“Well, this is a new one.” James sucked his breath in, quickly casting a few [Chaotic Healing] on his passed out friends.

They quickly came to, but they could barely move. Only Lunaris and Helios were relatively unaffected, even though they still fainted.

“What happened, why did you guys faint all of a sudden? Don’t tell me you’re impressed again, that shtick got old a long time ago. Is it a prank or something?” James was genuinely bewildered as he looked at them trying to get up.

“While we are impressed, that’s not why we fainted.” Lunaris groaned from her splitting headache. “It’s that thing.” She pointed at the flower in James’s hands. “I don’t know why, but just being in its presence is making me sick.”

“I know why.” Bacchus said while still lying on the ground, unable to even get up. “I’ve seen such a phenomenon once before. It was the only time I’ve actually met a level 30000 mage. Yes, you heard that right, level thirty thousand. Or at least that’s the only time I was aware of meeting one, those bastards are usually secretive as hell. Anyway, we were out on a mission with a bunch of other people, there must’ve been at least a hundred mages in total. A demon attacked us, and this high level mage flicked his hand and killed it in one hit. But that one hit made all one hundred of us faint. When we came to, we found him cooking a feast for all of us as an apology. And he explained that the reason we fainted was the extremely potent concentration of energy and other things within his spell. For him it was just a minor flick of his fingers, but for us it was something that our bodies couldn’t bear to be in the presence of without fainting.”

“Oops, sorry about that.” James cringed as he looked at his weird little crimson flower. “I promise I’ll make you guys a nice feast as an apology. Actually, that would probably make you faint too, I’m not good with that kind of stuff. I’ll find some other way to make it up to you.” He bowed awkwardly towards them. Even though he didn’t actually hurt them, he felt really bad about making them faint.

“No need for an apology, just please throw that flower at those bastards already.” Denmac coughed. “Being in the presence of such energy is making my stomach churn.”

“Wait, energy!” Lunaris shouted all of a sudden. “James, before you nuke half the continent, you need to absorb the energy from the city’s reserves. It’s the whole reason we came here.”

James slapped his forehead. “My god, you’re a lifesaver. I completely forgot about that, what with the stalkers and getting chopped to bits and all, it totally slipped my mind. I’m on it!”

He immediately left the barrier and darted in the direction of the energy reserves.

“Hey, where do you think you’re going? You won’t get off that easy.” The leader shouted as he darted after James.

James merely pointed his finger towards him without even turning his head to look. A crimson rod shot at the leader, and a corpse’s loud thump was heard without even a scream.

“Can’t believe I let myself get chopped up by trash like that.” James mumbled under his breath.

Within seconds, he reached the energy reserves and began slurping them up.

“Oh look, I’m all weak and defenseless as I absorb the energy.” James made one last attempt to lure out their stalkers. “Ah, whatever, I’ll blow you all up anyway.” He mumbled under his breath.

As soon as he was done with the energy, he rushed back to the barrier.

“That was quick.” Lunaris said. “This is a bigger city, weren’t the reserves supposed to be bigger as well?”

“Yep, ten times as big as one of the little cities I’d say.” James said nonchalantly. “Pretty good haul, if I dare say so.”

“Pretty good haul?!” Helios shouted. “Brother, that’s a massive understatement! You basically already have all the energy we need.”

“Yeah, well, even if I kill our stalkers now, I’m still going to plunder even more cities. The bastards chopped me up, that’s got me all frustrated. And the only way I’ll feel better is if I slurp up another few of these reserves. Absorbing that much energy does feel good, I must admit.” James flexed his muscles and closed his eyes as he let himself feel the waves of pleasure coming from the rapid expansion of his mana pool.

“All right, this has gone on long enough, I’m tired of feeling stalked. What a lame situation. I have all this power and yet I’m stressed out by someone I can’t even see. Anyway, brace yourselves.”

James gave the barrier one last infusion of mana, and he finally threw his radioactive flower.

The flower gently glided through the air, before softly landing on the ground. But it didn’t detonate.

“Damn it, is it broken?” James asked, right before all hell broke loose.

They couldn’t actually see what was happening, but they didn’t need to. The earthquake was all the information they needed.

James had caused the ground to shake many times before. But this couldn’t even be called an earthquake, it was as if the planet was splitting in two. The entire group fell down, even James. And they couldn’t get back up. The ground was literally slipping away from them, getting on their feet seemed impossible. Especially now that all their eardrums had ruptured, something that Lunaris and Helios were way too used to.

There was nothing they could do except wait for it to be over. So they resigned themselves to lying on the floor, not able to even get on their knees.

But at least they were safe. The barrier was cracking and snapping all over, but they won’t worried at all, they knew it would hold. The sheer opacity of it told them all they needed to know. It wasn’t just James’s flower that made them nauseous, but also the barrier that was so richly infused that it was basically oozing mana.

“So… did you watch any good movies lately?” James asked while he was lying on the ground, waiting for the nuclear armageddon to end.

The group wasn’t in the mood for jokes though. Even though they were safe, they weren’t quite as nonchalant as James about being in the middle of a raging tempest of ravaging magic.

“Not a big movie crowd, huh? Guess we’ll just have to look at the scenery.” But as he tried to look outside the barrier, he couldn’t see anything. He poured so much mana into his eyeballs that they were about to pop, and yet he still couldn’t see through the volatile explosions still wreaking havoc at full force.