The last time James fought the agent, he was mostly just defending. And it obviously didn’t go very well. He knew he couldn’t afford to make that mistake again.

Hiding behind his Chaos Barrier wasn’t a good strategy, what he needed was unrelenting offense. Taking down the agent would take every ounce of his power. Every portion of his power that he dedicated to defense would just leave less for the firepower he needed to destroy the agent.

So the offense itself would have to be his defense this time around.

But if James could stun the agent every time he tried to attack him, while constantly chipping away at his vitality with his own attacks, then he actually had a good shot at winning this thing.

However, that left him with little margin for error. One problem was that the stuns were incredibly short. Perhaps on a weaker opponent, several [Bullet Chains] striking at the same time would stun them for quite a long time. But on the empowered agent, he had to keep the pressure constant in order to stun him.

The agent’s aura was powerful enough now to make James incredibly uncomfortable. He could only thank the stars that they managed to disable the Bloodwell, otherwise they would’ve had no chance at winning.

But no matter how strong the agent was, and even though the stuns were minuscule, James was feeling pretty good about his chances. The sheer number of bullets he had prepared was giving him all the confidence he needed.

Without much warning, the agent began to move, launching his tendrils again. But James just sent another dozen bullets to stun him again.

His other hand was still unusable, since James kept his [Split Mind] spell active for now. He had a feeling he’d definitely be in plenty of pain eventually, and not feeling pain was a lot more useful to a mage like him than the use of an arm and a leg.

Luckily, he felt that his mana was flowing throughout his body as usual. So while he couldn’t move the hand, it seemed like he could still manipulate his own mana with it.

So while he stunned the agent with one hand, he used his mana pathways in his motionless hand to conjure to prepare a Chaos Saw, launching it at the agent at the same time as his stuns.

Not very surprisingly, his Chaos Saw barely scratched the agent. After all, he had spent quite a bit of time in that cocoon, powering up.

The cocoon phase did give James the time needed to prepare thousands of bullets. But the agent didn’t do it to give James an advantage.

Even just looking at him, James could see that the agent’s defenses had been greatly increased. The sheen of Darkness on his skin gave off such an intimidating aura, that it looked like one could drop a mountain on the agent, and it wouldn’t even leave a scratch.

No doubt, his resistances to stuns and magic were incomparable to what they were before. This was the true form of an agent, so James had to execute his plan perfectly.

The Bullet Chains kept him safe, but James barely had any time to think. Every single second, he was forced wave after wave of bullets with his hand, and he didn’t want to find out what would happen if he missed a wave. The agent was thrashing and flailing wildly, waiting for the first opportunity to rip James apart.

But as successful as the stuns were, he was still just stalling. It wasn’t any different than their previous fight, if James just kept defending, his defeat was inevitable.

James was hoping he could damage the agent with some lesser spells, wearing him down slowly while the bullets kept him stunned. But now it looked like he would have to resort to the Overloading Mana Prongs right away.

With his one hand launching waves of bullets every second, James used his other hand to conjure the Prongs.

But instead of sacrificing a lot of his mana right away to inflict a big burst of damage onto the agent, James decided to do something else. He could see how durable the agent was, so he couldn’t afford to just waste mana on strong attacks that didn’t do as much damage as expected.

However, other than his large mana pool, James’s build had another advantage. His mana regeneration rate!

James launched the set of Prongs and embedded them into the agent. The agent knew he had to avoid the Prongs, immediately trying to launch himself away from them. But James was constantly interrupting his actions with short stuns, the waves of bullets flying into him non-stop.

With the spell firmly embedded, James began sending mana into the Prongs. Just enough so it would do some damage, but not more than his mana regeneration rate couldn’t just replenish swiftly.

Even though James knew that he needed to do a whole lot more to beat this foe, he smiled.

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The agent’s reaction already made it the Prongs worth it.

The agent began flailing uncontrollably. His inhuman screams and shrieks reached all the way to where Lunaris and the rest of the gang were stationed. The sounds alone would probably be enough to cripple entire armies with fear, but James was just smiling giddily, happy his moves were working.

Suddenly, the agent’s tendrils multiplied and thick waves of Darkness shot forth. The agent activated his swiftness spell that could even keep up with [Reckless Abandon], and tried to leap at James.

As frightening as the sudden burst of power was, James wasn’t a fool. He had planted his bullets all around, pointing in every direction, expecting that the agent would have his own surprised hidden.

Therefore, no matter how fast the agent was, James would keep firing an unending stream of bullets at him. Chains kept shooting out of the bullets, stunning the agent every time he tried to advance towards James.

James couldn’t stop the agent entirely, the stuns were minuscule and they allowed him to constantly launch spells. But when he got stunned, the spells would immediately become much less threatening. Without his constant active control, the agent’s spells were child’s play to dodge for James’s SARM.

Each half of a second when the agent wasn’t stunned, he’d try to launch spells at James. Dark spells of all kinds were whizzing past James. Bombs, bolts, blades, each time the agent was not stunned for a fraction of a second, he’d conjure spells to throw at James.

But even in his empowered state, he couldn’t manage to do much in that short interval before he would be stunned again. Unlike the past waves of hundreds of blades, James didn’t even need a barrier to deal with impotent spells flying haphazardly in his general direction.

However, all of this still wasn’t enough. James was far from a victory. While he had a lot of bullets, the reserves would eventually dwindle. And then he’d be on the defensive again.

The Prongs were doing small amounts of damage, but he’d have to keep it up for hours to kill the agent that way, and he didn’t have nearly enough bullets for that.

He wasn’t entirely alone though. James told her to stay out, but even though she was exhausted and wounded, Lunaris decided to help James with her remaining strength.

She was still healing Helios, but she sent her butterfly to assist James.

The agent could destroy the butterfly with barely more than a glance, even before he powered up. But James understood right away what Lunaris had in mind.

As soon as the bullets’ stuns wore off, the butterfly struck at the back of the agent’s head. It barely did anything, but even that was a big boon for James.

With the bullets stunning the agent for a half of a second, and the butterfly stunning him for a small fraction of a second, James’s bullets would last for a little while longer.

Lunaris had just bought him more time.

But he still had the same problem. He still didn’t have bullets for hours. He needed to step up the damage right away.

James could feel the chaos magic aching to come out, but he didn’t dare use it. If his Chaos Javelin didn’t kill the agent in a single strike, then he didn’t know if he’d have another cast left in him. And if he was left there manaless, with agent still alive, they’d all die. James just couldn’t risk it. Not while he still had other options.

Back when he invented his Overloading Mana Prongs and Chaos Barrier, James had theorized different things. But he never actually tried them out, at least not against actual enemies.

He didn’t have the time to use it against the neophytes, they were fighting on too many fronts. But with just a single enemy in front of him, he could finally try it.

The last training session was dedicated entirely to creating a powerful spell. But then he had to fight a horde of demons, then ten neophytes and an agent. His attention had been split in too many directions.

But now he had an ideal situation. A single enemy, mano a mano.

James conjured a second set of Prongs. But this time, instead of sending mana into the Prongs, he would pull mana out of them.

The agent’s mana was very different from his own though. As soon as he new set of Prongs was embedded into him, the almost invisible string that linked the Prong back to James turned black, vibrating violently.

James wasn’t worried though. He didn’t have access to his dark powers anymore, but he didn’t need them. Over time, through his own weird choices, he had turned himself into a strong mage that could handle such things.

Just like he took mana from Denmac, he’d take it from the agent. Taking hostile mana was much different, much more violent and much harder to purify.

But while that could be a problem for many, it wasn’t for James. His weird build was almost designed for that.

As soon as the dark, hostile mana rushed into James, James felt waves of pain across every inch of his body. But he was used to that too. Even through the [Split Mind] he could feel the pain, which he actually found a bit funny. Perhaps taking in such hostile mana was a kind of pain that was impossible to block.

The pain itself would’ve been deterrent enough for others, but not for him. It was nothing compared to the torture he had put himself through with the Chaos Barrier and the health sacrifices.

The dark mana flowed into James, furiously rippling throughout his body. But it was quickly subdued by James’s own potent, dense mana.

James made sure not to take too much at a time, but his mana could handle quite a lot.

Now that he was stealing mana from the agent, he conjured yet another set of Prongs, through which he would use the agent’s own mana to constantly damage him.

James purified the mana he ripped out of the agent as well as he could, then he began sending half of it to damage the agent through the third set of Prongs now embedded into him.

The other half he would purify even better and add it to his own mana reserves.

The stream of mana he was stealing from the agent was more than enough to fuel his constant usage. Just half of the mana stolen was even stronger than the first set of Prongs.

James now had two sets of Prongs damaging the agent, and one ripping mana out of him.

But that still wasn’t enough. The bullets would run out eventually, so he needed to speed up his efforts.

He spared a few seconds to refill his Mana Devouring Necklace just in case, since he could afford it right now, and then he cast a fourth set of Prongs.

But this time he wouldn’t settle for damage over time. James sacrificed an entire quarter of his own mana, and sent it into the Prongs in an instant.

The agent’s body shook uncontrollably, as if he were being executed in an electric chair. Dark blood spat out of his mouth, corroding the ground as it landed.

As violent as the scene was, James smiled. He hadn’t won yet, but he’d get rid of this monster as soon as possible.