James was rolling around on the ground, screaming in pain.

“We need to do something!” Emilia screamed.

But Helios was barely able to keep himself from laughing. Emilia looked at him in disbelief, completely unable to comprehend what was happening.

After enjoying her shocked expression for a few seconds, he spoke up. “James doesn’t feel pain, remember? That’s his second awakening’s gift.”

“Oh.” Emilia’s cheeks immediately turned red, but she was obviously still shocked. “Sorry for screaming.” She said sheepishly.

“No, no. Keep doing it, actually.” Helios smiled. “Can’t have the guy figure out that James is only acting, so we gotta really sell it.”

Emilia nodded enthusiastically and began screaming her lungs out, happy to be of use.

The others also let out some screams, as if they were really panicked. Even though they didn’t really know what James was doing, they went along with his plan right away.

Meanwhile, James was bleeding all over.

“I’m only getting started. I’m really going to savor this, slowly.” The leader laughed. “The rewards I’ll get for your tortured soul will make me a king. No, even more than a king. I’ll be a God.” The agent cackled as he launched another axe, cutting off James’s leg.

James screamed even harder, as if he was being dismembered. Well, he was, but that didn’t actually bother him.

Although losing limbs felt weird, he was used to it. Lunaris could just grow them back anyway, and he didn’t need limbs to cast his spells.

And since he didn’t really feel pain, he was actually having a good time. Between his fake screams, he was smiling involuntarily. This was actually a nice break from the monotonous grind of killing agents and destroying their cities without taking a single hit.

But fun wasn’t the reason for this ruse, it was merely a nice bonus.

James’s true purpose was to lure out the stalkers.

The leader was throwing axes at James, trying to actually kill him so he could capture his soul. But James was subtly dodging. He let himself get hit every now and then, losing a leg, an arm, getting his belly cut open. But he avoided most of the hits, especially any fatal ones.

For whatever reason, James wasn’t good at healing himself. Whether it was the Darkness within him, or some other reason, his healing spells never worked very well on himself. But they were enough to keep him from bleeding out.

More importantly, they were enough to prolong the battle.

Even while he was getting cut to pieces, James was using most of his attention to scan for any trace of the stalkers.

As the axes were shooting towards him, instead of casting a barrier to protect himself from them, he was using his mana to spread a web of threads throughout the city, so thin they weren’t even visible.

By the time James was only left with a single leg out of all his 4 limbs, his threads had already spread all over the city. Well, the rubble that remained of the city, and a large area around it.

And yet, he didn’t detect anything.

He had been getting cut to pieces for several minutes now, and yet the plan had failed.

He tried to make himself as vulnerable as possible. He didn’t even cast his barriers, and he let himself be gravely wounded, to the point he was basically just a torso with a head at this point. All so he could provide the stalkers with the perfect opportunity to reveal themselves.

But if they didn’t reveal themselves now, when he was limbless, screaming in pain and drowning in his own blood, then his stupid little ruse had truly failed.

“Why won’t you just die?” The leader growled. For minutes, he had been throwing his axes at James from a distance. He looked like a single-minded meathead, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew what James was capable of, so he didn’t get closer at first. Instead, he tried to kill him from afar.

But even without limbs, James kept dodging his attacks.

However, seeing as his enemy was already limbless, the leader decided that it was now safe enough to finish the job with his own two hands.

James’s ruse had failed, but he didn’t want to accept that he had done all this for nothing. Every situation lately had been so anticlimactic, he wanted at least something to end the way he wanted to.

So even as the leader was rushing towards him, ready to pierce his head with his axes, he kept rolling around, screaming in pain, pretending to be gravely wounded.

The leader dropped down the axe onto his head, but James dodged at the last second.

“How long do you think you can keep this up for, worm?” The leader cackled as he tried to cut James’s head off over and over. “This is fun, like a game of Whac-A-Mole. Keep delaying the inevitable, I’m having fun.” But despite his words, he was obviously very frustrated that he couldn’t hit this limbless head for some reason.

James was just as frustrated though. Even now, after all this, when he was little more than a head that would already be dead if not for SARM, the stalkers didn’t reveal themselves.

The ruse had truly failed. If they didn’t show themselves now, then they never would.

Perhaps there were no stalkers after all, and he had let himself get butchered for nothing. Somehow, they gaslighted themselves into believing that they were being stalked.

But even as he was contemplating that, with an axe slashing at his head every other second, he knew that he hadn’t been wrong. His gut told him that they were indeed being stalked.

And he was going to kill the stalkers no matter what.

“Help me!” James cried out and launched his limbless body towards his friends.

But instead of throwing himself inside the barrier, James had another plan.

Dozens of crimson rods formed around James. As he was rocketing towards the barrier, more and more crimson rods appeared.

And then he crashed into it.

With a loud crack, the barrier broke. The barrier that should’ve kept his friends safe had been pierced by many Javelins, shattering it to pieces.