James sacrificed his health again, gaining [Reckless Abandon] and Chaos Barrier.

The pain was excruciating, every time he sacrificed it seemed to hurt more and more, especially since not much time had passed before the previous sacrifice. He was foaming at the mouth, even while biting into the shirt. The silver lining was that the pain itself was fuel for the skills. But with his eyes bulging out from the pain, James wasn’t exactly grateful for having such powerful skills at that moment.

Psychologically it was getting easier though. The human mind is capable of adapting to anything. Even the lazy, comfort-loving bum that was James was able to adapt to the self-inflicted excruciating pain, because he had the proper motivation. As long as it meant that he and his friends would survive, he could put up with the pain.

Without wasting valuable time, James started launching his saws. [Reckless Abandon] only gave him a short window in which he could do damage, but the degree to which his power was amplified was truly worth the pain.

With each saw, dozens of demons would die. James felt like he was dying from the pain, and yet it was worth it. James was launching wave after wave of saws, hundreds of demons dying in the few seconds that [Reckless Abandon] was active.

But to his surprise, James was seeing the world in slow-motion for a bit longer than before. The pain was so great that it still felt like he was getting stabbed all over his body, but in exchange, even the very duration of the skill seemed to have been extended a little bit.

James knew his saws were doing a lot of damage, he could hear the anguished cries of the demons, but the pain was slowly taking its toll too. He could barely comprehend what was happening, even keeping his eyes open was too much effort.

There were many thousands of demons left, so James closed his eyes and focused on casting the saws.

In James’s pained state, he could barely see the state of the battlefield.

But Helios’s perception was still pristine. There were still many thousands of demons left, but he could see their numbers slowly thinning from James’s relentless assault. Their numbers would get replaced by the countless other demons that were advancing on their position, but it wasn’t as fast as before. With every wave of saws he launched, the rate at which the demons’ ranks were refilled was getting slower and slower. It seemed to even take a toll on their morale, if these creatures were even affected by such a concept. The deadly saws being launched made them hesitant to move forward.

James wasn’t even looking at the demons anymore though. His eyes were barely open, his mind was robotically focused on one thing only: getting the saws launched.

He was in a self-induced haze. He intentionally tried to block any other thoughts from his brain in order to avoid focusing on the pain.

The pain was more than debilitating, but he dissociated to the point his body was basically moving on its own. He could see his hands moving, but it felt more like watching a movie instead of something that he was actually doing.

The saws were a spell very familiar to him, so he went through the movements effortlessly.

With a few waves of his hands, a new batch of saws was ready. And each time he sent them flying, dozens of demons would meet their demise.

But after launching several batches of saws, he’d have to put himself through the excruciating pain again and again. He’d launch four waves, then he’d have to sacrifice his HP again. Even though he barely regenerated any HP at all, so there was almost nothing to even sacrifice, the overwhelming pain was the main fuel.

He didn’t hesitate anymore though. He dissociated to such an extreme degree, even inflicting pain on himself became part of the mindless routine. He knew he had to do it, there was no other option. He didn’t have any other solutions, not even the Chaos Flower could deal with all these monsters. There were just too many of them, and it would leave him useless afterwards. If he wanted his friends to survive, he’d have to keep torturing himself.

Ironically, the lack of options made it easier. There was no point in hesitation or thought, not doing it would mean certain death for his loved ones.

In a way, even the pain itself was a useful tool. It was so extreme that his mind was able to enter the dissociated state and focus on firing the saws relentlessly, the only pause being to sacrifice his health yet again.

Despite the effectiveness of his strategy, he knew there were just too many enemies. He didn’t dare look at the progress he was making. There would be a lot more pain before this was over, and looking at it would just make it feel longer. Just like looking at the clock while in school, it only makes it so much worse.

He recalled a weird little saying his dad would always tell him when he didn’t want to do something. “Thinking about it is scarier than just doing it.”

He never liked hearing that back then, it always meant he had a hard day ahead of him.

But now the thought of it was soothing. Even amidst this debilitating pain, the thought of his father made it easier to endure.

Even though his dad probably never imagined his words would be used to make it easier for James to inflict pain upon himself so he could slaughter a bunch of demons, they were helpful nonetheless.

So James didn’t dare look at or think about the number of demons, instead he lost himself in the cycle of attacking and sacrificing.

Wave after wave of saws, self-torture after self-torture, it had gotten to the point James stopped thinking altogether. His mind was completely blank, the passage of time had lost all meaning.

He couldn’t keep a blank state of mind for too long. But his mind had other defenses to keep the pain away.

Images of his parents, images of his friends would flash in his head. He saw himself with them. Laughing, smiling, playing around. The images barely even made any sense at all. Sometimes they were on a cloud, sometimes they were underwater. It was like a fever dream.

But they still helped. The pain was merely a distant sting, his mind was in a dimension of its own.

[Skill unlocked: Dissociative trance]

The unlocking of a new skill pulled him out of the trance for a moment, but the pain quickly reminded him that he needed to dissociate again.

And so he returned to the psychotic routine. Creating saws, buffing himself up by torturing himself, and then launching some saws again. But his mind was far, far away, hanging out with Helios and Lunaris, playing with his cat.

He didn’t know how much time had passed. It could’ve been 30 minutes, or it could’ve been several days. Every time a thought popped into his head, he’d block it and return to daydreaming.

There were untold thousands of demons, he didn’t have the luxury of stopping.

He kept going on and on, he didn’t so much as think about the possibility or concept of stopping. Stopping was the most dangerous thought of all. If he dared think about when this torture would end, he’d find himself trapped back in reality, stuck in the present with all the pain, waiting for it to end.

Suddenly, he felt a slap. But he had dissociated so heavily that a slap barely even registered at this point. With all the pain his body was experiencing, it was incredible that a slap was even perceptible. It made no sense for him to be slapped while in a battle with savage demons, but his brain had given up on logic long ago. A slap wasn’t enough to break him out of this state.

But then he felt another slap, and another, and another. There wasn’t any pain from them, whoever was slapping him definitely cared about him too much to actually want to hurt him. But even if it didn’t hurt, eventually the slaps got his mind’s attention. His feverish dreams were interrupted by the constant sensory input demanding his presence.

He wanted to snap his eyes open to see what was happening, but neither his body nor his mind were capable of that at the moment. Instead, his eyes opened slowly, his pupils taking time to fully focus and be aware of what was in front of him.

It was Helios! Helios had been slapping him desperately, trying to wake him up.

“Thank God, you’re finally awake! I thought I’d never get you out of that state.” Helios then hugged him, so happy to see that his friend was finally responsive.

They were both too manly to hug other men, but at this point in their friendship they felt closer to one another than actual brothers. So even the overly manly Helios and James hugged each other, happy to see the other alive and well.

Though one could hardly call someone in James’s state well. He was bruised and bloody all over, he looked more like a corpse than a living human being.

James looked around, still barely able to comprehend his surroundings. “What happened?”

Helios let out a sigh of relief. He tried to smile, but as happy as he was that James finally came to, he was still too worried for him to smile.

“What happened? The battle ended long ago is what happened!” Helios exclaimed.

Seeing as James was still confused and didn’t seem to remember anything, Helios explained everything.

“I was fighting the demons that were climbing the tree. Their numbers were interminable, I thought they’d never stop coming. But then, after a while, I noticed that less and less of them were coming up. Whereas before I could see dozens of them on the tree at once, with hundreds at the bottom of the tree waiting to climb up, all of a sudden there were only a handful up the tree. And then, eventually, they stopped climbing the tree altogether!”

As Helios was talking, James slowly looked around. Only then he realized that they were no longer on top of the tree. They were on the ground, surrounded by what looked like thousands of corpses of demons, as far as eye could see. Far too many to even count.

Even though he really wanted to hear the rest of what happened, James had pushed his mind and body way beyond their limits. No amount of curiosity could keep him awake. Despite his best efforts, he succumbed to his exhaustion, passing out swiftly.