James lost a hand, but at this point that was not a shock to him anymore, it was just another Tuesday. He knew he could just get it healed when they get home, and with [Split Mind] he was even able to ignore the pain. But even if the consequences weren’t all that grave, it was quite annoying nonetheless.

“God damn, I’m tired of losing limbs. And what’s with throwing your weapons? Who does that?” James shook his head. The most frustrating part was that it wasn’t some fancy attack that took his hand, it was a braindead move that he should have been able to dodge with his eyes closed. But when you’re dodging an attack every second, you’re bound to make mistakes.

“I did you a favor.” Garantep laughed as he licked his sharp teeth. “You have to get used to losing limbs. Once I kill you, I’ll be breaking your soul’s limbs over and over for eternity.”

James rolled his eyes. “This battle is dragging on for way too long.” He mumbled to himself. “It’s not even his powers that I’m tired of, it’s the damn cartoonish lines he keeps spitting. I’ve just lost a hand, and yet hearing these things is what’s really painful.”

Luckily, James wasn’t a physical combatant. He could still conjure magic with a missing hand.

And he already had two hundred Javelins ready to go.

With a symbolic snap of his fingers on his remaining hand, the Javelins merged into the giant, crimson glob again. James jumped in and grabbed his second Glaive.

Garantep wasn’t about to let him have even a second of rest though. After picking up his crescent blades again, he restarted his merciless onslaught.

But with his first, autonomous Glaive and Emilia’s barrage of arrows giving him room to dodge, James was able to apply SARM on the second Glaive in a split second. However, that second is all it took for Garantep to throw his crescents at him again.

James managed to dodged, but only by a hair’s breadth.

“Another close call, huh?” Garantep mocked him. “Is it just me, or is that happening more often?”

James didn’t like it, but he couldn’t deny it. Garantep’s attacks were getting closer and closer.

But even though the enemy had a seemingly infinite amount of powers, James had a gargantuan amount of mana that he still hadn’t used up.

And now, thanks to that mana pool of his, he had one more Glaive spinning around, helping him block and attack. While Garantep could avoid the Glaive, he still had to put in the effort to avoid it, because he knew he couldn’t afford to get hit by it.

And now there were two of them.

SARM immediately flung the second Glaive toward Garantep. But just as he was about to block it, the first Glaive was flung towards his back as well.

But James and his Glaives weren’t alone. Having anticipated this moment, Emilia let loose a barrage of arrows. She knew she couldn’t do any damage to the monster, but James had more than enough firepower. What he really needed was a way to slow him down, and that’s exactly what her arrows would do. As the barrage shot towards Garantep, the spinning arrows seemed to be moving in slow-motion, even though they were zooming through the air quicker than a speeding bullet.

Even though Garantep effortlessly dodged one Glaive, the other one sliced right into his back, spinning continuously until more and more cracks appeared on his barrier. Emilia’s arrows hadn’t even arrived yet, but James already had a small victory.

Garantep jumped away, but the Glaives flung themselves back towards him. He didn’t seem to be doing any real damage, but this was already a big win for James. Without having to dodge, he was completely free to summon as many Javelins as he possibly could.

However, there was someone else who had been waiting for a chance as well. Before Emilia could even shoot her arrows, Helios had already been running towards the enemy.

With James stockpiling Javelins, Garantep was about to block the two Glaives. Just then, Emilia’s arrows were zeroing in. But with just a mere glance, Garantep melted them down with a simple wave of Darkness.

But even though the arrows didn’t land, they were yet another thing that Garantep had to split his attention towards. And while he could easily block the arrows, there was no blocking Helios.

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Helios looked like a giant ball of blue fire as he was dashing towards Garantep. With a leap that left a crater behind him, Helios launched himself towards his dark barrier, sword first. Without any regard for his own safety, much like his crazy brother, he plunged his sword deep within the barrier.

All the flames around him flowed into the sword, immediately assaulting Garantep’s defenses.

James shuddered, having experienced that attack on himself a few times. The flames immediately began devouring the barrier, and the sweet sounds of cracking and shattering rang out.

Normally, Garantep could definitely put out even Helios’s strong fires. But this wasn’t a normal situation. The onslaught was coming from every angle. Especially as James stopped stockpiling Javelins, and unleashed hell.

The Glaives had already flung themselves into the barrier, slashing continuously as they spun around, being guided by SARM while James pumped even more mana into them.

James had so much mana that he didn’t even have to do anything to the Glaives, his mana seemed to shoot out of him to feed them. Embedded into Garantep’s barrier, their crimson color was getting even stronger.

James himself was spamming his Chaos Javelins, launching them as soon as they were ready. He had already consumed a lot of mana, probably more than what fifty normal mages were capable of. But to him that was nothing.

The entire group came closer. Denmac kept the barrier up, but the dwarves stopped fueling it, instead focusing on attacking Garantep as well.

Hundreds of imps around Eruditus were throwing fireballs. Thorny vines and ghost wolves shot forth from Ruppus. Runes covered the ground around Bacchus, sending a soothing wave of mana that covered the entire group, noticeably boosting their health and mana recovery rate.

Every single member of the group was throwing all they had at Garantep. Except Lunaris, who was healing James directly, her hands glowing directly into his wounds.

But they didn’t seem to need Lunaris’s firepower anyway.

Ungodly screams were echoing out underneath the self-sustaining fire. Garantep couldn’t even move, pinned down by the relentless attacks.

His barrier was enduring though. And he knew he couldn’t afford to let it break. Unparalleled waves of dark energy were radiating from within the barrier, fixing it as fast as it was breaking. The ground was shaking as the dark energies ravaged around, leaking into the soil, warping the very air around him.

“How long can that barrier possibly last?” Lunaris asked as she watched Helios’s blue fires consume the barrier.

“I don’t know, but the fires will definitely run out soon.” Helios answered with a worried look. “Even a God’s barrier would have shattered long ago.”

James didn’t say anything for a while. He just stared at the barrier. He even stopped throwing Javelins.

Helios’s blue fires started to fade away. James immediately reacted.

“Everybody fall back, now! Stay as far away as you can!” He shouted.

Nobody was about to doubt James’s instincts, so within seconds the dwarves had returned to reinforcing Denmac’s barrier, and the entire group moved back a few hundred feet.

The blue fires had run out, but Garantep still couldn’t be seen under the storm of smoke and dark energies swirling around him.

“All right, come out. We all know you aren’t dead. Sick bastards never die that easily.” James announced nonchalantly, while preparing to dodge at a moment’s notice.

A dark figure shot out of the smoke, completely black from head to toe. It didn’t even have eyes or teeth, it just looked like the Darkness took the shape of a human.

James had been prepared to dodge, and yet he barely managed to avoid the attack. The creature was much faster than before. James tumbled as he dodged, relying on desperately flinging himself away with SARM in order to survive.

Instead of just the two crescent blades Garantep possessed before, every time the dark figure attacked, a new crescent blade seemed to be formed, flying towards James so fast that he didn’t even have time to think, having to dodge preemptively, on instinct. Not even his Combat Clairvoyance was helping, which usually allowed him to dodge most attacks. But this was just too fast.

If not for James’s Glaives intercepting as many crescents as they could, he would’ve been slashed in half already. He was desperately dodging, flinging himself away at downright uncomfortable speeds. Even though [Split Mind] was hiding the pain, he felt like vomiting from the sheer speed at which he was being flung around.

“So, you’ve finally showed your true colors. This is what you really are, a big blob of Darkness.” James mocked him.

A raspy, shrieking voice replied. “You’ll pay for making me do this.” Garantep was panting, seemingly in pain with every word he spoke. “I tried so hard to strengthen and purify my powers. It took me so many years to compress and enrich all this Darkness. I made it part of me, part of my mana pool, part of my soul. It got to the point that my body was so dense and rich in power that the Darkness in my vicinity was involuntarily fleeing from me. But now you’ve forced me to sacrifice it all. First my hands, and now my entire body. You’ve forced me to shatter my own mana pool, to permanently destroy my own powers just so I can use the decompressed energies to unleash their full potential.”

Garantep suddenly screamed. The space around him warped as giant, dark vortexes appeared. Powerful shockwaves erupted as what looked like at least a hundred of his crescent blades were formed out of the vortexes.

“It’s ok though. I’ll just extract it all back from you. In fact, you’ll be doing me a favor. I see you’ve become a good little mage. That mana … I can feel it from here, I’ve never seen such an endless supply, so rich and pure. Yes… you’re worth all this. I’ll use you as my battery for years. Your screams as I extract your essence for decades to come will make all my sacrifices worth it. What I lost will pale in comparison to what I’ll gain from your anguished soul.”

Even the poker-faced and sarcastic James was creeped out by the deranged declaration. But even more disturbing were the hundred blades aimed at him. He had trouble enough with two, but all of a sudden, hundreds appeared in front of him.