He was surrounded by hundreds of entities whose mere name would strike fear into most mages’ hearts. But for James, it was a perfect opportunity to have some fun.

He was so charged up by [Reckless Abandon] that his hands were trembling. But he wasn’t going to take full advantage of this incredible buff.

No, instead, he wanted to fool around, efficiency be damned.

James raised his hands and closed his eyes. He wanted this attack to be a surprise even for himself.

With his eyes closed, he began conjuring saws. He was waving his hands as if they were on fire, a downright massive tsunami of saws appearing out of thin air.

As if he was still getting used to his unbelievable amount of mana, more and more saws were being spawned each time he waved.

At first, he spawned hundreds of saws with a single wave of his hands. But then hundreds turned into a thousand. And a thousand turned into several thousand.

Not even two minutes later, and he was spawning ten thousand saws each time he moved his hands.

When James finally opened his eyes, he surprised himself yet again.

He thought that the agents would have destroyed most of the saws somehow. He still expected many saws to be buzzing around, but he thought that the agents would have had an answer to them, destroying a large portion. But what he saw was something else entirely.

Saying the sky was littered with saws would be a massive understatement.

He couldn’t even see the agents any more. Every single square inch of space was crammed with saws.

There were so many of them that he couldn’t even see where the mass of saws ended. Even as he flew up into the air, as he looked up, he couldn’t see where they stopped. The saws were even above the clouds. The entire city was filled with saws, as well as the sky above it.

“Ok, I may have overdone it.” James chuckled nervously.

He had no idea where the agents went. He couldn’t feel any trace of them because of the endless sea of saws interfering with all of his attempts to sense them.

As he traced his steps back, he landed at the spot where he had conjured the saws. He walked forward, having to swim through the mass of saws that were downright suffocating.

And then he found the agents. By literally stepping on one of them.

The limp, soft body of a superior agent was lying at his feet. He didn’t have to be a genius to figure out what happened. But he still couldn’t believe that it was that easy.

He ran around, stepping on an agent’s body with every step he took. Clearly, a lot of them died, but he couldn’t figure out if all of them were dead.

So he decided to get rid of the saws. Even though he was pushing through them without getting so much as a scratch, and they were damaging the agents with the fury of thousands of paper cuts per second. But the mere presence of the saws was annoying. Just walking around felt like swimming through gravel. And the fact that they prevented him from sensing only made it more annoying.

He had to say goodbye to his ocean of saws, even though it felt good to have millions of little minions on your side.

With a snap of his fingers, the saws exploded.

Each saw was very weak. Being hit by one did barely more damage than a punch. And their detonation wasn’t much stronger either.

But James had underestimated just how much damage millions of detonating saws could do, even though they were pitifully weak.

So when his Chaos Barrier began cracking, he was surprised yet again.

“Ok, so that’s my second screw up today. Next time I’m bored I’ll just play a game or something.” James sighed as he darted in the direction of his friends.

This whole boredom thing was infantile, he quickly realized. Even though the reason he didn’t just blow everything up in one second was to try and draw the battle out so that maybe the stalkers would reveal themselves, half the reason was also because he was just bored.

It’s not like he regretted destroying the city, that’s what he was going to do anyway. But this was just reckless, he was actually at risk of killing himself with a silly little spell he had cast just for fun.

He was fast enough to escape the explosion before his barrier succumbed to the pressure. But to his surprise, even though he was rocketing through the air, the explosion was actually following him!

His barrier had cracked some more, but it withstood the damage. He did cast several instances of it, after all, so he probably could’ve just stood in the middle for several seconds before actually dying.

But he couldn’t say that about his friends.

They were safe for now, the city was quite big after all. And he had left them at the gates while he played with the superiors. So there were several kilometers between them and his mistake that was currently evaporating every building it touched.

But the explosion didn’t look like it was stopping. If anything, it seemed to be getting even faster.

He had spawned so many saws that even though he triggered their detonation, it didn’t happen all at once. Instead, the millions of saws were continuously making the explosion bigger and bigger as the order to detonate cycled through all of them.

His friends’ barriers were not quite as sturdy as the crimson bubble he was safely hiding behind. So he had to hurry.

He wasn’t actually worried, but it felt quite silly. He was running from his own spell, that he cast out of boredom. He was so overpowered that his own mistakes were more dangerous than his actual enemies.

But that would only make it all the more silly if he died from it, so he pushed himself forward with a wasteful blast of mana.

Luckily, speed wasn’t a problem as long as he had mana. And he had plenty of it. It didn’t take more than three seconds to reach his destination.

James didn’t even look at his friends. Instead, he released a thick wave of mana that grabbed them and pulled them with him as he was streaking through the air. The mana took the shape of tentacles, holding his friends gently but firmly.

“What the hell?” Emilia shouted as she felt herself being dragged through the sky.

“Don’t worry guys, it’s just me.” James chuckled. “Sorry for my rudeness, but I gotta keep you away from that.” He pointed towards the explosion that was still moving towards them.

“What the hell is that?” Denmac asked as he stared at the immense mushroom cloud that was growing larger by the second.

“Uh, I blew up a few saws. No biggie, I’m way faster than it, we’re completely safe.”

“What about the superiors? And their leader?” Lunaris asked.

“I can’t imagine they survived that.” Helios chuckled.

But then, the explosion that was expanding violently stopped all of a sudden.

“That’s weird.” Lunaris said. “That felt like such an unnatural stop. One second it was at full strength, and then it vanished in the blink of an eye!”

“Oh damn it, I totally forgot about that guy!” James suddenly realized what could have been behind the disappearance of the explosion. And then he sensed an odd energy signature.