Something went horribly wrong when Lunaris was fueling Denmac’s divination skill. Neither he nor she expected for the search radius to so vastly overshoot the expected range.

Even though there was a nugget of good news in there, at least when it came to their efforts to track down the neophyte agents, they didn’t really see it as a good thing at that moment.

“Ok, so I did find a trail after all.” Denmac announced with a gloomy expression. “But we might not live long enough to follow it. I can already sense the enormity of the enemy force heading towards us. I can only hope you guys are as powerful as your reputation suggests.”

Not nearly as bothered by the bad news as Denmac thought they would be, James and Helios gave each other a high five. The two impatient hotheads were more excited about finally finding the trail than they were worried about the upcoming fight. At this point, a desperate battle sounded much better than the prospect of having to spend a few days searching.

“All right!” James replied excitedly. “A bigger search radius just means more demons coming at us, right? I know it sounds scary, but there’s no need to have such a worried look, mate.” James assured Denmac, noticing the quickly increasing dread in his eyes.

“Helios and I will deal with them, I promise. There’s no challenge the two of us can’t beat, isn’t that right, brother?”

Helios and James high fived and headbutted again, pumping themselves up for a proper fight.

“No, you dummies. You don’t get it!” Lunaris said while breathing heavily. James and Helios hadn’t noticed it before because she had been trying her best to maintain her composure, but Lunaris was looking extremely drained. She didn’t want to worry them, she knew how much they cared about her. But she couldn’t hide her weakness any longer.

“The search radius was A LOT bigger than we were expecting. A whole lot bigger than what the two of you are probably imagining right now.” Lunaris then closed her eyes. She didn’t even have enough energy left to keep her eyes open.

Only then the two hotheads realized the true extent of the problem. They understood the logic behind their predicament right away, but they misunderstood the magnitude. If Lunaris was so drained, then that meant that every bit of her mana was inadvertently sucked out of her and used in the spell. It even looked like she got drained way beyond that.

“How big?!” Helios asked. “Just how big was the radius?”

“Since it was my mana, I could partially feel Denmac’s spell too.” Lunaris answered. “If I had to guess, I’d say … several hundred miles in all directions.”

James and Helios suddenly weren’t as excited anymore. They were expecting to have to battle all the demons from a few miles around them. They were imagining a dozen or so miles when they heard that the radius was much bigger than expected.

But a few hundred miles? That probably meant tens of thousands of demons. This wasn’t a battle, it was suicide.

“Can we just stealth up and leave?” James had to ask, even though he wasn’t getting his hopes up.

“No.” Lunaris answered. “In just a few minutes there will be hordes of furious demons coming to look for us and rip us apart. Knowing we are here, they’ll search every nook and cranny till they find us. And it wouldn’t take long since there are so many of them.”

“Teleportation scrolls?” James asked frantically.

Lunaris shook her head. “They don’t work within the lands of Darkness. And that’s for a good reason. If teleportation weren’t intentionally made nearly impossible to and from these lands, we would find ourselves with agents and all kinds of monsters sneakily teleporting all over the world and wreaking havoc. Although I can see how it doesn’t seem like a great thing in our current situation.”

“Man, these things never work when you need them. That’s it, I’m flushing mine down the toilet. If I ever get the chance of even seeing a toilet again that is.” James spat out in frustration.

“Eh, cheer up guys.” Helios quickly got over his initial shock. “A hundred demons, a thousand or ten thousand. What’s the difference? It’s all just a number, who cares? We’ll deal with them all either way. And you know what else is a number, right James?”

“XP!” James excitedly shouted.

Helios was right. This was just another opportunity, even though the idea of fighting ten thousand demons was blood-curdling to say the least. But the amount of xp they’d receive would be glorious, worth all the blood thinners in the world.

Helios’s incredible perception and senses could already hear the first waves of the demon hordes, rumbling in the distance as they were rushing to kill whoever dared trespass into their territory.

“Are you ready, brother?” Helios asked James with a valiant smile.

“Aye. Let’s give them hell.” James answered, and they clasped their hands together with all their strength. James could feel Helios’s enormous strength through his hand, while Helios could sense the vast depth of James’s magic.

But even though they were about to fight hordes of demons, they were more worried about Lunaris.

“Are you ok? You look really exhausted, what the hell happened with that spell?” James asked, very concerned that the usually energetic and kind Lunaris was lethargic and pale.

Helios approached her and probed her with his mana, wanting to make sure she didn’t suffer any unexpected internal damage.

“I’m all right, don’t worry, we have much bigger fish to fry.” Lunaris replied.

Divination spells were complicated. While Lunaris had fed James her mana several times before, James’s spells were much simpler. Even though all the Darkness in these lands were known to have various corrupting effects, she still didn’t expect that fueling Denmac’s spell would have such a grave side-effect. Perhaps if it were a simpler spell, such a thing wouldn’t have happened.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t expect this to happen either.” Denmac added. “I don’t even really know what happened, this damn place is impossible to predict.” Denmac looked around suspiciously. “It’s corrupting influence is much more powerful than we thought.”

Insufficient knowledge about the Darkness got them in this predicament. It reminded James of just how important it was to recover his powers. Even though he didn’t really need the powers themselves, the knowledge they could provide was priceless.

They all looked around for a second. The very land was against them, the eerie thought was more concerning than the hordes of demons coming at them.

Helios and James began staring at Lunaris again, still concerned about her. Lunaris couldn’t help but blush. “Stop that, we really don’t have time. I’ll be fine, I promise!” She smiled.

“I’ll keep her safe guys, don’t worry. I’m not a combatant, but I have my tricks.” Denmac assured them.

Lunaris was unfortunately much too drained to fight. She would’ve been more of a danger to herself, so the guys insisted that she go hide with Denmac. She reluctantly agreed, only because she didn’t want to slow them down. She still insisted on casting support spells, but the guys wouldn’t even allow that. She was obviously having trouble even standing up.

Denmac’s stealth wouldn’t have helped them escape, but with James and Helios taking the heat, the demons would be too distracted to care about Lunaris and Denmac, even if they could vaguely sense something.

Denmac put himself and Lunaris under a deep stealth, entering almost a slumber-like state.

Once Lunaris and Denmac were hidden, James and Helios got into position.

“Since we’re going to be fighting thousands of enemies, going in at melee range and trying to fight them fairly won’t work.” Helios said. “We’d just get surrounded and slowly overwhelmed as they throw themselves at us.”

“So what do we do?” James asked.

“We chose this place while only planning to battle several hundred demons, but it’s still a good tactical position. This mountain behind us means that at least they won’t be coming from that direction. But more importantly, we have this.”

Helios then pointed towards a nearby tree. James looked up, but he couldn’t even see the top of the tree. It was probably taller than a ten story building.

“This is our lifeline. We’ll climb to the top and pelt them with spells till there’s not one of them left.”

James didn’t pay much attention to it before, but the trees around them were all gigantic, the size of entire buildings. They’d definitely have a strategic advantage from the trees.

James never was the attentive type, he always had his head in the clouds. But he was a quick thinker, and he could adapt to any situation in an instant. He could already envision himself battling from the top of the tree, thinking of several different strategies he could use.

Luckily, Helios had both the perception and experience to complement James’s gifts, and his flaws.

They were a pretty good team. James’s adaptability and ingenuity went well with Helios’s athleticism and flawless perception.

“Is that it? Sounds too simple, like there’s definitely a flaw we’re overlooking. Like maybe they’ll cut the tree or just blast us from afar or something.” James said.

“It’s fine. Battles are dynamic, we can’t expect to sit in the tree forever. They’ll find a way to deal with our strategy, then we’ll find a way to deal with that. In the meantime, we’ll be thinning out their numbers, one spell at a time.”

“It’s never a bad thing to have the high ground, that’s true. All right then, let’s get to it. Let’s fling our spells at them from trees like monkeys flinging shit.” James shouted energetically. The sheer scale of the impending battle was intimidating, but it got his blood pumping nonetheless.

After one last head bump and high five, the two hot-headed chimps climbed to the top of tree, where they quickly conjured a stone platform for some extra stability.