“Bad luck for you. These are shikigami, meaning they don’t use the same magic we do,” I told them. The way in which Raph-chan’s illusion magic worked had actually not really been determined. She could also use the same magic that we did, but considering how she had just used it here, she could clearly also use a similar but different type of magic too. She was a monster after all, and the circumstances of her birth placed her close to a resident of this world. All of which meant it was hard for them to block her.

Then, as the women tried to batter an illusory Chris, a massive Chris—at least two meters—appeared behind her, unleashing a mighty smack with his powerful flipper. The woman screamed as she went flying away.

“Pen!” Chris said triumphantly.

“Is that Chris?!” Glass exclaimed.

“Pen!” Chris affirmed, striking a body-building pose at Glass, as though to show off how strong he had become. Glass was stunned and then glared over at me. Hey, I wanted to say that had nothing to do with me.

Chris immediately returned to his small size and then the two other small ones dashed over to their respective owners and climbed onto their shoulders. That was all it took for Raphtalia and Glass to look like they were in considerably less pain.

“Has the pain in your chest improved?” I asked.

“That’s right,” Glass remembered. “These shikigami have the power to resist curses.”

“What?!” Miyaji was hammering the straw doll over and over again. Each time he did, there was the sound of something hitting Raph-chan and Chris.

“Raph!” Raph-chan batted it away with her tail.

“Pen!” Chris pecked something with his beak. In the same moment, the doll Miyaji was holding split apart.

“They repelled the curse attack?!” Miyaji shouted. With a pained grunt, Miyaji placed his hand on his own chest, glaring intently at Raph-chan while he did so. As the saying went, of course, if you curse someone, you’d better dig two graves. It was a standard trope in manga and anime for a curse like this “voodoo” to bounce back on the user if it failed. Maybe that was also an element of the attack he had used—or maybe Raph-chan and Chris had just bounced it back at him.

Now we could disrupt Miyaji’s curse attack and use support magic against it. That should stabilize the battle a little more.

“Stardust Blade!” Raphtalia unleashed a wide-range skill that consisted of sparkling stars and sent them flying at Miyaji’s women and Witch.

“That’s not going to hit us!” one of them yelled. They all dodged the incoming stars, then moved to strike back. I could completely nullify Witch’s magic though, so that didn’t get her anywhere.