The rest of the group was happily smashing any rank and file agents that came close. But James had his eyes on the bigger targets. Which were already rushing towards him.

James braced for the pain and cast twenty of his sacrifices. But he didn’t even feel a sting, just a mild, almost gentle pressure on his skin. He looked around incredulously for a second before he remembered that this is how his new awakening trait was supposed to work.

He was covered in his thick, crimson barrier, while Reckless Abandon slowed the world down to a crawl. All without a single cost to him, not even pain.

One moment he was standing on his carpet and watching over his friends, and the next he was hundreds of feet ahead of them.

A big energy signature was barreling towards him, distorting the Darkness around it from the sheer power it possessed.

“Just one of you? Oh come on, I don’t have all day here. Why don’t you all come out right now?” James shouted, putting mana into his voice to send his message all over the city.

Before James could even fully see his target, he launched a dozen Javelins at it. Not even a second later, all that was left were bits of flesh raining down on the city.

The trip to this Stygian city was proving to be more and more disappointing by the minute. He knew he had gotten much stronger ever since the curse was lifted and he got the experience of beating Garantep. But he underestimated just how strong he had gotten.

“Look, if you want to have a chance at killing me, you’d better come at me all at once! Don’t be greedy, there’s no point in waiting for the others to weaken me or wear me out. I can do this all day.” James shouted again, putting even more mana into his voice, to the point the buildings in the city were shaking. “Don’t be scared, I’m sure you can do it if you all work together! Think of the loot if you kill me! You can feel how much mana I have. All that juicy mana can be yours if you beat me!”

Helios laughed while pulverizing another agent. “Brother, I believe in you, but are you sure you should be taunting them like that? I mean, this city isn’t much weaker than Garantep’s. I’m sure the superiors and whoever is in charge will present a challenge just as big as Garantep was. I don’t want you blowing yourself up again.”

“Don’t worry.” James shook his head. “I’ve got this.”

However, James could feel thousands of smaller energy signatures converging upon Helios’s location. “Can you handle that though?”

“Of course, brother. Leave them all to Lunaris and I.” Helios beamed back.

James grinned and immediately began conjuring Javelins. But unlike his usual conjurations, he didn’t stop at a dozen or two. More and more crimson rods began rotating around him.

In less than a minute, three hundred Javelins were floating around him. But he didn’t convert them into a Chaos Glaive, instead keeping all of them locked and loaded.

The sheer amount of energy was distorting the space around him, making his body look like a crimson ghost from a different dimension.

All of a sudden, twenty huge energy signatures revealed themselves, rocketing towards James all together. Each one was stronger than the last, but two of them in particular dwarfed over the rest.

“Ah, I see you took heed of my advice.” James smiled.

Even James did want a bit of a challenge, he decided it would be more fun to see how many of them he could kill at once. So he unleashed his entire arsenal in one fell swoop.

Hundreds of Javelins shot forth at the same time. But instead of meeting their targets, they encountered twenty beams of dark energy which tried to stop their advance.

Some of the beams didn’t seem to be doing much, already faltering after clashing with one or two Javelins.

But the two most powerful beams were deleting the Javelins left and right, before they could even hit the lesser targets.

In just a few seconds, all of James’s Javelins were gone.

Twenty superior agents landed next to James, surrounding him.

To his surprise, he apparently wasn’t as overpowered as he had previously thought.

But before the superiors could even attack him, they began attacking each other.

“What the hell?” James looked at them in disbelief.

Before he could even understand what was happening, half of the superior agents were already gone.

“You’re eating each other?!” For once, James was the one with his jaw wide open as he stared at the two most powerful entities devouring the other ones.

In mere moments, only two remained.

“So you’re the Garantep of this city?” James pointed at the bigger one. “How was your meal?”

“Garantep?” The smaller entity asked. “What do you know about him?!”

The smaller agent was radiating Darkness, trembling and burping from the sheer amount of energy it had consumed. He was a quite powerful entity, leagues above the rest of the agents. If not for his beam of energy, undoubtedly many of the Javelins would have hit their targets. But he still paled in comparison to the bigger one.

As soon as Garantep’s name was mentioned, an undeniable hint of fear appeared upon its face though.

He examined James up and down, eyes opening wide in terror the more he stared. “You! You’re the one that killed him! Th-the whole city, gone!” The creature that was so confident just seconds ago mumbled in a panic.

The entity next to him was much stronger, having eaten the majority of the other superiors. He remained silent for a while, staring at James. But instead of showing fear, he flashed that creepy agent smile James was all too familiar with.

“Stop trembling!” He barked at the smaller one. “Think of how rich we’ll be if we kill him. They’ll award us with power beyond what we can even dream of if we apprehend the criminal that destroyed Garantep’s city.”

As soon as the bigger entity said that, all the panic was gone, and the smaller agent flashed a smile of its own. His mood completely changed as he imagined the wealth and power he could obtain if James was killed.

But while the smaller one was lost in thought, mesmerized by the possible rewards, the bigger one’s mouth was getting larger by the second. The smaller agent seemed downright hypnotized, unable to notice that it was about to be swallowed whole.

“Who could’ve seen that coming?” James chortled sarcastically.

Before he could even snap out of his fantasies, the smaller superior was snapped in half by the bigger one’s jaw, the two halves being quickly slurped up, further increasing the glutton’s size.

“So I guess now it’s my turn to be eaten?” James asked with a bored face.

“You should be honored. With the power I’ll get as a reward for your head, I’ll conquer this whole world. And your soul will have a front row seat, watching my glory unfold while screaming in the agony no other soul has ever experienced.” The glutton said as he burped, his belly greatly enlarged from having eaten so many of his subordinates.

“Yeah, like I haven’t heard that a million times before. Let’s do this thing already.” James rolled his eyes.