“Hmm, we just killed the big bad enemies, and now we’ve gotta fight even bigger and badder enemies.” James chortled. “That never happened before, oh what a lovely turn of events.”

“Yeah, we’re as lucky as a black cat that broke a mirror on a Friday while walking under a ladder on the 13th day of the month.” Helios laughed.

“Ok, so we can’t run cause they’re locked onto us. What else do you know? How long do we have?” James asked.

“I don’t know exactly.” Denmac replied anxiously. “I think we still have some time. If I understood this correctly, while the stalkers were basically scouts, they were still an elite assassin squadron. So they were supposed to actually finish the job themselves. The next ones that are after us, let’s call them group B, were preparing to come after us just in case we somehow defied the odds and beat the assassins.”

“And so we did, and now group B is coming after us.” James stated. “Can’t say I’m delighted about it, but what can you do? Gotta fight them, we have no other option, do we? Or is this ‘locking onto our frequency’ thing reversible?”

“No, it’s definitely not. That’s like half the point of these assassins, they’re stealthy and they’re impossible to escape from. Until we deal with group B, we can’t return to Hedonia no matter what. And group B will be a lot stronger. They aren’t invisible, but they more than make up for that with their strength.” Denmac replied.

“How do we know if it’s over when we defeat group B?” Helios asked. “What if there’s a group C? Or what if everybody on the dark side can attune to our frequencies now and follow us anywhere?”

“No, it’s not quite that powerful.” Denmac shook his head. “I’m sure such powerful spells exist, but that’s way above our level. From what I can gather, they had to relay this information directly to an item currently held by group B. As long as we kill them, we’ll finally be free. But that’s a lot easier said than done. I don’t know any details about group B’s powers, but the stalkers’ memories definitely held a tinge of fear towards them.”

“God damn, what’s with these agents? Every time we kill some great enemy, we gotta deal with someone who struck fear even in their hearts.” Helios spat out angrily.

“Well, yeah.” Denmac nodded dejectedly. “That’s how it works, their hierarchy is based on power and little else. If someone is just a bit stronger than you, then they can decide to end your life at a moment’s notice. Now imagine the kind of fear they feel towards someone much stronger than them.”

“Ok, so what do we do now?” Helios asked. “We can’t go back to Hedonia, since that would cause untold amounts of death and destruction. And if we fight them, it’s very likely that we’ll die. I mean, James was almost killed by these stalkers, how can we handle someone even stronger?”

“Hey, I wasn’t even close to dying!” James protested. “I merely chose to detonate myself, it was a tactical, wise decision.”

Lunaris rolled her eyes, while Helios could barely hold his laughter. “Yeah, but they forced you to detonate.” Helios chuckled. “I can tell you weren’t happy about that. The battle really didn’t go your way.”

“All right, I admit I was a bit overwhelmed.” James grinned cheekily. “But that was only because of their invisibility! That whole battle was weird as hell, I’m still not entirely sure what was happening. But this time we’ll just have a simple, boring fight to the death. I’m good at those!”

“I’m not gonna nag you, but these really don’t sound like the kind of enemies we can underestimate.” Lunaris said. “If the stalkers had something up their sleeve that could overwhelm you, there’s no telling what these other guys have.”

“You’re right!” James nodded, but then a devilish smile slowly appeared on his face.

“Oh no, god damn it, what now?” Emilia was already trembling as she looked at the lunatic’s face.

“We can’t underestimate them, right?” James chuckled uncontrollably. “And we can’t run away either, right? Then there’s only one thing left to do!”

“Here comes the insanity.” Denmac sighed.

“We gotta destroy more cities!” James declared gleefully.

“Oh come on!” Emilia nearly fainted. “Why is your solution to every problem to intentionally make it so much worse?”

“Hey, it makes sense this time!” James laughed maniacally. “We can’t run, so we have to stand and fight. Then we should get as powerful as we can before the fight. It’s the sanest course of action.”

“We don’t know how much time we have left!” Emilia protested. “What if we end up having to fight group B and a whole damn city at the same time?”

“Oh, sorry.” James bowed apologetically. “I forgot that for you guys a Stygian city is still something intimidating. But don’t worry, they’re trash. The smaller ones aren’t even worth going to at this point, and these bigger ones are much easier than I thought. So we just go to one or two more cities, how many we can, rob them of every ounce of energy they have, and then we’ll be in a much better state when we fight group B.”

“But just a few minutes ago, you didn’t even have a body!” Emilia kept protesting, even though she knew it was futile. But there was only so much insanity one could take before having a little breakdown. “You were already low on mana after that huge nuke, and then you gave even more mana to Denmac. You’re in no shape to fight even stronger opponents!”

“Ah, relax. It’s all good, my regeneration is as fast as my mana pool is big. I already have more than enough mana to wipe out one of these cities, and once I absorb the energy, I’ll have even more!” James grinned happily. “By the way, I’m lucky that the reserves of this one survived my nukes. I have a nice little feast awaiting me, so excuse me for a few minutes.”

James abruptly left. But just as he promised, 5 minutes later he was back.

“Sorry for the delay.” James burped. “That was a lot more energy that I expected. These bigger cities have like twenty times the amount of energy of the smaller ones. It felt like I was going to explode again, but I managed to absorb it after all!”

The group looked at him and sighed. At last, they weren’t feeling surprised anymore. He had done so many crazy things, that at this point they expected him to constantly do things they thought were impossible. Like absorbing twenty small Stygian cities’ worth of energy in 5 minutes, and then apologizing that it took so long.

But then, as if they brains had finally processed their information, they gasped in unison.