Just like Elise had said, the fairy arrived soon after. She looked surprised to see Nina out in the open, but decided to ask for an explanation later, instead flying up to her contractor and going straight into business:

‘I have it. So, do we still go forward with that plan or do you have a different idea?’ She asked through the bond, allowing Nina to hear it as well.

‘From what I’ve observed about that woman’s barriers, I believe my original idea should work, but it’s probably best to give her something else to focus on before trying.’ Elise replied.

‘Something else?’ Nalia asked for clarification.

‘You’ll have to use some sort of continuous attack to force her to devote some of her energy and attention towards blocking.’ Elise said.

She didn’t give any further instructions, confident that her partner would find a good method.

‘Can I help in some way?’ Nina asked.

‘You should focus on recovering as much as possible from that battle.’ Elise commanded ‘We’ll need you to be on the best condition you can when we’re chasing down the enemies.’

‘Okay.’

Upon that reply, Elise brought Nina into her room and began trying to help with her healing. The girl still hadn’t been able to progress specially far in developing the contract partner healing technique, but some help was better than nothing. Mostly it was Nina herself who did the work, commanding her inner energy to aid in her body’s natural healing process.

Meanwhile, Nalia was heading forth to do her part. She moved to a few steps away from the enemy and began to cast her magic. The enemy’s lack of offensive prowess meant she could be as thorough as possible, but she still tried to speed up her casting because they couldn’t waste time if they wanted to catch up to the enemies who had gone into the spirit realm.

So it only took a few seconds for the fairy’s magic to be done. The spell activated, creating a whirlwind above her head that began to spin faster and faster before drawing in earth and stone from all around, crushing it into a single mass that quickly grew bigger than Nalia herself, and then bigger than any of the people around, and eventually reached a size that would dwarf even the giant elf.

That was where it stopped, and the spherical mass slowed down before finally stopping in the air completely, allowing everyone present to see that all of the material had been so tightly compacted that it now seemed to be a single homogeneous mass.

“Give me some space, please.” She asked the wolves who were still close to the barrier woman.

She didn’t need to amplify her voice in order to be heard because the entire area had descended into silence upon seeing her magic, save for the still ever-present noise of the fire. And her request was quickly fulfilled, resulting in the Inishie woman being left completely alone in front of the portal, looking at Nalia and her huge earth sphere defiantly.

The fairy flew closer and at the same time swung her arm down, the sphere moving along with it, swinging in front like Nalia was using a gigantic flail. It was incredibly slow moving as controlling such an object wasn’t an easy task even for her, but that didn’t matter when facing a stationary target.

Regardless of her confidence in her own defenses, the barrier woman didn’t dare to underestimate Nalia’s attack. She brought her hands together above her head and focused her magic to strengthen her block.

Contact was made, and the woman’s barrier flared into view as she struggled against the incredible weight of the earth sphere, Nalia using her own magic to keep it centered, preventing it from falling to the side and keeping up the pressure. At that moment, it seemed like the resolution would come down to whoever could endure for longer.

However, the earth sphere was just a decoy, so when the enemy was focusing most of her strength into enduring it, Nalia put into motion the real plan.

By taunting the woman.

“Out of the way, you bastard.”

“You-!” The opponent’s words were cut off when something flew into her opened mouth.

Only the people closest to the action would have been able to tell that said object was a strange leaf with a purple color and orange spots. And those who were particularly observant would have seen that Nalia had brought that leaf floating behind her when she flew close to the enemy.

The woman gagged and coughed, spitting out the leaf, but the damage was done. Her first cough was followed by a second, harsher sounding one, then she let out some tortured sounds as her eyes became bloodshot and her limbs began to tremble.

Takato, the foxkin, had briefly looked up from his first-aid ministrations on Charlotte and managed to recognize the leaf, thus becoming the first one besides Elise and her partners to realize what had happened. That was a leaf of the rare ground-dwelling plant known as Amakaria, which was known as the most poisonous thing in the whole forest of Theremis. He had mentioned it during the discussion he had with Elise before the operation started.

That was the way she had planned to deal with their extremely resilient foe, and that leaf must have been what she had sent Nalia to get before, he thought to himself before returning to his previous task.

Indeed, that was the case. Elise had been thinking of it ever since the first fight with the barrier woman. She knew that the automatic defenses of the barrier couldn’t be too sensitive, otherwise it would keep triggering even from the slightest breeze. However, if the woman realized what they were trying to do, she’d be able to adjust her own defenses to block the leaf, like she had blocked the previous attempts to poison her.

That was why Nalia needed to force her to focus her energy and attention into that decoy attack, and then the last step was tricking the woman into opening her mouth in order to allow the leaf in, carried by an incredibly gentle wind spell that wouldn’t trigger any automatic defenses.

The enemy obviously realized what had just happened. The poison was wreaking havoc inside her body, and she knew that it would be impossible to keep fighting. In fact, the barrier above her head was already showing signs of weakening.

Thus the woman threw one last hateful look at Nalia before haltingly reaching a hand into her own clothes and doing something.

Then she glowed blue and vanished. Just like Naran had.

‘I guess she wouldn’t have been able to focus enough to teleport under her own power, so it makes sense.’ Elise thought to herself.

‘Is she gonna die?’ Nina asked her.

Elise had been sharing her sight with the rabbit, so she also saw what happened.

‘I doubt it. That leaf is a known danger of this forest, and they’ve clearly done their research. Whatever their fallback position is, they must have some antidote stored there, just in case.’ The contractor replied.

‘… I don’t know how to feel about that.’

‘You can sort out your feelings later. For now we still have work to do.’ Elise said.

‘Okay.’

The girl had been walking closer to the portal while they were talking, so it only took a few more seconds after that for her to reach beside Amara, who was examining the open portal, having told everyone to wait for her to check something.

Nalia flew up to her (having taken the time to dismantle her earth sphere) and sat on her shoulder, the two exchanged a smile before looking around while Amara was doing her thing. Elise then let out a sight of relief upon seeing a wolfkin coming from the woods, carrying the birdkin Iornos, who was clearly very injured but had already received first-aid and seemed to actually even be conscious.

Speaking of first-aid, Takato’s efforts bore fruit, and Charlotte no longer seemed to be at risk of dying, though she definitely wouldn’t be walking under her own power that day.

That was all they managed to see before a noise of “Tch!” drew their attention back to the owl woman.

Everyone else also turned to look at her, who sighed and explained what she had discovered:

“It’s like I suspected. This portal was only meant for those three to pass, so the ritual didn’t make it stable enough to allow too many people to use it.”

“So we can’t send large forces to pursue those three.” Fevora said “But couldn’t we just break the portal to keep them trapped inside the spirit realm?”

“No.” Elise was the one to reply “Their emergency teleportation tools should be enough for them to escape safely, and we’ve already seen that they can activate those manually.”

“If that’s the case, they don’t even need to come back the way they got in. So why would they even bother having people blocking the portal instead of just closing it behind them?” Takato was the one to ask.

“This sort of ritual can’t be easily undone.” Nerisha answered that question “They could certainly close this passage, but the weakening of the boundary would remain, and so we’d be able to open a new passage ourselves.”

At that moment, she was sitting down trying to recover her strength beside Himoko (who was doing the same).

“Do we even have time to chase those three? They’ve already been inside for a while.” A female wolfkin asked.

“The Spirit Realm forest is the sanctuary of the Agent. They definitely have some protections in place which would slow down the invaders, so there’s definitely still hope.” Elise replied.

“Regardless, our original issue remains.” Amara brought the discussion back on track “We can’t go after our enemies in force. I believe the maximum number of people who could go through safely is three, so we should figure out who to send.”

“In that case, I should be one of them.” Elise immediately spoke. She and Nalia exchanged a nod and then she brought the fairy into her Room “Bringing my partners along won’t cause any issues, and we’re still good to go.”

“I’ll head inside as well.” Amara said, tacitly approving of Elise’s suggestion “I haven’t spent a lot of energy and still have my trump card available.”

“I don’t think me or the other wolves would be a good option.” Fevora said “We’re all tired, and some of us are also injured. Plus we specialize in group tactics, so we wouldn’t do that well by ourselves.”

And so the rest of the candidates for that third slot were considered. Charlotte and Iornos were far too injured to qualify, Takato was completely out of poisons and didn’t think his skills would be of any great use against those opponents, Nerisha and Himoko were quite worn-out, not to mention their magic wouldn’t be nearly as effective by themselves…

Finally the group reached the inevitable conclusion: The only possible candidate was the foxkin Hiroka, who had leapt down from a tree and approached the rest during that discussion.

Without having to choose between candidates, the decision was thus easy to make. The trio of pursuers didn’t waste any more time before going into the portal, Amara first, then Hiroka and finally Elise.

+0+

Going through the portal wasn’t quite like going through a door. Instead it was more like they were being dragged along a tunnel, taking about five seconds to finally reach the other side.

During that time, the trio experienced a psychedelic maelstrom of colors and felt odd sensations on their bodies, all of which because their senses were unable to decipher the signals they were receiving from the environment while inside a space in between planes.

It was a relief when their feet stepped onto solid ground and their sight cleared to show a forest, one that was similar to the central area of Theremis, with short trees spread around a large area bordered by larger, thicker trees and vegetation.

Yet one could easily tell they weren’t back there. The most obvious sign was the fact that all the trees, as well as the ground (which was brown soil dotted all over with leaves and stones) seemed to shine with an inner light, looking brighter and more distinct than those in the ordinary forest. The other main sign was the fact that, while in Theremis itself the large bordering trees still had gaps between them one could use to go into denser parts of the forest, the trees and vegetation making up the borders of the spirit realm forest were so close together they made up true walls that didn’t seem to have any gaps.

It was like those were the borders of an entire world, which was not far from the truth, as the spirit realm itself definitely didn’t extend much farther than them.

“What?! Those are all… Spirit Stones?!” Amara exclaimed.

That was indeed the case. While the stones all over the ground initially seemed to be just ordinary stones like those in the normal forest, a second look revealed that they were indeed all spirit stones, which was almost unthinkable considering how rare it was for the spirit’s energy to stabilize into a concrete form after condensing.

“Yeah.” Elise replied, casually bending down to pick up one of them “This is the spot closest to the agent, so it’s natural his power would manifest to such an extent.” She then looked at Hiroka “I’m sure Amara already knows about it, but you should definitely be careful when walking around. If you step on one of those and end up cracking it, it’s gonna blow up with enough force to blow your foot into chunks.”

The fox woman looked around fearfully at that while Nalia came out of the Room and floated beside Elise.

“So where exactly do we need to go?” The fairy asked.

““That way.”” Both Elise and Amara pointed straight ahead and spoke in unison.

“I can feel the presence of the spirit.” The owl woman said.

“That area ahead has a large space without any stones.” Elise said “They must have been exploded by accident when our enemies started dealing with whatever defenses this place has, so that must be the direction they went.”

“But if the stones exploded, why isn’t there any sign of damage around?” Hiroka asked.

“The trees and soil here are part of the realm itself, so they should be able to regenerate back to perfect condition as long as it exists.” Elise explained “But we should really get going. Nalia?”

The fairy didn’t miss her cue, casting the same wind-based movement boost spell that she always used, but this time she gave it to Amara and Hiroka along with Elise.

The other two nodded and then the group began their pursuit. Nalia’s had put more of an emphasis on control than she usually did for that spell, so they were easily able to avoid the stones even while moving at speed.

Not that they had to dodge stones for long. Soon enough the group reached the point where the cleared part started, and shortly after that the path quickly narrowed down into a corridor where there were no more ordinary trees dotting the area, but only the impenetrable wood boundary on both sides. The corridor was still reasonably wide, but the path it followed quickly became winding, curving here and there, ascending and descending, and overall giving off a feeling that they weren’t supposed to be heading in that direction.

‘It would definitely be a lot worse if we also had to deal with whatever defenses had been here.’ Elise thought.

Soon after that, the girl felt a sense of foreboding that she couldn’t quite place, but looking at the two beast women running beside her Elise saw that they had also reacted as if they felt something, only they seemed a lot more certain of what it was.

‘I must have heard sounds of battle, but they were too muffled for me to consciously identify them. Those two have better senses than I do, so they would have heard it more clearly,’ Elise thought to herself.

She then let out Nina, as they were obviously going to meet the enemies soon, which was further proven by the sounds of battle becoming clearer and clear as they went on. The rabbit girl fell into step alongside them and casually kept pace without the need for any magic boosts.

However, something else happened first. For an instant, the forest around them, as well as the ground and even the air seemed to waver for a moment as brief as a blink.

“Khh!” Hiroka let out a noise.

Elise looked in her direction and saw that the fox woman was making a face like she had bitten into a far too sour fruit. More importantly, she noticed that Amara and Nina were also making similar faces, but Nalia wasn’t.

‘Well. Looks like we were late.’ She thought calmly ‘Hopefully, we’re not too late.’

There was no time for anyone to comment on what had just happened, as a final turn saw the corridor end into a wide-open area, more similar to the one where they had first arrived, even having a large amount of trees spread around. But there were some very clear differences.

First, this area didn’t have any Spirit Stones scattered around. Second, there were clear signs of struggle, with several broken branches all over the place, some fallen trees, and several parts were still on fire. Yet, the whole place was fixing itself at an accelerated rate, with white waves of fog-like energy regenerating the plants, quenching the fire and even vanishing the broken off pieces.

But Elise didn’t notice any of that at first. Her whole attention was focused on the central area, which was taken by a circular dais of flawless gray stone. On top and at the center of that dais was a rectangular stone platform atop a small column. That platform wasn’t particularly ornate, but merely looking at it gave one an impression of power and majesty because it was actually a bed.

A bed on which lay one of the Agents of the Cycle.

It was impossible for Elise not to recognize them instantly. The agent was a pure-white being with pure-black outlines marking the details of their appearance. The top half of their body was relatively humanoid looking, with a trunk, arms and a head.

They had two sets of arms pointing at opposite sides, which ended up in six-fingered hands, and their head had a face with the normal features, eyes, nose and mouth, but their details were indistinct enough one couldn’t pin down what species they were supposed to be, or even their gender. The most notable detail was the lion-like mane around the head.

The bottom half, on the other hand, was far stranger. There was nothing that could even vaguely be considered as legs, instead the main portion was a six-sided prism, around which revolved three rings of varying sizes, those rings also seemed to be immaterial, as parts of them were phasing through the bed beneath as they spun.

The Agent was screaming.

Or at least they seemed to be. Their mouth was opened wide, their expression showing obvious distress, and their arms were whipping around every which way as if trying to hit invisible enemies. They weren’t making any sound, though.

The reason for their distress was the man standing right beside them. He was the man that Elise had assumed to be the Inishie branch manager in charge of that operation. He was holding up a pyramidal white gemstone from which black strands emerged, said strands having tightly tied the agent to their bed by looping around them several times.

And at the manager’s feet was a second gemstone, this one being a deep blue color. Different from the other it wasn’t emitting anything, but instead absorbing red strands of lightning that were constantly shooting out of the agent.

‘So their goal was to drain the Agent’s power.’ Elise thought ‘They really don’t know what they’re messing with.’

The manager saw the group at the same time as they saw him, and before they could take any actions he gave an order to the two who had accompanied him through the portal, who were standing outside the area of the dais, on opposite sides.

“Aura, Risaro. Do it.”

The actions of the subordinates were a study in contrasts. The wolfkin’s expression changed into a scowl of obvious reluctance, and he hesitated very noticeably before picking up a piece of paper from his pocket, throwing it to the ground, clawing open a cut on his hand and letting a few drops of blood fall onto the paper.

On the other hand, the flame-speaker elf (whose name Elise just now discovered was Aura) went through the same series of motions without the slightest hesitation or even changing her expression, having already finished before Risaro had even thrown the paper to the ground.

Regardless, the distance between Elise’s group and the trio of enemies was large enough that they couldn’t do anything to stop those two. As soon as Risaro finished his part, both pieces of paper lit up with red-colored spell patterns and then each shot two deep red tendrils that looked like veins. Risaro and Aura were touched by a tendril each, both reacting as if struck, taking a step back to try and recover their balance, though the elf girl’s expression still didn’t change while Risaro visibly grit his teeth.

The other two tendrils shot towards the dais nearby, touching it and splitting into two, each circling the dais as if drawing its outline, and then both sets of tendrils touched one another, completing the circle and shining with an almost painful brightness before manifesting a spherical barrier around the whole space of the dais. The barrier was red in color and partially translucent, but just looking at it gave an impression of overwhelming resilience.

“A blood barrier?! Bastard, you’re even willing to use forbidden spells?!” Amara shouted at Risaro.

“You know what that is?” Elise asked her.

“It’s a special barrier spell that draws upon the users’ life force. Using it entails sacrificing part of your lifespan, but in return this type of barrier is almost completely impervious.” Came the reply, Amara speaking while still visibly angry “The only reasonable way to get through it is by killing the users.”

“Then that’s what we have to do.” Elise replied with no hesitation “And I think it’s pretty obvious how we should split our forces here.”

“Indeed. Hiroka and me should be able to deal with Risaro.” Amara said.

Her anger had been replaced by an eerie calmness that made Elise think of a volcano about to erupt.

“And we’ll fight Aura. Don’t worry, we should be able to keep her from going after you.” Was Elise’s reply.

The fire magic of the elf was something that neither Amara nor Hiroka had ways to deal with.

Those exchanges happened at a very fast pace. The two knew that time was of the essence and every second counted, so as soon as that was decided the group split up to go after their respective targets.

‘Keep the wind boost on them until they reach him.’ Elise ordered Amara as they were running.

‘Alright.’ The fairy replied.

It would be better for Nalia to focus just on her own fight. And more to the point, their two allies didn’t really need the help at that point. Hiroka simply jumped up a tree to conceal herself once Risaro was in range, and as for Amara…

“Spirit, grant me thy blessing…” She chanted, reaching a hand to her neck and touching the necklace she wore there.

And in response, one of the stones on the necklace burst with amazing power, revealing that it was actually a concealed Spirit Stone. Amara breathed in, and the seemingly decorative markings on her wings became channels, allowing her to absorb the stone’s energy.

That was one of the secret techniques the Spirit Keepers had developed based on their research of the Agent. It was also Amara’s trump card. Her wings flapped, and she burst forward, reaching her opponent in an instant and slashing with a wind blade, carving a deep cut on his arm.

It would have been his neck, but he was fast enough to raise his arm to defend. Yet that was enough to show why Amara didn’t need the boost anymore (Nalia had let it fade by the time she made contact). Simply put, the owl-woman was already fast enough.

And that was just the start of her attacks. Amara pulled up into the air and turned back, flying over Risaro and peppering him with continuous small wind slashes, easily dodging to the side when he jumped up and tried to claw her.

Then he had to hastily twist his body, taking on the shoulder an arrow that would have otherwise pierced his heart.

Hiroka was also there, after all.

+0+

Meanwhile, Elise and her partners had their own opponent to deal with. And while they were still approaching her, Nalia finished her preparations.

“Dual Wing Magic: Wind and Fire.” She declared.

Once more, an incredible amount of energy was released from the fairy, and once more that energy condensed into two huge wings, but while one of them was still the same violent wind funnel, the other ignited itself into a terrifyingly hot flame.

The elemental wings Nalia could use all had their own traits, and their combinations gave birth to dramatic variations on the spell’s effects. The first combination she had used, Earth and Wind, could be said to be the steadiest of them all, ideal for the fairy’s first use of that magic.

And her current combination, wind and fire, was the fastest.

Both her wings flapped, and the explosive acceleration of the wind was boosted even further by the flames, exactly like their opponent had done before. Nalia rushed straight into Aura, shooting a series of stone bullets as the opening salvo of the combat.

The elf’s gaze became piercing. The seal of flame that still burned on her chest doubled in intensity, and her counter-attack was a spell that instantly turned the whole area around her into a blazing inferno, causing Nalia’s stone bullets to disintegrate midflight.

‘Definitely a lot more powerful than before… But your control’s only gotten worse.’ Nalia thought.

She flew right into the flaming area, using her own fire magic to remain unscathed and swinging the fire wing like a gigantic blade, aiming at Aura.

That was not an attack that she could ignore, so the elf boosted herself upwards and to the side using flames and managed to dodge. But Nalia flapped her wings again and flew around her before creating a cannonball-sized stone bullet and firing, forcing Aura to quickly focus her magic into a fireball to blow it up.

And then she had to turn around and launch a flame wall to defend against Nina, who had leapt at her from behind. The rabbit’s fist broke through the wall, but she was slowed enough for Aura to use another flame-assisted dodge, yet Nalia followed her movement, easily keeping the elf trapped in between herself and Nina.

That was the reason Nalia was using the fire and wind combination. She was now easily faster than the enemy and could thus prevent her from going off to harass their allies, not to mention the advantages of a pincer attack.

Elise trailed behind the fight, watching intently.

The plan was working. So now it was up to each group to win their respective fights.