“Oh my God, what happened to you?” The seven shouted in unison.

“Just how strong was the enemy if they were able to do that to someone like him?!” Emilia turned pale.

“Oh, it wasn’t an enemy that did this.” James laughed as he pointed his fleshless finger at his skull. “It was me, I did it!”

“I know that we joke and say that you’re crazy, but for what possible reason would someone do that to themselves?” Denmac said as he stared at James, who was basically a walking skeleton, his brain being the only part that still was made of blood and flesh.

“Hey, don’t get me wrong, I didn’t do it just for fun, I’m not that crazy.” James snickered somehow, even though he didn’t have any flesh to actually produce a smirk. “I just got tired of casting barriers, you know? I wanted to be as fast as possible, so I kept pouring more and more mana into my flight. Well, eventually I got so fast that the damage from the speed alone was destroying my barriers within seconds. At a certain point, it got so annoying that I had to refresh the barrier several times a second. I figured there’s no real point in protecting the rest of my body, so I just cast a more concentrated barrier on my brain and called it a day.”

“So you just let your flesh melt. Because ... casting barriers was becoming too annoying.” Lunaris stared at him incredulously. He had always been more than a little bit odd, but she couldn’t believe that with increased powers, his insanity still kept increasing day by day.

The rest of them were standing with their jaws dropped. Somehow, the madman managed to surprise them yet again.

“That’s awesome, brother!” Helios was a lot more supportive of James’s insanity. “As long as you’re alive and well now, who cares if you have to melt your body once or twice?”

“That’s the spirit, brother!” James high fived his best friend. “It was definitely worth it too, I can’t believe just how much energy I’ve been able to steal.”

“Well then tell us, Mr. Sacrifice. How much stronger are you?” Lunaris rolled her eyes as she began regrowing his limbs for the millionth time.

“I lost count of how many cities I hit, and it’s not like I can calculate precisely how much energy I absorbed.” James said as he watched his flesh reattaching to his bones. “But if I had to estimate, I’d say it’s around 1000 small cities’ worth of energy.”

Half the group still had their jaws dropped from the previous surprise, but this time around they almost fainted. Their knees wobbled as soon as they heard the number.

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“1000 cities? Did you misspeak or something?!” Denmac shouted at the top of his lungs for some reason.

“Hey, I have ears!” James winced from the sudden noise. “Well, I don’t right now, cause Lunaris didn’t regrow them yet.” He chuckled. “But that was still way too loud, man! You did more damage to me with that shout than the last few thousand agents put together.” James said in an unusually braggy tone, although he definitely deserved to brag now.

The dwarves didn’t say a word and immediately pounced on James, analyzing his body and aura with various devices.

“What a wonderful opportunity! What a specimen!” Bacchus was almost crying out of joy.

“We’re the luckiest dwarves on the planet!” Eruditus was taking flesh samples out of James, but he didn’t seem to mind at all. Hell, he barely even felt it.

Ruppus was the most respectful in his analysis, but he steal eagerly studied James.

“Hey, don’t be so shy!” James told him. “Go on, dig in there! Grab a fistful of flesh or something.” He chuckled, but then Lunaris slapped him.

“Hey, I’m healing you here! Stop being so nonchalant with your body parts! Just because you don’t feel pain, doesn’t mean you should lose flesh every single day!” She shouted at him, but this time his ears didn’t hurt. He could see her smiling even while shouting. She truly cared about him.

And so did all his other friends. Helios was smiling from ear to ear, happy not only that his brother was safe, but ecstatic that he had gotten so much stronger. He could feel that James definitely hadn’t exaggerated, he truly did absorb that much energy. It was a bit difficult even to be near him, the aura was so overpowering.

Within minutes, Lunaris had regrown the entirety of his body.

“You know, any other person would have been in so much pain that they’d never forget this experience even a thousand lifetimes later.” She said as she was finishing up the healing.

“Yep, but I didn’t feel a thing!” He grinned. “I could lose all my flesh and not even flinch!”

“That’s not something to be proud of, genius. Most people would try to keep their flesh!” Lunaris insisted, but she couldn’t hide her smile.

“Ehh, I’ve got this power, why not take advantage of it?” James continued grinning like a moron.

As soon as everybody recovered from the shock of the sheer insanity they had witnessed, they got on the carpet. They were finally ready to go back home. It felt like an eternity had passed, even though it hadn’t even been a week.

“Guys, if you don’t mind losing a bit of flesh, I can get us back home within minutes!” James announced innocently.

“NO!” They all screamed in unison, having turned as white as ghosts in an instant.

“We’ll take it slow, thank you!” Emilia bowed to the madman. “Nice and slow is how we want it!”

The rest all nodded rapidly. Although, Helios was laughing to the point he almost fell of the carpet, and Lunaris was rolling her eyes with a smile on her face.

“All right, all right. I’ll go slow then.”

Although, Emilia should’ve been a lot more precise, because the word slow was relative. What was slow to James, was still a horrifying experience for the rest of them.

Their flesh was intact, but they were almost vomiting from the speed at which James was pushing the carpet.

But at the very least, it didn’t take more than half an hour for them to finally get out of the Lands of Darkness.