“All right, here we go again.” Denmac took a big gulp from the wine Helios had given him and put his hands on James’s head. His eyes rolled back as the divination started.

James could feel Denmac’s will entering his mind, so he lowered his defenses. His many enemies couldn’t mind control him, so Denmac’s strand of consciousness would’ve been wiped out in seconds if James hadn’t actively suppressed his mindspace’s killer instincts.

“My god, it’s worse every time I come in here.” Denmac trembled as he looked around James’s mindspace, the energies and quasi-entities present here would normally be enough to make him scream and head for the hills.

“Don’t worry, nothing here bites.” James chuckled. “Well, except maybe that thing, stay away from that.” James pointed at the remnants of the creature from the Bloodwell that was hissing quietly, barely able to move.

Denmac began scanning his surroundings, and he immediately felt a much too familiar presence.

“I suppose this is what remains of Garantep?” He asked as he approached a dark flame. It almost seemed weak and harmless. But when he got close, the flame exploded as if someone had poured oil on it.

“Yeah, the bastard still seems to have some will left.” James said. “But maybe that’s a good thing. If he has a will, maybe we can still recover a lot of info from him.”

“Let’s hope so.” Denmac replied as he popped out of the mindspace to down a full bottle of wine. “Sorry, but I think I’ll need the whole bottle for this task.” He said as he looked towards Helios.

“No worries, it’s just money. This is way more important. We’ve only got one Garantep, so let’s squeeze him for all he’s got.” Helios patted him on the back.

Back in the mindspace, Denmac began casting runes and formations around the remains of Garantep. He looked a lot more cautious than James had ever seen him.

Denmac placed his hands near the black flame, but it immediately began to burn him. “It hurts too much, I can’t get close enough.”

“That’s all right, I’m here. I’ll help you.” James didn’t know much about divination, but he certainly knew a lot about taking a hit or two from Garantep. He placed his hand near Denmac’s and began channeling his mana, wrapping it around Denmac’s body. “Don’t worry, I’ll take the heat, you just focus on extracting what you can.”

As soon as it sensed James’s mana, the black flame grew even bigger, the Darkness around it growing thicker and denser.

But this time around, Denmac wasn’t hurt at all. His will effortlessly glided into the black flame, which immediately conjured images from Garantep’s memories in his mind.

“I can see it! There are hundreds of years of memories here! A treasure trove! If we can extract them all, then the whole course of the war can change!”

But Denmac had spoken too soon. The flame began to shake, and then an ear-piercing shriek filled James’s mindspace.

It could even be heard outside of his mindspace.

“What’s going on?” Helios asked.

“Nothing good.” Lunaris answered worriedly.

“The memories are collapsing!” Denmac shouted as he browsed through the images in his head, not sure which one of them to examine and extract while he still had time.

The shrieking only got louder, and the flame burned even darker.

“The bastard is spiteful down to the core. Even his remnant will is spiteful.” James said as he looked around his shaking mindspace. The flame seemed to be expanding, trying to engulf his entire mind.

“Don’t tell me he’s actually trying to take over my mind?” James sighed. At this point it wasn’t even funny. It was just annoying, and it was getting old. Every damn thing he fought tried to take over his mind.

Without panicking at all at the attempted mind control, James closed his eyes and crossed his legs, turning his mana inwards. The flame began shaking as soon as it felt the overwhelming torrent of mana that it was up against.

It looked like James had won. But then, the flame began quickly dwindling.

“Stop!” Denmac screamed. “I haven’t extracted anything yet! Stop your mana or you’ll snuff it out before I can do anything!”

“I did stop!” James’s mana was already shut off, but the flame kept getting weaker and weaker.

James realized what was happening right away. “He’s killing himself on purpose. Spiteful to the damn core.”

“I don’t think I can extract much. At this rate, he’ll be gone in less than a minute.” Denmac focused his entire will on the flame, to the point his whole body was shaking uncontrollably. “I can get one thing out of him, tell me what!” He shouted.

“Get the locations of the other cities!” James shouted back without hesitation.

Denmac focused his entire mana pool, his divining gift and his will into extracting whatever he could out of the flame.

Within seconds, he began foaming at the mouth, his eyes rolling back and forth as he lost himself in the divining process.

But a few moments later, the flame had already disappeared. And any trace of Garantep vanished along with it, as if it never existed at all.

Denmac’s eyes snapped open in the real world, outside of the mindspace.

Everybody gathered around him, eager to see the results.

“Did you get anything?” Lunaris asked as she pumped some healing into him.

Blood began leaking from his nose. He stared blankly at the floor, not moving for several minutes.

The group was worried. Not even about the memories, they began fearing that Garantep had taken over Denmac’s mind or something.

But then he moved. And a giant smile appeared on his face. “I did it! I got what you wanted, James.”

“The locations of the Stygian cities?” James’s face lit up as if he had received the greatest gift in the world.

“Not all of them.” Denmac shook his head. “So many of his memories were guarded by spells I can’t even begin to contemplate.” Denmac sighed. “But I still got the locations of around a hundred cities. That’s pretty good, right?” He beamed.

“A hundred?” The seven others exclaimed in unison.

“What the hell? A hundred isn’t even all of them? Just how many are there?” Emilia asked.

“I suppose our hunch was right. There are … thousands. Many thousands.” Lunaris said with apprehension in her voice. “They did conquer a third of the planet after all, so I can’t say I’m actually surprised. Our planet is quite big, thousands of times bigger than other worlds. That’s a lot of space where they can grow their evil empire.”

“It’s not all bad news.” Denmac announced. “Many of the ones I’ve seen are not that much stronger than Garantep’s city. So at least we won’t be stumbling upon their more formidable specimens.”

“Was there anything more in the memories? Did you find out anything more? Any nugget of information is crucial.” Lunaris asked.

“I’m afraid not.” Denmac shook his head. “I didn’t have enough time. But more importantly, the memories were well-guarded. It seemed like many of those memories weren’t even locked by him, but it’s as if other entities placed restrictions on who could view them.”

As Denmac thought about the memories, he suddenly turned quiet.

“What is it? Do you feel alright?” Lunaris asked with genuine concern.

“Yes, it’s just that … I saw something about James’s origins in Garantep’s memories.”

Lunaris gasped. Everybody immediately rushed towards Denmac.

“What, what did you see?!” Helios asked.

“I didn’t have time to really see anything. The memories were collapsing so quickly, I barely had time to even glance at it. And it was one of those locked memories too. All I can say is that the reason for James having Dark powers may be much more complicated than we think.”

The room grew silent again. The fact that James had access to the powers of Darkness was a great thing, but their origins was always a big puzzle. They weren’t stupid, they knew that something fishy could be going on. But the fact that Garantep knew something about it was an unpleasant surprise nonetheless.

“Ahh, whatever. We’ll figure it out eventually. For now, let’s just be happy that I do have these powers.” James laughed nonchalantly. He wasn’t the same anxious man he was before. If there was a problem, he’d deal with it when it reared its ugly head.

But Denmac began pacing around the room, his hands trembling. “There’s something else. I did get see one other thing. It’s more of a vague feeling than an actual memory. Even though most of the memories were locked, this was something that they couldn’t hide: Garantep’s feelings towards the upper echelons of agents. They were Garantep’s true impressions of them, visceral feelings that are impossible to completely obfuscate.”

Denmac paused as the feelings overwhelmed his mind for a second. “And I can only describe them in one word: terror. Complete and utter terror.”

The thought that a monster like Garantep was terrified of the stronger agents immediately plunged the room into silence. The mood grew quite heavy, James could almost see the cloud of worries and fears over everybody’s heads.

But they were about to embark on a mission that could be just as difficult as the previous one. James knew right away that he needed to lighten the mood.

“Funny, that’s the exact same thing we discovered about Garantep from the other guy. History does repeat itself! Ain’t that interesting, these agents are all a bunch of chickens, terrified of each other.” James laughed, but no one else was laughing. Except Helios, who couldn’t help himself from smirking and nodding towards James.

“All right, if that lame joke didn’t snap you out of your funk, then perhaps this will.” Immediately, James released his aura. A tsunami of mana flooded the room, with a downright suffocating pressure that was literally stopping them from breathing.

“Pardon my rudeness, I’ll let you breathe in just a few seconds.” James smiled warmly, with a devilish glint in his eyes. “But I want you to feel this power. You can almost taste it, can’t you? Remember that taste. The next time you’re worried, recall this feeling. I promise it’ll make you feel better.”

As soon as James stopped the pressure, everybody began breathing heavily.

They didn’t understand what the hell just happened. James’s ideas were always weird and almost nonsensical.

But he was right yet again. As they stood there, suffocating from James’s mana, which was undoubtedly just an insignificant amount of his total power, they knew he was right.

He had given them a literal taste of his powers. They were unable to breathe not because James was actually trying to suffocate him, but the disparity between the potency of their mana was so great that all the mana in their bodies froze in place.

His powers were so much deeper than even his closest friends had thought. Perhaps only Cadmus, that had stared so much at James, knew just how deep his powers had gotten.

And now that the entire group had gotten a taste of it too, suddenly, any and all apprehension was gone.