--- Rania ---

"*...all I'm saying is that Aranea didn't sign the adventuring contract back then. You wouldn't let her sign, because you claimed she wasn't a real team member.*" Rania explained to her friends. "*It's great that we have corrected that now. But that doesn't change the fact that she was technically her own party when she got the killing blow on Victor. And that means that the loot should go to her.*"

The others were looking at her dubiously. They didn't disagree, but she could tell that they didn't like what she was saying. They were on their way to their next Quest Objective, and traveling through the feywild. Rania had taken the opportunity to broach the important topic of loot distribution.

Aranea looked between her and the others, then spoke through Dov's telepathic link: "*Thank you for standing up for me! But I think it's making the others sad, and I don't want my friends to be sad! Victor's armor doesn't even fit me. It would fit Atrog much better. Maybe we could trade?*"

"*Thank you, Aranea. That's very kind of you.*" Atrog responded. "*To tell you the truth, I'm mostly just very confused right now. I have never talked to an awakened animal before. You are much nicer than I expected.*"

Aranea preened. It looked kind of horrifying, but they could tell what she was thinking through the telepathic link and knew that her gestures weren't a threat.

"*What sort of things would you like in trade for the armor?*"

"*I don't know. I have never really needed anything before. Maybe more tasty things to snack on? Let's talk about it when we find something. I will loan you the armor until then.*"

Rania was happy that their discussion went so well.

There was a little more banter, but in the end everyone agreed. Aranea didn't really know what to do with all the loot from killing one of the most powerful beings on the planet, but she was happy to loan it to her friends.

She was so glad that her little sister was so nice, and that her friends were very accepting of her now that she was sapient.

She didn't know if her heart could have handled it if it had turned out that they were arachnophobic!

They continued on in companionable silence for an unspecified amount of time. As she explained to her friends earlier, they were sure to arrive at their destination in the nick of time. There was some confusion about the exact timeline there. Rania had no idea when the nick of time would be. But it was pretty obvious to her that that was when they were going to arrive.

Dov decided to break the silence. "*Aranea's genes are really amazing. I'm discovering the strangest things from experimenting on them. I understand now how she was able to join the telepathic link this quickly. It's like telepathy is second nature to her! It's not even distracting to look through her eyes, even though there are nine of them and making different senses work well is usually really hard.*"

Aranea had nine eyes, Rania now knew. There had been a misunderstanding about this earlier when Aranea claimed she had sixteen eyes. Rania had been worried. She wasn't very good at spider anatomy, and thought she had made a mistake her whole life because she could only see eight.

But then Dov ate some of Aranea's hairs to figure out what was going on with her.

A short while later, she clarified that Aranea in fact had nine eyes.

She had eight regular eyes, and a ninth eye for seeing supernatural things. Just like humanoids could have a third eye, so Aranea had a ninth. That made sense to Rania.

She still wondered what was going on with the other seven eyes, though.

Dov had a thoughtful expression as she continued to theorize about Aranea. "*I wonder if this has to do with the impressions of the bug-spider-raptor people I saw when I touched that artifact. They had abilities that are really similar to my telepathy. Some of them were even stronger than my mother. And their abilities were more diverse, too. Not just telepathy, but also things like telekinesis and teleportation, but it didn't look like magic. This must be what the fey meant by psionics.

I can't wait to learn about them and gain their abilities. I still don't understand how that works, but I'm pretty sure the artifact interfaced with my genes and downloaded some of those creatures' genes into me. I will need to experiment, but eventually I should be able to do what they do!*"

Galanys looked concerned "*Please be careful with that. You don't know what might happen, and I'm worried that you might hurt yourself permanently.*"

After a few seconds she smiled and jokingly added "*Also, I love you, but if you grow any extra eyes or legs I'm warning you it's going to take some adjustment.*"

They traveled in companionable silence for a while, before Atrog spoke up again "*I think we should use this opportunity to review the situation. Dov, how do you think your parents will react when they see you?*"

"*They will probably assume I'm a spy or something at first, with how much of a mess the Cassandra Project has made. It pretty much destroyed all diplomatic ties and political goodwill between Oruk and my parents' kingdom in a matter of just a few days. It's honestly impressive. They keep ignoring our message spells now because deliberately ignoring all messages no matter how plausible is an effective strategy when you know that your opposition is a better manipulator than yourself.*"

Balron nodded at that. Rania hoped he wasn't going to repeat that one horrible lecture about information theory and random agents again. So boring!

"*But Davlash physiology isn't exactly easy to fake, and by now my memories are almost entirely back. I expect that it will take them a couple of minutes to verify my identity. Then a couple of minutes to hug me and welcome me back. And then a couple of hours to lecture and berate me. But I think the lecturing and berating will also be pretty productive, and I expect that they will take my word for it when I tell them that it's all one big misunderstanding.

"*They should also be reasonable enough to wait for the Interim Council to send my siblings over. I think their decision to keep them in Northpass was sensible. At this point, after we killed Cilia, we are probably some of the most powerful adventurers in the country, so it makes sense to send me out as a messenger. But Morgan and Alexis haven't really grown much since we got here. Better to keep them safe in Northpass than to put all of their eggs in one basket.

"*I'm more worried about what will happen afterwards. Cilia Ulein was responsible for all of this. Xilly is the daughter of Vherdes the Hedonist. The Old Powers have agreements about not interfering with normal people and countries, because it's usually mutually assured destruction when they get involved. But if Cilia really deliberately caused a war involving Vherdes' own daughter, I don't think he will ignore that. The political situation there is kind of complicated, but trust me that it could get pretty ugly.

"*I think our best bet there might actually be Adam. If he can contact Denissa Mardok and get her to intervene then that would prevent a lot of trouble.*"

That sounded bad. Rania was pretty sure that Denissa Mardok was purely a background character. She was the Supreme Quest Giver, the one who told you what to do when the fate of the world was at stake. She was not someone who would interfere directly. That meant she and her friends would have to stop the war themselves.

It made her sad. Normally she would be excited that they had grown so much in such a short time. But going on an adventure to save the world, or at least a country or two, had sounded much more fun to her before she had learned about things like "collateral damage" and "civilian casualties".

If her fun adventure meant that other people had to go through a war, which she now understood was not very fun for them at all, then she thought maybe she would rather not go on the adventure at all.

It was such a weird thought. She would not have believed it possible a few months ago, but it looked like sometimes an adventure was just not worth it, no matter how awesome it might be.

Maybe at least other people could have fun adventures, without such horrible side effects? She wondered what other fun adventures people might be having right now.

--- Elona ---

The man barged into their tent, weapons drawn. A moment later he disappeared under two tons of fur and scales.

"You really think they will be fine?" Xilly asked Elona, ignoring the minor skuffle around them as their war beasts savaged the attackers.

Elona scrunched her eyes in thought. She moved her head slightly to the left, dodging an arrow. Having decided what to do, she finally made her move on the game board between them. "Definitely. The demands they made are nonsensical. They can't possibly be stupid enough to follow through on their threats."

Xilly countered Elona's move with her own. It was obvious that she was going to win, but playing this board game calmed her nerves. She just wished the enemy would be more considerate and stop it with the suicidal assassination attempts.

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"That's what worries me. If there is one thing I have learned never to underestimate, it is people's capacity for stupidity."

Elona suddenly looked a little worried. "You may have a point. They are dumb enough to attack us with just a handful of assassins, after all."

They heard a roar in the distance, and a terrified scream that abruptly cut off.

There was no point in getting up and abandoning their game for this nonsense. Elona would just revive and interrogate the attackers later. Both of them were perfectly capable of focusing in battle when it was necessary, of course. They had more than enough experience. It was just that neither of them saw the point. It just wasn't a proper battle for them. Why should they allow themselves to get distracted by idiots who won't even get past their war beasts? Better to let those animals and their handlers get some field experience instead.

What vexed her was that they still hadn't learned anything of substance. The assassins they met so far hadn't known anything. Worse, they had given contradictory statements.

Xilly really wished Damiah could be here right now. She could cut through politics like a hot knife through butter. Her own expertise was really not suited for this, and the less said about Elona the better.

Really, what was the point of all this? They had not intended to start a war. Only a rescue operation. But then things escalated because Oruk made it escalate.

The information warfare system they were using certainly didn't help matter.

Their latest messenger had claimed he wanted peace. But the previous two messengers had said the same thing, and they turned out to be sacrificial pawns meant to make them take their guard down. It was utterly insane. Oruk was burning its diplomatic bridges left and right.

What else could they do but fight back?

--- The Red Baron ---

"The baron of House Ashfall has the floor." Announced the chairman of the Interim Council

"Thank you, honored lords and ladies of the council, for granting me this opportunity to speak. I sympathize with the concerns brought forward by general Gran, truly I do. It leaves a sour taste in my mouth that we should retreat and flee from the invaders. It must make the villagers feel helpless, to be abandoned by the forces meant to protect them. Nevertheless, I believe that we should maintain our current stance and avoid unnecessary conflict."

There was some murmuring in the council. It appeared that most of them had not expected him to advocate a peaceful approach.

His embarrassment in front of the Historian of Secrets had been a wakeup call. If he made an enemy of a man like that, his reputation and lifestyle might be at risk. So he had reached out to Lilian Weaver, the expert on all matters related to Tonos bullshit, and asked her for advice. She gave him a pamphlet titled "How to avoid being a villainous stereotype and dying for no good reason". She apparently had a stack of those because this was not the first time she met someone in his situation.

"This terrible war is all a result of manipulation. If we lash out at the Shans just to protect our reputation, we will only be playing into the hands of our true enemy. No, violence is not the answer here. In these troubling times, we must all work together and unite as one. Otherwise many innocents may die. And that would be bad! Think of the children!"

He hoped his little speech was well received. He knew that it was not his usual style of argument, so some of his rhetorics might be a little off.

He overheard whispering from the politicians to his left: "If even this guy has concerns, maybe we were overreacting?"

It wasn't what he wanted to hear, but they seemed to support his goals. He would take what he could get.

The murmuring from the people in front of him was more concerning. Someone was wondering if he had been replaced by an infiltrator. Luckily someone else said that no spy would be this bad at impersonation. He did not know how to feel about that.

--- Rose the companion ---

The roar of the monster they were hunting echoed through the canyon. All of them immediately moved to cover each others' flanks and took up defensive positions.

All of them except for their leader, who struck a pose instead.

"Have no fear, my fearless companions! I, Hiro Shujinkou, will save us! This monster will be no match for my cunning and my overpowered cheat skill 'Elemental Control'!"

Oh gods. Rose felt her brain cells commit suicide with every sentence this moron uttered.

The man had been summoned by Niphia a few days ago. She and the rest of her team had volunteered to be his companions. The government had arranged for all of them to coincidentally cross paths with him so that he would recruit them. The entire team consisted of beautiful and well-endowed young women, because of course it did.

She shared a look with the others. No words were necessary. They all thought he was an idiot. Under normal circumstances, a fool like that would be actively detrimental to the mission. But these weren't normal circumstances, and this was not a regular idiot. This was a divinely gifted, massively overpowered idiot.

With him as their 'leader', they were much more likely to survive unharmed than normal soldiers. The companions of summoned heroes almost never died, because that would ruin the power fantasy Niphia was going for. They were getting paid a lot of money for doing this, and the growth potential was enormous. It was also going to look great on her CV: Being able to handle a superpowered man-child like this was an excellent demonstration of social skills.

All of those benefits outweighed the humiliation of having to deal with the moron, though only just barely.

"I don't know what we would do without you, Hiro!" Shouted Liriel. The elven woman was the only one of their group who actually seemed to believe the man. Either that, or she was the greatest actor Rose had ever met. As if to complete the stereotype, she was even a princess, though only on a technicality and she held no real political power at all. Not that Hiro ever asked about that.

They heard another roar, louder this time.

Even Hiro seemed to take the hint and drew his weapons instead of posing dramatically.

Their team had been sent on an extremely dangerous mission, because the government was pretty much banking on divine intervention to bail them out.

They were getting so much hazard pay for this.

They were tracking a flying monster that had been scouting and harassing the area. It was making it difficult for the army to move effectively. The canyon was too narrow to send a larger group, but the monster was too dangerous for a small squad of regular soldiers. A group of experienced adventurers like themselves was needed.

A giant gout of flame suddenly descended on them without warning. It could have killed them all, but instead the flames suddenly dissipated before reaching them.

"Haha! This dragon is no match for my Elemental Control!"

"We've told you before, it's not a dragon!"

As if to drive the point home, the head of an enormous eagle suddenly appeared, peeking out from the canyon's top.

And then a second head popped up right next to it. Because the Shans apparently liked creating crimes against nature.

The second head opened its beak and shot lightning at them, but that too was deflected effortlessly by Hiro's 'cheat skill'.

"Is that all you got?" The moron shouted at the beast as he continued to stand in the middle of the canyon instead of taking cover.

As if in reply to his threat, the abomination revealed a third head, and it opened its beak.

Rose saw the acid gathering in its beak, and she reacted immediately.

Acid was not an element. Elemental Control would do nothing here.

Hiro's eyes widened in shock as the deadly projectile completely ignored his ability, and he was only saved from a painful death when Rose's wind spell pushed him out of harm's way.

Well, so much for the cheat skill.

As the saying went: No plan survives contact with the enemy.

Now it would all depend on how fast they could adapt. She hoped that Hiro was good at thinking under pressure.

But the look of horror on his face did not fill her with confidence.

"Screw this! This is not level appropriate!" He shouted.

And then he ran away.

--- Davak Goront ---

"All runes are operational. Maru, proceed with the summoning when you are ready." The overseer announced.

Davak Goront was waiting with bated breath, and so were dozens of his people.

Maru's skills as a summoner were exceptional, and her connection to the celestial realms was close to unique. She was standing at the center of an enormous summoning circle, powered by dozens of mages and shamans, not to mention an utterly absurd amount of expensive materials.

This was not a summoning conducted by a group of cultists following some decrepit book in a moldy cellar.

This was a summoning conducted by an international group of experts and funded by one of the most powerful countries on the planet. With the knowledge they had gained from Rania Mortal, the Coros now knew better and more efficient methods than ever before to share mana in large-scale rituals. The ritual circle was located outside the city, and they had evacuated the area for kilometers around to avoid any accidental magical interference.

The military was paying the Coros to summon creatures for them, to bolster their forces with disposable meat shields. But this particular summoning was on another level. If all went well they would gain a force to be reckoned with.

"I'm sensing a connection. They are responding. I am summoning Rakul first."

Rakul. An angel of justice. One of the most powerful celestials on record, but quite zealous. Partnered with Arariel, an angel of knowledge and a general of heaven. More temperate, and able to guide Rakul in more reasonable directions. Unfortunately the records had been a little sparse on the details, but they were supposed to be very effective.

Davak sensed an enormous buildup of magical energy in the summoning circle.

There was a brilliant flash of light.

He looked up at the enormous thing that appeared floating above the summoning circle.

What exactly was he looking at, here? It made his head hurt trying to make sense of it.

"DO NOT BE AFRAID!" The thing shouted directly in his mind.

Then it unfurled 3+2i of its wings, and most of his people lost their minds and started screaming.

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH"

"WHY ARE YOU SCREAMING? I SPECIFICALLY ASKED YOU NOT TO BE AFRAID!"

Some of his people fainted. Others began puking.

"Maru, send it back!" He shouted. But she was busy retching as well.

"STOP BEING AFRAID! I COMMAND YOU ALL TO CALM DOWN!" The angel shouted in his mind.

The screaming continued.

"SCREW THIS. GET ARARIEL AND THEN TALK TO ME AGAIN."

With that, the angel Rakul suddenly collapsed in on itself. He turned into an enormous reflective icosahedron floating in mid-air.

At least he was three-dimensional now.

He just continued to hang there in mid-air, floating menacingly.

Now that his appearance was no longer blatantly violating the laws of physics, people began to calm down again.

Davak looked over his people. "Is everyone alright? Please wake up the people who fainted. Let's take a half-hour break for everyone to finish puking and get a change of clothes. Then we will proceed as planned and summon Arariel. Don't worry, he is supposed to look much less terrifying."

He used the break to contact a couple of therapists and paid them to come over. It was important to maintain the mental health of one's employees, and traumatic events like these were best treated immediately, rather than allowing them to fester over time. Luckily he still remembered the contact information of some good therapists by heart, since Aranea had visited them only a short time ago.

After the break, Maru continued the summoning.

This time, the being that appeared in a flash of light looked humanoid. He was actually quite attractive.

"Fear not!" Arariel said, with a handsome smile, his golden hair floating in the wind.

"Please marry me!" Shouted one of the summoners.

"I think I just realized I'm gay." Noted another.

Arariel floated serenely in the air, his very presence a balm upon the soul.

"I see that some of you still look a little shook. Please don't mind Rakul. He is very effective at what he does, but he isn't good with people. I personally prefer to take a shape that is more pleasing to the eye. It makes it much easier to talk to people."

Arariel smiled, and his teeth sparkled. One of the summoners developed a sudden nosebleed, then fainted.