely you could use an illusion spell to sound like the intended recipient- if you know who it was and what they sounded like- but the whole point was to not get caught. I did manage one final version that was the most optimal for spying. It probably wouldn't have worked with anything below Advanced Divination Magic, but infusing a large chunk of mana into the device we'd put together- basically a diamond encrusted radio dish- we finally managed to make it only overhear the exchange.

The only real thing I could detect was a slight loss of audible clarity, and even then I had to be listening for it.

I consulted Midnight on our results. "How large of an area could someone realistically cover with these?" I asked.

"As large as they wanted," Midnight said. "Or rather, as large of an area as they have access to. I don't know if people would use something quite like this in your world, but a network of these could cover an arbitrary area, most likely."

"How troublesome," I said. "Now to see if we can bypass it."

The answer was an easy yes. It probably helped that we had more upgrades in spatial magic than divination magic. It was also true that we knew what sort of defenses we had created and thus could bypass those specifically. Even so, I could bypass any or all types at once without needing to know which ones were active… and that was without using excessive amounts of mana. I could push the spell beyond where it was supposed to go, and even equally inflating the enchantments didn't let them keep up.

I was pleased with the results. Enough to confidently send a message to Wrickle.

I thought I'd done pretty well, but when her response came back she'd modified the spell.

"Your version is way too slow, kid. Meet me on Mount Agony."

The response came about as fast as I would have expected the message to arrive. No time for a return trip. How had she managed that? "Isn't that an evil volcano? If you come to Earth we can chat in a nice cafe."

"Can't," Wrickle responded. I could hear her creaky voice quite clearly, and now I was certain the time lag had dropped massively. "Meet me there in seventy hours."

That seemed to be the end of our available back and forth. It should have had more responses chained, but her modifications had made the time lag shorter. Well, less opportunities for someone to actively listen in, I supposed.

"Hey Midnight," I asked. "Want to go to a volcano?"

"No," Midnight said. "But I'm willing to do so."

I nodded. "I would like to have backup. Let's see about getting gear."

I wondered where on the volcano we were supposed to meet. Just at the peak? Well, I could probably divine her location if we got close.

There was one problem, though. I hadn't been to Mount Agony before. I wasn't even sure what it looked like. That meant we had to start moving out well before the time to meet. At least we would be able to Teleport much more efficiently, though. If we used Fly, we could cover at least a hundred miles at once without risking ending up somewhere bad. It would be like traveling to Ethus… but with fewer other people around.

But the destination was somewhere hot and dangerous, so it wouldn't be that different.