[Skill unlocked: Mana-Starved Bloody Pox]

“That’s a weird name. What the hell does it do?” Helios asked gleefully. All in all, he was happy that James had finally squeezed out a new spell. He had been straining himself very hard to no avail. Therefore, any results whatsoever were welcome, even if it wasn’t necessarily a game-changing spell.

“Remember the names of his other spells? It’s not that weird in comparison.” Lunaris chuckled.

James chuckled as well. He felt incredibly relieved for multiple reasons. He was glad to have finally invented something after days of trying. It wasn’t the nuke he had been hoping for, but at the very least they’d have yet another weapon against Garantep. It was also nice to finally be done with training. Even if it meant going on a suicide mission, not having to train any more felt like an enormous weight had been lifted off his shoulders.

“Unfortunately, I don’t think I can test it out right now. It’s a weird spell, and it definitely won’t work on a dummy, we’d need a genuine enemy to actually see the extent of its strength.” James replied, fidgeting nervously. “But it’s most likely quite powerful. I needed to take advantage of my large mana pool, so I focused on making a spell that burns a lot of mana. And in exchange, it does a large amount of damage. Probably.”

“Hey, just test it out on me! I was tough to begin with, but I’m even tougher now, you know? Three whole months of intense training is enough to completely change a man!” Helios shouted jubilantly.

Lunaris conjured a blank newspaper and jokingly smacked him over the head. “Are you crazy? Just look at the name! God knows what kind of things it can do to you. Let’s just be happy that we have a new weapon, there’ll be plenty of enemies to test it out on.” She then hugged Helios as an apology for smacking him.

“All right, all right.” Helios smiled. “I guess we’ll just have to enjoy the surprise when he blows up the agents with it.” He nodded and gave James a thumbs up. If it were anyone else, they’d be skeptical of whatever spell a person invented in a few days while highly stressed and pressed for time. But they trusted James, and they had faith that it was probably something good.

“So this is it, huh? The training camp is over, no more pushing ourselves to our limits.” James said with a sigh of relief. As much as he wanted to be more powerful, the last three months had been excruciating.

“The worst is yet to come, but I guess we can take it easy for a few days.” Lunaris replied.

“The worst? Hell no, what’s about to come is the best part! Isn’t that right, brother?” The training had been just as grueling for Helios. After three whole months of it, he wanted nothing more than to go out and bust some heads, danger be damned.

“That’s right, brother!” James replied excitedly as he cracked his knuckles.

As much as he’d have loved to relax for a while, what he wanted even more was to finally get rid of this monkey that had been on his back for so long. The benefits of dealing with Garantep would be enormous. Not only would he get rid of the curse, but such a powerful agent and his city of cohorts was the source of countless suffering in this world.

But more importantly, after so much training, he was aching just as much as Helios to go out and finally do something.

“Cadmus has probably been working hard too. We’ve been cooped up for so long, I’m actually looking forward to our meeting tomorrow. But for now, let’s go to sleep. We’ve earned a good night’s sleep.” Lunaris announced, barely able to even keep her eyes open. The cumulative effects of three months of hard work were hitting them like a ton of bricks.

It wouldn’t be right to finish the camp without a proper thank you though. The trio bowed to Bacchus, Eruditus and Ruppus, thanking them from the bottom of their hearts.

Lunaris and Helios conjured the best dishes they possibly could at their skill level so they could have a last feast together. The food was nothing compared to what Cadmus usually served them, but it still made James’s mouth water. The dwarves had been a great help, spending so much of their own time just to assist them, and they had grown quite close over the three months. It was hard to say goodbye, but they were all so exhausted that the goodbye banquet only lasted an hour. They all wanted to party a lot longer, but their eyes weren’t listening to them anymore.

The next morning, the gang woke up fired up and ready, thanks to Lunaris who made sure to conjure a mana rooster to peck them till they woke up. They probably would’ve slept for weeks otherwise.

The trio had been so focused on their training, desperate to get as strong as possible, that they had almost no contact with the outside world for past three months. As soon as they went outside, even just seeing the grass felt very odd.

They slowly strolled towards Cadmus’s house, taking in the scenery. James was a bit of a hermit in his past life, so it wasn’t unusual for him to not go out for long stretches of time. But after punishing his body and mind with excessive training, it was nice to just watch the birds fly, hear them chirp, and just feel the sunshine on his skin.

When they finally arrived, they noticed the absence of the feast that Cadmus usually greeted them with.

Instead, they found a disheveled Cadmus with bags under his eyes, clearly lacking sleep.

“My goodness, look who it is. Children! I haven’t seen you in so long, I’ve really missed you, you know.” Cadmus warmly embraced each one of them.

After giving his father a long hug, Helios asked him about his appearance.

“Yes, yes, I know I don’t look my best right now. I actually wanted to prepare a feast for you kids, but I didn’t have time for that either.”

Cadmus downed a glass of water before finally revealing what had been bothering him.

“Sorry, it’s just that I had on my plate. I didn’t want to perturb your training, so I didn’t tell anyone to inform you.” He paused again to drink another glass of water, his hand clearly trembling from stress and overwork, to the point he even spilled some water on himself. “You see … the stalemate, it seems to be crumbling.”

That was awful news, and the implications were hard to even imagine. But as shocked as the trio was, they didn’t make a peep, patiently waiting for him to continue.

“The reason I’ve been so busy is that I’ve been putting out fires left and right. Countries all over the world are calling up their reservists en masse, hiring mercenaries and enlisting the help of their allies. Naturally, I’ve had to have many meetings with various diplomats, and it was all very exhausting.”

Cadmus sighed and drank another glass of water, but this time his hands didn’t tremble at all. As he looked at the three of them, he smiled. It seemed like the presence of his son and his friends slowly began having a calming effect on him.

“My, would you look at all of you. I can feel your strength through your auras. You’ve all grown into such powerful mages in such a short amount of time.” He tousled their hair and laughed. “See, now I’m not the only one who is disheveled.”

Cadmus then looked at James with a mysterious glint in his eyes. “And you, young man. It’s been barely more than a year since we’ve first met, and you’ve come this far. You’re quite the hard worker, aren’t you?”

“No, no, it’s all thanks to Lunaris and Helios. I barely did anything, really.” James replied while blushing.

“Yeah, right. You should’ve seen him dad, he was killing demons by the thousands, and that’s the least of his accomplishments. The man’s a machine!”

“Stop it, you know damn well I’d be nothing without you guys.” James shouted awkwardly.

After they all had a hearty laugh, with James turning beet-red from embarrassment, Cadmus was a lot more relaxed so he continued his explanation.

“We’re not at an all-out war yet, thankfully. But there have been several battles over the past few months. They were short, pinpointed attacks. The agents and their monsters have targeted critical infrastructure in several different kingdoms, which tells us that they’re planning for a bigger attack in the future.”

“Thank God. How much time do you think we have?” Lunaris asked.

“Actually, there’s good news on that front. While everybody is on high alert for good reason, there are also grounds to believe that we might still have quite a bit of time until all-out war breaks out.”

“And what are those grounds?” Helios inquired.

“You see, the recent attacks had a certain interesting pattern. Unlike normal attacks, the forces of the Darkness didn’t physically make their way to their target destination.” Cadmus then looked directly into Helios’s eyes. “They teleported there.”

“What?! And you say that as if it’s good news?” Helios shouted in confusion.

“That’s unprecedented! Sure, a single agent could teleport if they moved out of the lands of Darkness first, but a whole army? The logistics of that would make it an impossible move without an army repelling them long before they completed the teleportation.” Lunaris interjected.

“Yes, yes, you have very good reason to react that way.” Cadmus replied. “But as grim as it may seem, you have to calm down and think about it with a cool head.”

“If they can teleport an army in and out of their lands as they please, then we’re in big, big trouble. They could infest lands and kill people anywhere in the world. No place would be safe anymore.” Helios added.

“No, wait a second.” Lunaris said with her eyes closed, trying to calculate the implications. “The fact that they revealed their capabilities but didn’t start a war yet, implies that the main reason for the attacks was testing the technology out, rather than actually starting the war.”

Cadmus smiled gleefully. “That’s my girl! As smart as always.”

Helios put his hand on her shoulder and gave her a thumbs up, while James winked at her. Now she was the one to turn beet-red.

“Anyway, that’s exactly right.” Cadmus continued. “A good portion of the military intelligence community of several countries have arrived to that very same conclusion. While every nation must still prepare for the worst, we believe there is still time before the real war begins.”

“Why test their capabilities in such an obvious fashion? Couldn’t they have done it in a way that didn’t betray the fact that they had this technology?” James asked.

“According to our calculations, that would’ve been impossible.” Cadmus answered. “That’s why they chose to stage several attacks on critical infrastructure. Teleporting an entire army would be impossible to hide, even if they did it to some remote corner of the world. The energy fluctuations would have inevitably been detected by some of our greater mages. And since they knew that their attempts would be impossible to hide, so they chose to deal some damage at the very least.”

“Still, how come they can do this all of a sudden?” Helios furrowed his brows as he worried about the implications of such capabilities.

“Well, we’re in luck there too. According to the calculations of our own researches here at Hedonia, teleporting an army is a difficult enough task. But to teleport them even through the great teleportation block that the most powerful of mages are constantly imposing onto the lands of Darkness? Now that sounds downright impossible.”

“Unless you can pay the price.” Lunaris said, while sneaking a look at James.

“That’s right. My, you really are a smart cookie.” Cadmus chuckled as Lunaris turned red again. “You’re correct. Regardless of how they do it, such a move would require absolutely gargantuan reserves of energy. I shudder at the thought, the cost of penetrating such a block AND moving a whole army is unimaginable.”

“The Bloodwells!” Helios shouted.

“That’s right. I see that my son is quite sharp as well.” Cadmus smiled.

James was a bit confused though. “Wait, we teleport around all the time. How come teleporting an army is difficult?”

“When we teleport, there’s only the three of us, and we still pay a price.” Helios answered. “We’ve covered the ticket price so you probably didn’t notice, but it’s actually pretty expensive. The farther you go, the more expensive it gets. And if more people teleport at the same time, the cost to operate the portal increases exponentially. Not to mention that the portals we used were well-established, stable, constructed over long periods of time. Now imagine that the forces of Darkness wouldn’t even have such infrastructure in place, having to summon a temporary portal capable of transporting entire armies. The potential cost boggles my mind to be honest, I can’t even believe it’s possible.”

“So they use the Bloodwells to fuel their teleportation?” Lunaris asked.

“Yes and no. It is now believed that the very reason we had a stalemate at all, was so that they could accumulate energy and power. Bloodwells are just one way they do that, but an important one nevertheless.” Cadmus replied. “The stalemate was an incredible relief for us as well, the world was weary of war. But they didn’t just sit idly by, they have been preparing. I imagine that every single person killed by an agent or a demon in the past few years was used as fuel for their nefarious needs.”

“So what will happen now?” Lunaris asked, anxious about the future.

“The number of attacks and enemy activity will probably increase.” Cadmus continued. “This time without any teleportations, but with the purpose of accumulating even more energy. Instead of an all-out war, we’ll probably see many battles popping up, while they wear the armies down and increase their own energy supply.”

“But what about us? How can we help? And what do we do regarding Garantep and the Stygian city?” Helios asked. The stalemate being over meant that things were a lot more uncertain and volatile than before.

“Ohh, I know just the thing that you can do.” Cadmus answered.