The young man and Kairos ended up sitting on the bench for quite a while in silence.
Kairos let out a small sigh.
“Did you really do all that just for this?”
The young man still didn’t speak for a while.
Kairos clicked his tongue.
“Who are you, anyway?”
The young man seemed more comfortable with this question.
“Haha, someone you know very well.”
Kairos raised an eyebrow.
“…Are you my father’s younger self?”
The young man rubbed his chin as though pondering over it.
“What makes you think that?”
Kairos blinked a few times.
“Well, he has some sort of ability that seems to be related to the past, and you also resemble him by quite a bit.”
The young man laughed.
“I must say, it is a very reasonable guess.”
Kairos’ light blue eyes flickered.
“…So you aren’t going to tell me?”
The young man shrugged his shoulders.
“You will figure out soon enough.”
Kairos didn’t really like talking to this person already.
“You are really annoying, you know that?”
The young man burst out into laughter.
“Yes, yes. It’s something I’ve become, you could say.”
Kairos adjusted his glasses.
“I don’t really like the way you smile. Is that something that has become of you as well?”
The young man shrugged his shoulders.
“More or less.”
Kairos rolled his eyes.
“You know, some of the people that smile all the time are completely oblivious to the real world.”
The young man didn’t seem offended. Rather, his tone dropped significantly.
“And some people that smile all the time, have seen too much.”
He still held that same casual smile, but there seemed to be a dreary air that came with it. For some reason, Kairos couldn’t help but feel unsettled.
Nonetheless, that strange air disappeared soon as the young man proceeded to laugh once more.
“Anyways… let me answer that question you had from way back, the whole reason I’m doing this in the first place.”
Kairos nodded.
“Alright.”
The young man paused for a few seconds.
“I just wanted to let you know, as bad as things are, they can get worse. Far worse.”
Kairos blinked a few times.
“You did all that just to lecture me?”
The young man shrugged his shoulders.
“That wasn’t the plan, but it somehow just turned out this way, so…”
He coughed into his fist.
“Bye.”
Without so much as another word, he got up and flicked his hand in parting. Then, the young man walked away.
Kairos raised an eyebrow.
“…Weird.”
He was left alone on the bench, and with that, the dream began to dissolve.
“Wake up, Kairos!”
Two tiny hands were on his shoulders and gently jostling him back and forth. He woke up to see Nicole with slightly bloodshot eyes. She seemed to have just woken up too, having difficulty in keeping her eyelids up.
Kairos snapped to attention.
“What happened?”
Nicole let out a tiny gasp.
“Your eyes are so… bright.”
She quickly shook her head, wondering why she said that out of the blue.
“Ah, you finally woke up! Apparently Ling ran off, and then someone went to go find him.”
Kairos was originally quite concerned but suddenly found himself not caring as much.
“Who chased him?”
Nicole rubbed her eyes.
“Um, I think Chase was the first one to go, then Tai followed soon after.”
Kairos narrowed his eyes.
“Chase went?”
Nicole nodded.
“Y-Yeah!”
Kairos clicked his tongue and suddenly sat up. He still had a faint headache, prompting him to grab onto the side of his head. It was the dead of night, with only an extremely faint illumination coming from the moon.
Tori and Sydney were both standing awkwardly, seemingly concerned but not doing anything.
As for Ling, Chase, and Tai, they were all gone.
Kairos muttered to himself.
“Did this guy work at a daycare center before?”
He sighed as he got up.
“Did you guys see where they went?”
Tori sucked in a sharp breath and hesitatingly pointed in a direction.
“I… think they went this way? I was still half asleep when it all happened.”
Kairos sighed.
“Then we might as well go off that to find them.”
The blankets were scattered around messily, while most of the weapons on the rack had disappeared. However, there was still one more glaive there. After a second of hesitation, Kairos ended up taking it.
Tori seemed surprised.
“Eh? Isn’t that theirs?”
Kairos rolled his eyes.
“They might die, why is your first priority to maintain the integrity of not being a thief?”
Tori let out a soft gasp.
“Oh.”
Kairos crouched down to jump off, but suddenly froze.
It was because his future vision seemed… off.
For whatever reason, it extended further into the future. It was only for a moment, but instead of being two seconds, it was one.
And in those extra two seconds, he saw that several monsters would try to ambush him the moment he got down.
After a moment of confusion, Kairos slid his glasses a little down before opening up his status panel.
[Status]
[ID: 345315364923]
[Rank: 72/1500 Evolution Energy – 500 required for Rankup]
[Objective: Gain 428 Evolution Energy]
[Proof Of Perfection Points: 3.7]
[Stats –
Strength – 4.9
Endurance – 5.5
Agility – 4.9
Willpower – 4.9
Mana Capacity – 9.0
Magic Affinity – 7.2]
[Special Abilities: Fire Spell (F), Pulse Spell (F)]
[Inborn Abilities: Shattered Truth (F)]
[Hide]
Kairos quickly scanned through his status panel and almost missed a very tiny minute change. His inborn ability, Shattered Truth, had changed from rank F- to F rank. He couldn’t help but recall the strange dream that he had, where that random person looked into his eyes like that.
There seemed to be some sort of relation there, but he couldn’t spend that long pondering over it.
“Kairos?”
Nicole seemed a little confused by why he just paused. Kairos took a deep breath.
“Hold on.”
He walked to a different side of the ledge, before trying to push his future vision to go longer. Kairos could feel a noticeable strain on his mind as he tried to perform this, but it wasn’t too much for him.
He maintained this state for a few seconds, where he could see two seconds into the future. Then, he saw himself jumping off, and right below him were a few monsters.
From there, Kairos jumped off in reality. With the glaive in one hand, he beheaded the monster below him a little awkwardly.
[Killed Creature – 0.1 points awarded]
From there, he swung his sharpened bone to the side. A cruel crunch resounded as he pierced straight through the skull of another one.
[Killed Creature – 0.1 points awarded]
The monsters had originally been extremely silent and even took advantage of the direction of moonlight to obscure their figures in the shadow. But now, they had been found out.
It seemed that they realized this, and roared out.
Sydney was the first to jump down, slamming both her sharpened bones into the heads of the monsters. Tori and Nicole jumped off after, also dealing with the monsters. Nicole remained rather aggressive, while Tori spent a few seconds in between every attack, still having difficulty in controlling her attacks properly.
[Killed Creature – 0.1 points awarded]
Kairos killed a few creatures before looking down strangely.
“Hey.”
Nicole looked over after splitting the skull of the last monster in two.
“Ah, what is it?”
Kairos rubbed his chin.
“There seems to be far more monsters than usual.”
Tori looked over the ledge and let out a small gasp.
“Ah… you’re right.”
The streets were teeming with monsters, nearly filled to the brim like a can of sardines. There had been a horde of them before, but it was nothing compared to this.
Kairos furrowed his brows.
“How did they even get anywhere with so many of them?”
Tori tilted her head to the side.
“Maybe they were attracted by them going onto the streets.”
Kairos clicked his tongue.
“…This will be a little difficult.”
Far off in the distance, was a rather bright light. Because of how dark it was, it stuck out like a sore thumb. Kairos and the others took a closer look at that bright light, to find it was the glow from Chase’s blue mana arrow as well as some strange sort of yellow energy coming from Tai.
Chase’s mana arrows looked distinctly different from usual. Normally, he would create fairly thin ones, with the intention of piercing. However, this time, he was coalescing a large amount of his mana to create a giant arrow. Unlike normal, when it would take a matter of seconds to create the arrow, this time it was taking nearly a minute to form.
He was standing at the back, hastily retreating as he pulled back the arrow.
Ling was on Chase’s back, holding on while panicking by a considerable amount. He still had a glaive on his back. And at the front, was Tai.
He was swinging his glaive like last time, but there was a far greater intensity in his strikes compared to before. Along with that, his blade was glowing with a bright orange, and every time he would swing, a bright energy would shoot out of it and continued to cut through more monsters behind.
With Tai spearheading the way, they were just barely able to push forth, but several gashes had already appeared on both Chase and Tai.
Kairos pointed his finger out towards him, letting a fireball coalesce at the end.
For a moment, he thought about releasing it closer to them so that they could cut their way back over, but then thought about the residual flames. The fire spell was quite nice because of both the initial explosion causing damage as well as the lingering flames. However, that lingering flame could easily end up damaging the people that weren’t supposed to be attacked.
With that in mind, Kairos redirected the fireball to go towards where they were retreating.
As the fireball continued to expand, Tai couldn’t help but freak out a little, but that didn’t stop him from slicing through the monsters in front of him. On the other hand, the corner of Chase’s lip turned up.
Once the fireball had expanded to become a little larger than two meters, Kairos figured that it would be enough. Although he didn’t have his full mana capacity right now, it was close enough.
As such, he was rather liberal with his mana.
The fireball glowed in the dark night conspicuously, almost like the sun hadn’t actually set. The visages of all the bloody monsters in the street were much more visible, with thin veins snaking across their bodies.
Kairos could feel the heat emanating contained within the fireball, which stirred up light winds that caused his clothes to flutter.
Then, he released it.
With a whoosh, the fireball snaked through the air before landing roughly twenty or so meters behind Chase and the others. An explosion shook the earth and the flames brightened the place up considerably.
[Killed Creature – 0.1 points awarded] x 40
[Multi-Kill (Type – Normal) – 0.3 points awarded]
The explosion itself made Chase sweat a little, both because of how close it had gotten as well as the heat. There was also a fire that began spreading, finishing off the monsters that were only partially charred and even claiming the lives of the monsters far off. Many painful roars emanated from the horde.
[Killed Creature – 0.1 points awarded] x 10
[Multi-Kill (Type – Normal) 0.3 points awarded]
While Chase was still charging up his mana arrow, a flaming monster rushed toward him. With a small frown Chase stuck out his foot before kicking it back into the pit of flames and letting the zombie burn alive.
It was then he called out to Ling.
“Hey, tell your grandfather to get ready to jump!”
It seemed that Ling was still in a partial daze, still too shocked to respond.
Chase frowned.
“LING!”
The sudden shout made him flinch.
Chase frowned.
“If you can’t even do this, I will personally kill you right here.”