Kairos thought of many things, but found himself to be quite limited in stalling. After all, his spells were oriented to combat, and attacking Chen and Bob would be hard to excuse despite there being a monster there to hit.
He didn’t want the monsters to die just yet, but didn’t want to make that clear.
After thinking within a split second, he found his only real option was convincing Chen to avoid attacking the monster.
“You have to save Bob!”
Chen had his knives pulled back, ready to stab the monster, but hesitated upon hearing that. In the end, when he saw the monster’s claws going for Bob once more, he relented and picked him up, fleeing the moment he could.
As for the monster, it did not try to chase. Instead, it continued to run away, but didn’t forget to cast its spell once more.
Kairos let out a sigh of relief when he saw this, but then his expression froze. He noticed another invisible figure of mana approaching the monster. He bit the bottom of his lip, not wanting to say anything to weird the rest of the group out, but had a bad feeling.
And unfortunately, it turned out his bad feeling was correct.
Out of nowhere, the last monster’s shoulder suddenly began to turn gray, almost like it was turning to stone. The monster cried out once it noticed that it was beginning to gray, but before it could do anything more, its entire head became that strange gray color.
Its entire body gradually froze up, becoming completely gray.
Everyone was originally panicking a little, but they froze in place when they saw that strange sight. It seemed a chill went down everyone’s spine at once.
A moment after, Nicole’s figure gradually became visible next to the monster. She looked clueless, almost like she wasn’t the one responsible for killing the monster. After lightly tapping her chin with a finger, she looked around.
“Are there any more of them to worry about?”
Chen’s eyebrow twitched when he saw this.
“Um, I don’t think so.”
In his arms, was Bob, groaning out in pain.
“Damn… I didn’t think it would hurt this much. How bad are my injuries?”
Chen looked down at Bob and frowned. He could see an uncomfortable sight, Bob’s internal organs were completely visible to him. Many of his intestines were badly damaged, but at the very least it looked like none of his vital organs were damaged. Regardless, it was a rather bad injury. Chen didn’t know what to say.
“…I don’t think it’s fatal.”
Bob let out a sigh.
“Ah, that is good.”
Chen furrowed his brows.
“But I’m not sure if we can save you.”
Upon hearing that, Bob fell silent. Before they could say anything more, two other people were carried over along with the rest of the group. The expressions of everyone else were rather grim.
Jake had already fallen unconscious at this point. He wasn’t bleeding, and it seemed as though he was breathing faintly. However, whether or not he would survive wasn’t too certain. A woman carrying Jake seemed rather distressed.
“A-Are there any doctors? We can’t have him die!”
Everyone was silent.
As for the woman that lost her foot, she limped over to meet up, though was clearly having a difficult time walking.
“Is everyone ok?”
Nobody responded for a good few moments. Eventually, Kairos decided to speak up.
“Everyone is alive, but some people are injured pretty badly.”
The woman looked at Bob and Jake, who were both being held up by someone as they helplessly remained on the floor.
Chen muttered to himself.
“These damn spellcasting monsters… if only we weren’t so unlucky to meet with them, then we wouldn’t have these kinds of casualties.”
A man in the group grabbed onto the side of his head with distress.
“Maybe… maybe we should’ve just ran away!”
Chen grit his teeth.
“I guess so.”
The woman with her foot blown off grit her teeth after hearing that.
“Maybe if all of us fought, then this wouldn’t have happened!”
Chen sucked in a cold breath.
“Stop. Everyone made their judgments over whether or not they would be fit for fighting. Whether they were wrong or correct, none of us wanted to get injured. At the end of the day, nobody died, and we should be happy because of that.”
Kairos blinked a few times.
“What will you do about them? I don’t think they’ll be able to walk that effectively on their own.”
Chen closed his eyes and didn’t speak for a long while.
“Although we haven’t gotten out of every fight unscathed, these are the worst injuries that we have suffered. I am not sure what to do in this situation.”
He then looked toward Kairos.
“What do you think we should do?”
Kairos looked back at him speechlessly for a few moments. What kind of leader just hands off the decision to someone else?
Nonetheless, he decided to answer him anyway.
“If they have any points, they should put all they can into endurance. It should help them recover greatly. Although it’s probably nothing compared to a monster’s regeneration, it should suffice.”
Chen gave a small nod.
“Did you hear that Bob?”
Bob slowly nodded.
“Yeah, I got it. Though someone has gotta wake up Jake for him to do the same thing.”
The woman holding onto Jake called out to him, but it looked like he was out cold. Kairos took a deep breath.
“Regardless, you guys need food, right? I think the best solution is to have a team to protect the injured as they heal, while the others go out to search for food.”
Chen furrowed his brows.
“It does seem that is the only option we have. I suppose we have to assign the teams.”
He closed his eyes and thought for quite a while.
“How about this? Kairos, Nicole, and Pablo will come with me, while everyone else will protect the people that are injured. Once we find a suitable amount of food, we’ll come back to deliver it to you.”
The woman that had her foot blown off looked at Chen with a concerned look.
“But are you sure you can trust those two? We just met them.”
Chen let out a soft sigh.
“The reason I’m bringing them with me is that I don’t fully trust them. Leaving them with the injured would leave them too vulnerable if they were to chase us.”
Kairos raised an eyebrow and nodded.
“Ah, that’s pretty smart.”
The woman furrowed her brows but gave a nod after ascertaining that the logic sounded correct.
“Alright then. Be careful.”
A man stepped up and smirked.
“Don’t worry about us, we will get some food and come back in no time!”
Chen sighed.
“Let’s go now. There’s no time to waste.”
The entire time everyone else was having their conversation, Nicole was silent. She figured that since she wasn’t too sure what to say, it would be better to say nothing at all. As for Kairos he cracked his neck and stood up.
“Then let’s head out.”
He forcibly stopped himself from smirking, knowing that it wouldn’t fit the situation. It wasn’t intentional, but the situation ended up becoming even more ideal for him. Now that Chen had fewer people with him, it would be much easier to pick him off once he got the necessary points.
Not to mention, although Chen was talking about not fully trusting them, Kairos could tell he was already pretty trusting of them. After all, he even let Kairos make the decision and followed through on it.
Kairos coughed.
“Anyway, do any of us have any leads?”
Chen sighed.
“It doesn’t seem like it. Let’s just go. Even if we knew where a grocery store was, at this point it was probably raided for everything that was inside.”
Pablo narrowed his eyes and muttered.
“Then where are we supposed to even find enough food in the first place?”
Chen shook his head.
“We can only try our best.”
Kairos solemnly spoke as well.
“I suppose we must hope.”
Though, his sadness was obviously completely fake. After all, if he really cared, he could just give them some of the nature cores that he had, and everything would be fine. But there was no way he would do something like that.
And so, now the four of them began heading off, some searching for food, while others were lying in wait.
The four of them progressed forth through the city, and they rarely spoke. It was almost like an awkward situation where the people in the group were friends of friends, but didn’t actually know each other. This situation continued on for hours.
There were monsters along the way, but none of them were special so their path forth was unimpeded. Pablo had a large metal mace that he got from who knows where to deliver heavy blows to the monsters, killing them in one hit most of the time. When the monsters weren’t directly killed, they were more or less crippled.
In the middle of their journey, Pablo suddenly spoke up.
“It feels… kinda bad to leave them behind.”
Chen shrugged his shoulders.
“There’s no helping it. We need people to protect them, but we also need to leave to get food.”
Pablo sighed.
“Yeah. If we were to abandon people though, I would’ve preferred to get rid of Kairos. But I guess that’s impossible if Nicole refuses to leave. And… keeping Nicole is definitely the best decision.”
Everyone in the group looked at Pablo with confusion. After a few seconds of contemplation, Kairos looked away as he came to an understanding. As for Chen, he looked at Pablo almost like he was trying to cut him with his gaze.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Nicole pouted.
“Yeah! Kairos isn’t weak!”
Pablo raised an eyebrow.
“Huh? Didn’t we make this arrangement to leave behind the burdens of our team?”
Chen frowned.
“Since when were they burdens? Each of them contributed in their own way, even if they didn’t do all that much.”
Pablo looked a little confused.
“Yes, I agree with that, but as you said food is too hard to come by at this point. We simply can’t afford to share it with so many people that don’t provide enough contribution that would be worthy of it.”
Chen narrowed his eyes.
“That’s no excuse to abandon people. Not people that we’ve trusted, and people that trusted us. They are waiting for us right now, and we’re going to go back to them once we’ve got food.”
Pablo looked down to the floor, and instead of angry, he seemed rather dispirited.
“I don’t want to abandon them either, but do you really think we’ll be able to get enough food for all of them? I’m not sure if we can get enough to feed ourselves.”
Chen’s lip twitched.
“…We’ll try our best. If we can help them, we will.”
Pablo gave a nod.
“Alright then.”
It seemed like that was the answer he wanted to hear the whole time.
Kairos wasn’t really paying attention to their conversation, but all of a sudden, he couldn’t help but notice something in the distance while they were talking. After a few moments passed, he confirmed it.
There was an extremely strong concentration of mana. The closer they got, the more blinding it felt. Kairos felt clear discomfort just from looking directly at it, almost like he was looking directly towards the sun.
He cleared his throat.
“Um, give me a second. I’m going to go check something.”
Chen wasn’t really in the mood to argue, so he just nodded.
“Fine. Be quick.”
Kairos went over to a nearby building. Nicole looked over with concern, putting a hand over her heart.
“Should I come with you?”
Kairos shook his head.
“It’ll only be a moment.”
Upon entering the building, he took a deep breath and reached towards the center of his forehead, digging in to pull out the green crystal. He muttered to himself.
“Now… I gotta convince them to go there. I wonder if it’s another dungeon.”