Kairos cleared his throat.
“Do you want to try to cast a spell? It should help you with the lack of prestige points you have.”
Nicole tilted her head to the side.
“Eh? But I’ve casted spells a lot.”
Kairos waved his hand dismissively.
“I mean casting spells you haven’t learned yet.”
She blinked a few times.
“How do I do that?”
Kairos let out a soft sigh.
“Well, you’ll have to learn how to manipulate mana. I can try to help you with that.”
Nicole looked at him with a neutral expression.
“But what about everyone else? Shouldn’t we sort out their promotions as well?”
Kairos raised an eyebrow.
“I could just do that later, no?”
A small smile formed on Nicole’s face as she scratched her cheek.
“Um, I don’t know. It’s just that I feel like… you probably aren’t going to do it.”
Kairos was a little confused.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Nicole looked down sheepishly.
“Well, I don’t think you will really ignore it completely, but it will probably be one of the things you don’t really care about. Then it will get shoved down from all the other priorities you have, and you won’t end up doing it for a really long time.”
Kairos blinked a few times.
“Huh? How did you gather all of that? What, you can see into the future now?”
Nicole clasped her hands together and smiled bitterly.
“I dunno. It’s more like… I can just feel it. I can feel like that’s what’s going to happen, because that’s what ends up happening most of the time.”
Kairos looked a little dumbfounded.
“What ends up happening most of the time?”
Nicole let out a light cough.
“Um, never mind. I’ll practice whatever it is you are talking about, but not right now. I don’t want it to get in the way of other things.”
Kairos looked somewhat estranged, as he felt this was quite out of character for Nicole. Nonetheless, he slowly nodded as it wasn’t something extremely important as of now.
“Alright then. What do you think I should be doing instead?”
Nicole put the tip of her finger on her chin.
“I mean, I think you already know what that is, right?”
Kairos paused for a moment, not getting what she was trying to say at all.
“I guess that there’s something else that I wanted to do, but other than that there isn’t really much.”
Nicole clapped twice.
“Ah, then do that!”
Kairos stared back at her with the same confusion he had at the start.
“Um, alright?”
Nicole gave a small bow.
“Alright!”
And with that, she left. Kairos wondered if something happened to her recently to make her different like this, but dropped it after a while. He let out a sigh before walking out of the room as well, then ascending up the steps.
It was to meet with someone he left for a little while. A person called Liam.
Once he climbed up all the flights of stairs, he eventually made it to the room he remembered Liam was in. Upon making it there, he could audibly hear several banging sounds within. After a few seconds, he pulled back his hand before slamming it onto the door, forcibly breaking past the metal.
He definitely messed up the door, but he also knew that Tiana probably couldn’t move the metal since the black stone’s radius also encompassed the place he was at right now, as he placed it on the roof of this building. As such, there wasn’t much of a choice for him if he wanted to get inside.
Though, once he got inside, he quickly found out that the mess he caused didn’t really matter. Because everything inside was torn up and broken. Almost like the aftermath of a dog that had too much energy left alone inside someone’s home. The only difference was the significance of the damage.
Cabinets were torn off from the wall, the furniture had been ripped to shreds, with the stuffing within thrown about all around the place.
In the middle of it all was Liam. He was making feral noises while frothing at the mouth. His hands were grabbing onto the sides of his head, while the majority of his body had been transformed to become a monster.
Though, the moment Liam saw Kairos, he called out like he saw his savior.
“Y-You finally came! You’re going to change me back right? I won’t be a monster anymore. I’ll be back to normal! I can be normal again!”
Liam crawled towards him on all fours because he didn’t have the coordination to stand on his feet.
When Kairos saw him crawl up, he simply let out a sigh and crouched down. With deadpan eyes, he stared at Liam, while slowly tilting his head to the side.
“You yourself said so many times that you were still a human. But look at the state of the room.”
Liam looked a little confused.
“W-What? I… I only did this because I was hungry! I was so so hungry, and I kinda just ended up breaking things. B-But that’s reasonable! You left me for so long!”
Kairos blinked a few times.
“You think that’s normal?”
Liam slowly nodded.
“Y-Yeah!”
Kairos let out an exaggerated sigh.
“A civilized human wouldn’t end up tearing their surroundings up like this. Maybe they’d get a little angry, but just a few days without food isn’t enough to turn them into an animal.”
Liam flinched.
“A-Are you saying it’s not normal?”
Kairos slowly shook his head.
“No, no. I do think that it’s normal.”
Before Liam could truly get relieved, Kairos followed it up.
“For a monster, that is.”
Liam looked up at him with a fearful expression.
“Monster? What? I’m not a monster!”
Kairos blinked a few times.
“Then why are you begging me to change you back?”
Liam bit the bottom of his lip.
“I… I’m not fully a monster yet!”
Kairos shrugged his shoulders.
“It seems I had too much faith in you. Originally, I believed that with time your human side could battle against the monster side of you.”
Liam looked confused.
“W-What? But you never told me about that!”
Kairos raised an eyebrow.
“Isn’t that something you should obviously be doing if you supposedly want to be human? Or is it that discarding your humanity is actually what you wish?”
Liam hurriedly shook his head.
“What?! No! I-I want to be a normal human again.”
A drawn-out sigh escaped from Kairos’ mouth.
“Unfortunately, it’s going to be a little difficult when so much of you has become like this.”
Liam trembled slightly.
“A-Are the chances low?”
Kairos narrowed his eyes slightly.
“Well, the chances may be low, but so long as there is more time, then there is hope that you could be saved.”
Liam slowly nodded.
“A-Alright, so time. H-How do I get more time?”
Kairos nodded to himself as though he had only just now thought of the solution.
“I’m afraid the only thing we can do is forcibly remove the monster parts of your body to delay it. For starters, we should amputate one of your arms.”
Liam’s expression changed slightly when he heard that.
“E-Eh? M-My arm?”
Kairos let out a sad sigh.
“It’s sad, but that’s the only real solution we have. The other option is that you turn into a monster, in which case I’ll just have to kill you outright.”
At this point, Liam grit his teeth intensely.
“Dammit. I-It’s just an arm! I… I’ll do it.”
Kairos gave a solemn nod as though he was the one making the sacrifice.
“I understand. You’ll have to bear with some pain though.”
Liam gave a small nod.
“Ok…”
With most of the furniture broken down, Kairos decided to just clear an area and have Liam lie on the floor. Although he did seem rather excitable, almost like he had severe ADHD, Liam did end up not acting out too violently.
As for Kairos, he flicked his spear, which cut through Liam’s shoulder. Though it was a fairly clean cut, blood sprayed out, while Liam’s completely monsterified arm had fallen off. The arm that was amputated continued to move around for a few seconds, before gradually relaxing.
As for Liam, he did not even end up letting out a cry of pain. In fact, it seemed as though he didn’t even realize that his arm was amputated.
Kairos looked at him strangely.
“So…”
Liam looked back at him with confusion.
“C-Could you just do it quickly? I’m a little scared.”
Kairos narrowed his eyes ever so slightly.
“Well, the only problem is that I’ve already done it.”
Liam looked rather confused. He looked to his side, and saw his severely reddened arm at his side, then screamed.
“AHHH! IT HURTS! IT HURTS SO BAD!”
Kairos looked at him like he was an idiot.
“You clearly didn’t feel it before. I cut it several seconds ago.”
Liam’s breathing got really heavy.
“What? But… but…”
Kairos furrowed his brow.
“Don’t worry about it too much. Just tell me if you feel any better. Less… monstery.”
After hearing that, Liam hurriedly nodded.
“Ah, yeah! I feel much better.”
All of his cries of pain suddenly disappeared, which jumped out to Kairos as a massive red flag. After thinking about it for a few seconds, he could feel like Liam was pretending to be a human, while in reality, he had already become a monster.
Kairos wasn’t one hundred percent sure, but at this point, he confirmed that Liam was definitely pretending to be more human than he actually was. The real reason why he did all this was actually to see if a brute force method could work in reducing someone’s monsterification.
He was actually trying to help, though he didn’t have any intention of actually saving Liam.
But this tiny little discovery that he ended up finding sent chills up his spine. That there were people desperately trying to pretend that they were human. He couldn’t help but wonder about Sydney. Nicole did say that she was acting differently…
Kairos continued to ask subtle questions to Liam again and again, trying to draw out certain responses and answers without being too obvious about them.
The conclusion that he eventually got to was that either Liam was extremely good at acting, and was playing dumb, or that he himself wasn’t exactly aware that he was actually more monster than human.
As Kairos thought about it further, it seemed that it might’ve been that Liam’s mind still considered himself as human despite changing to become more and more like a monster.
Eventually, Kairos ended up directly killing Liam.
He quickly realized that it was too late to even try to save him, as while his mind seemed to be functioning somewhat, at the core, his instincts were driving him to become more monster-like.
At this point, Kairos began to have doubts. Not just about Sydney, but also himself. His body obviously wasn’t a normal human anymore, but what if his true self was slowly being replaced by something else?