Early the next day, all of them went out, with Ben and Thera heading to their point while Sonya went to hers, wishing each other the best as they parted.

The two weren’t going to be beginning at the hospital that made up the center of that miniature gate network given the fact that there were not yet victims that needed to be healed, instead going to the first of the gates, standing along the wall where they’d been told to before as a flurry of movement went on all around them, with people getting in positions and arranging things the best they could or else just shuffling under the stress as the countdown went on with a flair going up in the sky.

“An hour to go,” Ben muttered when he saw it, flashes of the first wave and everything leading up to it making it across his thoughts as Thera took his hand beside him.

“It will be fine, we’ll survive this and I’ll protect you if things get bad.”

“Don’t worry and focus on protecting yourself, I’ll manage somehow. It’s not like I’m going to be down there at least.”

He looked over the edge they were waiting on to the warriors below, the ones whose skills were trained for direct combat instead of anything that could be used at a distance like so many magics but meant they’d be facing the horde in a significantly less secure way compared to them, being within reach of tooth and claw right from the get-go.

And all of the clouds don’t exactly help, do they? It’s not exactly too dark to see, but a little more light wouldn’t hurt. Oh well, not like it’s going to harm anything either.

At the very least, his vision wasn’t obstructed as he turned his eyes up to the point off in the distance, marking just where all hell was going to break loose.

A part of him that wasn’t suffering under the reality of the situation couldn’t help but wonder how it worked as he stared, and given that line of thought felt a bit more enjoyable than the efforts he was putting towards trying to avoid falling into despair, he let himself indulge in it, just for a moment as his head filled with possibilities.

It surely wasn’t a piece of magical technology, if only because the demons didn’t seem to dabble in such things if the few examples he’d seen were any evidence, though as he thought it he had to admit to himself that the small handful of demon technology and enchantments making their way to his eyes was too little to let him judge a galactic civilization, even if he felt sure of himself.

But if that wasn’t the case, then what? Considering that demons were a terrestrial race, born to a planet like all of those they invaded instead of being free to travel the void like some others in the universe, that meant they had to have had an origin point and his thoughts considered the species from that angle.

He knew they could become powerful if given the time to grow and seemed to be able to act together to an extent, though from his few experiences in the past, that may have been due to having a powerful leader acting above them. But did that translate into them being able to form cooperative relationships and work towards a common goal? From what Ben had seen any time he peeked into one's mind, he was sure the answer was no. They could be dominated by those above them but a desire to kill and dominate in return was too powerful for him to bet on more than a handful across any planet being able to put aside their differences and ignore their base nature to improve.

That meant what he was seeing wasn’t the product of some powerful ritual, he doubted the species was even aware of that application of magic and even if they were, wouldn’t have the ability to use it on such a scale unless a more powerful demon held such dominion over them that they had no choice but to learn such an outrageously powerful spell that somehow stretched across worlds and keep it up constantly until it was opened for those on the other side to flood through. He didn’t believe the race had the restraint to keep from just leaving it open either.

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Even if I still don’t understand why they do it this way.

It was a mystery he was sure he'd never get an answer to while he kept up his thoughts.

If it wasn’t the race itself who was doing it then it made a lot more sense to question if it fell under the domain of the demons’ gods. He didn’t have much context for how powerful any of the gods of his current world had been at their peak, all of them sharing a single planet meant there was only so much faith to go around, even if other benefits made it worth it. But could a space god manage such a thing if a planet worth of faith was being directed at them?

Maybe it didn’t even need to be as extreme as invading across the galaxy right off the bat. He knew the home star system of the various elven races had held a variety of habitable planets. Perhaps a space god could invade those nearby ones, letting them fill up with new believers for all the faith that would come with it before stretching out to other nearby stars, slowly gaining enough power with each new invasion until distance ceased to be a limiting factor.

That was certainly an idea he couldn’t help but think had potential as an explanation for where the power to cross such vast gulphs of reality was coming from and he put it at the top of his list in terms of probability, but another idea couldn’t help strike him as well, no matter how less likely.

The summoning spell and the mystery spell, two constructs of magic whose creation and creators were lost to time, with at least one of which had been able to demonstrate an insane level of power by allowing the gods of this reality to tear into another for all of the benefits that would come with that in terms of the souls they might harvest.

While he couldn’t say for sure what the second one did yet, he didn’t doubt that it would be similarly impressive in terms of power, and while the little bit he had been able to glean from it didn’t make him think it could be the one allowing for such interstellar travel, that didn’t mean the gods of the invaders hadn’t somehow gotten their hands upon a third. A different spell constructed for travelling between the stars themselves.

Given the power he knew the first spell had and the implications that held for the strength of the civilization that created it, it wouldn’t be surprising if they had at one point dominated the galaxy or even the universe, especially since the two original spells hadn’t seemed like they’d been found in the same area. Was it so hard to imagine that another had been lying around somewhere, maybe even laying on the rock that the coming demons had emerged from, left and forgotten there before life had even arisen?

It was a question he wasn’t going to get an answer to either, with so much information about the demons hidden from him, but it was a thought that left him a certain level of longing. If that had been the case then it might have been the sort of thing that would contain even more mana modifiers, something he simply didn’t have the time to try and discover for himself. That would be the work of years, decades, and maybe beyond. He could easily envision such a task taking up centuries of study, slowly trying to find more and more despite the growing difficulties in figuring out new ones as their pool of options increased.

But rather than think about that when I definitely don’t have the time to worry about finding new mana modifiers for me to use, let's ask a different question. How would I personally construct an interstellar gate network?

He’d already severely reduced the size of the enchantment needed for the planet’s current network, the question just became one of how he would make it strong enough to reach across the stars.

For starters, having the enchantment modifier already made a significant difference given that his initial progress had all come before he’d gotten it and he was sure that the way he’d incorporated it already wasn’t showing its full potential compared to what he might be able to manage with a bit more thought and experimentation, and he continued to consider it from there.

He did want to start experimenting with adding the modifiers he was aware of to his enchantments for whatever effects they would show and he already had some ideas that might bear fruit if they worked and when he looked at how small the current gate enchantments he was creating were, there was plenty of room to enlarge them.

Actually, I’d need to double-check the distance with Quilith but I think if I’m right about what I could currently create and I covered something the size of a standard gate, I’d be able to make something that would be able to reach the nearest stars. Interesting. And from there, to make something that would cover the entire galaxy…

Looking at his improvements with each level he gained and considering how he might continue to improve, it was enough to give him an estimate to work off of.

Past the ninth level of divine enchanting and deep connection, but maybe not by much. I don’t actually know for sure how much I’d grow if I ever managed to awaken the skills but that should in theory be what I’d need. Interesting.

It may have been an idea he’d never get the chance to pay off, but at the very least it was an interesting project to mull over, devoting plenty of his minds to it while the rest of him chatted with Thera until the ten-minute flare went up.