Holy magic tolerance advanced to level 7

I woke up back in the capital, in the ruins of the castle. There was some amount of commotion going on, apparently directed at me. What did my respawn look like here, without the statue? For that matter, what did it look like back in my original respawn cave? There hadn't been any other intelligent people around to watch back then.

When I stood up, commotion turned to screaming as half a dozen people fled the scene. A lot of the rubble had been removed since I'd last been here, so maybe they were workers? Whatever. I was fed up. I just wanted to go home, to the point I was tempted to risk the journey without the pathfinder skill.

I leapt into the sky, not caring if anyone saw me. The encampment of tents had been replaced by a group of stone structures, but it would probably still be where the important people gathered. I dropped in from above and stormed toward the most important looking building. A couple of guards standing in front of it heroically drew their swords and prepared to commit suicide by dragon breath.

"Is Ortho in there? Or Kevin? Either will do."

"Aren't you the hero?" asked one. "Didn't you head for the front?"

"Yes and yes, but they didn't believe Ortho's letter and attacked me."

"Let her in," came Ortho's voice from inside, causing the guards to stand aside and delay their suicide to another day.

I marched into the structure, which contained Ortho, Craig, and a few other military-looking men poring over maps.

"How are you here?" asked a very tense Ortho.

"Your bloody army at Muigal Pass attacked me the moment they saw me, without bothering to read your letter. When I surrendered, they knocked me out and I woke up goodness knows how much later attached to some sort of mana draining machine. They'd obviously read your letter by that point, given that they used my name, but apparently they decided I'd make a better battery than combatant. I had to blast my way out, so sorry, but a chunk of your garrison are dead or cursed. And now I want to go home. While I was willing to help you, that was contingent on you idiots accepting my help."

The others in the room kicked up a fuss, but were silenced by a glare from Ortho, who moved on to stare at me for some time before sighing.

"Well?" I asked.

"I suspect that declining you right now will result in you rampaging again, but please understand, you destroyed the ritual chamber. Until a new one is constructed, we lack the ability to return you home."

Proficient empath advanced to level 13

The battle-hardened noble was tough to read even with proficient empath, but he didn't seem to be lying.

"And I suppose you're going to tell me that if I don't help you, you aren't going to survive long enough to build it?"

"Exactly."

Bah. Should I risk interdimensional travel without pathfinder? I waved a hand through the air, cutting open a door to the Void, but as expected I could see nothing through it but eye-sucking darkness. If I jumped in there... The chances of finding any new world, let alone Earth, seemed slim. I regretted my choice to take fixed as my class skill. I could go looking for new shrines, but I had no idea where to start, and would likely end up getting attacked by both sides in the process.

I turned back to Ortho, only to find the group of commanders looking horrified, pressing themselves against the walls to get as far away from me as possible. A couple of them had small streams of blood running from their noses. Ah, right. Void stuff. I hurriedly sealed the crack I'd made.

"Sorry. Just testing if I could travel back on my own. It's an option, but a very risky one, so you'd better make damn sure that helping you is lower risk."

Ortho sighed, showing obvious relief, and fortunately not having been driven insane by my experiment. Wait... I'd assumed his earlier tenseness came from the war, but then why would he relax when I agreed to continue helping? And he'd opened with 'how are you here', rather than 'why'.

"You knew!" I accused. "How?"

His relief vanished as quickly as a low-ranking soldier standing in my flame breath.

"We use two-way communications devices for communicating with the battlefront. Unfortunately, you destroyed our halves of the pairs when you demolished the castle. We had to send new devices out by horse. The replacement device arrived in Muigal Pass a couple of hours ago. I'd already heard of your... unfortunate experience."

"Unfortunate?"

I fought down the urge to melt the entire camp, somewhat concerned I was starting to develop anger management issues. Then again, with this guy referring to my being restrained, unable to escape even by trigger respawn or suicide, as 'unfortunate', I felt a bit of anger was justified. And if he'd informed them, why the heck hadn't they freed me? Were they enjoying the boost to their barrier too much to want to risk sending me into demon territory? Or had I managed to escape with the worst timing ever? Given the encounters I'd had so far on this adventure, along with my own luck, I could believe either. Perhaps it was both simultaneously.

I suppose, thanks to my immortality, my priorities were rather skewed. I would have been far happier had they killed me once I'd triggered the respawn point, and I wouldn't even have minded being captured if they hadn't prevented me using trigger respawn. Most normal people would have preferred not being killed.

Well, I'd make another attempt at getting into demon territory, but I would fly over the wall rather than go anywhere near the fortress. The grand barrier wouldn't affect me, and having been on the receiving end of their attacks a few times now, their judgement spell was the only thing that had managed to do me significant damage. Despite Ortho's opinions, I didn't see how they intended to stop me if I just flew at full speed at high altitude and ignored everyone.

Of course, I could be wrong, but that would just mean one more respawn. And this time, if discern danger fired and warned me of an imminent attack, I'd hit trigger respawn even if it looked like I was about to die. And if I happened to chance across a damaged shrine and earned myself a new level at any point... I no longer had any attachments left in this world. Perhaps I'd just leave.

I turned around to storm out, only to elicit a panicked, "Wait," from Ortho.

Did I have to? I suppose I should. This could turn out to be like the fox-kin all over again, if I made assumptions. What if those people coming to the door when I'd escaped were there to release me? They certainly weren't talking like it, and one had started blasting me without so much as a word, but one of the mages had been shouting to stop.

Everyone else I'd bumped into had been hostile, though.

"What?"

"What are your plans this time?"

"To make my way to demon territory while having nothing at all to do with you humans. I'll fly high and fast and not care if I'm seen."

"You'll be blasted out of the sky."

"By what? The only magic I've seen so far that can seriously hurt me is judgement, and that's far too slow."

"We rely on more than just magic. Although... if you're fast enough to get back here in the two hours since I spoke to the garrison, perhaps you would just outrun everything. Fine. I still advise you to go through Muigal Pass now that I can communicate with them directly, but at this point I'll accept whatever you're willing to do."

There was a bit of misunderstanding there, and I doubted I could clear the distance in two hours even at top speed, but I couldn't be bothered to correct him. I left the building and dressed in my leather armour, hoping that my anti-perception stealth skill still applied in mid-air. I shot into the sky, reaching high enough that I wouldn't be visible to unaided eyes on the ground, then aimed west, using body reinforcement to accelerate.

The landscape rolled past beneath me, and while I was too far up to see people, I could pick out farmland, forests, towns and villages. A wide river meandered through lush grassland, feeding into a lake on which I could see boats. There was no sign anywhere of them being in the last days of a losing war, although I wasn't sure what I would see. It wasn't as if they'd burn their own homes down before the demon armies arrived to do it for them.

And then, suddenly, discern danger blared its warning. I rolled to the side as an enormous ballista bolt shot through my previous flight path. An enormous enchanted bolt; I felt the mana pouring off it as it passed.

Tracing back its path, it had been fired from a walled city some distance away, too far for me to make out individual buildings. How had they seen me from that range, and how the hell had the bolt reached? Was that what the enchantment was for? But that must have been what Ortho meant by not relying on magic. I curved to take more distance from the city, and flew on a bit longer unmolested.

As I approached the border, I swung wide, leaving the land-bridge entirely and flying far out to sea, but to my amazement the wall continued, slicing the sea in half. Did it encircle the entire kingdom? How did they build it? How did they man it? It certainly was manned, because, while I was able to get fairly close before triggering a reaction, the reaction still came. First blasts of magic, then a ballista bolt, then perceive presence picked up people flying toward me. They weren't as fast as me, though, and a small change of direction was enough to avoid their interception.

They launched more magic from behind, but the wide area attacks were weak enough for me to ignore, and the more focused attacks evadable. Another couple of bolts came at me, but they didn't manage to score any hits before I'd crossed into demon territory and accelerated away.

Perhaps their delayed reaction was because they were more focused on looking outwards than inwards, but it suited me fine; I'd made it without taking any damage. I swung back toward land, looking down below, and then had to check my minimap to ensure I really was on the right side of the wall. Nothing had changed. I could see fields, forests and towns. The town architecture was different, with wild differences from one settlement to the next, but the forests were the correct shade of green and the crops looked the same.

Well, I'd long since decided that I wasn't just going to barge in and murder anyone. I needed to verify Ortho's story before committing to picking a side. I wasn't going to fight them if Ortho had been lying about who started the war, even if that meant never getting home. I didn't particularly want to fight them even if he was telling the truth, because he'd outright admitted that they were being controlled.

I picked a town that looked like it had human sized and shaped structures, and dropped down outside it. It had a wall around it, with humanoids manning it. A few large gates pointed in different directions, again well guarded, and as I approached the closest it was obvious the guards had seen me, but despite being stared at, no-one attacked. I had to say, I was liking these people better than the humans already. Saying that, there was still plenty of time. I was still wearing my leather armour, so no-one had had a good look at me yet.

There was actually a short queue to get into the town, with guards checking wagons as they entered one by one. One was full of large barrels, and another crates. A third was empty. I couldn't make out the drivers from behind the wagons, and there weren't any in view coming up behind me, but the horses looked normal too. So far, I hadn't seen any sign that anything demonic was going on.

Now that I was closer, I could make out more details of the guards. They were wearing plate armour, which concealed most of their features, but they had prominent ears on display, sticking out from their helmets, as well as wide, bushy tails behind them. Fox-kin! What were the chances that the very first town I visited belonged to the fox-kin?

I reached the front of the queue, and a guard walked up to me.

"Sorry for the delay; you happened to turn up just after a caravan. Anything to declare?" he asked.

"No?" I tried, hoping it would work. At least that explained why there were a bunch of carts in front of me but no-one behind me.

"Okay, you can enter."

Huh? Seriously? I really should just thank my luck and walk in, but I really couldn't help picking at this scab. "You're just going to take my word for it? And not ask for ID or something?"

The guard's face scrunched up in confusion. "Why would I do that? You obviously aren't human."

Actually, it was hard to notice through the helmet, but now that I looked at that face more closely...

"Si'janrii?!"

The confusion on the face only grew, but he glanced behind me to check there was still no-one else in the queue. "Do I know you?"

It really was him. The fox-kin that had tried to sell and then rape me, was now here being a perfect gentleman. What the heck was up with this world?!