Kairos shook his head before walking back down the stairs. The people were still stunned for a few moments, but quickly recovered themselves when they remembered what he had said.
Not to waste his time.
Naturally, they couldn’t keep standing there, and also rushed down the steps, not even caring about the fact that they were stepping directly over fresh corpses.
At the entrance of the building was Quinn, who was weakly pushing the door open with a hunched back. Unfortunately, the door was hardly moving, despite him putting in all of his strength. With the way it was awkwardly bent, not even a normal person would be able to push it out of the way.
Kairos let out a sigh as he walked over.
“I’ll get it.”
After forcefully deforming the door to move it aside, Quinn gave him a quick glance before continuing on forwards.
There were many whispers coming from the crowd.
“He… helped open the door for him.”
“Did the weakling bribe him?”
“I don’t know, but it looks like we can’t mess with him!”
Kairos was able to hear their conversation despite the fact their voices were still hushed. Though he didn’t really care about it much. It did make him feel a little better to know that the people he was leading were just as he thought they were.
All of them began filing out on the street, coming up to roughly fifty people.
Kairos couldn’t help but scrunch his nose slightly, disturbed by the terrible smell, like he was in a washroom that was never cleaned. If he had decided to hole up in his own house, he probably would’ve become like that too.
Kairos thanked himself before refocusing on what he sought to accomplish.
“Is everyone here?”
There was no reply.
After waiting a few seconds, Kairos figured that while ten minutes hadn’t passed yet, it was close enough. And so, he waved to get their attention.
“Alright, let’s go then. Follow behind me and tell me if a monster is coming from behind. Don’t come too close.”
With that, he began walking towards where he remembered the city was, while the others followed. However, infighting almost immediately broke out, with people wanting to be closer to Kairos. Though, nobody dared get too close, keeping at least five meters between themselves and him.
As for Quinn, he simply walked from two meters behind Kairos. It almost made a few have the courage to also walk closer, but the general consensus was that Quinn had some sort of status advantage to him that let him stand that close.
Kairos wasn’t walking all that fast. Even Quinn with his severely weakened body was keeping up, albeit barely. Yet, the other people were even beginning to fall behind.
Eventually, Kairos stopped and turned around. His eyes widened while his pupils constricted.
“I said I would take care of any monsters that appear behind. If you’re so concerned about staying alive, then make sure not to piss me off. Frankly, I’m a bigger threat to you than the monsters could ever be.”
Like another spell, everyone fell silent once more.
Quinn couldn’t help but look at Kairos a little strangely, and muttered under his breath.
“…Is this how dictators were before?”
Kairos pretended that he didn’t hear that and continued walking.
The people following from behind recomposed themselves and didn’t shove each other even if they were uncomfortable with their spot.
Just a minute or two into their journey, a group of fifteen or so monsters had gathered up ahead, blocking the road. Kairos raised an eyebrow, feeling that these numbers were uncommon at this time of day.
Some of the people at the back began faltering. Not all of them had seen Kairos easily behead the few monsters earlier, and to them, fifteen monsters looked like a giant horde.
As such, many began crying out in despair.
“Why are there so many?”
“W-We’re doomed!”
“I’m not sticking around for this!”
One man began running away, and that seemed to be a signal for several others to run away. Even some of those that had seen Kairos deal with the monsters so easily couldn’t help but lose faith as well, deciding to leave.
Kairos didn’t stop them. After all, it wasn’t as though they were particularly important. He continued to walk up ahead as the monsters recklessly charged toward him.
He obviously knew that they weren’t a threat, as his stats were simply too high for them to do anything to him. Thus he was naturally very casual as he walked up, almost like he hadn’t even seen them.
A little girl suddenly called out.
“Watch out!”
Kairos let out a small sigh.
“I know.”
Once the monsters were all a meter away, his spear suddenly tore through the air, beheading five monsters all at once. It almost seemed like he was harvesting crops. The rest of the monsters proceeded fearlessly, but with just a few more swings, Kairos was able to take care of the rest.
They were unable to even get their claws near him.
Kairos then continued on.
The ones that were either hesitating or decided to stick with him all let out a sigh of relief, and also began to understand that Kairos was on a completely different level than they could’ve ever imagined. Practically everyone here quieted down and shuffled behind him.
A few people that had been running away saw this display as they looked over their shoulders and couldn’t help but stop in place. It was so insignificant to Kairos that he didn’t even have a second thought about it, but to these people, it was quite insurmountable.
After all, one monster was usually more than enough to kill one regular human. That group of fifteen would easily wipe out the fifty normal people even if they were united and fought with high morale.
They weren’t exposed to how strong people could really be.
Kairos continued forth, and gave a casual glance backwards. This intimidated the others, but it only made them walk faster.
Kairos then rubbed his chin.
There were still roughly thirty people, which was enough to be worth to continue leading them to the city. Otherwise, he would just pick up Quinn before ditching everyone else.
He then raised his eyebrow as he looked back.
That was because Quinn was observing his spear rather closely with his brows furrowed deeply.
Kairos coughed.
“Um, is there a problem?”
Quinn forced himself to stare at the spear even when he could hardly keep his eyes open.
“…That spear has unbelievable toughness. It’s almost like an indestructible object that showed up in a video game due to a poorly coded game engine.”
Kairos rolled his eyes.
“Of course, why would I hold on to such a thin weapon otherwise.”
Quinn began speaking as though he was perfectly healthy.
“I believed you were holding onto it for the sake of its flexibility, but that’s clearly not the case. There is no material I know that is actually that durable and can be forged in this way.”
Kairos shrugged his shoulders.
“Yes, though there are definitely stranger things considering there is an apocalypse and all that.”
Quinn slowly nodded.
“Yes… yes…”
With that, Kairos continued on while the others naturally followed. Almost all of the monsters approached from the front, making it quite easy to deal with all of them.
But eventually, someone ended up screaming out loud.
Kairos turned around and leaped up into the air while channeling mana to form a gale spell, pointing it back. As he expected, there were a few monsters behind them.
After channeling for about a second, he released it.
Several people cried out in despair as they saw the monsters come close. Once they lunged, most of them had already given up hope.
“Help me, please!”
Then, the monsters all blew up, splattering to become a bloody mess.
Kairos then landed back on the ground and turned to face forwards once more.
“Alright, the monsters are dealt with, let’s continue.”
Everyone was quite astonished, including Quinn, who began muttering to himself about various numbers.
There were no big surprises along the way, only monsters that Kairos could easily deal with. And soon enough, they were able to make it to the city.
Several people exclaimed with surprise and happiness. They weren’t exactly the most shocked by the thirty meters in height that the walls had, because they were used to seeing those kinds of heights in the city.
However, this was obviously much more unnatural considering its extensive width and the fact that this was something that was clearly made after the apocalypse. In reality, people were mostly holding onto a fantastical hope, without much faith that it would truly be a good place.
Yet, it was even better than their wildest imaginations.
As Kairos slowly walked up to the front of the place, the wall suddenly rose, revealing the inside.
And he saw some familiar faces.