The battle hadn't even started yet, but it was clear that the Chimeras were in a whole other league compared to the tigers from before. Even without checking their levels, James could feel their power.

Strong monsters just emanated a certain kind of presence, you didn’t even have to see them attack to know that you wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of whatever they've got to throw at you.

But their levels only confirmed their power. James checked their levels, and each one of them was level 85. And as usual, the monsters of this prison were much stronger than monsters of their level should be.

With the Chimeras bearing down upon them, James started casting right away. Every second was a valuable resource. There were too many of them, this wasn’t like the last fight. Helios couldn’t take on half of them while James fought the other half. They had to deal with all of them at once.

This was exactly the kind of dire situation that James had been worrying about. But that also meant that it was exactly the type of situation he had been envisioning while making his preparations.

The danger made his hands tremble. But weirdly, a large reason for that trembling was excitement. Just imagining himself blasting those powerful chimeras with one of the spells he designed himself was enough to make him giddy with excitement. Of course, he couldn’t even afford to think about it not working.

“Lunaris, I know you’re focused on healing, shielding and supporting and all that. But please forget that for a few seconds and channel some attack to keep them at bay for a few seconds.” James asked while already preparing his attack.

Luckily, due to his friends' quick reactions, they were already surrounded by walls of fire that allowed the chimeras to only attack from the front. Ideally, James would've loved if they could just surround themselves in a dome of fire to keep the chimeras out. But the fires were only strong enough as a deterrent, they weren't impenetrable.

“We’d be totally defenseless if I do!”

“Believe me, I’ve got this, I just need a few seconds and I’ll take it from there.” He reassured her.

Even though she was reluctant to do that, she trusted him. Though if it didn't work, he'd be the one to die, and that worried her. The main reason why she was dedicating herself to supporting was that James was especially vulnerable due to his curse.

With Lunaris and Helios buying him a few more seconds, James’s plan should work.

The main problem of his most powerful spell was the cast time. And he knew just how to fix that problem, but given the large number of enemies, he’d still have to take a few extra seconds.

Up until now, he used his weird way of thinking, his active imagination and harebrained creativity to mentally envision new skills he could learn. Aided by his many years consuming all kinds of fantasy books, movies and games.

The Arcane Simulation skill he had just unlocked allowed him to do just that, but much more efficiently. It was as if he had an actual simulation in his mind, that could allow him to design spells much more accurately. With less trial and error, and with some actual feedback showing him if he was right or wrong.

But having just unlocked the simulation, he wasn't really proficient at it yet, it would take time to test out any new skills.

Therefore, he barely even used the simulation, and materialized the skill he had been thinking about in the good old-fashioned way of just going with the flow.

His idea was fairly simple, but if it worked it would change everything.

Instead of casting a very powerful Razorice Saw, James chose to sacrifice the strength, durability and sharpness of the Saw.

By using earth magic as the base, he was able to very quickly conjure a small circular saw that almost fit in his palm.

At that moment, it seemed like a useless lump of mud, but it hadn’t even taken a second to make one of them. And that was exactly why it was so powerful.

In what couldn’t have been more than five seconds, James had ten small circular saws.

He then floated all of them in front of him, and infused them with so much fire magic that his entire mana reserves were depleted.

The fire was a necessary part of the equation. A lump of mud wouldn’t do much damage, no matter how much mana and skill he had put into making them as sharp and tough as possible. Especially when many enemies had tough exteriors, like these very chimeras that were made out of stone.

But having added the fire, not only would the damage be increased, but the saws were so hot they could do considerable damage even to stone.

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[Skill unlocked: Lava saw]

James could’ve made these things much bigger and stronger. While each one was quite formidable, they were considerably weaker than the Razorice Saw. But they were so quick to make, the only reason he had to ask Lunaris to step in was that he needed time to make ten of them in order to deal with the large number of opponents.

Just like that, he already had ten powerful weapons. There was just one final thing he had to do.

Letting the saws fly wildly through the room would probably deal a lot of damage, but it would be hard to ensure that they themselves wouldn’t be hit by the saws.

And he couldn’t actively control ten of them. Luckily, this part of the equation had already been solved.

Helios and Lunaris told him repeatedly that he had to be careful and prepared. Not only that, he wanted to keep his friends safe and sound.

So he planned several steps ahead! He thought of every contingency. It would've been great if he could've simulated it first, but he had thought about it long and hard. So many nights he couldn't fall asleep because his brain was so busy thinking about all kinds of skills and spells.

Perhaps that's why he unlocked the Arcane Simulation skill, he had already been pseudo-simulating things in his head since he came to this world.

The answer to controlling the saws was SARM! The automatic system that helped him dodge. The mana exoskeleton that pushes him out of harm’s way according to his subconscious impulses.

There was no reason that very same concept couldn’t be used for offensive purposes.

The exoskeleton part of SARM was used to physically push him out of the way before even his legs could react. But the impulses were transmitted through mana. And after he quickly chugged a potion, he had plenty of that.

With a wave of his hand, James attached mana strands to each saw. He could now control the ten of them semi-automatically. He still had to pay attention to the fight so that he could send subconscious impulses to the saws, but they would do his bidding before he could even articulate the thought.

Ideally, he would have attached a small mana exoskeleton to the Saws that would be able to propulse them at incredible speeds in the desired direction, allowing them to move and turn even faster.

But given that there were ten of them and that would take a little extra time, the current design should do the trick. It's not like they needed exoskeletons to do all those things, but James drooled at the thought of having legions of these saws, enhanced with all the superfluous additions he could think of.

Not that he had the time to add anything else though. Helios and Lunaris had been valiantly keeping the chimeras at bay for the few seconds James had taken to create the saws, but even that was too long.

Helios’s shield had already turned into a hunk of junk, so he had to pull out another out of his storage ring. Lunaris was running out of mana, having had to channel more than one spell to keep the foes at bay.

James didn’t take a second longer than he had to, depleting his mana once again in order to send the saws flying with as much speed and force as possible.

As soon as he launched the saws, the already frenzied fight had turned into a chaotic mess. As if the sounds that were made by ten chimeras with two heads and a hissing snake tail weren’t enough, ten loud flaming saws flying around made it feel like ten helicopters were taking off right next to them. Helios and Lunaris said something, but James couldn’t hear a thing.

Not that there was any need for words, the sights spoke for themselves.

The miniature saws proved to be extremely useful. Even after the powerful rebound, SARM was able to reroute them so that they were back to attacking the enemy right away. Having poured so much mana into them, their speed made it so one attack only took two seconds, even though the saws were bounced back a great distance after the impact against the stone bodies.

While they were useful, the damage they were dealing was surprisingly low. Perhaps James had sacrificed too much power and sharpness in exchange for cast time.

But that would be enough. The saws didn’t have to finish the job all by themselves. All they had to do was keep the enemies under control.

Not only were the saws’ powerful impacts pushing the chimeras away from the trio when they wanted to attack, but they were also a problem the chimeras couldn’t ignore. They were essentially tanking the whole group!

As long as the saws persisted, the three were free to attack without consequences.

Each chimeras was assaulted by one saw, therefore none of them could attack the trio.

The bizarre sight stopped both Helios and Lunaris in their tracks. They weren’t new to combat, they knew each second was valuable, but they hadn’t seen something as weird as that before. A bunch of automated saws keeping enemies distracted all on their own. One or two minions tanking the monsters wasn’t something out of the ordinary, but it would take a powerful summoner or necromancer to be able to fight ten powerful foes like that simultaneously.

Perhaps that is why nobody in this world ever bothered to develop something like SARM. Only a very weird mind that defied all convention and built his own systems would be able to devise something quite so … useful and redundant at the same time. As usual, James proved to be a living contradiction.

Contradiction or not, the two quickly regained their bearings and launched an assault on the preoccupied chimeras. Lunaris didn’t bother supporting anymore, seeing as the enemies were fully focused on the saws.

Meanwhile, James was dual casting Mana Drain with both of his hands, and immediately transferring as much mana as possible into his necklace. These moments of safety were not guaranteed to continue, so he had to stock up.

But while the Mana Drain wasn’t doing much damage, the spells Lunaris and Helios were throwing out were definitely felt by the chimeras.

As soon as Helios’s sword struck one of them, all ten of them went into even more of a frenzy, desperate to deal with the saws.

Seeing as the saws were too quick and too durable to deal with by normal means, the powerful and intelligent monsters chose another route.

It was clear that if they didn’t deal with the saws right away, they would just be picked apart by the three mages one by one.

So the chimeras chose to sacrifice one of their heads in order to stop the saws.

As if they were a hive mind, the chimeras performed the same move all at once. Right as the saw as about to strike, the goat head bit down with all its might.

The shrieks the other heads were making were so loud that the trio had to cover their ears. The goat heads exploded in a mass of stone and blood, the molten saws immediately cauterizing the small amount of flesh and blood that was apparently inside the mostly stone bodies.

Just as the heads were destroyed, so were the saws.

With the saws dealt with, the chimeras were now ready to attack directly, a lot more furious than they were before.