“So what do we do now?” Denmac asked.

“Well, our goal is to kill Garantep.” Helios answered, his eyes darting around. “But our more important goal is to survive, obviously. James destroyed the energy containers, so it’s not like we’d be going home empty-handed anyway. But now that stealth is not an option anymore, it looks like we’ll either have to kill everything that moves, or be killed. I doubt we could escape, not with so many of them after us. Might even be worse if we try, they’re quite adept at hunting fleeing targets. Best to fight them head on.”

James nodded. He knew that every second of not being attacked was valuable. Even though it meant the agents were planning and scheming, it was important time that he could use to restore his HP, stamina, and even his nerve. God knows that it took a lot of nerve to set the whole facility ablaze, even if he was insane.

While Lunaris was healing him, his head on her lap, James spoke up.

“First of all, I’m sorry for worrying you all.” He said as he looked at Lunaris and Helios. “But when our stealth plan failed, I knew I had to do something drastic. At least the explosions made them more wary of us. It’s better than being swarmed right away.” He smiled as he looked around, still sensing countless eyes on them.

“I agree that fleeing is not an option.” He continued. “I’d gladly run away with you guys. I’d love nothing more than to know that your lives are not at risk anymore. But I just don’t think it’s possible to outrun so many killers who grew stronger precisely by hunting mages that were running away.”

Everybody nodded. As nice as it would be to just abandon the mission right now and go home, that option was taken away from them as soon as the three agents exploded, revealing their presence.

Every time James blinked, he could see them exploding. Even though plenty of stranger things happened to him, even just a few minutes ago. But for some reason, the agents self-detonating left a mark on his psyche.

“So that just leaves one option: fighting.” James said while clenching his fists, trying to shake the images off. “You’ve seen that the agents are mortal too. They can be dealt with. The fact that they’re not attacking us right now is proof of our strength. Granted, we’re probably going to face some much stronger ones, orders of magnitude stronger. But I believe we can do it.”

The motivational words were as boilerplate as they came. Uninspired platitudes that everybody had heard a thousand times in their life.

And yet, coming from someone who just killed hundreds of agents, they seemed to have an effect. Suddenly, the pressure of being watched by so many deadly foes seemed to pale in comparison to their will to fight.

But there was still the problem of what they were going to do.

“I believe in us too. But I still think we’ll end up getting swarmed though.” Denmac said. “It’s not like they’ll just fight us one by one. Even if one group decides to take us on for the glory and rewards, the rest will just swarm us if we beat those ones.”

“Yeah, it’ll probably end up being a random shitshow where both sides try to overwhelm one another. For now, we have to try to limit how many of them can attack us at one time.” James replied.

“Sounds good, not like I have any better ideas. But how do we do that?” Denmac asked.

“We take the previous ‘Phalanx and wrecking ball formation’, and we tweak it. Instead of the Phalanx part being a semi-defensive unit that acts as a support for me and Helios, we make it a fully defensive unit. So the Phalanx becomes more of a cocoon, but with one deliberate opening. Helios and I will be within the so-called cocoon along with you guys, but we’ll be blocking and attacking through the opening. The rest of the cocoon doesn’t have to be impenetrable, but strong enough to make it not worthwhile to pursue breaking it, so that the enemies will have just one lane through which they can attack us.”

“So it’s pretty much the same as before, expect the six of us focus fully on defense, while you two guys work even harder?” Lunaris asked and sighed.

“Well, you’re our healer, so out of the six, you’d still be throwing spells our way.” James smiled. “But other than that, yeah, that’s what it boils down to. It’s not ideal but the alternative is a bunch of them attacking us from all directions. At least this way, we won’t have thousands of spells coming at us every other second.”

“Sounds good to me!” Helios pounded his chest as he screamed excitedly. “We’ve been through the ringer before. Granted, nothing really compares to having to fight God knows how many more agents, but if anyone can do it, it’s us. Right brother?”

“That’s right!” James shook his hand and they headbutted, ready for yet another grueling fight.

“By the way, I feel quite a bit stronger.” As James checked his status window, he noticed he was level 197 now.

“Well, isn’t that a nice surprise in these trying times?” James chuckled.

“Hey, that’s not bad. That’s quite a few levels, brother.” Helios clapped enthusiastically. “Though after killing hundreds of agents, I wouldn’t have been surprised if you got a lot more. I guess you made it look so effortless that the system didn’t grant you all that much xp, relatively.”

“Yeah, I also think the ones who were killed by the explosions didn’t give me the full amount of xp.” James smiled, still quite pleased with the haul. He could already feel the mana within his body getting even stronger, deeper and denser.

Helios was quite happy for him, to the point he even began dancing the jig the dwarves taught him. Any extra boost to their group’s power was more than welcome in this situation, but he was also just glad to see James happy.

Helios’s cheer quickly spread to the others. Even in these horrible circumstances, they were all smiling, pumped up for some action. Quite a stark contrast compared to the dread they felt when they first came to the city.

James had fully recovered by now, thanks to Lunaris’s constant healing. And the rest of the group was fully rested as well.

“We should get into position now.” Denmac warned, his divination helping him sense that their minutes of calm were just about over. “Our smiles seemed to have pissed the bastards off.” As if to mock them, Denmac smiled even harder.

They got into their cocoon-like formation immediately. The six of the Phalanx were ready to block attacks from any direction, while Helios and James would duke it out in the small opening within the cocoon.

The three dwarfs and Denmac got to work right away. Instead of splitting their attention to also support the two attackers, they focused entirely on the barriers.

With all four of them casting their own brand of barrier, the group truly looked like they were covered in a cocoon. They were encased within a multicolor plasma, with a small opening seemingly inviting the enemies inside.

Emilia understood her job right away too, even though defense wasn’t her usual role. With her bow in hand, she began scanning her surroundings. Whoever got close too close to the barrier would get stunned before they could break it.

“Wow, you guys understood what I said better than I did.” James exclaimed as he examined the barrier.

“It’s like an igloo.” Helios shouted energetically as he gave it a smack, only for his hand to go numb.

The three dwarfs, quite knowledgeable in the ways of magic and warfare, molded the barriers in a way that gave the group quite a bit of area to maneuver.

Instead of the barrier being the usual bubble that covered the group in a rather claustrophobia-inducing way, the barrier was now the size of a pretty large room.

While the entrance was quite a long and narrow hallway, giving the whole barrier the shape of an elongated igloo.

Denmac shaped his own barrier to match that of the three dwarfs. And with four barriers contributing to their defenses, and with Emilia shooting out spells to intercept any attackers, the enemies would truly be much better off just trying to attack through the narrow opening.

The whole strategy was just a fancy way of keeping everybody safe while James did most of the work. But that’s exactly what he wanted. He didn’t even want to consider the possibility of putting them in danger. Their support spells were more than enough.

The group moved along with the barrier to a more favorable spot. They could feel the eyes watching them, seeing their every move even through the thick barrier.

They quickly marched towards the walls of the city, stopping at the first spot that seemed a little bit more advantageous. With the walls on one side, and with wide open space on the other side, they felt slightly better than at their previous position. It wasn’t ideal, but at least they didn’t feel like agents would just pop out of nowhere anymore.

But with them moving, they also noticed the activity of the agents getting much more restless right away. By the time they settled on a position, the tension was palpable.

A swift, dark lightning bolt struck Helios, who barely managed to block it with his shield.

In an instant, thousands of loud booms were heard. And thus the battle had started.