After having eaten his comrades, the enormous glutton was so full of energy that he couldn’t stop belching. Every step his belly would get smaller while he grew taller as he was absorbing the power he had consumed.

“Are you almost done? I don’t really wanna attack you before you’ve finished ‘digesting’ your comrades.” James asked mockingly. “This whole trip has been one anticlimactic fight after another, I want at least one good fight.”

The glutton snorted and lunged at James, but James didn’t even need [Reckless Abandon] to dodge.

“Is that seriously it? What, is your meal weighing you down?” James laughed while conjuring a Javelin.

But the glutton was getting faster by the second while his belly shrank. He lunged again, managing to actually scratch James.

“Not so funny now, are we?” The glutton laughed and lunged at James again.

James stopped smiling and conjured a Chaos Barrier.

The glutton’s belly shrunk even more, and now he was towering over James. But that’s what James wanted.

James wanted the glutton to get as powerful as possible. There was no telling what challenges he’d face in the future, so he had to fight as many powerful foes as he could find.

Having sacrificed his health once, James was already faster than the Glutton. But each time his belly shrank again, he would lunge with increased speed at James, managing to actually land a hit on him with each strike.

Even more surprising, his Chaos Barrier broke after a few strikes. James hadn’t really expected this glutton to be quite that powerful, but apparently it wasn’t an enemy he could just play around with after all.

James’s body was being corroded by the glutton’s dark energy, his flesh searing. But thanks to his second awakening’s trait, he didn’t feel any pain at all.

With a loud burp, the glutton stopped growing taller.

“You should’ve killed me while you had the chance.” He roared as he jumped at James again.

“Oh good, you’re finally done! I was tired of waiting!” James said gleefully as he sacrificed his health forty times in an instant. He looked at his body with bewildered eyes for a second as he couldn’t believe the fact that he still didn’t feel any pain. And then he smiled. “Now we can get to business!”

James hadn’t really attacked the Glutton so far. But now that he was done powering up, he decided to not pull his punches any more.

After the huge batch of sacrifices, [Reckless Abandon] was now in full swing. Even though the Glutton’s powers had grown exponentially, he now looked as if he was in slow-motion to James’s eyes.

James conjured ten Javelins in a flash. Without wasting a second, he launched them towards the Glutton.

Without even looking, James began preparing another batch of Javelins for his second attack.

However, he was rudely interrupted by bits of flesh landing on his face.

In his haste, James hadn’t even checked whether or not the Javelins were effective against the glutton. He wanted to prepare as many as possible for a really powerful attack. This was an enemy that was supposed to rival Garantep, after all. He wanted to have some fun, but he also had to be a bit cautious.

But to his surprise, not only was his first attack effective, but it had actually blown up the Glutton to the point all that was left of him were his toes, scattered around the city.

James wasn’t about to be tricked though. It was clearly a decoy or some sort of trap! He looked around with his enhanced sight, pumping a whole bunch of mana into his eyes, trying to anticipate where the next attack would be coming from.

But no matter how much mana he poured into his eyes, or how much he tried sensing any mana fluctuations, it seemed like the glutton had simply vanished.

The only movement in the entire city was around his friends, who had already killed hundreds of agents.

James darted towards them. “Do you guys need any help?”

“No! Stay away, brother!” Helios shouted desperately.

“Why?! Is there some sort of trap?” James asked while looking around frantically.

“No, we’re just getting too much damn xp, brother!” Helios laughed as he slammed his molten body into another agent, evaporating him on the spot.

The dwarves, Emilia, and even Denmac and Lunaris were actively attacking the agents, seemingly giving no thought to defense.

Hundreds of charred corpses of what must’ve been agents were scattered all around them, so many that they were beginning to pile up.

“How are things on your end?” Lunaris asked with a smile as she crushed an agent’s skull with a conjured holy mace.

“Hmm, how do I put this… I don’t know where the guy is.” James sighed.

The groups’ faces froze as they stared at James. “What do you mean you don’t know where he is?” Helios asked while exploding another agent. “Did he teleport? Did he go to call for backup?”

“I don’t know!” James shook his head meekly. “One second I send some Javelins his way, and the next all that’s left of him are toes. Clearly he used some clever stealth spell to feign death and vanish, hiding his presence completely!”

The entire group looked at him with confused expressions. “… could it be that he actually died?” Lunaris asked with a sweet smile, finding it hard to keep herself from laughing at the genius mage who was also really stupid sometimes.

“No, you weren’t there, you didn’t see it. All I did was cast a few Javelins, that’s it. There’s no way the guy could die from that. He wasn’t quite as strong as Garantep, but he was still the leader of this city. It’s impossible for him to have died from that.”

Lunaris sighed, no doubt in her mind about what had actually happened.

“Why do you never check your levels, brother?” Helios intervened as he chuckled while barreling towards another agent.

James blushed. He really should have done that before bothering them. But he was always a bit of an airhead when it came to the little things.

As soon as he opened his status window, his jaw dropped.

[You have reached level 282]

He had indeed leveled up a whole bunch of times. And that could only mean that he had defeated the big bad boss.

He didn’t even feel like he deserved to level up. Leveling up was directly correlated to effort, and he definitely didn’t put any effort into it. But he was hardly surprised. His true power was so far ahead of his level, perhaps this was just a way for the number to slowly catch up.

“Wait, so is this it? Are we pretty much done here?” James shouted in disbelief.

“Well, we still gotta kill these little ones. But I guess we can leave that to the others.” Lunaris chuckled. “Why don’t we go deal with the energy reserves in the meantime?”

The shock of having killed the enemy leader so quickly had made him completely forget about the energy reserves.

James was about to crush one of the Darkness-detecting capsules Cadmus had given them, but he realized he didn’t even need it. His affinity with mana was so much more refined than most mages, that now that the curse was broken, he could tell where the reserves were without even thinking.

Together with Lunaris and Helios, James arrived at the energy-storing facility within seconds.

Dozens of agents were still guarding it, not abandoning their posts even after their leader had died. But it was more likely out of fear and not loyalty.

With a wave of his hand, James launched a wave of saws at the agents.

“All right, now how about we do something about this energy?” He said as he stared at the dozens of enormous tanks of Darkness around him, while the guards’ lifeless bodies slumped over.