The energy built up for only a few seconds, but it was enough to get the few mana sensitive on the ground to look up. Gilliam realised this was Savia immediately and internally cursed her, giving out her position like that.

The faceless demon seemed to turn his face towards this, hinting that though he didn’t have eyes he might at least follow some of the same ‘rules’ of sensing. In any case, he currently had his face pointing upwards as the energy Savia was storing pulsed, immediately after Gilliam felt something fumbling around his hands. This was shortly followed by another pulse and she was gone, again being above them and storing energy. The faceless demon faced Gilliam a second before again turning towards Savia and her gathering energy. The main difference was that Gilliam didn’t look up this time; his hands were free.

Savia had teleported down behind Gilliam, grabbed hold of the bindings and brought them with her back up then started channelling again to announce herself. If this was her planned idea it was brilliant.

Gilliam didn’t waste a second, his hand was reached out towards the demon. The only spell he could think of fast enough was the single Aether dart. He had used that a lot and it was the one freshest in his mind. Not taking even a moment to alter the spell or upgrade it, the spell circle flashed into existence and disappeared just as fast, having collapsed into a teal dart before his hand which was aimed at the demon’s central mass.

The demon tilted its head back down towards Gilliam, probably sensing the more present buildup of mana, and instantly as his face faced his human prisoner he started tilting his body to the side. This dodge was smart but not fast enough, as the dart left Gilliam’s hand it flashed through his right chest, piercing through two more demons behind him before disappearing into the sky.

Continuing the twisting of his body, the demon ended up falling over but through the whole movement, he was moving his own hands around, building up energy. Gilliam tried to repeat the feat and charged up another Dart but before he could complete the process he found himself in pitch blackness. He couldn’t see anything besides a white line around him on the horizon.

It was like he was in an endlessly large room without walls, letting in light all around him but not enough to see anything besides himself.

He wasn’t sure how this was looking outside of the illusionary world but this time he didn’t think that he was knocked out. Trying to will himself awake didn’t work and he was afraid to aim in random directions as he might hit his allies.

His attempt was abruptly halted as he felt something sharp rake across his chest, followed by a similar feeling across his back. He was being attacked and there wasn’t anything he could do about it. Defending himself could be fatal to the others.

He needed defences at the very least, setting up a barrier around himself took only a moment but was enough for them to get in another solid swipe across his thigh. The barrier formed in place and protected him as he started healing himself, ignoring the surface-level damage for now he focused on the deeper cuts on his thigh. The barrier was nearing its end quickly as the attacks increased dramatically. Focusing on defense would only go so far and he needed to find a way to attack as well.

He briefly considered an attack at standing level as the girls were laying on the ground, but this could prove problematic if they had woken and stood up, or someone were to lift them around, or if Gilliam himself was even standing now. There were too many unknown variables and he needed to find out what he could do about it.

Willing the illusion away didn’t work, perhaps the demon was focusing harder or just Gilliam’s lack of mental defence was the issue, he didn’t know and it was becoming more and more problematic. He had barely set up a second barrier as the first one popped, though he didn’t get hit this time he assumed it was close. It felt like a considerable amount of them were attacking it. Another issue was that first now that he started using magic, did he realize that he never ate the food nor got the relaxing atmosphere he thought he had when they exited into the jungle. They never got any sustenance and it was starting to get to him, his Boundary was emptying and his Core couldn’t keep up, he was weak and tired from before and this was not helping.

Managing to barely think through the panic he realised that the link to Savia wasn’t cut this time, he could feel her worry and uncertainness. He focused on the language they used back at the academy and shouted out for her. “Savia, can you hear me?!”

He waited for confirmation over the link but felt nothing.

He assumed that whatever he was doing in there was only partly affecting the outside, he might not even be moving or anything, so the shouting might never have happened. This begged the question of why his barrier worked, and why his healing worked. He assumed that it didn’t, it might just be his subconscious filling in the blanks and either the attacks didn’t happen or his mind was just not processing them.

Again he found himself sending a pleading feeling over the link, he got a response of first happy, but then extreme worry. This lasted for what felt like minutes so there might just be a difference in how his mind processed things in here and outside. They do say that your dreams only use a moment of real-time even though they can last years inside your head.

He tried to run, perhaps moving from the location might change things, and he tried to flail around him. Though he might punch the girls they were extremely hardy and it wouldn’t kill them. Nothing seemed to change anything.

The worry from the link changed back into the confident feeling from before, it seemed that Savia might have an idea.

This time he prepared, clearly picturing the magic circle of the multi and homing Aether darts spell he needed targets. With this spell he could manifest four targets, they still pierced before and he could send multiple at the same target but it was a bit harder to control than the single one. However, he hoped that the prep would overcome the time needed to cast it normally.

He waited and waited, she was using so much time. Or at least a long time by his current standards. He felt pain raking across his legs but couldn’t do anything against it. Or at least he didn’t think he could do much about it, he also chose to focus on the spell so it was ready whenever possible.

This took what felt like hours, he was mentally fatigued in addition to everything else, like focusing on the same task for an hour his mind desperately wanted something else to think of, but he had to force it back to the magic circle. Keeping on track he allowed himself to consider how the circle looked, removing the minute imperfections, imagining cleaner lines and more perfectly accurate runes. From Jial’s explanations, this shouldn’t change too much but it gave him something to do while still keeping on-task.

Suddenly the darkness broke, he opened his eyes and managed to look around for a split second. The magic circle was already being manifested and he was looking for targets. Pain shot through his body from his back, chest and both legs as he realised that he was being carried by several of the lizard-like demons. Their clawed hands didn’t intend to cause damage but being as sharp as they were it wasn’t exactly like his soft skin had much resistance.

The two individuals that were carrying him became targets one and two, the girls were still knocked out and he finally found the non-faced demon struggling with a savia on his face. Knowing her knack for crash-landing it wasn’t hard to guess what was going on. He aimed darts two and three at his head and chest before activating the spell.

“Savia, move!” He ordered his familiar as the spell collapsed and aimed out in their different directions. Savia had seemingly already prepared herself and instantly vanished, the demon looked in Gilliam’s direction as the two closest darts went through the chests of the ones carrying him. As he was freed and on the way to the ground the other two were now en route towards the illusion demon.

Dodging to the side wasn’t enough this time, one of the darts impacted his chest with great speed, causing the second one to not hit his head due to bodily movement, but rather his horn. The one hitting his chest dug deep before it faded into particles as the second one took off his left horn, the one with the golden ring.

Activating the flying spell on himself, though it was never deactivated he never properly considered it before now due to the danger it could place the others in, but now he was going to take control. Focusing his mind he manifested the carpet-bombing spell, getting some height allowed him to take in where everyone and everything was, letting him point it in the correct direction to make sure his friends wouldn't be caught up in it.

His barrier took several blows from ranged thrown objects before he got enough overview to cast the spell, though luckily for him everyone was too busy with him to do anything with the girls.

Pointing his arm out towards the group of demons he formed the spell circle, it took a few moments as his mind was a bit split, not to mention his strongly dwindling mana reserves. Though as enough mana had been gathered the circle formed, he aimed it properly and let it go. The runes and accompanying circle split and collapsed into several small orbs of energy before flying towards the group of demons. Most of them detonated right away but a few hit the sand and took a brief moment before exploding. The following chaos and damage were enough for them to let go of the girls and scatter.

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A brief existential moment had Gilliam wonder. Should he go straight for the girls or focus on the illusion demon first? He quickly decided that the latter was the smarter move. The dangers of the illusion were surprisingly large and he didn’t want to be uncertain of everything or be caught in that dark world again.

As the demons were scattering he wasn’t being bombarded by objects, which gave him a brief piece of mind. This helped him focus his mind and cast the four-homing dart spell again. Not being as prepared as he was before it took a moment, he saw some movement from the demon as the spell was done and just as the spell circle collapsed into the darts and they left his fingers, he found himself back in the dark.

Internally cursing he started wondering how he should get out of it this time. Preparing to contact Savia over the link turned into a wasted effort as he found the dark world fade after only a moment. Looking down he not only saw that he was still flying, but the illusion demon had found four more holes in his body, as the spell had just left Gilliam’s fingers they were on a homing trajectory. This saved him as the demon seemed to have died, or at least lost focus as he was perforated.

Taking another quick look around, the girls were in the sand, unconscious but besides that and a few minor wounds they at least weren’t run off with.

The same couldn’t be said about their gear, he started looking around after their stuff as he was rudely interrupted by a crash-landing Savia.

“Master, did Savia do good?!” Only a second after crashing into his face she pushed herself away, being picked up in his hand as she requested validation for her actions.

“You did amazing, you might have saved us all.” Gilliam replied without any hint of sarcasm. Her seemingly simple actions had saved them all. He would most likely not have broken out of the black world illusion had it not been for her.

She smiled wide and honest, her whole existence beaming with pride and happiness.

“I have another job for you, can you see if you can find our stuff?” Gilliam opened his hand to let her fly off. It should be a simple thing for her to get the things if she finds them, but he needed to look into the other companions.

She saluted with one of her wing arms, briefly making Gilliam wonder where she had seen that action done, but before he could ask her she jumped off his hand and started flying about.

Lowering himself down to the girls he did a pit-stop at the illusion demon, picking up a crude bone spear he shanked the demon in his head and chest multiple times, ending up leaving the spear stabbed through the head before he moved onto his friends.

As soon as he got over to them he quickly checked how they were doing. From the head wounds, having more than one and much deeper than the one he has, he assumed they had punched them more than once... Gilliam might have woken up before them but he’s nowhere near as hardy as they were... Perhaps as a result they had to bonk them multiple times, prolonging their unconsciousness.

Using his remaining energy he constructed a water and earth spell to make shade, it was some simple columns of sand with a plate over them. It was a crude lean-to with a slanted roof, but it worked. The remainder of his active mana was used to heal them the best he could, sending him deep into the ‘feeling shit’ territory of being completely out.

He didn’t know how much time he had to relax, they were still in enemy territory and he needed to get in the rest he could before they left. The event that just happened seemed to at least give them some time to relax, and he had to take advantage of that for now.

A few minutes after sitting down to relax, there were some emotions shared over the bond with Savia. The first was aggression, but it was not mixed with fear, but with something weird he hadn’t felt from her before. It was some happy or at least positive feeling but, he couldn’t lock it down.

It didn’t take that long before he heard screaming, he was not in a good position to fight. He didn’t have any proper weapons he could use and he was fresh out of mana. If only he had the ring or coat.

It only took seconds before he realised that the screaming was coming from above, it was a bit hard to narrow down due to the landscape not giving the sound anything properly to bounce off. Only a few moments after he had localized it a lizard-like demon slammed into the sand. As the sand and dust settled two things were clear, the first was that this individual was carrying at least the coat, and the second was that he was not moving anymore.

As Gillian wondered what caused this issue two things had him figure it out right away. One was that he felt Savia above, the other was that he realised the alien feeling, it was a weird sadistic glee. She took a strange enjoyment out of this and... he couldn’t help but think it was a passive side-effect of how he had been wading through the demons in nothing short of mass murder as of late. She might not have what Gilliam defined as a normal moral compass and might be trying to learn how to behave based on what he did. And though he didn’t want to kill he did feel some satisfaction in it. The satisfaction was in the power he wielded and that he was keeping them safe, but over the link, this could easily be linked to the act itself... He would have to talk to her about it later.

She descended into his line of sight, sporting an incredibly satisfied smile wide as could be. Though the action causing her to do this was questionable at best, Gilliam couldn’t do much but smile back at her.

Getting up from the patch of sand acting as his sitting area, he inspected the corpse and what it was carrying. It seems the coat, being the largest item, was used as a bag of sorts and was wrapped around everything else, he let out a massive sigh of relief when he found the ring on the finger of the demon, though it was not exactly his side so it only passed the first joint.

Pulling it off took considerable force, something Gilliam didn’t have much of at the moment in his weakened state, but he eventually got it off and put it on his finger. He needed to get their stuff back before leaving this area, which was easily done now that he had the ring.

The first thing he did was take a fist-sized Aether gem out of storage and consume it, this refreshed him considerably. It didn’t fill his Boundary a dramatic amount but it was enough to take him out of self-loathing to a more comfortable zone. This also let him use magic again which let him do a quick shower using Unstructured water magic to just create water. This let him get rid of all the sand, clean both his wounds as well as the wounds on his friends, and also cool down everyone a little. Though as he was dealing with two unconscious people he didn’t want to overdo it, especially since Petal shared the locals’ heat and cold affinities.

He got to see the odd demon in the distance, keeping far away from the little lean-to he had constructed. And a few brave demons here and there wanting to try their luck quickly found their end at a homing dart from afar, this gave him enough time to at least get their stuff in the ring and tie everyone together only to set off upwards again. It was a bit heavier due to the flight spell not being activated on their side, forcing him to recast it on them in a way he could control. All of this was draining his newly charged Boundary but he could eat and relax a little once he was properly airborne.

A quick thought had him wonder about the illusion demon’s heart, he wanted to check with Petal if she wanted it, but... he didn’t feel entirely comfortable digging it out. So instead, he did the next best thing and had the ring absorb the corpse. This did two things. Firstly it allowed him to bring it for her to do the ‘digging’ later. Secondly, it confirmed that the demon was indeed dead. The earlier testing showed that living things couldn’t be absorbed by the ring.

Feeling satisfied with this he took flight, aiming straight up he held out his hand for Savia and put her back in his hair, she didn’t like being wet at first but the sun and dry air fixed that in mere minutes. He didn’t feel entirely nice dragging two unconscious and naked women with him into the air like this but it was the far better choice he had at the moment.

Luckily enough it seemed that the fight and the killing of the stronger demon was enough terror for the other locals to leave them alone long enough so they could disappear in the distance of height. The barriers kept more sand from being more annoying and once he felt like he was high enough in the air he could finally relax. Looking down he was high enough that he couldn’t make out anyone, he couldn’t sense anything either from this range so he should be far enough away to properly relax, which brought him to the next step; sustenance.

He wanted to cover the girls with something but... he could also clean them and dress them but no matter what he thought, it all just felt worse than waiting... there was no winning this train of thought so he would just have to take the flame when it came to that. At least Petal would most likely not mind, the problem was with Angela...

He wasn’t trapped in some fucked up illusion world... he hoped... so this time he could eat! Taking out some food and drink he consumed it like the caveman he was. It was a simple meal, nothing too fancy, but right now it might as well be the best meal served to man. It was as the saying went; hunger is the best spice.

Moments later he heard noises, Angela seemed to be the first one waking up!