Extra was really upset with me. I could tell because my debt to them wasn’t done with the whole Raglubithex thing. Well, I supposed giving me too much leeway would be bad for their reputation. Just one single mission with danger and a bunch of easy ones didn’t mean much. They had one more big thing for me, apparently.

  An investigation project that probably didn’t involve a mental showdown with an extradimensional entity. Which was good because my brain needed a break. No signs pointed towards Raglubithex being malignant… but dangerous? Certainly. That was where I got all that experience. Not a full level or anything, but certainly equivalent to a very serious battle.

  As for the investigation, I’d been given some basic information. A couple dozen people had disappeared in similarly suspicious circumstances. The reason Extra was involved and the job wasn’t just tossed to heroes was that there were lingering traces of extradimensional intrusion.

  “Do you think something is eating people?” I asked Malaliel.

  She made a face. “I certainly hope not. If that is the case, however, even more reason to stop it. But things appear a bit too clean for that result. No real signs of struggle either. All we can clearly say is that people are being abducted. Nobody that was at all associated with supernatural incidents before their disappearances- as a group.”

  She gave me the report that Extra had collected, which would save me from a lot of talking to people. Probably for the best, since regular citizens got weirded out or confused when I asked them things. I didn’t see much helpful, except the pictures of the people themselves. Other than that, I could only pick out a vague district where things seemed to be happening. Not a small neighborhood, either, but the various incidents had happened in a pretty widespread area. No signs of a linear pattern and not enough data to determine a confined zone, but at least suggestive of a limited range.

  “I’ll let you know what I find,” I commented, gesturing with the stack of papers. They could have been given to me in other ways, but paper copies were always useful.

  Later that day, I was in front of my Scrying orb. Vilhelmiina had made it for me, so it was mine. However, the Power Brigade sheltered it and they were allowed to have other people use it. I didn’t know if anyone besides Bolster did, but it was possible someone needed something like this. Since this was a personal project, official business would take priority- but Bolster couldn’t even spend an hour using it each day.

  Midnight wasn’t working today, so it was just me.

  First was some guy named K?re. I wondered if I needed to know how to pronounce the name for it to count. Technically, the picture was better than just a name but I was willing to bet both was more optimal for finding some guy who had been extradimensionally abducted. So I had to look it up. Translation would have let me say it, but that wasn’t as useful as hearing someone else say it.

  The funny a was a long o sound. I’m sure they had a perfectly good reason to write it like that in whatever language they spoke. Or not, because sometimes languages just did stuff wrong.

  “Let’s see if you’re alive,” I commented to nobody except the half dozen cameras in the room.

  Scrying didn’t easily resolve into an image of him. Instead, the swirling mists were sluggish. Rather than being disappointing, it just meant I had to put in more than casual effort. After a minute or two, I finally wriggled my way across the unfamiliar distance to reach this guy.

  Oh. Sucks to be him. This blond fellow was covered in wounds and appeared to be in some sort of dungeon, chained up. Well, that certainly fit the abduction theory. I made sure to get as many angles as possible for future observation, if necessary, but I couldn’t find anything distinctive enough to provide further info. Nobody was in an adjacent cell. The sort of dungeon it was did have some implications, but I was planning further investigation before I made some sort of final judgment.

  Next on the list… Summanus. While that one guy probably had a common name in his culture, I was pretty sure Summanus wasn’t the sort of name modern people used. Anyway, it was slightly faster to resolve him. Familiarity with the world, or some sort of minor preventions in the first location?

  He was standing in some sort of archery range, lobbing a spear at a target. I had to admit he looked significantly less abducted, but also far less like an Earthling. Even if he was definitely human. His spear magically returned to him. Type F was looking more likely. I wasn’t certain that they were in the same world yet, but one more should get me familiar enough to give a better estimate.

  The third man was the fastest. Certainly, familiarity was one of the factors. He appeared to be in quite a pickle. There he was, looking rather haggard and singing at a bunch of monsters. He probably wasn’t crazy- I couldn’t feel any magic through the Scrying, but there were some subtle visual indications… and the people fighting around him weren’t yelling at him.

  The monsters they were fighting weren’t entirely familiar, but they weren’t that unrecognizable either. They were some sort of magical abominations, mish-mashes of various animals and beasts. Teeth, claws, stingers. Scale and fur.

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  They didn’t seem like they were going to win. I was fairly certain I couldn’t do anything about it, but I tried anyway. A simple Haste spell, but I gave it a significant amount of mana to try to give it some distance. The mana left me, but I was certain it never reached the man.

  Disappointingly, I had confirmed that I couldn’t yet cast spells through Scrying connections. I wasn’t going to say never. Wrickle’s book had an oblique reference to something like that, but it would likely require Master Spatial Magic. Though maybe a combination of Master Divination and Advanced Spatial Magic would do? Not that I had that either, and I was making far more progress with space magic.

  The group fighting the monsters tried to retreat. It didn’t look like they were going to make it, but Scrying faded and I wasn’t motivated to continue watching.

  The third Scrying had revealed enough to me. The world was the same as the other two, most likely. Just by feeling, if nothing else. For something like that, feel was actually a pretty good metric.

  Upon reviewing the footage, I was also able to determine that three of those fighting around him were other missing persons. I figured this should be enough for the purpose of Extra, and began to compile the information to put together.

  It would be better if I could determine how these people were abducted, though. It didn’t seem likely they had transported themselves. They were far too weak for that, what with the one captured guy and the other ones losing against moderately strong monsters.

  Midnight was bored. I called him up and asked him if he wanted to wander around the city looking at the remains of magical events. He did.

  -----

  I started with the oldest. I could have reviewed the locations in person before Scrying, but Extra had already examined them. Some of their specialists would be better than I was at sensing such things, though it was always valuable to have different perspectives.

  “... feel anything?” I asked Midnight.

  “Nothing,” he shook his head.

  I sighed. “Not even with your fancy alien stuff?”

  “It’s been over a week, right?” Midnight said. “Except for familiar things, that’s pretty far outside of generalized equipment. Maybe if we got a specific scanner…?”

  “Not necessary,” I said. “This is the oldest one anyway. We’ll just head to the rest.”

  Today was supposed to be my day off, so leisurely walking around the city was a reasonable thing to do. As long as I got to stuff today, the trail wouldn’t really grow any colder than it already was.

  The path we took was meandering. It didn’t really mean anything, just going from point to point in order. But… after two more locations that felt like nothing, the fourth had a bit of lingering… something.

  “What spell is that like?” I asked Midnight. It was on the tip of my tongue… maybe. It wasn’t precisely like any spell we had. “Actually, do you sense mana?” I could have been reading into things because I was thinking about a type F world.

  “I don’t quite recognize it,” Midnight admitted. “But it’s definitely magic. And also vaguely like teleportation. Not Gate.”

  “Right.”

  Fifth location. This was the last one. The feeling was stronger, but I still couldn’t place it. “Do we go down the list?” I asked. “Storage?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Summon Minor Elemental?”

  “Of course n-” Midnight didn’t finish.

  I was thinking the same as him. There weren’t any elemental traces around here. It was just a sidewalk. “Hmm.” No elemental traces, but it felt kind of similar. “A summoning? Let me text Extra real quick.” I confirmed that none of the missing people had suddenly returned. Though I was pretty sure a couple had probably died in that battle. Maybe others before that, if the world was that dangerous.

  “So not a summoning,” Midnight said. “Not that it could last that long anyway.”

  “Well…” I pondered. “Maybe a Planar Ally spell?”

  “You’ll have to explain that.”

  “Long term summonings with payment,” I said. “They might not be following the same rules, but if it’s something similar… they’d actually die.” I pondered for a moment. “Maybe their rules make it easier to summon people against their will? Our system makes it magically easier if payment is offered, but they might not need that. Or they could be more powerful, but in that case why would they need random people.”

  “They could be some sort of psycho who likes to see people suffer,” Midnight offered. “Just a magical kidnapper.”

  “Hmm. You think we could hit them with Meteor Swarm?”

  “We’d have to find them first,” Midnight said. “But I suppose if we did, holding back would be insane.”

  It was good that he didn’t bother to consider us not fighting. That was the most appropriate thing to do with bad guys.

  “You should also just shoot them too,” Midnight commented. “The more stuff the better.”

  “Yeah,” I nodded.

  I crouched lower to the ground, trying to sense the magic better. A bit of Arcane Sight might be helpful, so I cast that and shared with Midnight.

  “Ooh! Squiggly lines!” I would have said runes, but they didn’t seem like runes. Well, whatever they were they were more like the memory of stuff on the ground. “Look at this,” I pointed.

  “... some sort of trail?” Midnight suggested.

  “Only one way to find out,” I commented. “It’s meandering time!”

  It turned out that it was, in fact, a trail. But not of a person. Maybe not even a thing. A phenomenon, maybe. We arrived with a couple minutes of magic vision left, though I could have cast more. Then again, I would be getting pretty close to negatives if I did.

  Whatever it was, it didn’t seem high powered. If I hadn’t followed a faint glowing trail to it, I wouldn’t have even noticed it walking by on the street.

  “Squiggly lines,” Midnight confirmed. “A magic circle?”

  “Nothing like what I have ever seen. But much like our Scrying orb… yeah.”

  Specifically, it wasn’t round. It wasn’t really any one shape. It was slowly distorting as it slid around on the surface. I watched in fascination until Arcane Sight ran out.

  Time to report all this to Extra. Then figure out where it was going. Because now I was super invested in figuring out the answer.