At first, the group ran away for fear of the cultists catching up to them, but once they got a large amount of distance, they began to walk.
They were still in quite the abandoned area, so there were hardly any monsters nearby. And the ones that were, ran at the first sight of them.
Kairos massaged his temple while furrowing his brows.
Sam noticed this, and spoke up.
“Is something bothering you?”
Kairos sighed.
“I’m just a little ticked off. I thought everything would be fine once I got to the wilderness, but there really isn’t anywhere safe.”
Sam raised an eyebrow.
“Don’t you have that red block that can create those super sturdy walls? That should work fine, right?”
Kairos clicked his tongue.
“Unfortunately, it’s basically out of energy. Also I remember tucking that thing away, how did you even know I had it?”
Sam sighed.
“Shame it has no energy. As for how I knew, it’s related to this weird ability I have.”
Chase raised an eyebrow.
“Does it let you see through walls, like some sort of x-ray vision?”
Sam waved his hand dismissively.
“No, no. It’s nothing too special, really. It’s just if I lay my left hand down on a surface and concentrate, then I will see what previously happened. That’s how I was able to find you guys.”
Kairos’ eyebrow couldn’t help but twitch.
“Huh. That sounds quite useful, though not in fights.”
Sam nodded.
“Yeah, it is pretty useful. At first, the reverse of time is slow, but it gradually picks up. I’m pretty sure I can see things that happened long long ago, but it will also be difficult for me to see as it will pass by too fast.”
Chase cracked his neck.
“Makes sense.”
As they were walking, a group of two monsters spotted them, but they quickly fled into the forest once they did.
Tori frowned.
“If only we had a gun, or something. That way we could make use of all those walking points.”
Sam laughed.
“I… wouldn’t put too much trust into guns?”
Nicole blinked a few times.
“Eh? Why is that?”
Sam took a deep breath.
“I thought that maybe the military base was a good place to go, but when I reached there everyone was dead. It didn’t exactly make much sense to me, but I used my hand to find out what happened.”
He narrowed his eyes.
“There were many monsters. They were attracted by the sounds of gunfire, but also died quickly. The various soldiers got their various weapons to fend them off. There was even a mounted minigun that one of them used.”
Sydney let out a sigh of relief.
“Ah, I thought you meant guns wouldn’t work on the monsters.”
Sam laughed.
“They work… that’s for sure. But their guns began transforming into something else.”
Chase’s face twitched.
“Wait, the guns transformed?”
Sam nodded.
“All of the guns were becoming a little redder as they killed monsters, especially so for the mounted minigun. At some point, flesh shot out of the minigun as it consumed the person using it. Then, it began shooting everywhere, killing both people and monsters. I nearly jumped even though I knew it was a vision, haha.”
Nicole shivered.
“Even random things can turn into monsters? …What if our clothes transform into monsters too?”
Sam laughed.
“I don’t think that will happen… probably.”
Kairos looked at him.
“What do you mean?”
Sam hummed.
“From what I saw, the gun’s transformation was pretty proportional to the amount of monsters that they killed. I believe what was happening was that the guns were getting the evolution points instead of the soldiers using the gun.”
Chase frowned.
“My bow doesn’t work like that though, thankfully. I get all of the points.”
Kairos’ eyes widened slightly when he heard that.
“Huh… so it seems a gun is too complicated for whatever is judging who gets the kill, so it considers the person firing the gun not doing enough to be credited with the kill.”
Nicole held onto the fire axe a little tighter.
“That is… weird.”
Tori looked at her red katana.
“Huh. If our weapons were credited with the kill instead of us, then humans in general would probably go extinct, huh?”
Kairos shrugged his shoulders.
“At this rate humans are probably going extinct anyway.”
Sydney muttered.
“…Everything really has changed.”
Nicole smiled gently.
“But that just means it can change for the better too!”
As they continued to get closer to the city, the buildings became more frequent. A group of four monsters charged towards them, but Sam was able to tear all of them apart with just one strike using his sharpened bone.
It seemed like the number of monsters were about to increase, but it instead decreased. Instead, they were replaced by corpses instead. This was considered a rather rare sight because most corpses would be consumed promptly after they formed, meaning it would be hard to see this many laid out.
One thing to note was that each and every one of them were brutally murdered. There were several instances of the top half of a monster’s body laying down on the floor while its shattered rib cage peeked out.
Other than the monsters smashed into pieces, there were also ones with massive holes in their body, predominantly being their chest. Almost like they got stabbed by a large tendril of some sort.
Sam let out a soft sigh and turned to Kairos.
“This seems to be the work of your mother, though the bodies look a little old.”
Kairos looked up, towards the scene in front of him. Far up ahead he could see various skyscrapers fighting each other to be the tallest. Though the streets were littered with blood, there was a strange silence within the place.
It was almost like the place was frozen in time.
Kairos rubbed his chin.
“You said that the monsters would run away from her? How far was that range?”
Sam blinked a few times.
“The only thing I recall was that it worked even when the monster was a few hundred meters away. I wasn’t able to find any specific limit.”
Kairos looked down at the bodies.
“It seems that the monsters still don’t dare approach, because these corpses are untouched. In other words, Mother should still be close by, and this should also be a safe place to be.”
Nicole put a finger on her chin.
“Wow, that sounds really convenient.”
Chase stretched out his arms.
“Then what are we waiting for? Let’s loot one of those grocery stores.”
Kairos narrowed his eyes.
“Wait.”
He couldn’t help but recall how close Sydney was to reaching her maximum evolution energy gount.
[Rank: 97/100 Evolution Energy – 50 required for Rankup]
Though he was curious what would happen, he didn’t want to see it happen just yet. If they really did go into a place devoid of monsters, then Sydney wouldn’t be able to get points to level up, thereby risking her becoming a monster herself.
Kairos pushed up his glasses.
“I believe it would be better for Sydney to collect points required for her evolution to a higher rank, that way she can use the food to support her own evolution.”
Sam nodded.
“That makes sense.”
Kairos stood in place, thinking for a moment.
“How about you guys go secure one of the grocery stores while I help Sydney get the points she needs?”
Sam raised an eyebrow, but pointed towards a building soon after.
“Well alright, I will go secure that grocery store. You guys come back later and we should have a meal prepared.”
Kairos nodded before looking to Sydney.
“Follow me.”
Without waiting for an answer from anybody involved, he left.
Nicole called out.
“Stay safe!”
Kairos waved dismissively.
“It will be fine!”
Sydney hesitated, but soon followed after him. Kairos looked around for a moment before leaping up onto one of the houses, landing nicely on the roof. He walked towards the center before scouting the area.
There was a fairly large group in the distance, prompting him to call out while pointing in a direction.
“Let’s go over there.”
Sydney hesitated before jumping onto the roof as well, then looking at where Kairos was pointing.
“A-Alright.”
Kairos was focusing heavily on Sydney’s eyes. This was because he had seen earlier that she was looking intently at the corpses laid across the ground. Considering people would normally be disgusted, he didn’t think that was a normal response.
However, her eyes seemed normal… for now.
Kairos leaped across the roofs of the houses and Sydney followed after him. After a few moments, they got closer to the large group of monsters and saw what they were doing.
They were each holding onto the limb or head of a person pierced onto a piece of bone, lifting it up and down while chanting something. It looked rather gruesome, prompting Kairos to furrow his brows.
“…They seem to have their own culture.”
Sydney blinked a few times.
“Maybe they were all part of a group before the apocalypse?”
Kairos adjusted his glasses.
“Maybe…”
He then leaped off the roof.
“Regardless, you will be killing all of them.”
Once his foot landed on the ground, all of the monsters noticed his presence. They dropped the bones they were holding onto before charging forth. Kairos looked up to Sydney that was about to jump off to him.
“Get behind them. I will distract.”
Sydney stopped herself and circled around before jumping off. She attracted the attention of a few monsters, but it wasn’t a big deal for her.
As the monsters rapidly closed in on Kairos, he swung his sharpened bone, taking off legs one after another, forcing them the monsters to crawl. Sydney did the same, except it was taking off heads. Though the monsters attempted to kill her, she was just a step ahead, able to dodge and take advantage of the length of the sharpened bone.
There was the occasional surprise of a monster lunging towards Kairos, but his future vision gave him more than enough time to react.
As for Sydney, she continued hacking through the monsters, already dealing with half of them. But there was a sudden shift at this point.
Most of the monsters gave up on Kairos altogether before rushing to surround Sydney. Though Kairos wanted to help, there were still seven monsters that remained, blocking his way forth.
Kairos ended up hesitating.
But then, he heard Sydney scream.
He quickly decided to force his way through, gathering mana in his hand for the pulse spell.
Then, a second later, he let it loose.
With a bang, all seven monsters exploded into pieces.
[Killed Creature – 0.1 points awarded] x 7
Kairos rushed forth gathering the mana for another pulse spell… but quickly stopped himself.
Sydney’s eyes were wide open and bloodshot. However, she was tearing through all of the monsters around her. The only concerning thing was a rather large gash on her shoulder, but it was already healing.
Before long Sydney had ripped through all of the monsters and began panting heavily.
With his future vision, Kairos could see that she would lunge towards one of the corpses. He had a strange premonition that letting her do so would probably be bad, thus dropping both the sharpened bone and black carapace in his hand so he could restrain her.
Kairos held onto her shoulders, and almost immediately, there was a lot of resistance. Sydney desperately tried to bring herself closer to the corpse on the ground, opening her mouth wide and even screeching.
Kairos frowned before hooking both his arms around her shoulders, forcing her to remain upright.
“Calm down!”
Sydney raised her head high and let out a guttural roar, almost like she was a monster herself.
Then, she moved her head to the side and opened her mouth wide, attempting to bite down on Kairos’ arm.
She lost her rationality.