After yet another banquet during which Cadmus tried to shock them with his crazy theories, with Lunaris trying to shock him back with tales about James’s insanity, the trio finally went back to Helios’s house.

“Man, that plan is tedious as hell.” Helios complained. “We gotta hit at least two Stygian cities now for the pocket dimension, and even more later on for the time chamber? That’s crazy.”

“And there’s probably a Garantep-like agent in each one of them!” Lunaris added. “Cadmus didn’t even seem all that worried, I think he has more confidence in us than even we do!”

“We did gain a lot of experience. And now I’m a lot stronger than even when I fought Garantep, what with the curse no longer being a thing. And the actual experience of fighting Garantep was excellent for my progress as well. If we can destroy one of their cities once, we can do it a dozen times. And we’ve even got our awakenings to go through.” James said.

Helios nodded. “Yeah, it’s time to awaken already. Man, I can’t believe we really slept for two weeks.”

Without too much fanfare, the trio went into the mediation room and sat down so they could finally go through their awakenings.

It required a tranquil and focused state of mind, which turned out to be pretty hard to achieve when you know you’ve got to repeat the suicide mission you’ve just finished.

But after a full day of meditation, all three of them managed to go through their awakenings. With the versatility of their kits, they could feel conflicting powers swirling through the room, presenting many choices for their future progress. But ultimately, they could only pick one.

“My new skill seems pretty good, though I have to test it out in battle to know just how good. But having parts of your body turn into solid chunks of molten magma that you can tank with while also burning your opponents can’t possible be bad, right?” Helios chuckled gleefully as he turned his arms into magma. As he inspected them, a piece of magma dripped onto the floor, setting the entire room on fire in an instant.

“Jeez, you boys can never behave, can you?” Lunaris smiled as she extinguished the fires with a wave of water.

“So, did all three of us stick with our current classes, or did one of you change the direction of your build?” Helios asked as he stretched his back, waves of fire shooting out of his body involuntarily.

“I’m still an all-rounder technically, but I’ve decided to focus more on healing from now on. Luckily for you crazy bastards, I received a skill that can heal you fast enough to even regrow limbs doing combat. Which I’m sure will be quite handy, unfortunately.” As Lunaris talked, gentle, green waves of mana filled the room, the calming and healing effect being felt as soon as they touched the skin. “What about you, James?”

“Actually, I didn’t get any new skills.”

“What?!” Helios and Lunaris shouted together.

“That’s impossible! Each awakening is supposed to give you at least one, core skill. Many of them are so powerful that they are build-defining!” Lunaris shouted.

“But I did get a trait.” James smiled devilishly.

“God damn, don’t scare me like that.” Helios laughed. “If that’s all you received, it must be really good. Don’t keep us waiting, what is it?”

[Trait unlocked: Like a stone. Description: You don’t feel any pain. Pain is replaced with minor discomfort and pressure to indicate what would have been pain. The worse the damage, the stronger the pressure.]

“My God, that’s perfect!” Lunaris rushed towards him and hugged him. “Now you won’t have to torture yourself any more, I’m so happy for you!”

“Aye, that’s a game-changer for sure. I guess inflicting insane amounts of pain on yourself each and every single day finally paid off, brother!” Helios shook his hand with a big smile.

“Hey, let’s test it out!” James proposed. “Cut off my hand!”

“What?! Are you crazy?” Even Helios was stunned by the madman’s request.

“He is crazy, he’s actually crazy, I knew it!” Lunaris shook her head as she stared at James.

“Oh, come on! Think about it. I don’t feel any pain, and you can just grow it back with literally no downsides. If anything, it’s a good test, so I know what I’m dealing with here. You’d actually be helping me out by cutting off my hand! And we’ll get to see your new skill too!”

Helios and Lunaris were about to argue, but they knew there was no point when they saw his crazed smile.

“You know what, I’ll just do it without looking so we can be done with this. The more we’re talking about it, the longer I have to think about it.” Helios said while closing his eyes.

He pulled out his sword and slashed at James’s hand. James didn’t dodge or even blink, he looked at his hand being cut off without feeling a thing. He didn’t make a peep, to the point that Helios was wondering if he hit his target.

Lunaris immediately began healing it, also without looking.

“Do you really not feel anything?” She asked. “Healing a lost hand like this would’ve usually had you screaming so loud the windows would break.”

“Nope, I don’t feel any pain at all. Just a vague pressure that even tickles a little bit.” James smiled gleefully.

“But wait, aren’t your sacrifices based on the amount of pain you feel? Did you just greatly nerf yourself?” Helios asked with worry.

James’s face immediately turned white. Without even waiting for his hand to be fully healed, he cast twenty sacrifices.

Immediately, he was covered in a crimson cocoon, and the world seemed to have slowed down to a crawl. It looked like Chaos Barrier and Reckless Abandon worked as intended.

It still took a minute for color to return to James’s face. He had really thought that he unintentionally nerfed himself. Helios and Lunaris were laughing uncontrollably though.

“See, if you thought about the consequences of your actions a little bit more, maybe you wouldn’t have gotten frightened like that.” Lunaris wiped off her tears of laughter.

“I knew that an awakening wouldn’t give you something that nerfed you!” Helios said while holding his sides from laughing so hard. “You should’ve seen your face!”

“Oh, I’ll get you for that!” James smiled as he began pelting Helios with waterballs.

But after James cast his sacrifices, his waterballs turned out to be a lot more potent than expected. A single one was enough to douse Helios from head to toe.

Although, James wasn’t even sure if he could call his buff a ‘sacrifice’ at this point. He wasn’t actually sacrificing anything anymore. It was basically just an instant cast that cost nothing, an instant buff that allowed him to be much stronger with just a snap of his fingers. There was bound to be some kind of downside to it, he was sure of that. But for all intents and purposes, he basically just got exponentially stronger, so he was quite ecstatic as he pelted Helios and Lunaris with spells.

After a prolonged waterball fight that left the whole house flooded, the trio invited the rest of the group over.

Denmac, Emilia and the dwarves arrived within minutes.

“My god, did it rain in the house or something?” Emilia asked as she stepped into a puddle of water.

Bacchus cast some runes to dry the house. He expected one rune to do the trick, but it took him ten before the house was finally dry.

Now that they weren’t knee-deep in water, they all sat down to talk shop.

“What?!” They all exclaimed in unison upon hearing the joyous news of their new mission.

“We have to go back? And not to just one, but to two Stygian cities?” Denmac asked while examining Helios’s face, to make sure he wasn’t being pranked.

“Come on, it’s not that bad.” Helios answered. “You saw what James did to them the last time around. And he’s so much stronger now, it’ll be a piece of cake!” He chuckled awkwardly.

The group was stunned for a few seconds. But then they began nodding. They all saw what James was capable of, they weren’t about to start doubting him now. If anything, he had shocked them so many times, that they were ready to follow him to the ends of the Earth.

“The war has taken many lives already.” Emilia added. “We need to do our part. Even if it’s basically walking into the belly of the beast we just crawled out of. Too much is at stake to say no.”

The dwarves all nodded. “We’ll do anything to save Hedonia and beat the Darkness. You can count on us.”

“How do we find these cities though?” Denmac asked. “There’s hundreds if not thousands of Stygian cities all over the world. Maybe even a lot more, God knows if the information we got so far is reliable. The one we’ve been to was basically one of the weakest ones. If we just randomly walk around hoping to run into one, there’s no guaranteeing it won’t be a city ruled by someone a thousand times stronger than Garantep.”

“Well, why don’t we just ask Garantep then?” Lunaris proposed.

“What do you mean ask Garantep? He’s dead, isn’t he?” Emilia asked.

“Yes, but there’s that remnant James apparently ate, so to speak. I think that’s what she meant.” Helios scratched his head.

“Oh, don’t tell me I have to go looking through another agent’s soul.” Denmac cringed.

Lunaris didn’t answer, she just smiled.