“Am I going to lose my arm?!” Harry asked in horror.

 

“No, definitely not, it is just a curse,” David said confidently.

 

“How do you remove a curse?” Harry asked in 

 

“A powerful image can unravel it, but we don’t have one of those. A strong enough warrior can just shrug it off, but they can do that for almost anything.” David looked at his friend whose arm looked like it was covered with bruises with a dissatisfied expression. “I keep telling myself you will get there eventually.”

 

“Then how are we going to solve it?” He asked.

 

“David, I got him.” She said.

 

Lena came out of the back with a person on her back, it was hard to call them a person though. Their whole body was swollen and covered in deep bruising from the curse. This was the only survivor they had found from the imp, the real entrance to this trap was through the backdoor that was unlocked.

 

When they had looked in the back of the church they found two rooms, one was a robing room for the priest and a backdoor that was the entrance to this trap, and a separate one that led to the basement as well as the loft. Inside the basement they found all of the imp’s victims, it amounted to seven of them. They also found what they thought was a woman from her dress and hair.

 

“Wait, him?” He asked.

 

“Yes, he was even wearing women's underwear,” Lena replied coldly.

 

“I am going to assume there is a reason for it, let’s ignore it.” He said. “Just treat them as they present themselves upon waking up.”

 

“Wait, am I going to get like that too?” Harry asked, horror evident in his voice.

 

“Yeah, if we waited a few days to treat you. This curse is nasty since it kills slowly and painfully, but because of that the imp needs time for the curse to incapacitate its victim which is why this trap was made the way it was.” David explained. “Seven people have died here, probably thought that the food in the storage was still there.”

 

“So what are we doing then, won’t that person die soon?” Harry asked.

 

“We invoke a being who is well versed at dealing with these things,” David replied.

 

“Invoke?” Harry asked.

 

“Right, think of it like praying and getting an answer,” David said.

 

“Then why doesn’t everyone do it?” Harry asked.

 

“Because it costs a lot of mana to do it if you want to lower the cost you have to train your mana into a form that they like. They also have preferences.” He said.

 

“Are they gods?” Harry asked with shock.

 

“When we call this one, you will feel its presence, then you tell me what you think,” David said cryptically. 

 

“So that is why you are drawing that thing on the ground?” Harry asked.

 

“That’s right,” David said.

 

On the ground written in chalk was a large diagram that looked like a chart of various points with lines connecting them, creating shapes with various symbols in between. It was large and it took David prying up the carpet to give himself room to make it on the floor. It had taken him almost an hour to draw it out on the ground.

 

“Where should I place them?” Lena asked him.

 

“I made points on the outer ring, I put marks on the ground that look like little circles, and set them on one.” He replied as he carefully checked everything. “Harry you too.” 

 

Over in the corner sitting on the keyboard to the piano was the small cat waving its new bell around with excitement. Her Infernal box that had shrunk to the size of a pendant was processing her meal for her. Seeing the cat happily cleaning and modifying the demon weapon, made David pause before he also sat down on the large formation.

 

“Pandora, come here.” He called.

 

The cat looked over at him and nodded in a human-like way before it clipped the bell to the bottom of the box, making it hang on it like a larger trinket, then it hopped off the keyboard on all fours and dashed towards him. In response, he made a cradle in his arms and soon felt a furry weight hop into them with a small mewl.

 

Her fur was soft and long, and she started purring when he began petting her, but what he was trying to do was identify her. Most cat demons had very specific patterns that would give away their species, but the cat in his arms felt like some strange chimera of them all. That was the only way he could describe it.

 

The flame on the candle belonged to a Kasha, a type of cat demon with a powerful flame that gets stronger the more undead it burns away. They were powerful demons who were able to trade blows with the most powerful of yokai. Yokai were a sub-species of demons who tended to be very exclusive. 

 

The white coloration was something that only Maneki-Neko possessed, it was a cat with an absurd ability. A lot of people thought that it was lucky, but it was much different than that, it could feel supernatural powers like a detector. This meant that it was rarely blind, and it could read things like mana, astral force, and Infernal energy.

 

This meant that the Maneki-Neko was a natural treasure detector, they often were incredibly rich demons. Then there was the really strange thing he had discovered about the cat at the end of the battle. That was the fact that the tip of its tail was split, but it was so slight it was not to be noticed without digging through her fur.

 

There was another cat demon called Nekomata that had a split tail and was capable of performing necromancy. They could also use fire magic and were said to be evil creatures that tried to kill and replace humans. They were also said to be reclusive and live in mountains.

 

The purring cat in his arms began to curl up as it played with the box on its chain as it waited for it to finish refining the Imp. Under the cat’s control, it had become a proper anti-demon weapon with a lot of different features. On the back of this small box, he could see the contract he made with the cat and the rune that had formed with its name.

 

“Can you transform into a human?” David asked the cat as he walked over and sat at the large diagram.

 

The cat shook its head in response to his question, she was laying on her back in his arms with har box and bell at her stomach as she played with them. He had wondered if it was possible since several different cat demons could, and yokai in general were all an odd bunch. The ritual song and dance that the cat had used were a part of the different things that yokai could do.

 

“Do you think you will one day?” He asked.

 

The cat responded to this with a very human shrug of her shoulders, and David found himself using a finger to play with the white patch on her chest. She responded by batting at his finger playfully with her paws, and the two found themselves playing a game for a few moments. They were soon interrupted though by the man with the cursed arm.

 

“When are we going to invoke that thing?” Harry asked him, he was painfully gripping his arm.

 

“I guess we can now, but try not to be too disappointed,” David said as he walked over and sat down at a spot on the large diagram, Pandora was sitting in his lap.

Lena came over and sat down next to him and began fussing with the wounds that her blade had caused him when she was under the bell’s illusions. David didn’t see why she was making such a big deal about it, he had already forgotten about it. Instead, he checked to make sure everyone was in the right position.

 

“Most invokers need to create a contract with an extra-dimensional being to be able to do things like heal or remove curses. This is because the control needed to do so is almost impossible to achieve, so you reach out to beings who can control it for you and they take some of your mana as payment.” David explained. “What we will be doing is calling one of those beings.”

 

“Is this like a god?” Harry asked.

 

“No, they often get mistaken for them though, they are more like spirits that exist as a part of mana itself,” David explained. 

 

“But they have supreme control over mana?” Harry asked. 

 

“Better than any living being can, but they don’t interfere without someone providing mana to them.” He said.

 

“What are the advantages over spellcasting?” Harry asked.

 

“Union, it is possible to all pay mana together for something that would normally be out of reach. This curse is something that falls into that category, but we can do a group blessing like this if we are all willing to contribute.” He said.

 

“But don’t you need to have a contract with it?” Harry asked.

 

“Rollo, please aid us and provide us your blessing in our troubled times!” David called as he poured mana into the large formation. “Everyone add some mana!”

 

Harry paused as he used his healthy arm to direct mana into the chalk pattern that was carved into the ground, what he discovered was that it seemed to slip away into the void. Lena felt this same experience, and the heavily cursed person just laid there. Soon a wind began to fill the church that seemed to emanate from the circle itself. 

 

David sat for a moment to get his breath, the expenditure was quite intense after having just come out of a battle. The benefits of having a dedicated invoker was that they could perform similar spells much cheaper than people who didn't have a contract with the entity. He hadn't decided to use this formation before as it was too expensive, but now he had Harry and Pandora to help provide the costs to run it.

 

A pressure felt like it was beginning to build inside of the church as if some great being was directing its attention towards them. Harry felt the hair on the back of his neck begin to stand up, and he swallowed the saliva in his mouth out of nervousness. The pressure kept building though as his mana continued to decrease.

 

“Are you sure this isn’t a god? This feels almost li-” Harry was getting concerned and began asking again when a change occurred in the room.

 

Harry realized that it was like making a phone call, and what they had experienced was the dial tone. This was because the moment the call connected they all could feel the being they had summoned. They could all feel it approaching them.

 

The image of a corgi he had when he was a child appeared in Harry’s mind, that was the feeling he would use to describe the signals that this being was giving him. It wasn’t so much coming towards them as it was sprinting at full speed in its pure joy that it had been called! Harry could feel its boundless love and compassion as it seemed to smother everyone in its presence like a warm blanket.

 

Only David seemed calm as this being seemed to appear all around them, in its sheer joy it felt like all of them had a creature that was zooming around them as it rubbed itself against them. The most disconcerting part was that Harry could also feel the boundless strength of this creature as well, he was like an ant before it. This gives him the most conflicted feeling in the world, like an ant being lovingly embraced by a human.

 

“You said its name is Rollo? What a strange name.” Harry said.

 

“That isn’t its name. Its name is over forty letters long and is almost impossible to pronounce.” David replied.

 

“Why did you call it Rollo?” Harry asked with shock in his voice.

 

“He doesn’t care, as long as it is close enough that he can understand you mean him then that is all that matters,” David said.

 

This information caused Harry to pause, then suddenly he remembered his arm and looked down. To his shock though he could see the bruising was receding painlessly away as if it never existed. This caused his jaw to drop open.

 

“Rollo hates pain of any kind, it is the only invoked being who has no means of attack. This is because he is horrified by confrontation, if we started arguing in this invoking circle then Rollo could be scared away. That is as long as we weren’t severely injured, he will still help heal people in battle if they might die.” David said.

 

“His name is so easy though, how can people possibly not find out about him?!” Harry asked with shock.

 

“To contract with him you need a circle like this, and this is not something you would stumble upon by accident,” David explained. 

 

The priests on Edea made it a point to attempt to locate new beings they could invoke and start new religions. They told people they were summoning gods and relying on their miracles, which wasn’t true in the sense that they were gods. Every one of them had a personality and a presence you could feel just like Rollo did, but most of them were different.

 

Most of them had a lot of pride or arrogance that you had to deal with and some of them only liked people with very certain personalities. When the priests discovered Rollo it almost caused a divide in the church who believed that the proud gods were far above mortals. Then they discover one of these beings who seems more content burying himself in the invoker's lap than anything else.

 

They considered it a threat to the future of the church's image and erased all knowledge of the being and made it a forbidden invoked being for the clergy. Later the Machine Lord discovered Rollo and said that it was the best invoked being among them all. It didn’t judge anybody, it just wanted to be loved and doted on!

 

“My arm doesn’t hurt as bad, this is incredible,” Harry commented.

 

David looked down and saw that the bruising on his ribs had receded and his cuts felt like they were being licked by a rough wet tongue, and they were rapidly closing as well. Currently, he was wearing a T-shirt that had the church's logo on the front and it was white. With his ribs healing, he found he could finally breathe easy again.

 

“Are we staying here tonight?” Lena asked.

 

“Yeah, the sun will set in a few hours and this church is already well fortified. We can sleep in the loft and Pandora can alert us if anything gets close.” David answered. “If we run into any setbacks while carrying that person then we will be in trouble. I don’t want to have to move in the dark and risk getting lost, or worse.”

 

All of the bodies of the victims were brought outside and burned in a pyre, that was the first thing they needed to do to secure the place. After that David went outside and relocked the front door and they had barricaded the backdoor using lumber from the pews. The loft had rooms already for visiting clergy, David had taken a few minutes to destroy the wooden stairs and install a rope ladder.

 

“This place had less than 100 people living here, and over half of them have died,” Harry said in anger. “First the military, and now people are summoning demons and leaving them as traps to kill people!”

 

This had also taken David by some surprise, but he could also see the appeal in it. Using the demon to kill people and feeding on a portion of its kills to increase your power was a common tactic on Edea, and many evil sects had sprung up as a result. Demons had always been good at tapping into the darker feelings in societies.

 

“It is terrible, and it is only going to get worse. The flame of civilization that humanity spent thousands of years building is going to get extinguished.” David said. “That is why you need to get powerful as quickly as possible, and if magic isn’t an option for you then Martial Force can certainly do it. You know, seeing you sometimes makes me feel ashamed of myself.”

 

“Why?” Harry asked.

 

“Because, if this had been real then you went into a church, a place that is traditionally against homosexuality, all to save a nun who probably preached a gospel that hated how you were born.” He said.

 

“Wait?! How did you know I was gay?! I haven’t told anybody! Are you-” Harry was shocked at first before he suddenly became excited and was cut off.

 

“Of course not,” Lena said definitively.

 

“Is my arm okay now? It doesn’t hurt.” Harry decided to try changing the topic.

 

“Of course, if you are not comfortable then how can you pay your full attention to Rollo?” David then quoted something that the Machine Lord came up with to describe him. “Your body is his temple, and your lap is his shrine, if he does not maintain it then how could it maintain him?”

 

Rollo had no concept of dignity, none at all, you call and he comes. You didn’t even need an invoker if you wanted to receive healing from him, just a massive and complex diagram and enough mana. There had never been a priest on Edea who was allowed to use him before, so he had no idea what to expect.

 

“Hey, they are waking up!” Harry called.

 

“No lights, no loud sounds, just Rollo and heal,” David said as he stood up and looked at his healed wounds.

 

Then he glanced over at the person wearing sweatpants and a sweatshirt taken from the church's stash of clothes they sold. They had hair that was longer than Lena’s and it was dark brown, it looked like it had been long before and they hadn’t cut it since the apocalypse happened. David had taken a pair of scissors so that Lena could cut his hair for him but he hadn’t needed to yet.

 

“Hey, can you tell me your name?” Harry asked the person who was looking at everyone around them.

 

“Jasmin, my name is Jasmin.” They said with some hesitation as if gauging everyone's reactions.

 

At this point, David decided to refer to them as a girl from this point on, if you were ever unsure about something it was best to just use whatever they addressed themselves with. Lena went with whatever David did, and Harry had experience with these kinds of things already. Jasmin saw that no one gave her a negative reaction, so she decided to speak further, this was much quieter.

 

“I overheard some of what you were talking about.” She said, “I was wondering if you could teach me about invoking?”

 

David suddenly felt Lena reach over and grab onto him with a hawk-like grip, she then eyed the woman down with a flat gaze. This caused Jasmin to suddenly feel her breath catch in her throat and she could feel a warning being issued to her. This didn’t matter though, she decided to clearly state her reasoning.

 

“I have decided to dedicate my life to serving Rollo and spreading his name!” She said clearly.