When James came to, his friends were staring at him, inches away from his face.

Lunaris had her hands on his chest, the powerful glow from her healing magic was almost blinding.

Helios was quite chipper, Lunaris having healed him quite well already.

“Look who decided to finally wake up!” Helios smiled and helped James stand up. “Welcome back, bro.”

Helios then looked into James’s eyes profoundly while shaking his hand firmly. James could sense the respect in his gaze. Even though Helios had always treated him incredibly well, like an actual blood brother, he had never looked at him like this.

It was the respect a true warrior gave to another warrior. A kindred spirit that knows the hardship and suffering your soul has endured. A soul that walks the same path.

That gaze said more than any words could, and the firm handshake said everything else.

Lunaris didn’t dare intervene while the two warriors had their moment. But once the handshake was over, she leapt at James, giving him a deep hug and kiss.

James never had any siblings, but Lunaris really felt like a caring, older sister. Even though they were the same age, the love, care and worry he sensed through her embrace was exactly what he imagined having an older sister was like.

“You keep winning, and yet I only grow more and more worried every time.” Her eyes watered and tears began streaming down her face.

James wanted to say something to comfort her, but no words came out. He hugged her harder. His appreciation and love for her and everything she did were much greater than mere words could transmit.

Helios approached and joined the group hug. After such a trying and stressful battle, they were all emotionally exhausted. A group hug was more powerful than any healing spell.

Meanwhile, Denmac stood to the side with his mouth agape. James had slept for almost an hour, and yet for the entire hour since he killed the agent, Denmac just stood there, frozen in astonishment.

He killed an agent! And not just some neophyte, an actual, full-fledged, true agent! Not only that, he hadn’t even been in this world for a full year! And he was more than a hundred levels lower than Helios! Denmac couldn’t believe what his eyes had seen.

Even the magics he used were mind-boggling. His weird battle strategies were surprising enough. Thousands of bullets launching chains? Weird little autonomous saws flying around? These weird little things were unheard of.

But the real surprise was the finisher. What was that energy? His eyes had barely seen a red haze, and the agent was dead.

Once he saw that Helios couldn’t defeat the agent, he began thinking that they were pretty much doomed. And yet, this weird little man with so many quirks somehow pulled off a victory.

“C-c-congratulations!” Denmac mumbled, realizing he had been quietly staring for way too long.

He began clapping enthusiastically. James awkwardly smiled and bowed his head in response, his cheeks turning red from embarrassment.

Noticing this, Lunaris and Helios smiled devilishly, with an evil glint in their eye.

They began clapping fervently, loudly shouting praises.

James turned beet red, he wasn’t able to even look in their eyes from embarrassment.

“Screw you guys, I’m going home!” James shouted jokingly.

After having a good laugh, the group went back to licking their wounds. They couldn’t make the trip back without being at full strength.

“Man, how do you keep forgetting to check your status after a battle?” Helios asked, barely able to contain his laughter.

“Oh shit, right. I probably leveled up, didn’t I?” James hurriedly checked his status.

[You have reached level 172]

“Holy shit, that’s from just one guy?” James stared with his mouth open, as if he was mimicking what Denmac was doing not long ago. “And I thought levels would be harder and harder to come by. God damn, I should fight agents more often.” He grinned devilishly for a second, but after he remembered all the pain he went through, his attitude changed immediately.

Even though he was still exhausted and wounded, James could feel the change in his power. The levels seemed to have more and more of an impact. His mana felt purer, deeper, denser. His magic power felt boundless, as if he could barely contain it in his body.

He flicked his finger, launching a fireball into a nearby tree.

He did it to test his strength, expecting to create a pretty big hole in that tree.

Instead, the entire tree exploded and a huge inferno sprang out from the fireball. The flames quickly started spreading to other trees, and it looked like the fires would only getting faster.

“Oh shit.” James hurriedly launched a dozen water balls to fix his mistake. Helios and Lunaris laughed as they joined him in his firefighting efforts.

“Sorry mother nature, I didn’t mean to do that.” James wasn’t a hippie, but he loved nature with all his heart. A love passed down from his father, who was a very gentle soul. When a fly would get trapped in the house, he would carefully catch it so he could release it. James wasn’t quite that gentle, he’d cast a fireball on a whole swarm of flies without blinking, he had no empathy for invasive insects. But he did feel sorry for burning down a tree. “I’ll plant a few trees near my house to make up for it.”

“That’s a good idea.” Helios smiled. “Actually, I could get a botanical garden for my house. And you know that what’s mine is yours.” Helios then grabbed James by his shoulders, thrilled by the thought. “Imagine, brother! A whole pocket dimension full of trees! We could get millions of them in there! We could even collect trees from different planets. Though those are quite pricey.” Helios was drooling at the thought of expanding his house even more.

The two fantasized about trees for a while. Lunaris was constantly chuckling at their harebrained conversations while healing them.

“Wait a second! I forgot to ask, did you guys level up?” James asked.

Immediately, the two laughed. Lunaris turned towards Helios. “You owe me five gold!”

“Damn, I thought he wouldn’t remember.” Helios paid up. But then he smiled excitedly.

“Actually, we did level up!” Helios beat his chest proudly. Lunaris rolled her eyes and chuckled, but James could sense a bit of pride and happiness coming from her too.

“Right, you guys got xp from the neophytes and the agent too. I bet you got at least a few levels! I mean, at your level I know you require much more xp than me, but you probably did advance a bit, right?”

“That’s right!” Helios answered, his excitement not waning even a little bit. “It’s the most xp I’ve gotten in a long while.”

James stared at Helios, excitedly expecting an answer, but he looked back at him without saying anything, just smiling.

“Oh come on, stop teasing me and tell me your levels already!” James pleaded.

“All right, all right. You won’t believe this though. Check this out, I’m level …” Helios dragged it out as long as he could, to the point James was about to throw a waterball at him.

“I’m level 295!” Helios finally announced, laughing and jumping around in glee.

“And I’m level 288.” Lunaris announced while blushing.

The guys were celebrating to the point they forgot about their injuries. Lunaris conjured a mana rope and dragged the jumping idiots back to their resting spot where she could heal them.

“Wow, that’s amazing! Don’t you usually only gain one or two levels when your level is that high?” James asked.

“Well, yeah, but you don’t kill an agent and a bunch of neophytes every day. These animals killed many mages in their lifetimes, especially the true agent. In doing so, they became formidable enemies. It was precisely because we struggled so hard that we were able to get so much xp. The more you push yourself, the more xp you receive. That and the agents themselves grant a lot of xp when you kill them. The genuine struggle and effort multiplied the amount of xp we received.” Helios answered.

“Speaking of struggle, can you sense the Bloodwell?” Lunaris asked.

“Now that you mention it, I do. Is my tainting of it fading away already?” James replied.

“Exactly. We can’t leave without doing something about it. We need to put these souls to rest, as well as making sure nobody else can use this Bloodwell ever again.”

“Right! The souls! They’re being tortured as we speak.” James remembered. “How do we stop it?”

“Putting the souls to rest requires the use of soul magic. It’s complicated, but I can do it. It’ll take most of my mana though.” Lunaris answered. “But other than that, we also need to actually destroy the Bloodwell, by infusing it with a lot of our own mana. So yet again, we need a lot of mana. Since you have so much of it, you could probably do it on your own over a period of a few hours. It would be easier if you did it with Helios, but we’re still in dangerous territory, so we can’t sit around with all the possible combatants drained of their mana.”

Lunaris got to work straight away, wanting to spare those poor souls from any more suffering.

She kneeled down and put her hands in the Bloodwell. A soothing aura began emanating from her.

James could feel a tinge of sadness in her aura. He couldn’t stand seeing his friends sad, so he approached Lunaris and put his hand on her shoulder. Helios joined him and put his hand on her back.

The aura was still sad, how couldn’t it be when Lunaris couldn’t stop thinking about the tortures these souls must’ve endured? But it was noticeably gentler now that her friends were next to her.

Glowing wisps began rising out from the Bloodwell. The horrific sounds coming from the well began dissipating. Even its disturbing red color seemed much less violent.

More and more wisps began rising and flowing high into the skies. Before long, a veritable storm of souls had formed, a seemingly endless stream of wisps floating out of the well.

“My god, just how many people did they kill?” Lunaris cried out.

Yet again, James didn’t know what to say. He wanted to comfort Lunaris, but his usual jokes didn’t seem appropriate. All he could do was rub her back with Helios, paying respects to the dead.

As solemn as the moment was, James couldn’t help but smile. As a result of their victory, these souls were now free. Free from the terror of the Bloodwell, free from the threat of being consumed, free to reincarnate into a new, happy life.

Thinking of all the lives they had spared, all the potential victims of these agents that were now safe, James’s smile became even brighter. He looked at his friends with a tear in his eye and bowed his head respectfully. They were too absorbed in their own thoughts to notice it, but he didn’t want them to notice it anyway. He just felt the need to express his endless gratitude towards these amazing people.