The group was already willing to follow James anywhere, no matter how insane his plans were. But after the shocking display of power, they actually became rather excited. And that was the amount of mana he gained from just one city!
“His mana pool and mana regeneration rate are already insane. Are you telling me that with each city we beat, this guy’s powers get even crazier? I probably haven’t had that much mana if you add every ounce of mana I had my hands on in my entire life. Is there even a way to quantify the amount of mana he receives from each city?” Emilia blabbered on and on while she was clinging for dear life to the flying carpet.
James couldn’t even hear what everyone else was saying. This carpet ride was even faster than the previous one, since time actually mattered now. He was fully focused on pumping his mana into it. He really meant it when he said he’d try to hit 40 cities, and he wanted to do it before any serious reinforcements could arrive.
He didn’t plan on wasting a single moment, but right now that came at the cost of the group’s sanity. They had been clinging to the carpet by using mana for ten minutes, but it felt like it had been an eternity.
“Well, if I had to guess, going from the amount of mana he displayed, I’d say that he increased his mana pool by around a fifth.” Lunaris replied to Emilia. “Those are rough estimates, of course. But if we actually succeed with all 40 cities, he stands to increase his mana pool and mana regeneration rate eightfold.”
“Eightfold!” Denmac kept repeating excitedly, as if his brain had been reduced to that of a parrot from sheer amazement.
“Well, I suppose that while increasing your power eightfold sounds like a lot, when the task at hand is this ridiculously difficult, it’s actually a quite fitting reward.” Emilia sighed as she thought about just how ridiculous the whole plan sounded.
Luckily for everyone, the nauseating carpet ride was as short as it was fast. Because of the absurd amount of mana James had used, they arrived to the next city from Garantep’s memories in less than 15 minutes. Even with Lunaris constantly pouring water and mending the carpet with her magic, it was singed and charred all over from the sheer speed that it had been forced to endure.
“All right. We’re here, you know the routine by now.” James looked towards the sky and smiled. “Looks like the welcome party is already here.”
Hundreds of agents were already on their way towards the group.
James buffed everyone up with Chaotic Healing, thus also activating [Reckless Abandon] on himself.
This time around, James wasn’t playing around. There was nothing to test, no trap he had to be wary of. At least, none that could actually do anything to him. This time, he was going to get the job done as fast as possible.
James began conjuring Javelins. But he wasn’t aiming at anything in particular.
He was aiming at everything.
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Without even bothering to look at his targets, James sent Javelin after Javelin into the general direction of where he sensed mana fluctuations.
He didn’t have to look to know that it was working. The carnage could be imagined from the sounds alone, the countless explosions and screams told the entire story all by themselves. The loud explosions of the Javelins that were enough to blow up several buildings at once were almost deafening. The shrieks from the agents blown up and scorched by the dozens of flying instruments of death that were bombarding them were music to his ears. And the rain of debris provided a nice beat.
There wasn’t even anything to defend from. The group had raised their barriers, but nothing was attacking them. The agents were too busy being blown to bits to retaliate in any way, shape or form.
“Ok, so these guys finally showed up.” The superior agents of this city showed up, so James empowered the next Javelins with more mana. “Guys, get yourselves some xp from the riffraff that’s left.”
Leaving the scarred and scorched horde of agents to his friends, James launched himself into the city to take care of the real threat.
But he didn’t treat this threat with much respect either. At the very least, he actually bothered to look at them, unlike the way he dealt with the rank and file agents. But other than that, it was the exact same process.
The superiors rushed at him all at once, but he just kept conjuring Javelins and throwing them.
In mere seconds, they were all dead. Thirty superiors used to inhabit this city. But now they were all dead.
James could sense an aura in the city much more powerful than all the superiors combined. But by now, even that was part of the routine.
He just kept preparing and piling up Javelins. The leader of the city was probably gathering every ounce of strength they had for a surprise attack. But James wasn’t going to wait for a big battle.
At thirty Javelins, James sensed a shift in the aura. Whatever was happening, it would be coming at him soon. But the specifics of it didn’t particularly matter.
James immediately released the Javelins in the direction of the aura.
And a second later, the aura disappeared.
With all his enemies defeated, James rushed towards his friends.
“All right, I’m almost done here, guys. I’m just gonna absorb the energies in a jiff and then we can move on to the next city.”
And then he rushed towards this city’s facility.
“D-did he say he finished already?” Denmac looked at the others as if he had just seen a ghost.
“I think I misheard him. Or he must be joking or something. It’s barely been a few minutes, he can’t be done already.” Emilia shook her head.
Even Lunaris and Helios gave each other an odd look. But they knew James better than everyone. He wasn’t joking, it was really over that fast.
They knew it was real, but it still didn’t feel real. It was a hard thing to comprehend. Several months ago, a Stygian city was this incredibly horrific and dangerous place that they wouldn’t even want to visit in a nightmare. And yet, here they were, killing all the agents in just a few minutes. And then they were even moving on to the next city.
“Ok guys, let’s just hurry up and soak in as much xp as we can from these weaker agents.” Helios was the first one to snap out of the shock. “Otherwise, James will probably just kill them all and we’ll be left with nothing. Let’s go!”
But before he barely finished the sentence, several explosions appeared out of nowhere. The agents in front of Helios turned into minced meat right before his eyes.
“Sorry brother, but you’ll have plenty of agents to kill in the next city. Off we go!” James beamed, filled with so much energy that the carpet was trembling from his mere presence.
“Oh my God, this can’t be real, can it?” Emilia and Denmac were so shocked that they couldn’t move their limbs.
“Come on guys, this is getting old. We’ve got a job to do!” James smiled awkwardly, but his nonchalance was just making the situation worse. The poor guys kept having their worldview turned upside down, and yet James was treating it all like a walk in the park.