Nicole was smiling strangely. She grabbed onto Kairos’ arms and began humming to herself happily.
Kairos looked at her plainly.
“…Go to sleep now, ok?”
Nicole grumbled.
“Only if you’re here with meeee….”
She repeatedly tugged on Kairos, though it was incredibly weak, like a child. Kairos let out a sigh.
“And why do I have to sleep with you?”
Nicole shook her head from side to side exaggeratedly.
“You haveee to! If you really think about me, then you have to! You have to, you have to!”
Kairos massaged his temple with his index finger. He was wondering why he suddenly found himself dealing with a spoiled child. He couldn’t help but let out a helpless sigh as he let himself get tugged by Nicole. With a glare, Kairos slowly spoke.
“…Not as much groping, ok? Only a little bit.”
He felt a little strange that those words were coming out of his mouth, not to mention when he was a man. As for Nicole, she let out a soft giggle.
“I just want a hug… no touchy touching for now…”
To Kairos’ surprise, she kept to her promise, only wrapping her arms around him before letting it be like that. Kairos looked back at her with distrust, feeling that she was going to act up at any moment.
However, she didn’t. Nicole was already quickly drifting off into sleep as she held onto him, doing so practically instantly. Kairos mumbled to himself softly.
“I guess it does help you sleep.”
When he felt her gentle embrace, he couldn’t help but start feeling tired as well. Almost like everything would be alright. He began blinking intermittently, on the verge of falling asleep.
And then he felt himself go to sleep.
Kairos suddenly found himself awake. He was slightly confused, but he could eventually tell that he was in a dream. It was similar to what had happened to him before, which let him randomly peek into the future while sleeping. It was a little while since it had last activated, making him wonder if it was real, but having it happen once more was reassuring.
Though, the situation he was currently in wasn’t all that reassuring.
He found himself and his group out of the city, attempting to fight against a large horde of monsters during the night. This immediately stuck out as strange to him, as under normal circumstances he was just watching over the rest of them, since he would rather observe the mana that flowed through their bodies.
He wasn’t making much progress on understanding the abilities like Tori’s wing spell, but at the very least he was making decent progress on the elemental ones.
Kairos simply swung at the monsters he saw in front of him with his spear, fending them off. But one thing that he immediately noticed was that he was actually having quite a bit of difficulty fending them off. His weapon was still holding on strong, but the monsters were simply much tougher than before.
Despite knowing that he had more strength than them, he couldn’t help but feel pressured as the gap wasn’t large. In fact, he would probably get absolutely overwhelmed if he didn’t have a weapon he could rely on.
In the middle of fighting these monsters off, he suddenly heard Nicole call out to him desperately, tearing her throat up in the process.
“RUN, KAIROS! PLEASE.”
Hearing this, Kairos furrowed his eyebrows intensely. What in the world was going on? Then, he felt the ground tremble. As he lifted his head up to look, he saw a massive monster, standing at nearly fifty meters in height appear behind one of the apartments.
The very first thing that Kairos thought was that it was unbelievably disgusting.
At this point, whenever he saw a monster that was clearly powerful, he would connect it to those related to The Church of Evolution. However, there was one aspect that made him feel like that wasn’t true. The monster consisted of countless limbs and heads, just a freakish abomination in general.
Although the general figure had somehow become something like a humanoid, it looked like it could fall apart at any moment. Somehow or another, countless monsters had fused together, and the individual arms were still moving around, almost like zombies that moved when they shouldn’t be able to.
Kairos ended up running, as Nicole begged him to. He saw that all of his group was running towards the city, but it seemed that they had made it quite a ways out. Chase was putting extensive amounts of mana into his bow to launch several arrows, trying to make a path. However, more than the sheer number, it was the toughness that the monsters had that made it too difficult.
Sydney took the lead, fending off the surviving monsters with her body. As for Tori, she was whispering something to Chase urgently, but from the frown on his face, it was clear he was not having it.
Kairos didn’t have much context in this situation as he was randomly put here, but from what he could tell, they weren’t going to make it back to the city.
He sucked in a cold breath before turning towards the monster once more. Though he didn’t exactly understand what was going on, since this was only a dream, it was best that he used it to test exactly how strong this monster was.
Kairos continued to backpedal, but was channeling his pulse spell as he did so. Though using a spell to its full potential would be terrible for his body, these events weren’t actually happening in reality, so it was fine.
Nicole seemed to catch on to what Kairos was doing, and looked quite anxious.
“We have to run! Fighting is too risky!”
Kairos smiled bitterly.
“Do you trust me, Nicole?”
Nicole hurriedly nodded.
“Yes, yes, so please hurry up and run away!
Kairos let out a soft sigh.
“Then treat this as a dream.”
He could feel that his hand was on the verge of exploding. If a pin was pushed against it, he wouldn’t be surprised if it just popped like a balloon. His hand glowed a familiar blue, which began snaking up towards his arm.
The monster in front of him seemed to notice what was happening the assorted limbs and heads burst out of its stomach, almost like a tentacle, and shot towards Kairos. All of the hands seem to reach out towards him, wanting to grab on.
Kairos narrowed his eyes before releasing the pulse spell.
With a bang, the assorted limbs and heads in front of him exploded into a mess of blood, splashing all around. Waves of wind rushed from the force, and the surrounding pavement and walls had cracked.
And when that shockwave made it to the monster itself, blood splattered all around, severely damaging it. However, it began to absorb the surrounding monsters, forcefully grabbing onto the nearby ones and making them a part of the abomination. Kairos frowned as a sense of dread came down onto him.
He coughed out blood due to the backlash from the spell, while his hand looked quite deformed, almost like it was melting to become sludge. It was better than outright exploding, but not by much.
The monster began charging toward Kairos once more, making him narrow his eyes. There were other ones trying to swarm him, but before he could even worry about them, they were grabbed onto and absorbed.
Kairos clicked his tongue as he saw it approach even closer.
He fished out a green orb out of his pocket. It was the last one he had, but since this wasn’t reality, he didn’t feel too bad about wasting it. And so, he quickly stabbed it with his spear and began drinking it. The ball rapidly shrunk to become a bead, and at this point, the monster was reaching out to him with its hand.
Under normal circumstances, he would’ve either tried to run away or at least dodge.
But right now, he wanted to test how badly injured he would be after taking on the attack of the monster head-on. And so, he watched as the various limbs reached out towards him, wanting to pull him in to be part of the conglomerate as well.
Yet, before it could happen, he felt an incredibly strong tugging force on his arm that directly tore open his skin. It was Nicole, and she was using her inborn ability to directly pull him along whether he liked it or not.
He could feel the wind whip into his face as both teeth and hands just barely missed him. With furrowed brows, he turned to Nicole.
“What are you doing?”
Nicole had a frown on her face that looked quite desperate.
“Saving you! What else?!”
Kairos shook his head.
“Didn’t I tell you just to pretend that this was a dream?”
Tears began forming in Nicole’s eyes and just barely spilled out.
“Yeah, and if it was a dream then I would do everything I could to save you!”
Kairos blinked a few times as he felt himself getting dragged along. It seemed that he wouldn’t be able to test it, as Nicole would pull him out of the way if he didn’t do anything. But despite that fact, she still wasn’t fast enough to have them escape. Those in his group at the front desperately tried to pave a way forward, but the monsters were simply too resilient now.
As for Kairos, he didn’t do anything. He just watched.
While still getting dragged along, he suddenly felt a strong tug on his leg. Several limbs had wrapped around it, and teeth had begun to sink in. Nicole refused to stop, deforming his arm and causing concerning cracking sounds to come from his shoulder.
Then, his leg got ripped off.
Kairos frowned deeply.
He wasn’t sure if the green orb would be able to regenerate his leg assuming he took it. As he continued on, his other leg eventually got ripped off as well, once the monster reached for it.
Though Nicole was facing forward, tears began streaming down her face as she sniffled. It seemed that she could tell what was happening to him, and just desperately wanted to make it out alive with him.
Eventually, one of his arms got ripped off as well. Now, the only limb he had left was the one Nicole was dragging him with. Kairos watched as his limbs got absorbed into the monster before becoming one with it, then moving around with a clear lack of coordination.
At this point, Nicole was screaming at the top of her lungs.
“NOOOOOO! NOOOOOOOOOOO!”
It was like she was screaming out while being murdered, though considering the situation it wasn’t too different from that. As for Sydney, although she was still regenerating, it seemed that she was beginning to reach her limits as she was slowly losing her flesh, and getting ripped down to the bone.
Chase was constantly cursing over and over as he continued to pull back mana arrows, however, they were incredibly weak. It was apparent that he didn’t have the mana to continue. As for Tori, she bit the bottom of her lip so hard that it bled, before grabbing onto Chase.
Chase immediately let out yells.
“Stop! Stop it now, Tori!”
However, Tori didn’t listen as she forcefully brought him up into the air, away from all of the other monsters. Chase continued to call out, both insulting Tori and telling them to go back, however, Tori just remained silent as she heard all of that. Her eyes were closed tightly as she continued to soar through the air as quickly as she could.
Then, he watched as the various limbs and heads approached him once more. In fact, he could see that his own limbs were at the forefront.
And as his head was getting torn off his own body, there was only one thought.
That he had overestimated his teammates.
