Now that all eight members of the crew were gathered at Helios’s house, the insanity of what they were about to do was dawning on them. They were actually going on this suicide mission.

Not that they didn't have a good grasp on the situation, they all understood the risks very well. And yet, actually getting close to the start of the mission was a bit nerve-wracking even for the bravest of them.

But before they’d actually start the mission, they had to iron some things out.

Firstly, they all got acquainted with each other’s powers, which was the least they could do if they were to work as a team. The dwarves knew the trio’s powers quite well already, but they had to integrate Emilia into their battle plans as well.

In just half an hour, Helios’s dojo was in flames, craters all over. Even though Emilia and the dwarves revealed many new powers that they possessed, the damage was mainly due to James’s spells.

They were all coughing, the smoke from the craters being quite noxious, but at least they were now all acquainted with each other’s powers.

Denmac revealed that he hadn’t wasted the past three months either. Since divination wouldn’t be his sole purpose during the mission, he made sure that would be useful. He spent the entire three months training his barriers.

“So you’re saying that you’ll be a full-time barrier mage?” Helios asked.

“You betcha. No matter how many people are behind the barrier, I can keep them safe. Sure, it might break if enough enemies attack it, but the beauty of it is that I can just cast another barrier soon after. So I can keep our backline relatively safe. If one or two other people pick up the slack while my barrier is down, we can greatly increase our security.”

“That’s great! Ok, let’s see, who’s the backline? Raise your hand if you’re part of the backline!” Lunaris requested with a sly smile.

As they looked around, everybody realized that most of them were part of the backline. Lunaris had realized it during her previous calculations, and her hunch that she was the only one that noticed it was correct.

Weirdly enough, even though there were now eight of them, James and Helios ended up being the only two that would form the frontline. They had added four people to their team, and yet the situation wasn’t much different from before.

Every single person other than James and Helios had their hands raised. They looked at each other in disbelief. Surely, out of 8 people, there’d be more than 2 actually going out there and duking it out.

“Wait, how does this work? Will this work?” Emilia asked, unsure if such a formation would even be able to survive.

“No, no. It’s fine. Just give me a second.” Lunaris said.

She then grabbed a piece of paper and her Aetherphone and began calculating yet again. The more she thought about it, the weirder the situation seemed. Especially now that she got more acquainted with Emilia’s and the dwarves’ powers, things just seemed even weirder.

Half an hour had passed, to the point the group had gotten bored and were having a waterball fight, when Lunaris finally finished her calculations.

“All right, listen up guys!” She announced. “It turns out that we have an odd situation on our hands, but I believe it can work quite well. Actually, it can even be quite powerful. If we take into account our strengths and weaknesses, we can use a formation called the ‘Phalanx and wrecking ball.”

Lunaris sat down and put her hands up. She began conjuring illusory figures with her mana, projecting a simulation of the formation.

“As you can see, it’s not complicated at all. In fact, its simplicity is what gives it its strength, although it worries me a bit too. Anyway, the six of us that form the backline will be huddled together, forming the Phalanx. Denmac will be protecting the Phalanx from most attacks with his barriers. I will be focusing on healing Helios and James, while providing a series of buffs and shields and other support. Ruppus will be using his druidic powers to partially assist Helios and James, while also attacking nearby enemies. Eruditus will be using his warlock powers to debuff the strongest of foes the frontline is facing, while his minions protect the Phalanx. Bacchus will be using his runes to deal damage over a wider area and grant buffs and debuffs, which is important in case we’ll be fighting too many enemies at once. Emilia will be using her Spellbreaker attacks from afar, mainly assisting the frontline, and only bothering with the Phalanx in case we are about to be overwhelmed.”

And then the projection ended.

“Of course, that’s just the ideal situation. In reality, we’ll just have to adapt to our surroundings.”

“What about the frontline?” Emilia asked. “I wanted to see what the two handsome guys will be doing.” She winked teasingly.

Both Helios and James coughed simultaneously, clearly unused to such weird compliments.

“They’ll be forming the wrecking ball.” Lunaris answered with a smile, clearly suppressing a laugh after seeing the guys’ reactions. “Which is actually the most important part of the formation. Helios will be tanking as much as he can, but also performing area of effect attacks to damage as many opponents as possible.”

“And what about Mr. Subtle-aura over here?” Emilia approached James and squeezed his forearm. As if sensing his mana through the squeeze, her eyes opened wide, looking like she had just been electrocuted. “Wow, you guys gotta check this out. His aura is even crazier when you touch him!”

As soon as she said that, the other 4 approached and squeezed James’s forearm while he blushed. When Denmac squeezed his forearm, he looked thunderstruck. It took him a full minute to process what he had just felt, only moving when Emilia pushed him to squeeze James once more. Meanwhile, Helios and Lunaris were off to the sides, giggling like teenagers at James’s cute discomfort and awkwardness.

“My god, what did you do, guy? Did you eat a God or something?” Emilia laughed while slapping his back as if she had just said the funniest thing ever. James just smiled awkwardly, but Denmac, Lunaris and Helios found his embarrassment pretty funny, especially having seen what James had to go through to get that much mana.

“Anyway, James is our nuke.” Lunaris continued. He’ll be dealing with the stronger foes, keeping them away from us and killing them as fast as possible. But while he tries to keep them away from us, Helios and the whole Phalanx also tries to keep them away from him, a sort of back and forth that will allow him to do as much damage as he can.”

James nodded with a serious look on his face, the previous feigned shyness having disappeared completely.

Along with his emotions, his aura seemed to have changed as well. The whole room turned serious in an instant.

They all knew that the time for play was over. They joked around as much as they could to take the edge off before the mission, but the time had come.

They made sure that they had all the supplies they could possibly need, from potions to alchemical ingredients. After going over the plan again, the group turned in for the night. It was the last chance they’d have for a good night’s rest for a long, long time.

At the break of dawn, they were already out the door. They quickly made their way to Andarmat through the portal, and from there they followed the route they were already familiar with.

Before long, they could already see the lands of Darkness.

They huddled together and Denmac activated his stealth barrier.

James noticed the difference immediately, Denmac wasn’t lying when he said he had been practicing barriers. Even his stealth barrier was much more powerful, he could feel the mana covering him and weighing on him, and the quality was much more refined than before.

He looked around, but nobody else seemed to have noticed anything. Perhaps it was because of the ‘Embodiment of Mana’ trait, but he had been much more sensitive to anything related to mana lately.

Besides activating stealth, they decided to put on their masks too, just in case.

“Wow, we all look so creepy!” Emilia shouted. They all looked like agents, even down to their auras.

“It does feel strange.” Bacchus stated while examining himself and others carefully, inspecting them for any flaw. The three curious dwarves were walking around an inspecting everybody like it was their job. “I’ve heard of things like this before, but they’re incredibly rare, I’ve never actually worn one. They are definitely well made.” He said as he went around touching everybody, making sure there wasn’t anything that would blow their cover. “Still, they’re not foolproof. They might deceive outwardly, but if someone suspects us and starts interrogating us, the jig would be up.”

“T-that’s true. Agents are master infiltrators, they’re not that easy to deceive. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have lost a third of the world already.” Ruppus the druid added sheepishly.

“I can’t deny that.” Lunaris nodded. “It would be foolish to think we can just completely deceive the agents like that. But it’s still a lot better than nothing.”

“Actually, I have an idea.” Eruditus added. “If what you told me about Denmac’s powers of divination was accurate, then there’s something we can do before we actually go into the city.”

“I’ve seen his powers with my own two eyes. Every word we told you is true.” Helios replied.

“Good. Very good!” Eruditus exclaimed happily. “Here’s what we do then. Sneaking around under stealth while in the city is our first line of defense. The masks are the second line of defense, making even our auras that of agents. So even if they sense us skulking around, they’d just sense a bunch of agents under stealth, which wouldn’t immediately compromise our mission. Even if someone did get suspicious, it wouldn’t immediately sound the alarms all over the city, since the response wouldn’t be nearly as strong as it would be if they had detected actual intruders. We’d still have a chance to just deal with whoever came our way.”

“It’s good enough, but I agree that we need something more.” Helios nodded. “They’d be bound to notice our stealth sooner or later, and even if we deal with whoever came to check us out, there’s no guarantee that we’ll be able to silently resolve the ensuing struggle. We could find ourselves surrounded by hundreds of agents in no time.”

“Exactly.” Eruditus replied. “Ideally, we’d be able to avoid combat until we’re actually fighting Garantep. And we could greatly increase the chances of that happening. So here’s my idea: Cadmus tried hard to get us the information we need. But he couldn’t have possible gotten what we can get now that we’re infiltrating the lands of Darkness. All we have to do is kill agents. We kill them, then Denmac divines through their memories. The more we kill, the more memories we receive. And through them, we’ll be able to see everything we need. The layout of the city, patrol routes, hidden passages etc.”

“I see, so we’ll be able to not only sneak around while under stealth, but we’ll also know the best routes of sneaking around so we risk detection even less.” James nodded enthusiastically. Having so many people in a party sure was beneficial. Finding solutions to problems was now much easier. “Man, all our stealth plans will feel really stupid if we just end up having to fight the whole city anyway.”

Nobody replied. That prospect was too terrifying to even think about.

“How do we find agents to kill though? If we do it in the city, we risk detection.” Helios asked.

“Then we just have to do it outside the city.” Lunaris answered. “There’s around a thousand agents in the city, so there’s bound to be traffic to and from the city. So we’ll turn the tables on them. Just like the agents hunt and ambush our mages, that’s what we’ll do to them.”

That seemed to have struck a chord with everybody. Suddenly, the aura of bloodlust was almost suffocating. Many people have lost acquaintances, friends or even loved ones at the hands of agents. Doing the same thing to the agents that they were doing to innocent people would be beyond cathartic.

“Ready to crack some skulls, brother?” Helios asked with a radiant smile.

“Aye, let’s get to it.” James answered as they clasped their warrior hands together.

The aura the two were giving off was so intimidating that even the rest of the group was taken aback. Only Lunaris was standing there smiling, proud to see her boys radiating such monstrous power.