“Ok, so let’s say it is possible to teleport the entirety of Hedonia to a pocket dimension, how do we do that?” Lunaris asked.

“Well, the groundwork for the pocket dimension and the teleportation will be done by our researchers, naturally. You don’t have to worry about that. But you guys will have to take care of the hard part: getting the energy to fuel these things by having James absorb it.” Cadmus replied.

“I hope that doesn’t mean what I think it means.” Lunaris sighed.

“I’m afraid it does, children. You have to go on another mission, just like the one before.”

“You mean we have to go back to a Stygian city?!” Helios’s eyes shot open.

“No.” Cadmus smiled awkwardly. “You have to go to two Stygian cities.”

Lunaris’s eyes shot open as well. During the last mission they had almost died at least a dozen times. And now they had to do it all over again!

James, however, was calm and unmoving.

“I see that James is not quite worried as you are, children.”

“Well, he’s always jumping into suicidal situations, so that’s no surprise.” Lunaris shook her head.

“We all know it must be done.” James answered as he patted his friends on their shoulders. “I’ll do it and I’ll keep everyone safe, I promise.”

“I think you’ll be surprised at your own powers, children.” Cadmus snickered devilishly. “I can sense that you’ve all grown a lot since I’ve last seen you. But James in particular seems to have reaped great rewards from his recent struggles.” Cadmus’s eyes were glowing with a golden sheen as they were staring at James, mesmerized by the mind-boggling amount of progress he had made in such a short time.

James bowed and thanked Cadmus. “But what about the war and the rest of the world? Even if we do manage to teleport Hedonia away, that doesn’t really help the war, does it?” James asked.

“No, it does not.” Cadmus replied. “Naturally, saving Hedonia is our top priority. Not only is it our home, but humanity can’t afford for the research and secrets hidden all over our little slice of heaven to be destroyed. Don’t fret though, saving Hedonia is just the first part of the plan.”

“What’s the second part?” Lunaris asked as she braced to hear yet another stupidly reckless plan from the otherwise sane people around her.

“Fighting back, of course!” Cadmus answered. “We must destroy their cities, kill their most powerful agents, push back the Darkness!”

“That’s a noble sentiment, but we would’ve done that already if we could.” Helios replied as he spat on the floor.

“Well, yes.” Cadmus nodded, snapping his fingers to incinerate Helios’s spit. “But that’s the beauty of science. We’re always progressing, always learning new things and adapting to our situation. And as devastating as the Darkness’s teleportations have been, the fact that these feats of theirs were even possible, gave us a whole new understanding of what one can do if we harness the Darkness.”

“And that is?” Lunaris asked, not entirely sure if she even wanted to hear the outlandish fantasies of the wide old man.

“Time! Think about it. Space and time are interconnected. If one can use the Darkness to manipulate space, then, logically, we can use it to manipulate time as well!”

“Wait, wait, wait.” Lunaris shook her head, the implications of Cadmus’s words being immediately clear to her. “Does this mean we need to raid even more Stygian cities?” Lunaris asked, her eyes wide in horror.

“Well, yeah.” Cadmus chuckled and then coughed awkwardly. “But that’s after we teleport Hedonia, so you don’t need to worry about that right now.”

Lunaris, Helios and James all looked at each other, dumbstruck. “We’ll end up raiding these things for the rest of our lives, won’t we?” Helios laughed dejectedly. No matter how hotheaded and energetic he usually was, the fact that they had to raid at least three cities was too much even for him.

“We can just power time and space magic the good, old-fashion way. Perhaps we don’t need to gather Darkness for every single step of the plan?” Lunaris proposed, hoping for the best.

“Of course we can. One can do anything with sufficient mana and skill.” Cadmus laughed. “But not even if every person in Hedonia pulled their mana together would we have enough for this. Not everybody is quite as … unusual as our friend here.” Cadmus said as he kept staring at James. Even as he was talking, his eyes didn’t stop inspecting James’s aura for even a second. “That is why we need the Darkness’s energy reserves. Such dense and vast concentrations of energy are incredibly hard to find. Well, I’m sure there are many other ways to harvest energy, but none quite as easily attainable as the ones in the Stygian cities.”

“Easily attainable? Father, have you been drinking?” Helios approached Cadmus and smelled his breath.

“Look, I know how it sounds. Even just surviving a trip to a Stygian city is enough of a miracle, much less actually doing what you did. But you have to understand, these are immense quantities of energy we’re talking about. You don’t just stumble upon these kinds of things. I’m sure there are many other sources of energy in this world, but believe me, they’d be even harder to get to. Through their disgusting and macabre deeds, the agents have gathered mind-boggling amounts of energy, and it’s just lying there. The very fact that we know of the existence of these energy reserves makes them a much more feasible option than anything else of comparable potency.”

“If they’re so valuable, how come no other kingdom is after them? I’m sure a level 2000 mage somewhere would love to grab these valuable energy reserves. And wouldn’t these reserves have much better protection anyway, now that we’ve pilfered one already?” Lunaris asked, always the voice of reason.

“Other kingdoms are a lot more wary of directly attacking the Dark side within their territory. We didn’t really have a choice, since we had to remove James’s curse. But even a level 2000 mage would rather not risk becoming wanted by the Dark side. Sure, they might destroy several of their lesser cities with ease, but there’s an unspoken rule about such things. If someone did that, the Darkness would retaliate, and it would become their utmost priority to wipe the mage’s entire kingdom off the map. That’s another reason why we should hurry up and teleport our lovely home into a pocket dimension.” Cadmus chuckled nervously.

“What about the increased security? We’ve destroyed one of their cities, wouldn’t the other smaller cities be on high alert now?” Lunaris continued her line of questioning.

“That shouldn’t be a problem.” Cadmus replied. “It’s been a few weeks since your heroic exploits. Normally, you’d be absolutely right, but their side is busy waging a war. Even though they’re strategically important to their cause, they’re nothing in comparison to the full might of their side. That’s why these cities aren’t even involved in the war yet. Needless to say, they won’t be sending any of their big boys to defend them. At least, not if you only pillage one or two cities.”

“You know what? This is whole plan is so insane that I’m just going to stop asking if it’s possible. Anyway, assuming we can gather all the energy we need, what exactly do we do with it? How do we manipulate ‘time’?” Lunaris asked.

“Glad you asked!” Cadmus beamed proudly. “This is what the researchers and I will be working on while you guys are on your mission. You see, it’s all intertwined. The teleportation, the pocket dimension, and time! A pocket dimension this big will basically allow us to manipulate and design it as we please. So with enough energy, we’ll be able to set up rooms where time is greatly sped up. With time on our side, we’ll be able to greatly increase our powers, to the point we can actually become a real threat to the Darkness as a whole.”

“But hyperbolic time chambers already exist, don’t they? Why go through all the trouble?” Lunaris asked.

“Nothing is new under the sun, dear.” Cadmus replied. “Sure, there are great mages all over the universe with arcane mechanisms that can already do this. But it’s not like we can just go to a level 10000 mage and ask him ‘hey, can we use your machine please?’?”

“I know, I know. The more powerful the mage, the less they care about us mere mortals.” Lunaris sighed, all too familiar with the eccentricity of powerful mages.

“Besides, even if time chambers do already exist, ours will have a nifty little feature that others probably don’t. We can speed it up as much as we desire!” Cadmus declared proudly.

“Do you mean that we can speed it up to something like a hundred times faster than the real world?” Lunaris’s eyes shot open again, but this time with glee instead of shock.

“And even more than that! Provided we have even more energy, of course.” Cadmus whispered almost inaudibly.

This time, Lunaris’s eyes froze in horror again as she realized what that meant. “Oh my God, we’ll have to raid even more cities, won’t we?”