James couldn’t believe his eyes. The secret room was full of gold coins! It wasn’t a big room, but it was literally stacked to the brim with gold coins. Probably several hundreds of thousands, they were rich!

James was extremely happy. Not only did he level up a whole lot, but now he had a lot of money as well! With this money, he would progress even faster.

“Let’s split it evenly, we each take a third.” James proposed.

Helios and Lunaris looked at each other for a moment.

“Mate, we think you should take it all. You need it a lot more than we do.” Helios said.

“I agree, you could put it to much better use.” Lunaris added.

James could not accept that though. His friends have been way too good to him, way too kind. He didn’t want their friendship to be a one-way street.

“Sorry guys, but I can’t accept. I don’t want to just take from you without giving back. You’re my friends. In the future, I'd love to help you ten times as much as you have helped me up until now. And we can start by you taking your fair, definitely earned share.”

James was not willing to hear anything else they had to say. Helios and Lunaris were too generous. If he let them, they’d walk away empty-handed.

Seeing as James wasn't listening no matter what they said, Helios and Lunaris soon acquiesced.

After they split the gold evenly, each of them was left with 125k. That was a huge haul for James! His thoughts were racing, he didn’t even know what he’d buy!

“Don’t get too excited, James.” Lunaris chuckled. “Higher level equipment is much more expensive than you think. This is actually not that much.”

James’s innocence was refreshing for both Lunaris and Helios. He was like a baby sometimes, completely unaware of even the most basic things. And yet, sometimes he showed deep insight and was even shrewder than them.

“All right, we took the gold because of your insistence. But that thing is all yours, this time we’re the ones who won't budge.” Helios said.

“What thing?” James asked, having no idea what Helios was talking about.

Lunaris chuckled again. “Check the dungeon core’s remains.”

The monsters in this dungeon didn’t really drop any loot up until now, so he didn't bother checking too hard. All James got from them was replenishing some essence of Darkness from the demons.

Luckily, his friends were a lot more astute. James could’ve gone home without noticing a thing.

As he approached the shattered crystal, James noticed it.

[Mana Devouring Crystal - Item type: Necklace. Effect: Can store 50.000 mana by absorbing it from its user. Stored mana decays within twenty four hours]

“It suits you! Even though you can get a pretty penny for it, I recommend not selling it. You should use it for a while. Your mana pool should have increased to around 3000, right?” Lunaris asked.

James nodded. The benefits from leveling up have been fairly predictable and linear so far. More mana, quicker mana regeneration, spells being more powerful.

But Lunaris had told him to cherish the simplicity for as long as he could. And so he did, James was perfectly happy to just cut skeletons in half and become more powerful. There were enough things to worry about for now, he was glad that leveling was still a simple process.

“You can store more than 15 times your mana in that thing, huh? Just remember to actually spend the mana you save up. These things are rare but I’ve seen some other people with them, and most of them just end up hoarding the mana, “just in case”, and by the time it expires they did absolutely nothing with it.” Helios shook his head, disappointed in the weaklings that don’t unleash their stored up mana in a glorious blaze of fire at the first chance they get.

Before they left, the gang looked around the room one more time to make sure they didn’t miss any hidden loot.

As they were about to head home, Helios suddenly stopped in his tracks with an ugly look on his face.

“Lunaris, start deactivating your level dampener, now!” Helios shouted while deactivating his own level dampener. Lunaris did the same thing, but it would take five minutes until they reverted back to their original levels and recovered their full powers.

“Now that you mention it, I sense it too.” Lunaris said, her face having turned completely pale.

“What’s going on?” James asked.

Neither of them answered, they were too busy frantically pulling defensive artifacts, shields and anything they could get their hands on out of their storage rings.

Helios threw James a shield. When he caught it, he almost fell over. It must’ve weighed hundreds of pounds. Helios threw a similar shield to Lunaris, but she caught it without any trouble at all. Even though now was not the time to think about this, James decided that he’d have to accept Helios's invites to work out in the future. He was way too weak!

But he was quickly pulled out of his distracted thoughts by Lunaris’s shout. “Pull out your teleportation scroll and keep it in your hand. Be ready to rip it at a moment’s notice.”

With the teleportation scroll in one hand, while barely able to hold the heavy shield in the other, James asked again.

“Now that we’re all turtled up, can you tell me what’s going on?”

“I felt a mana signature that was definitely that of an agent of Darkness.” Helios said with a tense grimace. “It was faint, especially since my perception was dampened a bit along with my level. But I definitely felt it. Someone or something is following us.”

“Shouldn’t we just teleport back to Hedonia right away then?” James asked with concern in his voice.

“We could, but then we wouldn’t learn anything about who is following us and why. And that could be even more dangerous. What if they stalk you for months and strike when we're unprepared?” Lunaris answered. “That’s why we should keep the teleportation scrolls ready in case things get hairy, but for now we should wait.”

“By the time the level dampening wears out, we’ll be much safer. But I doubt we’ll get that luxury. Will we?” Helios said while looking straight ahead, this time with a mocking smile.

“No, you won’t.” A shadowy figure walked into the room, clapping slowly. It was a tall man, his entire body covered in a thick layer of Darkness. He could barely be seen within the thick miasma and flickering shadows. His face was entirely covered in an ever-shifting mask of Darkness.

“I have to give you credit, I never thought you’d be able to spot me. Especially when you weren’t even at your full power. Bravo, you live up to your title of one of the Rising Stars of Hedonia.” The man uttered mockingly.

“I assume you’ve been following us for a while. You’ve probably been following James for a long time, haven’t you?” Helios asked.

“Oh please, following this … thing around is beneath me.” The man pointed at James with disgust. “But yes, I have been observing him, indirectly. I wouldn’t want to sneeze and accidentally kill it, the frail thing.” The man’s mask then shifted, showing an illusory, harrowing smile with dozens of sharp teeth.

James’s heart skipped a beat, the man's presence was something else. He hadn't felt anything like it before. Every hair on his body stood upright. But being treated like this made him too angry to care about fear.

“So, you peeped on me, did you? Did you like what you saw?” James flexed with a big, mocking grin on his face.

Helios laughed, proud of his response. Lunaris wasn’t able to contain her laughter either. They didn't expect him to make a joke in this terrifying situation.

“Well, if you'd really like to know, all I've seen was an idiot barely even able to comprehend his own powers. But that’s good thing for us.” The man laughed. “Thank you for being a narrow-minded, blind fool.”

“What the hell do you want?” Helios barked at him. The more he talked, the better it was for the trio. If they could stall for a few more minutes, they might even be able to defeat him.

“What do I want? Hmm, nothing much. I don’t want you guys researching the Darkness through this half-demon thing. You’ve found yourselves a neat little cheat, haven’t you? None of our guys would cooperate, and yet out of the clear blue sky you get handed some weird halfling that could eventually show you secrets of how the Darkness really works." The man then betrayed an ugly, maniacal smile. "I guess I’ll just kill him before that happens. I’ve seen enough, I don’t need to observe you anymore.”

As soon as the man said that, thick shadows covered the whole room. It became pitch black. Lunaris had to immediately throw out a ring of holy fire around them, just so they could see.

“You won’t be needing this anymore.” The man said as he was holding James’s teleportation scroll.

Seeing that, James felt awful, his stomach sank. That scroll was his lifeline, he was holding it tightly in his hand. And yet, the next thing he knew, it was in the agent's hands.

“You bastard, you’re toying with us!” Helios screamed angrily. “Here James, take my scroll.”

“Are you sure you want to use it, halfling? You stay here and you could help your friends fight me. You run away, and they will die for sure.” The man laughed with an ugly sound that made James’s ears hurt.

“Use it, James. We’d rather take our chances than have you die here. We wouldn’t be able to forgive ourselves!” Lunaris implored him.

James didn’t consider it for even a second though. How could he abandon his friends, letting them fight this maniac all by themselves? He’d rather die right then and there than even entertain the idea of putting his friends in danger.

“I can’t. We’re going home together, and I won’t have it any other way.” James flashed them a pained smile.

Helios and Lunaris kept insisting, but James adamantly refused. Seeing his conviction, they stopped trying. They've seen him like this before, he was too pig-headed to listen. Although they were a bit happy that their friend cared so much about them, that feeling was vastly overshadowed by the worry for his safety.

So they had to fight to survive. If they could just stall for a few minutes, it would all be over. But could they even survive those minutes?