The three didn’t even think of attacking. All they had to do was survive until the level dampening wore of, so they focused entirely on defense.

The agent was striking them mercilessly, throwing out powerful spells with each wave of his hand. The spells were enhanced with so much Darkness that they couldn’t even recognize what the spells were, all they saw were large projectiles of Darkness being thrown at them.

Yet again, the shields soon turned out to be useless. The Darkness-enhanced spells were just too powerful. Every hit was taking out big chunks of their shields, in mere seconds they had to throw them away and try to dodge instead.

But dodging wouldn’t work this time around, the agent was throwing out way too many attacks, they were ceaseless and coming from all directions.

They had to combine their defenses. James cast a Mana Shield not only on himself, but on his friends too. He pumped all his mana into these shields, trying to make them as strong as possible. Hopefully, shielding spells would be much more successful than the actual shields were.

Over his shields, Lunaris cast her own type of shield spell, a Holy Shield, giving them a double layer of defense. The holy element was supposed to partially help against the Darkness. It wouldn’t do much, but any extra protection was welcome at the moment.

Helios got the idea and cast yet another layer of defense over the three of them, his very own Blazing Wrath Shield. Infused with the fire element, this shield would also get stronger along with the user's emotions.

With three shielding spells combined, they had thick defenses covering their entire bodies. The only problem was that every time they were hit, a huge amount of mana was consumed due to the extreme amount of damage that was being absorbed.

They were trying to dodge to the best of their ability, while keeping the shields up. Each one of them were chugging mana potions, but were quickly reaching their daily limit.

James then tried using Mana Drain on the agent to replenish his mana reserves.

“Don’t make me laugh. That pathetic thing can’t touch me.” The man spat out, disgusted at James’s pathetic attempt at Mana Drain.

With Mana Drain not working, James soon ran out of mana, and the group only had two defensive layers left.

The outcome was clear, the other two shields would soon be gone and they'd be left entirely defenseless.

That’s when Helios and Lunaris dispelled the shields that were protecting the two of them, and focused their shields entirely on James.

“What are you guys doing?" He asked incredulously. "Come on, stop playing around! Don’t protect me, protect yourselves!” James blurted out with extreme worry. He had an idea about where this was going.

Neither of them responded. There was no use arguing.

“Oh? And what is this? You’re willing to die for your friend? That’s very nice of you! Then I’ll kill you, and after that I’ll kill him anyway.” The agent cackled maniacally.

“If we die, he’ll just teleport away. There’s no point in him sticking around if we’re already dead.” Helios said with a grin, spitting towards the agent.

“What? Are you crazy? What kind of plan is that? I can’t live knowing that my best friends died for my sorry ass. I won’t do it, I won’t teleport away even if you die.” James said stubbornly, trying to make them change their minds.

“Yes, you will. Would you let our deaths be in vain? Would you make our sacrifice entirely meaningless?” Lunaris said in a grim tone while giving James a hug.

“You wouldn’t do that to us. If we die here, then you must teleport away. Otherwise we died for nothing.” Helios said, patting James on the shoulder.

James was ready to do anything to prevent this absolutely insane plan. He was about to run straight towards the agent and make the bastard kill him before he could kill his friends.

But before he could do that, the agent spoke.

“Oh? So I kill the both of you, and he teleports back to Hedonia. Where he can be guarded and trained and your people can research the Darkness by observing his powers. And if I don’t kill you, in a few moments you’ll recover your true powers and then I probably won’t have a chance to kill him anymore. Is that your silly little plan?” The agent smugly smiled.

“The clock is ticking.” Helios smiled bravely. In the next few seconds he’d either die, or live long enough to kick this guy’s ass.

The three friends hugged each other, not knowing if this would be their last few seconds together.

“All right, not a bad plan. Takes a lot of balls, I admit that. But there’s also option C.” The agent laughed and pointed his finger towards James.

“If I can’t kill him through those shields of yours, then I can just make him useless to you.”

The agent began channeling. His whole body shook, then the whole room shook. Waves of dark miasma were emanating around him, converging into his hands, swirling around uncontrollably. A dark, aetherial, ghostly mass of smoke and miasma was forming in his hands, shaped like a skull.

After a few seconds, he pointed his hands towards James. The skull then flew out.

The shields that were defending James didn’t block it at all. They weren’t even touched or shattered, the skull passed through them like they didn’t exist at all.

James was bracing for impact, but the skull just entered him without any resistance.

[You have been cursed. Effect: error]

“Well then, seeing as the wonder boy is now useless, and your powers are about to return, I’ll just take my leave.” The man cackled again. In the next moment he vanished, leaving behind the echo of the disturbing cackle, but he himself was nowhere to be seen.

“James!” Lunaris screamed, as James was writhing in pain on the ground, black goo oozing from his mouth, his ears, and even his pores.

Helios lifted him upright so he wouldn’t choke on the black liquid.

James was shaking and spasming uncontrollably, a very painful sight for his friends.

Lunaris was wiping the black liquid off him, which had an unbearable stench, but they were so worried that they didn't even notice. Helios was searching through his storage ring for various pills that could help.

In a few minutes, whatever was happening to James seemed to have stopped, but he had passed out. Seeing as no liquid was oozing out of his mouth anymore, Helios made him swallow a few pills that would help strengthen and restore his body, as well as alleviate any pain when he woke up.

“Do you have any idea what that thing was?” Helios asked, pacing around and spitting uncontrollably out of rage and worry.

“If I had to guess, I’d say it was a curse. A nasty one at that. Curses aren’t even usually visible, but we both saw that skull clear as day. And these side-effects… clearly it wasn’t an amateur’s work. But we’ll have to wait for him to wake up to tell us what the effects are.” Lunaris sighed with a worried frown on her face.

Helios grabbed James and the three of them left, quickly making a campsite outside the dungeon.

“Should we just use the teleportation scrolls to go back to Hedonia right away?” Helios proposed. The dampening were off and they were at their full power, so they were probably safe from any attacks. But James's health worried them.

The scrolls were valuable, not something you would usually use just for a trip back home, but for the sake of their friend they were ready to sacrifice the scrolls.

“If he doesn’t wake up soon, we will.” Lunaris answered.

A few minutes later, James came to. But he could barely move.

His head was dizzy, his body felt battered, as if a train hit each individual pore on his skin. His mouth was the worst though, it felt like a slug covered in skunk stink crawled through every square inch of his mouth.

“Hey, what’s with the long faces, did someone die?” James smiled, trying to make his friends cheer up.

“James!” Helios and Lunaris shouted in unison, happy that he regained consciousness.

“How are you feeling? Should we teleport back to Hedonia, do you think you need emergency treatment?” Lunaris blurted out the questions in such a hurry that James barely made out what she said.

“No, I think I’m alright. My body hurts but the pain is quickly subsiding. Don’t worry, I’m fine!” James smiled again, he didn’t want them to worry.

“No, you’re not fine! You were cursed, weren’t you?” Lunaris asked, not able to hide her worry. Helios was just pacing around furiously.

James paused for a second. He didn't want them to worry, but he also had to tell them the truth. He chose to at least answer casually, maybe his attitude would make them less worried. “Yep, there was indeed a message that said I was cursed.”

“What did it say?” Helios and Lunaris were literally holding their breath as they were waiting for the answer, hoping the effects of the curse weren’t too devastating.

“I don’t know, it just said error.” James answered nonchalantly and with a complete lack of worry.

Hearing that, Helios's and Lunaris's faces turned pale.