James was suddenly the target of what looked like a hundred dark, crescent blades. He had enough trouble with just two, and now he somehow had to survive the onslaught of a hundred of them.

“All right, I guess we’re going all out now.” James mumbled under his breath.

“Garantep seems to have pulled out all the stops” Lunaris said, watching from a distance with the rest of the group.

“Aye. That means James will have to do the same thing.” Helios replied, his eyes glued to the fight. “It’s a bad situation to be in. An all or nothing kind of deal. After releasing every ounce of power within them, throwing whatever skill they still can conjure, whoever is left standing will be the winner.”

“James is powerful way beyond his level. But I don’t know if even he can beat this monster. To sacrifice one’s mana pool, Garantep destroyed his powers permanently just so he can win. I can’t imagine the amount of power such an extreme sacrifice can give you.” Lunaris said with bated breath as she look at James. “Let’s hope we can at least do something to make sure James is the one left standing. I don’t want to sit here uselessly while he’s in a life-and-death battle.”

The group grew silent. Everybody understood the gravity of the situation. Even as they were standing hundreds of feet away, they could feel the oppressive, heavy aura of the giant crescent blades.

And deep down, they knew they wouldn’t even be able to help. Emilia kept trying to shoot at Garantep, but he was a whole different person now. With his body burning his very mana pool that he had compressed and enriched for years, the arrows couldn’t even fly towards him. The energies in the air were so strong that the arrows disintegrated in mid-flight. And it’s likely they wouldn’t even do much if they did land.

The others weren’t doing any better. It was truly all on James now.

And even he felt the pressure this time around. After killing so many agents almost effortlessly, this was the first time he actually felt like he was about to die. The pressure of so many blades chasing him was even making his hand tremble.

But he wasn’t about to let himself lose now, not after he had gotten so far. He was so close to finally being done with this hellish chapter of his life. But more importantly, the lives of so many people counted on him.

He didn’t know how the fight would end, whether or not he’d still be alive to tell the tale. But for the sake of his friends, he was going to kill Garantep, no matter what it took. No sacrifice was too great.

The hundreds of crescent blades chased James , space being warped behind them as they trailed through the air.

James knew he had to pull all the stops as well, so he did the craziest thing he could imagine. He sacrificed his health twenty times.

Instantly, his eyes started bleeding. He felt woozy and nauseous, but at this point in his life he was used to the feeling.

The world looked red for many reasons. Behind his twenty times strengthened Chaos Barrier, and twenty times stacked [Reckless Abandon], along with his eyes literally pooling up with blood, how could it not look red? But even within all that red, he could clearly see hundred giant dark spots flying towards him.

They seemed so slow at first. But James wasn’t the only one pulling out all the stops. As if reacting to his increased speed from the sacrifices, the blades were getting faster by the second.

Garantep was burning off his very essence without any mercy at all. Not towards himself, and definitely not towards James. Dark fumes were rushing out of Garantep, a veritable storm of Darkness flowing into the blades, making them faster, bigger, sharper with each passing moment.

James could keep up for now, but [Reckless Abandon] wouldn’t last for very long. He had to make it count. He called his Glaives towards him and unleashed so much mana onto them that they began wobbling uncontrollably, seemingly unable to even handle all of it.

As soon as he sent them flying, he began preparing more Chaos Javelins.

The Glaives crashed into Garantep’s crescents. Huge chunks of Darkness flew off the blades, but it still wasn’t enough. The damage was considerable, but there were only two Glaives against hundreds of crescent blades, with even more of them getting spawned. And with each hit, it looked like a small portion of the Glaives was being torn off as well.

In his currently greatly buffed state, James could dodge the crescents. But he had to actually shift the balance of power before [Reckless Abandon] ran out. He didn’t know just how many sacrifices he had left in him, but he already felt woozy.

“Even if I turn into a pool of blood, I’ll kill him.” James mumbled as he turned his head to look at his friends for a split second.

Despite the grandiose declarations, James did the only thing he could think of. He kept spamming Javelins. Since he was under the effects of 20 layers of [Reckless Abandon], he could conjure them quicker than he could move his fingers, and they were much more destructive as well.

The Javelin rocketed forth so fast that it looked like teleportation. Immediately, a significant chunk was taken out of a crescent.

But the crescents were so large and full of Darkness that they still marched on, ignoring the missing chunks within them. They even looked like they were regenerating as Garantep was constantly burning off the Darkness within him.

James’s Glaives were flinging themselves amidst the crescents, taking chunks off with every hit.

But even with the Glaives and the Javelins assaulting the enemy, the numbers of crescents only looked like it was increasing.

He didn’t have to wait to understand that this would not suffice. Not only was his firepower inferior, but as a crescent whizzed by him, missing him by an inch, he understood that his defenses were inferior as well.

Too many things were after him. James knew he needed to increase the number of pieces on his side of the chessboard. He stopped firing his Javelins, even though that immediately increased the number of crescents that got through and were an inch away from slicing him in half.

But he had to do something to tip the scales, and apparently firing off Javelins just wouldn’t cut it.

So he used his increased casting speed to conjure as many Glaives as he could.

Thirty Javelins were conjured in five seconds. The speed was phenomenal, but [Reckless Abandon] was already slowly wearing off. In five more seconds, he conjured 28 Javelins. He could feel himself becoming slightly weaker by the second.

In a single minute, even while dodging the immense crescents, he had conjured enough Javelins to create a Chaos Glaive. He grabbed the Glaive out of the glob of crimson energy and launched it with SARM towards the crescents.

But he had already lost more than half of his [Reckless Abandon] buff.

He knew he couldn’t afford to slow down now. Failing to move by a fraction of a second could mean death. Not just him, but his friends’ as well.

That meant that he had to see his sacrifices as a resource. No matter how much they hurt, he had to use them. It was now or never.

He didn’t know how many he had left in him, but he didn’t want to leave a single possible sacrifice on the table. Dying by sacrificing too much was preferable to not doing everything in his power to save his loved ones.

Without hesitation, he sacrificed another 20 times.

Blood shot out of his eyes, ears, nose and throat. Even the pores on his skin seemed to shoot out blood.

But he was still alive, and that’s all he really needed. He was so woozy he couldn’t even stand, but his mind was still there. He instructed SARM to fling him away from the crescents. He couldn’t move much by himself, but he was far from defenseless.

He could barely even move his eyes, but at least he had all the power he needed now.

“Why won’t you die? You cling to life like a cockroach.” Garantep shouted as he infused even more Darkness into his crescents. His very body seemed to be disintegrating from pouring so much into them, parts of his fingers turning into dust.

Instead of hurting each other, it looked like a race to determine who could hurt themselves more.

James’s Glaives were flying around him, chipping away chunks of Darkness out of any crescent that got close. His body was weak and crippled, and yet his powers were never stronger. SARM was basically teleporting him throughout the sky, flinging him away before even a particle of dust could touch him.

But there were just too many crescents. The three Glaives were the most powerful weapons James possessed, but not even they could deal with so many powerful blades flying around, constantly powered by Garantep.

Even while barely able to move, James kept conjuring Javelins, taking advantage of every single millisecond of [Reckless Abandon].

But he knew it wasn’t enough. Even if he could create several more Glaives before the effects ended, he’d still be at a massive disadvantage, inevitably heading towards defeat.

If he wanted to win, he had to do more. Much more. But as much as he always boasted about having a nearly infinite mana supply, this time around, the enemy had beaten him at his own game.