Midnight, with his greater sense of responsibility about things, reacted to the news of Antiele learning things with greater concern than I would have. “We need to do something about this. If there are people who don’t want knowledge like this to spread… people could be in danger.”

“Ugh, do we have to?” I sighed. “I mean, how often is this going to come up?”

“All the time!” Midnight said. “It happens just from people doing things, after all.”

I looked to Sir Kalman. “This is your job.”

“Of course I will take on the responsibility of keeping safe the people of Granbold,” he stood up ‘tall’ and straight.

“Great, now that we have that settled…”

“Oh come on,” Midnight said. “He can’t do everything alone!”

“That’s what he’s got subordinates for,” I pointed out.

“Umm…” Antiele, the individual at the center of this whole issue, took her opportunity to speak up. “Can someone explain what is happening?”

Easy. I began listing things off on my fingers. “Going through portals to another plane unlocks growth functionality aside from points. It’s still limited by time and effort. It seems to be a secret for some reason so presumably there’s a shadowy cabal suppressing the information and they’ll probably try to kill anyone they find out about.”

“There are a lot of presumptions there,” Sir Kalman pointed out. “What if people simply don’t know?”

“Then Master Uvithar would have been surprised rather than worried, and he wouldn’t have suddenly gone missing. Hopefully into hiding and not disintegrated or something. It’s not like people don’t travel between planes, you know? A normal level 35 mage could do it if they wanted to, and a level 39 could learn Gate with literally no points saved up from a prior level.”

“Perhaps you overestimate the standard level of mages,” Sir Kalman said.

“Nah. It might take more casual people until they’re much older to reach that level range, but who wouldn’t want to travel to other planes as soon as possible?”

“Most normal people,” Sir Kalman said.

“Oh yeah? Show me one person.” Two hands and a paw went up. “Well that’s hardly fair,” I crossed my arms. “Okay, let’s say it’s half of mages. You’d still expect some person in the latter half of their lifespan to want to go visit Elysium or somewhere safe and pretty.”

“Most people don’t make it past a couple hundred,” Sir Kalman said.

“Indeed,” Antiele nodded. “It is a long and slow road to higher levels.”

“... I meant people who were like fifty,” I replied. “Do people really level up that slowly?’

“It’s a slow road,” Sir Kalman nodded. “I am past seventy but barely level 45.”

“You don’t count,” I pointed at him. “This world is intentionally engineered to ruin our experience progression.”

Antiele tilted her head. “What do you mean?”

“We both have Curse of the Barbarian and everyone says there’s ‘no wars to train for’ and ‘no monsters in the wilderness’ and ‘you shouldn’t just fight everyone you see’. And having seen the monsters portaling into New Bay, at least that second one is garbage. The third one too because it’s good experience even for people without the Curse.”

“Oh, I see,” she nodded. “I never intended to have a life involving combat, so I hadn’t really considered any of that. But I can say level progression is quite slow for long lived races.”

That seemed like a huge disadvantage. How did they not get wiped out? Well, dwarves like Sir Kalman were more in a middling range so their growth wouldn’t be that slow.

Sir Kalman was pondering furiously. “Turlough. You truly believe the world is made so that those with Aspect of the Barbarian do not grow quickly?”

Did I? “It makes more sense, if you ever run into ancient orcs.”

“I will admit to not having met any, and the orcs I have heard about tend to be rather violent.”

“They are,” I said. “Or at least… the ones the supervillain Doctor Doomsday recruits are. My psychiatrist keeps telling me to not just assume that of all of them.”

“What’s a psychiatrist ?” Antiele asked.

I shared a look with Midnight. “It seems so obvious I forgot they don’t have that here. They’re um… head doctors? For when your thoughts don’t work right.”

“So for crazy people…?” Antiele asked.

“Only if everyone is crazy,” I replied. “Hey, Kalman, you need to add a psychiatrist to the negotiations list. I’d bet that most of the people who got abducted are at least a little traumatized.”

Sir Kalman nodded. “An unfortunate burden. But with time, they might recover.”

“Yeah. Or help,” I said. “I don’t know about you but I’m rather more attached to what’s in my head than my arms and legs, but I still go to a doctor when I break a limb. And all these civilians weren’t prepared for the stress involved so they’ll be way worse off than you. And how Antiele looks.”

“I’m fine,” Antiele protested. “But determined to fight back.”

“I like that part,” I said. “But all my talking with my fellows from the Power Brigade tells me that normal people don’t handle life and death situations well.”

Midnight nodded, “I’d prefer to stay out of them entirely, if it were a simple option. But there are things to be done, and people to be saved.”

“You two are oddly concerned about people for mercenaries…” Sir Kalman looked at me.

I just shrugged. “What? If I’m going to be fighting people anyway, might as well do it for a purpose. And get paid. Seems like the best option.”

“Doesn’t this other world have heroes?” Sir Kalman asked. “Would that not be a better option?”

“Nah. Heroes just get their faces plastered all over billboards. I don’t think half of them do more than that. Well, there are probably some legitimately good ones, but for every one of them you have a chance to get Stargirl.”

“... Who?” Sir Kalman tilted his head. “Sorry, you’ve only barely introduced me to this other world.”

“Nobody important,” Midnight said. “Just someone posing as a hero while primed to do a heel turn into villainy at the first opportunity. A personal rival of a friend.”

Sir Kalman grimaced. “A fallen hero. It is a shame, that such a thing would happen to this Stargirl.”

“She’s Darkstargirl now,” I replied. Midnight just reflected amusement.

“So,” Antiele attempted to get us back on track. “I might be in danger, not just from this other world but our own. And the rest of those involved as well…?”

“Maybe,” I said.

“Then I must do my best to be strong. And the others as well. Sir Kalman, would you introduce me to them?”

“Of course,” he said. “Perhaps we were too hasty in sending them home.”

“Just one thing,” I said. “Do you uh… speak common?”

“... some,” Antiele grimaced. “Do people not speak elven regularly here?”

“Sir Kalman is an exception,” I pointed to him, then Midnight and I. “And we’re using magic. Does your class allow you to learn languages quickly?”

“She’ll need a teacher for such things,” Sir Kalman said. “Perhaps it would be best if you-”

“Oh wow look at the time. We should be Gating back to Yew-Kay any moment now. Also she gets along with you better. And I’m an orc.”

“Dwarves aren’t much better known for getting along with elves,” Sir Kalman mumbled.

-----

Ten minutes later, and we were back in Yew-Kay.

Midnight’s tail flicked back and forth. “So, were we supposed to bring her…?”

“Would it be better for me to stay behind?” Antiele said. “Where I can speak to no one and people might be looking to kill me.”

“You were going to be brought home as soon as we could arrange it…” Sir Kalman said. “And I try to diversify the languages my subordinates speak.”

“But also,” I shrugged. “We’re here now. And it’ll probably be fine.”

We had come to the Extra branch closest to Petalton, though it wasn’t directly in the town. Crown Forces had an official presence, but Extra tended towards larger cities. So it was a bit of a drive back to our temporary base. To save on resources, Zakaria was coming along with us on the same trip. He’d had paperwork to do all day regardless.

“I can’t help but notice you brought Antiele back with you,” he said.

I made the executive decision to cast Translation on her to save on headaches. “Yeah, that’s right. She’s a political refugee now.”

“...What happened?” Zakaria asked

“Whatever it’s called when people are afraid of potential want to quash those that might be a threat to them some way.”

“Related to powers specifically? I hadn’t heard of power-based persecution in your world. Is that an issue?”

“Yeah, probably,” I said.

Zakaria pinched the bridge of his nose. “I suppose we can offer temporary refugee status until we get things worked out,” he said. “But it would really be better if people were returned to their homes.”

“She’s also easier to reach for witness statements,” I added.

“At least some people will be happy about that,” the man shrugged.

When we arrived back at the base, Calculator was waiting, probably with some specific intent. Instead, he looked at Antiele, and then back at me. “Why?”

I felt like I was going to have to give this explanation a lot. So I repeated the salient points. Calculator seemed intrigued, annoyed, and resigned at the prospect of a conspiracy in my world. “Also she might be able to provide training benefits to others.”

“We need to test that,” he said.

“How?” I asked. “It’s not like we have a bunch of exactly identical people for me to fight for the first time.” I looked around, but didn’t see Squad Ten. “Also I’m pretty sure Squad Ten would only count once.”

“I can at least perform my own calculations on training efficiency,” he said. “And perhaps that same ally of ours might be useful, depending on how his powers work. Either way, I would be interested in verifying how much… especially given how useful your own powers are.”

Sir Kalman folded his arms. “Next I imagine you’ll be trying to recruit me.”

“Interested?” Calculator grinned.

“Sorry, but I have my own attachments. And this is still a strange place.”

-----

While it would be nice if we could spend a few weeks in training to see what Antiele could learn and fit her into our combat strategy, we didn’t have the luxury of time. So while we was able to train alongside us, we barely had more than a couple days to prepare for the next move. During that time Midnight and I were responsible for keeping in contact with Harold back in the other world, with Sir Kalman providing his lieutenant orders to keep watch on the safety of those who had come back. Just in case there was some shadowy cabal who would come after them for just having been to another world. Sir Kalman himself was another case that would have to be dealt with after all of our current stuff.

Along with that and some more Scrying- using standard quality mirrors instead of my far superior ‘orb’- and I had little mana for other training. But between Midnight and I we scrounged up enough to get into a few tussles and slowly edge higher in level. Midnight was 20, almost 21, and I wasn’t quite halfway to 33. Getting experience from Midnight’s efforts and the quick rate of growth from Curse of the Barbarian would keep me ahead of him for a long time- unless we spent years without combat of any sort.

Sir Kalman didn’t suddenly develop any new abilities- not beyond Guard Breaker- but he was as ready as any of us to make the next move. This time, it involved an actual secret underground lair and hopefully the largest remaining portion of the Grey Gunners and their allies’ power.

We’d captured a number of influential people who were trying their best to fight back against the myriad of supervillainy charges the more political members were levying against them. The hope was to get the last of them, or more evidence. Evidence which included most of the remaining captives from my former world. After that, the job would be done… as far as my involvement in this world went, at least. I would still have to straighten things out with Sir Kalman and the other side, and we’d have to figure out what we were going to do about all these people who went through portals. Why couldn’t other supervillains just be simple and straightforward like Rodentia?