“Did you really kill their leader and absorb the energy that quickly, brother? We were barely there for a few minutes. That’s way faster even compared to the previous city.” Helios asked as James flew the carpet at a dizzying speed towards the next city.

Helios and Lunaris were the only ones who could actually talk, the rest were paralyzed from the shock. Even though James had yelled at the five, telling them how tired he was of this ‘being shocked by what he did’ routine, they were simply staring at him with their eyes wide open.

“It’s only going to get quicker, brother.” James answered with a grin. “There’s no time to waste. I doubt their side will let us wreak havoc for too long. Sooner or later, somebody is going to come to stop us. And I want to hit as many cities as possible before that.”

They had been travelling for a few minutes already, and yet the group was still stunned, much to James’s chagrin. But Helios and Lunaris were actually feeling sorry for the rest of the group. They gave them their belts of soothing, and Lunaris kept pouring heals into them.

Hearing the crazy, seemingly harebrained plan was surprising enough to them. But seeing him actually do it was so shocking that it was changing their very worldview, rapidly. Such an impossible thing actually being realized in front of their eyes made them feel like they were having a stroke.

Despite being tired of this shtick, James’s frown eventually turned into a smile as he saw the pitiful look on their faces. “Lighten up, guys! Think of all the xp you can get. Just make sure you kill the agents as quickly as you can, because in another five minutes, we’re off to the next city!” He laughed maniacally.

Not even ten minutes had passed and the carpet already blitzed through the gates of the city that was to be James’s next victim. The more energy he absorbed from each city, the more he poured into the carpet, making the trip shorter each time. And his friends even dizzier.

“Look alive, people!” James announced gleefully as dozens of agents swarmed in, slashing at the impertinent intruders. “We’ve got work to do!”

James launched himself into the sky, leaving his friends to take care of the lesser agents.

It didn’t take long for the superiors to show themselves, but James was already prepared. Before they could even say a word, their chests were hollowed by a crimson flash.

Before even two minutes had passed, all the superiors of the city were already dead.

The leader, however, didn’t seem to have any intention of showing himself. James scanned the city for any powerful presence, and yet he couldn’t find anything.

Suddenly, James felt a strong fluctuation, and it was darting out of the city.

“Damn it, nothing is ever easy.” James spat.

Just as he was bracing himself for another easy fight, the boss decided to turn tail and run.

“Perhaps my presence is too strong.” James already had a lot of mana, and now he was absorbing even more from each city. It wasn’t particularly surprising that even the proud leader of the city fled after seeing a creature with such an insane amount of mana destroy his powerful underlings in seconds.

Now James had to play a game of cat and mouse. Luckily, he had plenty of mana to burn.

Without hesitation, he shot in the direction of the fleeing mouse. Speed wasn’t necessarily his forte, but when you have so much mana at your disposal, you can turn it into anything. Especially if you don’t care how wasteful you are with it.

Without giving any thought to how much mana he was burning, James was rocketing ahead, mana shooting out of his hands and feet, as if he was doing an impression of Ironman.

[Skill unlocked: Wasteful flight].

James snickered. He knew that this wasn’t exactly elegant. Hell, any proper mage would probably vomit at the mere sight of such a wasteful use of mana. There was probably some clan of scholarly mages on this planet that would try to kill him on sight for such depravity.

But he planned on making it a lot more depraved than that.

He could sense the fleeing leader way ahead of him. James didn’t know what powers he had, but from the looks of it, he definitely possessed some sort of skill or artifact related to speed. He knew he needed to do something drastic if he were to ever catch up to him.

The mana launched from his hands and feet was a steady, very powerful stream. This kind of mana expenditure would probably drain a normal mage dry within seconds.

But even with so much mana being spent, the stream was still barely the width of his hands. There was plenty of room for improvement. As if he was intentionally insulting every mage on the planet, James pumped even more of mana into his flight.

Suddenly, the stream doubled in size. But James wasn’t even close to being done. Triple, quadruple, quintuple. It didn’t take long before it got to the point that James couldn’t even see behind him. The thick, bright blue stream of mana shooting out of him was larger than the size of a building.

Now even James felt the mana expenditure.

[Skill unlocked: Stupendously wasteful flight.]

“Having a giggle, eh?” James snorted.

But soon he realized that his mana wasn’t quite infinite. He didn’t expect to be burning quite this much. He got carried away with pumping out as much of it as he could, it was even a little bit worrying.

But without him even realizing it, the mana had already done its job.

He had been too wrapped up in pumping mana and adjusting to the speed to realize that he had already surpassed the fleeing leader.

“Oh, hello there. How rude of me to just fly ahead of you, I do apologize.” James bowed mockingly.

But the agent wasn’t in a mood for talking. While James was bowing, thousands of crows exploded out of the leader. The guy even shouted his own name and some vague threat, but James had heard so many of these things that his ears didn’t even pick up the words. Nor did his mind bother learning the names of these faceless foes that he’d forget about within minutes.

But even though the guy was an ant in his eyes, James could immediately tell that he couldn’t afford to get hit by even one crow. Still, he wasn’t even close to being worried.

He pumped mana into SARM and began preparing his Javelins.

Thousands of crows exploded out of the agent every second, filling the sky with his deadly minions who were all torpedoing towards James.

But not even three seconds later, several crimson lights flashed through the giant mass of crows.

A body dropped down, and suddenly all the crows disappeared.

The huge murder that was filling the sky with deafening caws just seconds ago was gone in an instant. And all that was left was a limp body with a gaping hole instead of a heart.

“Guess I’ve got some energy to absorb now.” James smiled as he headed back to the city. He was quite relieved that nobody had seen him, he couldn’t handle any more gasps or jaws dropped in amazement.