As there was no xp to gain from the first floor of the Soul Grinder anymore, the trio pushed forward like madmen.

With the skills from their first awakenings available to Helios and Lunaris, Helios and Lunaris were already way stronger than before. But now they even turned off the level dampening, which made most of the monsters absolutely trivial.

They were going from room to room, exploding and decimating every monster in sight.

At first, James could barely keep up with them. Even just physically keeping up with their running speed was tough. James may be good at magic and spells, but his hate for any physical activity was really biting him in the ass.

He was a lazy couch potato back on Earth, and he’s still the same exercise-hating, pudgy, unhealthy bum. And instead of thinking about training his body, he was contemplating about whether or not he should develop a spell that does all the running for him! So he wouldn’t have to move his legs at all anymore. Although if he actually tried creating such a spell, it was likely that Helios would just smack him back to sanity and never let him use it. And Lunaris would probably give him disappointed looks till he just gave up on it altogether.

As much as he hated the feeling of his lungs being on fire from all the running around, his competitive spirit wouldn’t let him get carried through the dungeon. He wanted to show off his skills and contribute too.

James was aching to use his Chaos Javelin. It would’ve been so fun to just zap monsters left and right with this powerful spell that made him feel butterflies in his stomach just from thinking about it. He was like a kid who wanted to play with his new toy. Other than thinking about how much he hated running, all he could think about was his shiny new toy.

But he’d have to level up more and increase his mana pool and mana regeneration rate a whole hell of a lot more before he could let loose and use the javelin willy nilly.

He still needed to do something though. He was leeching off Helios and Lunaris since he got to this world, but at least he did a lot of heavy lifting as well. But watching them clear the Soul Grinder while he did nothing felt too much like being a lazy parasite. While he couldn’t use his new toy, he settled for something much weaker, but just as flashy.

As Helios and Lunaris were sprinting like madmen, melting everything that stood in their way, James was right behind them, spawning saws. His mana recovery rate was still a bit affected by the consequences of using the Javelin. But since his glass cannon build was focused entirely on training his magic and mana, even his temporarily crippled mana recovery rate was still better than that of the average mage.

There was another problem though. Since his two friends were taking care of the monsters as soon as they saw them, he couldn’t find any targets! Before he could even snap his fingers, the monsters were already dead. Helios in particular wasn’t messing around. He was much stronger now compared to his first trip to the Soul Grinder, but he was too angry at this place to take it easy.

Even though James couldn’t strike, he kept spawning saws. Lacking targets, the saws just kept piling up. It got to the point he had so many saws flying around that the buzzing was annoying even to him. And since the saws would also decay quickly, he had to put them to work as soon as possible.

As he was feeling more and more useless, unable to find targets because before he could send the saws to attack, the monsters were already dead, he finally had an idea.

If the monsters were dead as soon as they appeared in their line of sight, then he just had to kill them long before he could see them.

James gathered all the mana he could muster, and threw half of his saws ahead, into the next room.

Since SARM was based on the subconscious impulses from his brain, the saws wouldn’t be able to target monsters without him being able to see them.

But he didn’t need to see anything for this move.

The saws flew blindly into the next room. Without him seeing the target, the saws could only follow simple orders. Move left, move right. He had to manually guide them.

But there were a lot of them. James didn’t need pinpoint accuracy when he could just detonate a whole army of saws.

After blindly guiding the saws, James tried to guess when they’d arrive in the middle of the next room, and then he detonated them all.

The explosions were in the next room, and each room in the Soul Grinder was quite big, so they were quite a distance away. But there were just so many saws, so many loud explosions that it felt like something was exploding right next to their ears.

“Jeez, give us a little warning next time, mate.” Helios said while massaging his ears.

In his impatience to do something, anything, James had inadvertently hurt himself and his friends. Their ears were bleeding.

Lunaris healed everybody’s eardrums in a flash, and then spawned three sets of ear plugs.

“I have a feeling we’re going to be wearing these all the time.” She chuckled. “I should probably create a more comfortable design for them. Oh, I could even enchant them! Ear plugs that buff you!” Even though she had been a bit annoyed when her eardrum burst, she had already forgiven James. In just a few seconds, she completely forgot about it, instead being delighted at having such a silly but potentially useful idea.

“You scoundrel, your spells really do pack quite a punch, don’t they?” Helios slapped James’s shoulder and laughed. Helios quickly forgave James as well. He had actually gotten scared that the explosions were caused by some unknown monster, he was even a bit relieved when he realized it was James’s foolish spell that caused it.

James was feeling a bit guilty. He had flashbacks to when he was a kid and a teen back on Earth. Whenever he did anything at all in front of other people, he would fail. Whether it was solving a math problem in front of the class, kicking a ball or singing a song. Every time he wanted to show he was smart or skilled or something, he ended up creating cringeworthy memories that haunted him even now, in an entirely different universe.

It wasn’t a mystery why he had become an introverted and reserved recluse that barely left the house and died in his mid twenties. Every time he did something, he humiliated himself. So he just kept to himself and didn’t try to do anything.

But it felt different with Lunaris and Helios. They were so accepting, kind and nice. Even when he made such a gaffe, they forgot about it in two seconds. He really loved these two friends of his, they had become like family. Helios and Lunaris were like the best brother and sister anyone could ever ask for.

With such great friends, James’s sense of guilt quickly evaporated as well.

He did feel relieved that at least the explosions were in the next room and he hadn’t peppered his friends with shrapnel or anything. Although the latest saw designs he used didn’t really leave much shrapnel. Instead, he put an emphasis on the fire element to make the explosion more damaging, with progressively less shrapnel each time he modified the design. The last few times he used the saws they weren’t hit with shrapnel at all.

As soon as the trio walked into the next room, they realized they also needed nose plugs in addition to the ear plugs.

“So, can you enchant nose plugs too?” Helios said and started laughing.

The explosions killed a large part of the monsters in the room. Some of them were tougher and had survived, but Helios dispatched them quickly.

The problem was that the monsters in this particular room were slimes. When James detonated the saws, the explosions set fire to the slimes.

It smelled like a sewer beneath a city of skunk people with bad diets.

Slimes weren’t the most pleasant-smelling creatures even in their normal state. But when set on fire, their scent was really amplified. The fumes that were filling the room as a result of James’s brilliant plan were downright vomit-inducing. Literally, because before they could plug up their noses, they got a good whiff of the fumes. Without going into too much detail, a few seconds later their stomachs were empty. The silver lining was that they didn’t lose the buffs from the food they had eaten before, at the very least.

Helios and Lunaris just looked at James and laughed. James blushed, but he laughed as well. At this point it was downright funny to him how much he had screwed up.

So much for showing off. But at least he had learned a lesson. James decided to not explode things at random anymore. It was probably a wise decision for multiple reasons.

Helios and Lunaris decided to slow down a tiny bit, so that James could at least get to throw some spells in each room.

There wasn’t any actual xp to be had, but it was a good opportunity to train his skills, which are trained by using them, not requiring xp from monsters.

James started thinking about his arsenal of skills, which had gotten quite big already. But many of them were already useless. Magmafrost Bullet had become useless in the face of higher level monsters. He’d probably never use it again in its current form.

Luckily, he was getting so used to the arcane simulation that he was activating it without even realizing it. Almost every time he thought about skills and spells, the arcane simulation would aid him.

Without even seriously intending to do anything about the Magmafrost Bullet, a half-hearted idea was formed in his brain. And that was enough.

“Wow, guys, this arcane simulation thingie is becoming scarily useful.”

As he was running alongside Helios and Lunaris, the half-hearted idea became more and more vivid until it was actually put through the simulation without him even focusing on it too hard. And the idea bore fruit. The simulation proved that the skill was possible, James was able to play with the idea and try various things out in the simulation, until he was finally able to mentally execute it. And thus his old, useless skill had become less useless.

[Skill unlocked: Magmafrost Bulletchains]

It didn’t take much, James only had to imagine and theorize about the combination of the Magmafrost Bullet with his Mana Chains skill, and the skill was created.

He knew that the bullet would never be relevant again. Even if he leveled the skill up a whole lot, it wouldn’t compare to his more potent weapons.

But that didn’t mean he had to forget about it. If trained up a bit, the bullets themselves could still have great accuracy while doing a small amount of damage. But more importantly, its potential accuracy would go great with some crown control.

“Check this out guys, I just created this spell!”

He did find a way to show off after all, the cheeky brat.

James shot a bullet at each monster, and while the bullets did absolutely no damage to the monsters with relatively high defenses, they did however chain the monsters up, rendering them unable to move.

The fast bullet was able to get really close to the monsters, and the chains would shoot out and envelop them. It was much more efficient than just throwing the chains out, this way not only were the chains shooting out faster and were harder to dodge, but they were also able to shoot out from an advantageous position.

The chains only held the monsters for a brief second. But the concept was sound, it could become a formidable weapon in the future. Perhaps one day he could conjure chains that would become unbreakable, powerful enough to immobilize his foes indefinitely.

The trio were still rushing through the rooms at a breakneck pace, but the Soul Grinder’s floors were immense, it felt like there was no end in sight. Room after room full of monsters, it seemed unending. But even with no more xp coming in, James found it quite useful.

While he was adding no xp to his own level, James was able to train his Magmafrost bulletchains quite a bit.

He didn’t neglect his other spells either. He had the opportunity to train his skills, it would be foolish to not take advantage of the situation. Lunaris even stopped killing monsters, and she dedicated herself to transferring mana to James. James would just train his skills on the mediocre monsters, while Helios took care of the tougher ones.

“I’m glad you’re training your other skills as well, brother. You were too focused on new skills and your overall level. Strong skills and a strong foundation are the cornerstone of a strong mage. I also find the numbers going up quite motivating, seeing a skill getting more powerful is almost as satisfying as seeing your overall level go up, isn’t it?”

After cleaning out room after room of monsters, they had gotten tired. It was time to take a small break, while James could also check the progress he had made.

[Magmafrost Bulletchains has reached level 17]

It still did no damage, but his bullets were faster, and his chains were stronger. As his insight and talent at using the skill grew, so did his level with the skill.

James chose to train his defensive skills a bit too. If he didn’t train them on these weaker monsters, the stronger ones wouldn’t be so kind as to warn him that his defenses were lacking.

[Mana Shield has reached level 21]

[Combat Clairvoyance has reached level 36]

[Blink has reached level 5]

Due to his excessive use of SARM, not only on himself, but on the saws as well, it had been leveling up nicely.

[SARM has reached level 68]

What surprised James was what happened to his saw skills. Having used so many saws, all his “saw” spells combined into one.

[Skill unlocked: Master of Saws]

[Master of Saws has reached level 50]

Helios was right, this was satisfying. James was ecstatic, this was why he came into this world in the first place. Levels, levels everywhere. It felt like he’d overdose on the dopamine.

But while his friends were happy as well, their smiles were cut short.

“So I guess there’s one final obstacle between us and the elevator.” Helios said with a frown.

“A tough one too. It’s quite far away from us and we can already feel it. There shouldn’t be a monster this strong on the first floor. If I had to guess, it’s the agent’s last surprise for us. Aren’t we lucky?” Lunaris added.

Only after they mentioned it, James felt its presence as well. The spider queen was the strongest monster James had faced up until now, and that presence made the queen feel like an ordinary house pest.

But James felt no fear. He probably should have, fear is a necessary part of a human’s instincts, necessary to ensure survival. But instead, he was excited. His friends had access to more of their powers compared to when they fought the queen. They were even undampened. But more importantly, he was a lot more powerful too.

He knew he should be fearful, but after fighting all this trash, he was itching for a proper fight.