James had invested hundreds of Javelins into creating the Chaos Glaive, and yet he was already unable to keep up with Garantep.

Garantep had only gotten stronger, and now he even pulled out a second blade.

James wasn’t a close quarters combatant in the first place, so now he was at even more of a disadvantage.

“Oh no, you’ve got two blades now. What will I do?” James mocked Garantep, even while his barrier was quickly cracking from the onslaught of the two crescent blades.

“A man in your position shouldn’t be making jokes.” Garantep quipped while slashing relentlessly.

As the dire as the situation looked, Garantep didn’t notice any fear coming from James. “You’re courageous, I’ll give you that. But at a certain point, courage is just insanity and idiocy. You should know when to panic, boy.”

With a dual slash from his blades, Garantep finally cracked James’s barrier.

Without missing a beat, James sacrificed his health three times, conjuring a powerful Chaos Barrier yet again.

“This is your plan?” Garantep shook his head. “You’re just delaying the inevitable. What’s to stop me from breaking your barriers till you’re too weak to conjure any more?”

Garantep then lunged at James again.

James dropped his Glaive, jumping away with SARM. “Ok, you win. You’ve proven that you’re the superior fighter in melee range.” He bowed sarcastically.

“So what, you’ll start throwing your weak little Javelins at me? Stop wasting my time, I’m not anything like the trash you defeated before. Those can barely tickle me.”

Garantep rushed towards James. James jumped back, but the slashes got closer and closer every time he dodged. But James had no intention of letting himself be anywhere near Garantep.

“You’re not even fighting back, did you finally realize that your fate has been sealed the moment you stepped foot into this city?” Garantep laughed as he slashed at James. “You little rat, you’ll tire out long before I do.”

“That’s true, perhaps I should start fighting back.” James smirked.

Suddenly, tiny cracks appeared all over Garantep’s barrier. And yet, James hadn’t even moved his hands.

“What the hell?” Garantep shouted as he turned around, only to see the Chaos Glaive spinning around in the air, slashing at his barrier autonomously.

James smiled as he fed mana into the Glaive, making it spin even faster.

But then Garantep simply jumped away. “Is that what you were counting on? Congratulations, you got one free hit on me. I think we both know it won’t happen again. That thing is too slow to hit me without the element of the surprise.”

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Garantep then leaped towards James again.

Now that Garantep knew about the Glaive’s ability to attack independently through SARM, he was slashing at James while constantly blocking the attacks from the Glaive. The Glaive was indeed too slow, so it was unable to actually damage Garantep anymore.

But James was still smiling. “What are you smiling for, you ant?” Garantep shouted, enraged at his complete lack of fear.

James kept dodging, flinging himself as far away from Garantep as he could, while staying within a moderate range so he couldn’t attack his friends instead.

Even though the Glaive operated by SARM was slow, since it was much bigger and thus harder to control than a saw, it was powerful enough that Garantep couldn’t just ignore it.

As he was slashing at the dodging James, Garantep had to turn around for a split second to block the Glaive.

And that’s all that James really wanted from the Glaive.

He wasn’t expecting to beat Garantep in close-quarters combat in the first place. And he wasn’t relying on the SARM-enhanced Glaive to do the heavy lifting either.

All he really needed was a gap within Garantep’s defenses. And now he had it.

Garantep was furiously slashing at James, his hand speed much higher than James’s. But James was flinging himself away as much as he could. It didn’t even look like dodging, it was like an invisible catapult was constantly launching James in random directions.

Garantep was still faster, but the Glaive didn’t allow him to actually touch James. Every time he got close, the Glaive threatened his back. The SARM equipped on the Glaive was launching it almost as hard as James was being launched.

And James wasn’t slacking off either. Each time he successfully dodged, he conjured another Javelin.

Perhaps the Glaive alone wouldn’t manage to buy him the opportunity he needed, but his team wasn’t standing with their hands in their pocket either.

Besides Lunaris’s constant healing, he was receiving support from every other member too.

“Take that, you bastard!” Emilia shouted as she launched her arrows at Garantep. Not all of them were actually hitting their target, nor did they actually do very much. But the incredibly brief slows and stuns they applied to Garantep were more important than they seemed.

“Gotcha!” Just as James’s Glaive was about to hit, Emilia’s ghost arrow hit him. The effect didn’t last longer than half a second, but that was more than enough to ensure the Glaive’s attack landed.

Garantep’s barrier cracked all over. It was repaired within an instant, but that was still progress. Even just damaging this seemingly unbeatable fiend’s barrier for a second was a small victory in and of itself at this point.

“Good job, guys!” James said while spitting at Garantep.

“You ants are just making the moment I’ll be wringing your neck and torturing your souls all the more satisfying!” Garantep shouted.

James didn’t actually attack yet. He knew that launching Javelin after Javelin wouldn’t work, not on this enemy. So he kept stockpiling them again, while sending mana into the Glaive’s SARM to keep it fueled up.

Meanwhile, Helios was waiting for his chance to strike as well. The meek spells he was throwing weren’t doing much. He couldn’t afford to go out there and get hit by Garantep either. But he really wanted to help James, so he had to wait for an opportunity and make it count.

Luckily, it looked like the opportunity was slowly creating itself.

James had been constantly dodging, creating hundreds of Javelins again, without launching a single one. With the Glaive and Emilia peppering him with small attacks, James was able to dodge without a single crack on the barriers he had conjured again.

Seeing the hundreds of Javelins surrounding James, Garantep realized he had to act right away. Even though it looked like he was just going in for another strike, he instead threw both of his crescent blades at James.

James’s barriers cracked in an instant. Worse yet, the barriers only managed to stop one blade.

As if they cutting through butter, the other blade passed through James’s arm at the shoulder, severing it completely.

“God damn it, not this shit again!” James screamed as he activated his [Split Mind] skill.