Kairos woke up, and the dream he had was clear in his memory.
It seemed that if they decided to try and go out like usual to earn points, then they would end up dying.
Kairos couldn’t help but laugh. For whatever reason, it was Chase that wasn’t trying to abandon them, while Tori was the one that left without hesitation. He couldn’t help but be surprised as he didn’t think Chase had any good reason for that.
At the very least, that was what the dream told him.
He got up while holding onto the side of his head. Despite sleeping, he could still feel the phantom pain of having his head and limbs ripped off. Kairos patted his neck as though double-checking his head was still connected before trying to get up off of the bed.
Though, Nicole was holding onto him too tightly for him to do so.
Kairos tried to subtly pry her hands off, but whenever he began doing so, her grip tightened considerably. That was probably how Nicole was holding onto him the entire night. Kairos let out a sigh before patting her on the face.
“Hey, come on. Let me go.”
Nicole mumbled to herself before her eyes slowly opened.
“Mm… Kairos?”
Kairos let out a soft sigh.
“Yeah, let go of me now.”
He looked out the window and saw that the sun was beginning to set. Nicole let go and got up while rubbing one of her eyes.
“Is it time to go out again?”
Kairos blinked a few times.
“We’re canceling that for now.”
Nicole blinked a few times and seemed to fully wake up.
“Eh? We’re canceling it?”
Kairos slowly nodded.
“The monsters are too strong to fight against right now. It seems that these strange events with red light regularly happen, and whenever they do the monsters get stronger.”
Nicole tilted her head to the side.
“Oh… ok. So we can just stay here then?”
Kairos shrugged his shoulders.
“I guess so. I’m going to go somewhere on my own though.”
Nicole let out a small gasp.
“Eh? Then I’ll go with you!”
Kairos shook his head.
“I already said that I’m going alone. That means nobody is going to come with me.”
Nicole’s expression contorted.
“B-But why?”
Kairos let out a sigh.
“Don’t worry so much about it. I’m only going to be gone for the night. Not even a full day, alright?”
Nicole looked at him for a few moments before nodding.
“…Ok.”
As Kairos got up, he cracked his neck.
“Oh yeah, can you let the others know that we aren’t going to be going out at night for now?”
Nicole gave a small nod.
“Ok!”
With that, Kairos got up to leave and left the black stone that distorted mana behind. Upon leaving the center building, he saw that most of the people were sleeping. All of the fields had been more or less dug up, and now they had nothing to do but get some rest in. Even their snores were rather quiet, almost like they were too tired to even snore loudly.
Despite there being so many people around him, the most audible thing was his own soft footsteps hitting the pavement.
Upon reaching the entrance, Kairos was a little worried that Tiana was asleep, thus wouldn’t open up the wall, but he found it did, thus that concern was unnecessary.
Kairos began thinking of the monster that he had seen in his dream.
It definitely wasn’t invincible, but it seemed like it could “regenerate” itself rather easily by using other monsters. That meant the best way to deal with that kind of thing was to directly blow it up with an attack so strong it would be able to regenerate in the first place.
This immediately made him think of one of his passive skills, Alone. It would both triple the damage, and also reduce the backlash that he would feel in the process. If the effects were active, then he was pretty sure he could take on most things, assuming they weren’t that exaggeratedly overpowered.
When Kairos made it out onto the streets, he could see quite a few monsters making their way out of buildings and scattering around. He avoided them before directly clambering up a building to avoid them. Though he was sure that he would be able to deal with them easily now, he didn’t want to waste his strength.
The exhaustion he felt during the dream was still fresh in his mind, and he didn’t want to end up like that.
Kairos continued leaping over buildings, and at some point, his entire body felt much lighter than before. The mana around him simply felt different, like it was calling out to him. There was no longer this faint resistance that he felt from it. He immediately knew what was happening.
His Alone skill was active.
Kairos continued to leap across buildings, going to the place that they usually went. He figured the monster would be somewhere around there, and then he planned on taking it out.
He searched for quite a while and didn’t come up with much. And eventually, the moon began rising, showing that it had already gotten deep into the night. Kairos was currently crouched on top of an apartment building, looking down at all the monsters.
He clicked his tongue, wondering how he was missing something large.
Yet, right as that thought crossed his mind, he heard the berserk cry of a nearby monster. And strangely enough, it was coming from directly below him. Kairos’ eyes narrowed before he suddenly leaped off the building, towards another.
And as he did so, the entire complex broke apart, scattering brick and dust everywhere before revealing the monster he had been searching for this entire time.
Right now, it looked like a mass of monster parts in a rod. However, it slowly expanded outwards to become the familiar humanoid shape that he remembered. The monster let out a cry before rushing towards the nearby monsters, attempting to consume them.
From what Kairos could tell, it was only about thirty meters tall right now, compared to the dream when he saw that it was roughly fifty meters. In other words, this thing would only grow stronger as time passed.
Kairos immediately began casting the pulse spell, wanting to kill it while the thing was still young. Almost immediately, he could feel the difference that the alone skill was making.
He could feel the mana within him roiling, almost like it was fighting to get out of him. As for his body, there was a strange sturdy feeling that seemed to overwhelm the aggravated mana within him.
The monster didn’t even seem to notice him on the roof of a nearby building. It simply continued to eat up the monsters nearby, continuing to expand itself.
Kairos sucked in a cold breath as he could feel his entire body reacting to the mana. His vision was starting to have a blue tint. He quickly connected the dots to realize that mana was literally pouring out of his eyes and even coming out of his mouth.
He held out one hand that was brightening to become a solid blue, that was gradually becoming a blinding light. Kairos noticed that this shine was leaking out into his arm, forming a pattern that almost looked like veins snaking across his skin. After a few moments, he used his other hand to grab onto his wrist, trying to slow that mana from spreading.
Kairos could immediately tell that the situation was getting dangerous. Unlike normal casting, the power of the spell was increasing three times as fast as normal, effectively meaning he was channeling three times faster.
That would mean he would have to release it sooner rather than later, or he might end up sacrificing too much to cast this one spell.
With that in mind, Kairos leaped off the roof, finding himself above the monster.
It was at this point he felt like the monster noticed him. Despite not having any clear eyes, its head tilted back as though looking at Kairos. At that point, it opened up its mouth before a horde of hands suddenly reached out toward him.
Kairos knew from the dream that he would essentially be dead once they reached him as despite being a high rank, the strength of this thing was simply far too high.
Nonetheless, he wanted to channel it for just a little bit longer in order to guarantee it. He also began narrowing the cone to increase the effect directly in front of him.
Kairos’ eyes widened all the way as he watched the various limbs and heads rush up towards him, desperately reaching out to claim his body for their own. The corner of his lip turned up as he let out a light scoff.
Right as his vision was filled with heads and arms, he sucked in a cold breath to brace himself. Not from the monster, but rather the backlash from his own spell.
A massive explosion resounded, but Kairos only heard it for a split second. Blood and flesh splattered outwards, like a balloon filled with water getting popped.
The shockwave continued forth, rampaging through the monster until it finally slammed into the floor, causing a crater to form. A few nearby buildings began tilting towards the crater, and some directly collapsed after losing their balance.
As Kairos watched all this, he gradually felt his hearing return to him in the form of blaring ringing sounds. However, he didn’t really find that it was the time to begin worrying about that, as that pulse spell actually ended up shooting him high into the air, letting him meet with the clouds.
As he began falling back down, his hand trembled intensely. Casting that last spell used up most of his mana. But thankfully, it seemed like his body wasn’t ruined because of it. Though the pain was bad, something like this was nothing new to Kairos.
He began thinking of what he could do to slow his fall, as he doubted he would be able to land unscathed. He thought of a few methods, but the only real one would be to cast another spell.
He frowned due to the lack of mana, but then remembered a trick he learned earlier.
He circulated what little mana he still had left in his body, just like it was a tornado. Kairos saw the surrounding mana was pulled into him and did so rather easily. There was no longer the demerit of lessening his mana regeneration, meaning that it flowed rather easily to him.
It almost made him feel like he was in an ocean, and directly commanded the water to move in the way that he wanted.
By the time he was just about fifty meters above the ground, he could tell most of his mana had returned. From there, he pointed his finger down as a strong pillar of water shot out, slamming into the ground with a loud thud.
His body tensed up as he felt his downward momentum gradually lessening.
He didn’t know what had happened to the monster he hit, but he figured it was still alive since he hadn’t gotten a notification yet. This worked as both slowing him down and possibly interfering with the monster.
Soon enough, he slammed down on the ground, causing water to splash into the air.
He looked around among the rubble, searching for anything that was still alive. He noticed that the nearby monsters were running away, clearly wanting nothing to do with what was going on here.
That was when he set his eyes on a lump of flesh that was mostly buried in the rubble. He charged up the pulse spell for a second before releasing it, smashing the surrounding debris and revealing what was underneath.
Kairos couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow when he saw it.