Kairos raised an eyebrow.
“Chasing something? What were the monsters after?”
Tori tilted her head to the side.
“I’m not sure, it was too far away to see clearly.”
Kairos sighed. He closed his eyes for a few seconds before responding.
“I suppose… we can’t do much else. Let’s go then.”
With that, Tori led the way while the others followed. They ended up walking through several alleyways and awkward entrances because Tori wasn’t the most flexible leader, but they were able to get to where they desired, which was what mattered most.
The sun was gradually beginning to hang rather low, casting the sky with a faint orange glow. In other words, it would soon become night. Soon, they started to hear the roars of monsters and the sounds of their footsteps.
Along with that, they had come across a fairly big clearing. It was a rather large parking lot, with quite a bit of scattered rubble that presumably came from destroyed buildings.
Within that clearing, were countless monsters, just like what Tori had said before. And they were all chasing something.
Or rather, someone.
It was a relatively old man holding onto a glaive, which was essentially a spear with a blade at the top of the pole instead. The pole itself was black in color, while a red tassel hung just below the blade.
As for the old man himself, he had a fairly long gray beard. His clothes seemed to be some sort of robe, but it was hard to make out what they really were because of the thick layer of blood coated over them.
There were over a hundred monsters in the parking lot alone, and all the commotion seemed to be attracting even more monsters. However, their target, the old man, didn’t seem to be all that concerned.
He was jumping around rather deftly, leaping up on top of cars and twirling his glaive around, beheading many of the monsters.
The old man suddenly turned to look at Kairos and the others. From the looks of it, the sight of other people made him incredibly vigilant.
“Ni men yao si ma?”
Tori raised an eyebrow.
“Uh, what is he saying?”
Kairos blinked a few times.
“…I think he is speaking Chinese, but I can’t really make anything out other than him saying something about us.”
After a second, he turned to Nicole, whose eyes were open wide.
“Um, he is asking what we want.”
Chase chuckled.
“I assume that it is in a sarcastic way.”
Nicole scratched the side of her head before nodding.
“Yeah… should I tell him that we mean no harm?”
Kairos rubbed his chin.
“Tell him that we would like to kill some of the monsters.”
Nicole nodded promptly and proceeded to convey that mention to the man, speaking in fluent Chinese. The old man seemed a little surprised once he noticed that Nicole was speaking with the proper accent as well.
He immediately became much more amicable and spoke casually while he continued to fend off the monsters coming for him.
While the two of them were talking, a few monsters from within the horde broke off from their initial target and came towards the group.
Kairos had pulled back his sharpened bone, but didn’t end up swinging it.
Because a soft gleam flashed by him before all of their heads came off.
The monsters collapsed to the ground powerlessly as blood spilled out. It seemed like they didn’t even realize that they had died in the first place.
Kairos turned to look at Tori, who was cringing slightly.
“…I told you it would hurt to have imbalanced stats.”
Tori was holding onto the wrist of her other hand painfully, almost like she couldn’t bear to hold onto the weight of the katana.
“I already knew that part!”
On the other hand, it seemed that the talk between Nicole and the old man was going rather smoothly. After a few moments, Nicole turned to the others rather excitedly.
“He said that he wasn’t going to kill all of these monsters anyway, so we can join in! Also, apparently, there will be a lot of monsters when it becomes nighttime, so we get out of here soon as well.”
Upon hearing that, Chase took the bow off his back.
“Alright then.”
A mana string coalesced around his bow, while he reached out. However, just moments later, Chase suddenly covered his stomach with his arm. A frown formed on his face.
“Damn, I thought it healed up by now.”
A bit of blood seeped out from his stomach. Though he was injured, it didn’t seem like he was willing to give up on killing some of the monsters.
And as such, he pulled back on the string of the arrow using his teeth like last time. A mana arrow formed before launching forth.
A large line of monsters all had the skulls split open, but the arrow was not done after just that. It proceeded to turn around and cut through another line.
Nicole had put on her red watch and rushed in to join the fight as well.
Though she could only kill them one by one, she was able to stably do so while avoiding their attacks. Sydney joined in as well, but was far more reckless, not caring if she had gotten hit in the process of killing the monsters.
Tori also partook in the fight, but would only slash every twenty seconds or so before trying to recover. Each slash of hers would take out several monsters, but in the end, how fast she could kill things lowered considerably.
Kairos didn’t want to be left behind either, thus joined in.
[Killed Creature – 0.1 points awarded] x 15
Altogether, they cleared through countless monsters, causing the corpses to stack up rather quickly. However, there was a constant flow of monsters that replaced them, making it so that they just kept coming.
It did not take long for Chase to run out of mana, leaving him standing there awkwardly with an arm on his stomach. As for Tori, she had also given up on swinging, opting to take a break to rest her arms.
Perhaps it was only Sydney that continued to gain momentum, swinging much faster compared to when she just started. Her breathing was heavy, while veins began bulging in her skin.
The sun was on the verge of setting, about to disappear altogether.
It was then the old man called out.
Nicole let out a soft gasp before passing on what he said earlier.
“He said that he’s leaving now and that we should do the same!”
Kairos felt somewhat reluctant as he felt like he hadn’t gotten many points at all. However, he figured there should be a reason for his advice.
“Let’s find a place to take shelter then.”
Everyone had begun retreating from the swarming monsters.
Well, everyone except Sydney.
It didn’t seem like she had even actually heard the others speak. She was swinging her sharpened bone wildly and even using her free hand to grapple the monsters and smash them against the sides of cars.
The old man had already hopped rather far away, but didn’t leave just yet. He said something, which Nicole promptly translated.
“Um, he said that we can go with him, but we need to hurry!”
Kairos looked towards Sydney and frowned slightly.
“Hold on, I’m going to try and get her to wake up.”
Because Sydney was fairly deep within the group of monsters, Kairos had to rush through them to get to her. He ducked when one of the monsters tried to bite down on him and swung his sharpened bone to behead another that was charging towards him.
[Killed Creature – 0.1 points awarded]
While weaving past two claws that swung towards him, he jumped on top of a car, prompting the monsters to climb up on as well.
He stepped on top of one of their heads before leaping towards Sydney, landing rather close to her. Kairos’ sharpened bone whipped around, killing all of the monsters next to him, and giving a second or two of reprieve from being attacked.
[Killed Creature – 0.1 points awarded] x 3
Then, he grabbed onto Sydney’s shoulders.
“Hey, we are going now.”
Almost immediately, Sydney spun around and swung her sharpened bone behind her. In his future vision, he saw the bone tear through his chest. While enduring the pain he quickly backed up, avoiding it.
At the same time, he kicked away several monsters that were approaching him before turning back towards Sydney.
“You already bit me before, are you going to do that again?”
Sydney was in the middle of swinging her sharpened bone towards him, but suddenly stopped. It seemed that those words caused her eyes to light up with both sanity and a bit of guilt.
“A-Ah! Sorry!”
Kairos let out a soft sigh as he continued to push back the monsters.
“Apologize by leaving this place already.”
Sydney nodded.
“Ok!”
She ran back, rushing through the monsters rather forcefully. Though the monsters were able to slash her, they were also forced back. It was as though she had become a spearhead, leading the way and clearing a path.
Kairos followed behind and swung his sharpened bone towards any monster that was about to attack him.
[Killed Creature – 0.1 points awarded] x 5
It did not take long for them to push through the horde and appear on the other end. The old man had his eyes wide open as he saw how many ugly gashes were on Sydney’s body, to the point that part of her bone was revealed.
On the other hand, while the others seemed slightly uncomfortable, they weren’t all that concerned. Nicole seemed to notice the old man’s reaction and quickly reassured him of Sydney’s wellbeing.
The old man didn’t seem to believe her at first, but after seeing how fast Sydney’s wounds regenerated, he eventually nodded with widened eyes.
From there, he gestured to follow him, which everyone promptly did.
The old man deftly ducked behind a building, hopping on top of a dumpster before leaping onto a building opposite to the dumpster.
Everyone was more or less able to perform the same act, though Chase’s bleeding began to worsen slightly because of the pressure he had put onto it. As for the monsters, some of them began to jump to try and chase after them.
However, most of the monsters just barely weren’t able to make it to the roof. That was because they did not bother to use the dumpster to help boost them up slightly. Instead, they opted to just jump up normally.
Though that didn’t mean they were completely unable to get on the roof, and the old man seemed to notice this. He gestured hurriedly to follow after him as he rushed forth. The actual roof of this place had little space compared to the large building, because there was another section, like a smaller block placed on top of a large block.
The monster ended up stacking to a point that they could jump on top of each other in order to reach the top of the roof.
Kairos made sure to kill any of them that did get up on the roof, before kicking their corpses back down, interrupting a few others that tried to jump up.
[Killed Creature – 0.1 points awarded] x 4
While that was happening, the old man picked up a ladder before setting it up on the side of the wall. He quickly climbed up while urging everyone else to do the same.
One by one, everyone climbed up. Chase cringed a little more from his wound, but didn’t complain. Kairos was the last person to get to the ladder as he was taking care of the monsters behind all of them.
He ran towards the ladder once everyone else had climbed up, while several monsters followed him closely from behind. Kairos was getting ready to fight as he climbed the ladder, yet once his hands grabbed onto the bars, the old man lifted up the ladder, pulling Kairos up as well.
Upon reaching the upper roof, he looked towards the old man with a bit of surprise.
“That is a pretty smart way of doing it.”
The monsters gathered on the roof, and began to stack up. However, before they could form a pile big enough to jump off of, they ended up sliding back down.