Kairos saw in his future vision that Sydney would bite down on him, thus he stopped restraining her to avoid it. Sydney bit down, but only got air and stumbled a few steps forward after being let go.
Almost immediately, her vision snapped towards one of the corpses as she lunged towards them once more.
Kairos frowned before rushing forth once more, wrapping one arm around her neck and pulling her back. Sydney immediately retaliated by trying to bite down on the arm, but he pushed up her forehead with his other hand to stop her from doing so.
“Can’t you see what you’re doing? Wake up!”
Sydney let out a low growl as she threw herself side to side violently, trying to break free. Kairos furrowed his brows, wondering if there was some other way to get through to her.
He got right next to her ear and began shouting.
“You are not a monster, you are a person! Can’t you remember that?”
The only response he got was a guttural roar, but he could still feel that there was a tiny part of her still inside, trying to fight it.
Kairos grit his teeth.
“Open your status panel! If you can still hear me, open up your status panel!”
At first, nothing happened, making Kairos think that this was going to be hopeless. He even saw other monsters closing in, making it so that the time that he had to try and wake her up was limited.
But then, her status panel appeared in front of him.
[Status]
[ID: 423632551433]
[Rank: 99/100 Evolution Energy – 50 required for Rankup]
[Objective: Evolve]
[Proof Of Perfection Points: 21.6]
[Strength – 4.5
Agility – 3.9
Endurance – 4.9
Willpower – 4.3
Mana Capacity – 0.0
Magic Affinity – 0.0]
[Special Abilities: Gnawing Hunger (F-)]
[Inborn Abilities: N/A]
[Evolve]
[Hide]
He looked at it by raising his head at an awkward angle, letting him see it without his glasses.
The first thing that jumped out to him was her evolution energy, just one away from reaching one hundred. This caused him the most panic. Though this was also an extremely intense situation, he still noticed that Sydney’s stats had increased slightly.
But he very clearly remembered that Sydney never added any points.
Kairos decided to think about that later. Thankfully, she had more than twenty points, which also meant there was enough for him to carry out his plan. He kept one arm wrapped around her neck and used the other to shoot towards the evolve button.
Kairos was betting quite a bit, as he wasn’t sure if he would be able to interact with another person’s status panel, but decided to try anyway.
However, he saw that in his future vision, Sydney would viciously bite down on his arm if he tried to do so.
And so, he pulled back.
The gash Sydney had earlier had fully healed up, and that was when her status panel changed all on its own.
[Status]
[ID: 423632551433]
[Rank: 100/100 Evolution Energy – 50 required for Rankup]
[Objective: Evolve]
[Proof Of Perfection Points: 21.0]
[Strength – 4.6
Agility – 4.0
Endurance – 4.9
Willpower – 4.4
Mana Capacity – 0.0
Magic Affinity – 0.0]
[Special Abilities: Gnawing Hunger (F-)]
[Inborn Abilities: N/A]
[Evolve]
[Hide]
The first thing he noticed was the evolution energy had jumped up to one hundred out of hundred, making him panic a little. As a side thing, he noticed that she lost 0.6 points, but only gained an overall of 0.3 points in her status.
However, now was not the time for theorycrafting.
Sydney’s skin began to redden, almost like she herself was transforming into a monster. And that was when Kairos decided to risk it all, pressing down on the evolve button.
Right after, his arm was bitten down on. He could feel Sydney’s teeth rip through his flesh, sharper than what he remembered.
However, as bad as it was, Kairos was internally letting out a sigh of relief, because he was able to interact with the status panel.
[Use 5 points for stable evolution? Yes/No]
[Use 10 points for natural ability? Yes/No]
[Use 5 points for Fire Spell or Earth Spell? Fire/Earth | Yes/No]
[Confirm]
For whatever reason, the option to evolve stably was grayed out. And so, Kairos forced himself to press on the yes option. Since natural ability was already automatically selected as yes, he went down towards the two spells.
In an ideal world, he would’ve deliberated over whether or not the fire or earth spell would be better, but the situation didn’t really allow it. While feeling Sydney’s teeth rip through his arm, he selected the earth spell simply because it was something different.
And then, he pressed confirm.
The status panel disappeared, while Sydney suddenly stopped moving. Kairos’ breathing was heavy, wondering if it was still not too late. Sydney was still biting down hard on his arm, but her jaw gradually slackened, letting go.
A few faint cracking sounds came from her body as she became slightly taller.
She seemed to be in a daze, but was no longer in her frenzied state.
As for Kairos, he now had a long gash ripped across his arm. Blood spilled out and splattered onto the floor, but it did not take long for the wound to stop bleeding. As for when it would heal, he wasn’t sure, but it wasn’t too bad, all in all.
The monsters around Kairos continued to close in, but he wasn’t afraid. He picked up the sharpened bone, lunged forth, and slashed at a monster’s neck, ripping it off.
[Killed Creature – 0.1 points awarded]
He was about to do the same to the other nearby ones, but then a figure flashed by in his vision, and that monster’s head flew off.
It was Sydney.
Her eyes were wide open, and her breathing was intense. Right after taking that monster’s head off, she put one hand on the headless corpse’s shoulder, then pushed in the sharpened bone and ripped it apart.
Right afterwards, she yelled.
Kairos looked over and blinked a few times.
“Are you ok?”
Sydney grabbed onto the side of her head with her hand, speaking in between heavy breaths.
“Sort… of.”
A few of the monsters charging towards them suddenly stopped in their tracks. Sydney’s eyes abruptly snapped towards a small group of them.
Her hand clenched tightly against the bone, shaking erratically.
Then, she ran towards the monsters.
“AHHHHHHHH.”
Seeing this, the monsters began running away. However, they hesitated for a moment, giving Sydney enough time to catch up easily. She ripped into the first monster, but didn’t stop so that she could catch up to the other ones.
It took only a few moments before all of them had fallen.
But she didn’t stop there. Her mouth opened wide, making Kairos a little nervous, but she closed it soon after, without biting into the corpses.
Instead, Sydney began ripping into the monsters with her sharpened bone.
“RAAAAAAAAHHHHH!”
Her screams were tearing her throat. Her eyes were widened and bloodshot. She continued to bash the corpses even when they turned into mush.
If Kairos squinted hard enough, he might’ve seen a kid playing in a puddle of water.
Well, maybe not.
Eventually, Sydney calmed down, but her breathing was still intense. Her clothes that were dry before were now drenched in blood and covering up the entirety of her forearm and some of her upper arm.
In all honesty, Kairos thought that most of Sydney’s desire for violence and eating flesh would dampen greatly after evolving. But that wasn’t exactly the case. Her sanity had definitely recovered to a great extent, considering just a moment ago she was biting into Kairos’ arm.
However, the damage was not fully undone.
Kairos guessed that he was a little late in clicking that evolution button considering the shade of red that appeared on her skin. His original thought was that he made it in the nick of time, but it seemed he had actually been a bit off.
Kairos slowly walked up.
“Have you got it out of your system?”
Sydney shut her eyes and began shivering.
“I… think so.”
She took in several deep breaths one after another, before shakily getting up to her feet. Then, she had a closer look at the mess below her.
“What… have I become?”
Kairos let out a soft sigh.
“The fact you have the capacity to judge yourself for it, means you are more sane than you think.”
He didn’t say the last part of his thought, which was, ‘though that doesn’t mean you are sane by any means.’
Sydney continued to take deep breaths, trying to meditate her emotions. Though, it seemed that those emotions were spilling out of her from how she was trembling.
“I don’t… understand. I’m usually not the type of person that lashes out like that.”
Kairos shook his head.
“I don’t think any of the monsters thought they would be the type of people to kill others either.”
Sydney grabbed onto the side of her head and shut her eyes tightly.
“Am I going to become… a monster?”
Kairos shrugged his shoulders.
“I can’t say for the future, but you are fine for now. Evolving seems to have the effect of increasing your tolerance of the strange red energy. Because you evolved, you don’t have to worry about becoming a monster any time soon.”
He said, ‘at least, not physically,’ in his mind.
Sydney blinked a few times.
“Do I… need to tell the others? About my breakdown?”
Kairos looked at her for a moment.
“That’s your choice. I won’t tell them, so if you want it to be a secret, then you can just keep it one.”
Sydney’s mouth twitched a couple times, showing her hesitation. Eventually, she sighed.
“I don’t really want to think about it right now. Maybe later.”
This immediately set off a flag in Kairos’ head. Namely because Sydney was very willing to share the fact she had been mutated by the red sun before. Yet, now she was a little more hesitant.
After a few seconds of deliberation, he decided to watch a little instead of acting out.
“Do you mind if I take a look at your status panel?”
Sydney nodded a little absentmindedly.
[Status]
[ID: 423632551433]
[Rank: 0/1000 Evolution Energy – 500 required for Rankup]
[Objective: Gain 500 Evolution Energy]
[Proof Of Perfection Points: 5.6]
[Strength – 4.7
Agility – 4.1
Endurance – 5.0
Willpower – 4.5
Mana Capacity – 0.2
Magic Affinity – 0.2]
[Special Abilities: Gnawing Hunger (F), Temperance (F), Earth Spell (F)]
One thing he noted was that the evolution consumed all one hundred of her evolution energy, but he considered it to be a positive thing. Less evolution energy meant being farther from monsterization.
As for her special abilities, he was a bit surprised to see that her ‘Gnawing Hunger’ ability had risen from F- to F, but didn’t look too much into it. The temperance ability made him curious, but he decided that it was better for Sydney to get something to eat before any experimentation.
“Anyways, let’s get to the grocery store where the others are. I’m sure you are really hungry at this point, no?”
Sydney suddenly snapped to attention when she heard hungry.
“Um, yes.”
With that, they began running back, though it felt more like a brisk jog to the both of them.
It did not take too long for them to reach back to the grocery store that they said they would come to. The immediate sight they were greeted by was a pile of bodies.
Not monsters, but people.
Their wounds were noticeably different from all the corpses outside. Instead of being brutally smashed or pierced, they were ripped apart.
At one end of the place was Chase, who spotted them.
He gave them a small nod before continuing to eat on his own.
Kairos and Sydney walked over to see the others with several scattered packages across the ground. Sam was the first to look up and speak.
“Were you able to finish your business?”
Kairos nodded.
“Sydney was able to evolve, yes. What happened on your side?”