Kairos stared at her blankly.
“And why did you suggest that?”
Tiana shrugged her shoulders.
“It seems like most of you aren’t really into it. Maybe if it’s a semi-real fight, then you all will get more into it.”
Kairos blinked a few times.
“What makes you say that?”
Tiana shrugged her shoulders.
“Then let’s watch them for a little bit longer and see.”
Kairos slowly nodded, then turned to look at the others with her.
Chase no longer curved his arrows, but now that he did so his hit rate was abysmal. He aimed at targets that were at least five hundred meters away, and his actual arrow was at most ten centimeters off their mark, but he was missing nonetheless.
As for Sydney, she had her brow furrowed. She created another wall, but it was practically the same as the last one. After casting, she only seemed more lost and clueless. The only thing she found herself able to do was cast the spell once more, to little success.
And finally, Nicole recasted her invisibility spell and attempted to approach Kairos. However, before she got that close, Tiana walked up and tapped her on the shoulder.
“Found you!”
Nicole gradually became visible, revealing a distraught expression on her face.
“E-Eh? How did you find me!”
Tiana giggled.
“You weren’t sneaky enough.”
She then turned to Kairos.
“See? They aren’t putting their all into it!”
Kairos blinked a few times.
“It’s going a little overboard to expect the best results when people are just starting.”
Tiana let out a sigh.
“Yes, it’s overboard, but everything that the apocalypse brought has been overboard. If they just progress at a normal pace, they will be unable to do anything.”
Kairos didn’t know what to say for a moment.
“Fair enough.”
He then clapped his hands rather loudly.
“Change of plans!”
Chase and Tori flew back down, Nicole came back out, and Sydney turned to look at him.
Kairos cleared his throat.
“We are going to be doing the same thing, except we will be doing it while fighting against Tiana.”
Tiana smirked.
“And your sole goal is to have someone land a single hit on me. Do it before all of you get exhausted, and that’s considered your win!”
Kairos let out a small sigh.
“Sounds like you plan on getting really into this.”
Tiana let out a soft hum.
“Well, I wouldn’t say that.”
She walked to be roughly ten meters away and raised three fingers into the air.
“Alright, we can start after a countdown from three!”
Tiana smiled.
“Three!”
She lowered one finger.
“Two!”
Then another.
“One!”
And then the final finger.
“Go.”
The instant she said that she instantly shot upwards on a metal pillar, going up rapidly. Everyone else seemed a little unprepared still but didn’t wait before getting to work.
Tori flew up into the air while carrying Chase, and he drew back an arrow.
As for Sydney, she hesitated for a few moments before casting an earth spell, elevating her, Nicole, and Kairos. It was nowhere near close to the speed that Tiana was going up, but it would at least close a bit of the distance.
Nicole turned to Kairos with a confused expression.
“Um, how am I supposed to get close to her?”
Kairos narrowed his eyes slightly.
“You will probably have to scale up one of the nearby buildings, then try to get to her from there, though it will probably be pretty hard. If you think you can use that ability, then just try it. It seems to preserve your initial momentum from the moment you cast it, so take advantage of that.”
Nicole nodded.
“Got it!”
She gradually turned invisible, then went to scale up one of the buildings. Although it wasn’t something she was the most used to, she had been able to climb trees before, and the increased stats helped her do it smoothly.
Sydney turned to Kairos at a bit of a loss.
“What should I do?”
Kairos shrugged his shoulders.
“Well, just try to protect the others. You probably won’t be able to match the rate Tiana can raise the ground, so you’re gonna have to just climb up the buildings as well.”
After saying that, Kairos leaped up onto the side of a building before scaling it, and Sydney followed after without much hesitation.
As they were going up, metal spikes shot out of the building, interrupting them. With the help of his future vision, Kairos was able to easily evade them. However, Sydney was caught, getting one of her hands impaled.
She furrowed her brow before ripping her hand out forcefully and continued climbing upwards. Her hand was heavily damaged in the process, but it was also regenerating quickly.
There were several more metal spikes going her way, and she was able to dodge some, but not all of them.
As for Kairos, Tiana gave up on trying to stop him entirely, giving him a rather smooth journey upwards.
Once he got to the top, he looked over to his side to see Chase pulling back a mana arrow while Tori was carrying him. It was a much smaller mana arrow than normal, which was to be expected since it was only a spar, and they just had to land one hit on her.
However, that didn’t mean they would have it easy. The metal pillar underneath Tiana expanded out, creating several metal spikes. They then detached from the pillar before shooting toward Chase and Tori.
With quick reflexes, Tori was able to fly out of the way of the spikes. However, the jostling was so intense that Chase had a far harder time trying to aim his arrow. He let one loose, which shot through the air quickly and curved towards Tiana. However, Tiana herself was quite agile, and the metal pillar underneath her could also move rather freely.
She was able to dodge Chase’s arrow easily and further provoked him with a smug smile.
Chase clicked his tongue before pulling back another arrow.
As for Kairos, he raised two fingers and pointed them towards Tiana, planning on using the water spell. While he thought the gale spell would have a higher chance of working, he wanted to save using that spell for a decisive moment.
A thin, but fast beam shot out from Kairos’ finger towards her, which Tiana was also able to dodge quite easily. Kairos almost immediately figured that he would be unable to hit Tiana with the water spell under normal circumstances. However, because of its beam-like nature, while it didn’t hit her, it was able to zone her out, reducing the areas she could dodge.
Chase took note of that and continued to let more mana arrows loose.
Unfortunately, Tiana was just a tad bit too slippery, allowing her to get away unscathed. Despite having his future vision, Kairos was having difficulty in zoning her properly. The biggest problem was that Tiana could both raise and lower the metal pillar she was standing on very easily. That meant she could go either under or over his beam of water if she wanted.
Tiana had also been shooting metal spikes in his direction. Although none of them hit him, they were enough to make positioning his beam properly difficult.
This continued for several minutes, until eventually Tiana directly created a large metal wall on the building Kairos was on, preventing his beam of water.
He turned to Sydney, who was right next to him.
Could you elevate the platform so I can continue attacking?
Sydney promptly nodded and did as he said. It took a couple seconds, but Kairos was back to shooting a beam of water at her.
Chase felt that he wasn’t going to be able to hit her despite having Kairos’ help in restricting her movement, thus he decided to do something similar to him and also restrict Tiana’s movement, hoping that someone else would do something.
He let out an arrow at the side of Tiana, stopping her from going in that direction.
Tiana simply remained where she was to avoid it.
Then out of nowhere, she conjured a wall next to her.
With a slam, something hit it. Nicole gradually revealed herself on the other side with blood dripping down from her forehead. She began freefalling and desperately clambered onto the side of the walls to slow her fall.
At the same time, Tiana snuck a metal spike in Tori’s blindspot, causing it to slam into Chase’s stomach, causing him to cough up blood.
Then, she took her time creating several metal spikes around both Kairos and Sydney. In a panic, Sydney created earth walls all around the two of them. Unfortunately, the metal spikes slammed right through them.
Some of them impaled Sydney, but Kairos jumped up out of the way.
Tiana looked at Kairos with a confident smirk.
“Want to keep going?”
Kairos rolled his eyes.
“There’s not much point in continuing further.”
Tiana put her hands on her hips.
“Heh, seems like I won.”
Kairos rolled his eyes.
“That was to be expected.”
Tiana clicked her tongue.
“You could at least be a little encouraging.”
Kairos raised an eyebrow.
“You could at least be a little less cocky.”
Tiana laughed.
“Ah, fine.”
She proceeded to get rid of all the metal she conjured during the fight, letting it sink into the ground.
Kairos slid back down the building along with Sydney. The group met back up again, though they had all sustained injuries. Though they would be life-threatening to a normal person, just a bit of rest would let them mostly recover.
Kairos let out a soft sigh.
“Guess that’s the end of today’s training session.”
Tiana nodded.
“Yes. But there’s still something else…”
She narrowed her eyes.
“For now, everyone but Kairos will go back into the city.”
Kairos turned to look at her with curiosity.
“In case you’re wondering, I have no plans of sparring against you myself.”
Tiana waved her hand dismissively.
“It’s not that, just stay with me here for a moment.”
Kairos shrugged his shoulders.
“Alright.”
Though the others seemed a little confused, they went through the opening in the city walls that Tiana created without much complaint. They also wanted to get some rest after their injuries.
Once they were all gone, Tiana took a deep breath.
“Alright then. Now it’s time to deal with a few hyenas.”
Without saying anything more, she pointed her index finger upwards.
The ground broke apart in a certain location, while a metal platform raised. That platform then whipped in a direction, landing right in front of Kairos and Tiana.
Kairos blinked a few times.
“Ah, I see what you mean by hyenas now.”
There was a group of four people on the metal platform in front of them. They all had startled expressions on their faces and appeared a bit panicked upon realizing they were exposed.
Tiana put one hand on her hip.
“And what exactly were you all doing here?”
A man at the front with short blonde hair recovered first and put on a stalwart expression as though they hadn’t been caught just now.
“We are simply a group scavenging the area for supplies.”
Kairos blinked a few times.
“So, basically people that are too weak to actually win any fights on their own, and thus take advantage of people after they are exhausted from battling.”
The corner of the man’s lip twitched.
“We have no such intention! We are just a friendly group trying to survive.”
Tiana rolled her eyes.
“Yet, this friendly group was slowly getting closer once they noticed a fight was going on.”
Kairos caught onto something as Tiana was talking. He noticed that four strands of mana were slowly sneaking their way toward the four respective people.
He was a little confused as to what her intention was, thinking that maybe she wanted to convert them into allies. Though her attitude right now seemed quite antagonistic.
Kairos decided to remain silent and watch.