Something that surprised Kairos slightly was that even after he had added three total points to his overall status, he didn’t feel hungry afterwards. Though he could definitely tell that the evolution was still consuming the energy in his body, the aftereffects were not felt.
After a moment of deliberation, he realized that it must’ve been because of the liquid he drank from the green orbs. Other than the healing, mana restoration, and stress relief, there was also a property that made it quite nutritional.
Kairos reminded himself once more to be smart about how he used the green orbs considering how many things they could do.
And with that, he set foot into the dense misty mana.
It felt as though his leg was pushing through water, but that water didn’t provide all that much resistance and wasn’t wet. There didn’t seem to be any solid surface for his foot to be placed on, but it was held up nonetheless. It gave his body the instinctive feeling that he was falling, though logically he knew that he wasn’t.
Kairos decided not to think about it too much and continue to push through, stepping forth with his other leg as well. He closed his eyes, but the bright blue light that came from the mana seeped past his eyelids to blind him anyway.
Kairos felt as though he was falling through the air for a few moments. It wasn’t the most comfortable feeling, especially with the glaring bright light that assaulted his eyes. However, it soon came to an end, as Kairos found himself once again in a dark and dingy stone room.
Except this time, it was far smaller, and only had one hallway up ahead.
[Advance to the next floor to clear this level]
Kairos blinked a few times, wondering why the system couldn’t be just a little bit more detailed, perhaps describing the situation he was in or the obstacles he had to face.
However, he didn’t harp on it.
With nowhere else to go, Kairos began walking down the corridor with his spear in one hand and bag of green orbs in the other.
As he was advancing down the hallway, he suddenly took a step back.
Though nothing happened in reality.
Kairos saw in his future vision that if he took a step forward, then a spear would suddenly shoot out of the wall. His reaction time was enough to dodge it, though he ended up dodging a little too early, as it hadn’t actually happened yet.
He realized that this seemed to be because of his heightened agility stat. The fact that his reaction time was so quick now wasn’t something that he was used to.
Though, it seemed that this hallway was filled with traps, and would thus give him a great opportunity to get used to it.
Kairos massaged his temple with the tip of his finger before taking a step forth. He saw a spear shoot out of the wall and held back the urge to immediately dodge. Then once the spear came out in reality, Kairos took a step back.
With a bang, a stone spear shot out and hit the other side of the wall. There were no cracks in the wall where it hit despite hitting with quite the heavy impact. As for the spear, it remained attached to the wall, the length spanning the entirety of the hallway.
After a second or so, it began to slowly retract back into the wall, almost like a viper.
Kairos waited for it to go halfway before putting his foot back in the place that activated the trap last. However, nothing happened.
He then waited for the trap to retract completely, disappearing into the wall like it was never there. From there, he placed his foot at that place once more, before retracting it.
The spear shot out and hit the opposite wall with a bang, an awfully familiar scene.
Kairos rubbed his chin. It seemed that these traps could continually activate, making them renewable in a sense. However, there was also a cooldown of sorts while the trap was retracting back into the wall.
In other words, he wouldn’t be able to slowly trigger traps one by one to make it through, as they would eventually reset.
Though, that wasn’t too big of a deal to him.
Kairos bent his knees slightly and hunched over. Then, after tensing up one foot, he abruptly bolted forwards.
Several spears shot out of the wall, from every angle. However, they were unable to touch Kairos before he shot past him. For a second, he thought that this was going to be quite easy as he just had to be fast enough.
However, he was quickly proven wrong, as he saw a spear shoot towards where he would’ve been. Nonetheless, Kairos was easily able to dodge it by twisting his body slightly, not needing to rely on his future vision.
As he continued forth, the spears seemed to be able to predict where he would be based on his speed. Considering there were at least two spears that shot out from varying angles for every step he took, Kairos had to slow down significantly to dodge.
As a spear shot out from the side and towards his head, he leaned back, letting it pass by his face. A spear then shot out of the ground, forcing him to slide to the side. While they were retracting, Kairos continued to go forth.
A spear shot out from each side of the wall, forcing him to take another step back.
It was then Kairos felt a strong pain in his foot from his future vision.
He grit his teeth and moved his foot out of the way. Right when he did, a spear shot up out of the ground.
A bit of sweat came down from his forehead.
The spears seemed to be able to predict his movements, like they were learning his patterns. Kairos clicked his tongue and continued while the spears were retracting.
This time, he decided to move more erratically, opting to pause randomly. Spears ended up launching out of the wall before he had even stepped there. From there, he slowly walked past the spears before suddenly bolting forth.
By the time the spears shot out, Kairos had already been gone.
It was almost like whatever was controlling the spears was getting confused. The spears continued to shoot out, but they had become far more random. Though, because it was much more random, it had become far easier for Kairos to dodge.
It seemed that his movements were still trying to be predicted, but weren’t able to do so.
Kairos was moving randomly and doing a good job at it. One thing that he had learned from probability was that people tended to believe one possibility was more likely to happen if another one had happened first. However, this was false.
An example would be that most people would think flipping heads on a coin four times in a row would almost never happen. But in reality, it was actually relatively common, assuming that there were enough trials.
As such, Kairos would frequently repeat the same action several times over before randomly switching to another one. The spears that were initially trying to predict his movements seemed to give up altogether after just a minute had passed, opting to randomly shoot out.
Unfortunately, because Kairos could see them all happening, it wasn’t really random to him.
He got by quite easily.
And before he knew it, he found himself in another room.
Upon stepping inside, both of his feet were tensed, ready to make a sudden movement to dodge. However, nothing happened.
The spears in the corridor behind him gradually retracted.
Kairos surveyed the new room he found himself in. It was quite similar to what he had seen before, made out of stone and being rather dark and dingy. There was only a weak blue light coming from the ceiling. Unlike the last time, where he only had one path to go, there were now three other paths for him to travel through.
One of them was an incredibly wide hallway, where five people could comfortably walk side by side in. Another was a medium hallway, that would just be slightly larger if Kairos stretched out both arms. The last one was very thin, to the point that a person could only fit if they walked sideways through it.
Though, those paths weren’t the things that he had first noticed.
“A… a person!”
Rather, it was a man that was inside the room. He looked to be in bad condition, with his skin wrapping around his bones, and frazzled black hair. Ah, and he was also missing a foot.
There was a rather clean cut just above where his ankle should’ve been.
There was also a steel sword lying next to the man.
When Kairos looked at him, he saw a blurry status panel appear next to the man, making him quite surprised.
The man was cringed in a corner on the opposite side of the room, but he crawled over to Kairos.
“Hello? Could you please give me some food?… Please respond!”
Kairos snapped out of his stupor, ignoring the blurry status panel for now.
“Sorry, I didn’t bring any food.”
The man blinked a few times.
“What? Then how have you survived here? That bag must be full of food, you liar!”
Kairos shook his head.
“I only got here a few minutes ago. This bag is full of explosives, not food.”
He casually unraveled the bag he had, revealing the green orbs. Though Kairos knew that they could double as a food source, and a good one at that, he was unwilling to reveal that information.
The man furrowed his brows.
“No… no… maybe it is edible?”
Kairos shrugged his shoulders.
“If you want to explode into tiny little pieces, sure.”
The man shuddered.
“But… but… you should have one point from entering the dungeon, right?”
Kairos shrugged his shoulders.
“I didn’t use it.”
The man seemed to be in shock, frozen up in fear.
Silence fell.
Kairos used this time to try and get a better look at the blurry status panel. That was when an idea formed in his mind.
He extended his future vision to be two seconds long.
And then the status panel cleared up.
[Status]
[ID: 064245313420]
[Floor Level: 0]
[Dungeon Currency: 11]
Kairos stopped extending his future vision and massaged his temple. He only saw the information briefly, but got the gist of it. It wasn’t the status panel he was used to seeing, but he seemed to be able to see the information of others anyway. The eleven dungeon currency surprised him slightly, but for some reason, he couldn’t help but feel strange.
It was unrelated to the currency, but there was just this weird sense like something was familiar, but also not.
Kairos sighed and arbitrarily opened his status panel.
[Private announcement]
[First Ten To Daring Kill (Tenth – by ID: 721432546245)]
[Hide]
It was then that Kairos had a sudden enlightenment. After seeing the announcement, he realized what that ID was. The man starving next to him was the ninth in the world to perform a Daring Kill.
Kairos looked at the man once more, reevaluating him.
He cracked his neck.
“How about this, I can help you get some food after we clear this floor. I should have some points to spare, and I can even get you the steak and wine, if I have enough.”
The man’s eyes suddenly lit up, however, they turned dull soon after.
“But… it’s far too hard. The traps are impossible to cross!”
Kairos raised an eyebrow.
“Surely you are exaggerating, what do you mean?”
The man shook his head fervently, like he was recalling his trauma and desperately trying to deny it.
“The traps were never made to be cleared in the first place. Surely, you understand that, right?”