Choosing to turn around and run was a drastic shift in strategy. But it was already clear to James that he’d need yet another drastic shift if he wanted him and his friends to survive.

With Chaotic Healing enhancing all of their speeds, the entire group was so fast that they were basically teleporting forward.

The dwarves even stopped channeling the barrier, instead choosing to focus their mana into further increasing the group’s speed. It was obvious to them that a single attack would slice all of them right in half, so it was pointless to even try to defend. Speed was their only chance right now, so they had to increase their speed at any cost.

With one hand feeding mana into carpet, they used the other hand to enhance their getaway in other ways. Bacchus was casting runes onto the carpet to increase its speed, Ruppus was spreading vines on it in order to prevent it from wobbling, and Eruditus’s imps were shooting out waves of fire, trying to propel the carpet forward as much as they could.

But even as the carpet was zooming forward at unprecedented speeds, to the point they were barely able to keep themselves from emptying the contents of their stomachs, they all knew that this wouldn’t last long.

And James was the only one that stood a chance at beating this monster. So they had to assist him as much as possible. Lunaris wasn’t even contributing to the speed of the carpet at all, fully pouring her healing into James, desperately pressing heals into him with both of her hands. Helios wasn’t much of a healer, so he focused on the carpet like the rest of the group, but with his other hand he was throwing every buff he could think of at James.

With the rest of the group trying their best to assist, James was the one who had to actually do something to turn the tide.

They were going fast, even faster than Garantep with his ludicrous amount of power. But they couldn’t keep this up for hours, and that monster would clearly chase them to the ends of the earth if that’s what it took.

James had to buy time so he could regenerate his mana.

But there weren’t any other tricks he could pull. He had already surprised even himself with the massive change in strategy. And he couldn’t go back to clashing his powers with Garantep either.

It’s not like they could just hide somewhere until he recovered all his mana. Garantep was hot on their heels, and he wouldn’t let them get away.

So if just fighting wasn’t an option, and they couldn’t just disappear either, the only thing left to do was to keep running. Not the drastic shift in strategy that James was hoping to come up with, but they had to try.

To truly regain enough power, James would have to avoid combat for several hours, but the group couldn’t possibly keep this up for long enough. They were all strong people, but none of them were freaks with nigh unlimited amounts of mana. They’d run out long before he would recover sufficiently.

But as he was contemplating his dilemma, James realized that unlike them, he was actually a freak. So he could go with a solution that was just as freaky as he was.

It was a going to be tedious and arduous for everybody involved. But it was their only chance for survival. Stopping to fight Garantep was suicide, and unfortunately just vanishing into thin air was beyond their capabilities. So this was the only option.

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James crossed his legs and focused. Suddenly, his mana shot into all of his friends.

“What?” Lunaris gasped as she felt her mana pool slowly refilling with each passing second. It was just enough to cover her mana expenditure, so her mana levels weren’t going down anymore. “Isn’t that counter-productive though?”

“How are you going to recover mana if you spend it on us?” Helios asked as he kept pouring mana into the carpet.

“It’s true, this will make the recovery process much longer.” James nodded, but he kept feeding them mana. “I will still regenerate mana though. I’ll have to spend more than half of the mana I regenerate on you, but this is the only way we can survive. It’ll keep you from running out. We’ll have to keep running for even more hours, since it’ll take much longer for me to recover sufficiently, but I still recover more than I’m spending. So all we have to do is not die for several hours.”

James laughed awkwardly, realizing the idiocy of what he just said. Surviving hours of being chased by an enraged madman was not a plan, it was the antithesis of a plan.

Immediately, a giant crescent flew past them, nearly slicing their heads off.

Garantep wasn’t catching up yet. But every minute, dozens of giant crescents would zoom past them as the madman was burning his energy to launch the crescents with a speed that even the empowered carpet could barely dodge.

And yet, time was slowly passing, and they were actually able to dodge them all. Every second was nerve-wrecking, but they were alive. And slowly, James was indeed recovering mana.

“I’ll add a thousand more years of torture for every minute of this charade.” Garantep screamed in the distance as he launched another wave of crescents at the group.

The plan was stupid, dangerous, and beyond reckless. But it was working.

With six of them focusing all of their efforts into flying the carpet as fast as possible, Garantep wasn’t able to catch up to them. The carpet was glowing and vibrating from all the mana that was being poured into it, but it was darting across the landscape without fail.

They were even able to dodge every crescent thrown at them as they were spending just as much mana to actually control and direct the carpet.

“Your souls will be regenerated only to be tortured again for a billion years!” Garantep shouted. But then he went silent.

And the crescents stopped coming too. It was eerily quiet, which was somehow even more unnerving than crescents the size of a house being thrown at you.

“Brace yourselves!” Denmac warned. But you didn’t have to be psychic to know something was up. There was no way the monster gave up.

Suddenly, Garantep shot forward, his speed having more than doubled. His crescents were disappearing with each passing second, but it was a price he was willing to pay. It was clear to him that time was not on his side.

The pipsqueak actually managed to turn the tables again. Each minute that he failed to kill them, James was recovering more and more. Even if James didn’t have any more tricks up his sleeve, eventually he would recover enough that he wouldn’t even need tricks.

The crescents were burning, the Darkness feeding back into Garantep. With each burning crescent, his speed was greatly increased.

Even though he couldn’t physically see, James’s eyes shot open. He slammed his head into the carpet, and it shot forward with an explosion of mana. Spending this mana would only delay his recovery.

He was really tired of this cat and mouse game, so prolonging the whole thing was exactly what he didn’t want to do. But he had no choice. At least it looked like Garantep couldn’t just catch up to them without sacrificing his Darkness either.

Since Garantep was burning off his Darkness, that meant that the amount of mana James needed to beat him was reduced a bit as well.

Victory didn’t seem entirely impossible. If they could survived a while longer, Garantep would just burn off more of his Darkness, while James recovered his mana. And victory would be theirs.

But Garantep wouldn’t let them do that either. Suddenly, a dozen crescents burned off, and Garantep shot forward, landing inches away from the carpet.

James had to match the sacrifice again. He slammed his head into the carpet, and they narrowly managed to avoid getting cut in half.

James didn’t know who was sacrificing more. Every time he slammed his head, he lost minutes of progress. He could only hope that it cost Garantep more than that to launch himself forward.