As Kairos set his foot forth in the corridor, he heard very faint whistling sounds. Out of pure instinct, he tried to jump over it but saw in his future vision that it would just barely graze his heel.
His first instinct was to jump just a little bit higher, but after a moment of thought he didn’t
Kairos let the gale spell cut through his heel, causing a bit of blood to splatter.
He didn’t want to rely on his future vision. For at least this corridor, he decided that he wasn’t going to change his actions based on his future vision so long as it wasn’t that bad of an injury.
Before he could contemplate it any longer, he heard more whistling sounds. His eyes narrowed as he threw his head back. Unfortunately, he messed it up once more, getting the skin on the tip of his nose ripped off.
More than anything, it was just inconvenient, but he was still a little peeved that he wasn’t able to dodge it. Nonetheless, Kairos continued with full confidence. He could feel things were immediately beginning to ramp up.
This time, he heard whistling sounds coming from both directions.
He had already leaned back and committed to it, directly performing a backflip while flinging himself forward. Two sharp gusts of wind passed over his torso and leg respectively.
The moment his foot landed, he hopped upwards to dodge another one. He was a little surprised as he heard a gale spell coming from his front. He twisted his body to the side, letting it graze by.
He then slammed both feet into the ground, avoiding a sharp gust of wind that came down from the ceiling.
This time he ended up dodging all of them completely, but there was still a frown on his face. That was because he was dodging them by a relatively large margin, a little over a centimeter away. He preferred it when he was just barely grazed over dodging like this.
Kairos decided to abandon his previous overly safe way of running forth and committed to just barely dodging. He didn’t want to put in more effort than required. And so, more of his body was grazed again and again.
He still looked more or less fine as most of the injuries healed over a few moments after they formed. However, Kairos was quickly finding the more gale spells he heard at once, the harder it was to decipher their location from sound alone. He was beginning to get grazed even harder.
Then, he felt a gale spell slam straight into his torso, cutting open his stomach. Kairos’ eyes widened all the way. He didn’t even notice that gale spell before it slammed straight into him.
Kairos really wanted to change his actions based on what he saw in his future vision, but after realizing that it could only cut through part of him, he decided to ignore it. His blood splattered across the floor once more, but disappeared rapidly the moment it touched the ground.
Kairos didn’t look down, but could tell that his insides were showing from the chilly feeling he got in his stomach area. With gritted teeth, he pushed on. He was used to this much pain, it wouldn’t distract him.
Unfortunately, it was still more or less a trainwreck as he continued on. Multiple times one after another, he didn’t dodge properly, getting grazed over and over. He even ended up getting a ghastly gash on the side of his leg due to carelessness.
Kairos couldn’t help but feel a little depressed by these results. He thought that he was at least better than this without his future vision. Doubts began forming in his mind as he wondered whether or not he was more reliant on his future vision than he thought.
Yet, right as those doubts formed in his mind, he shoved them right back down.
If he really was that reliant, then he would stop being so reliant as of now. He was fully going to depend on his own senses. With that new mentality, he kept trying. And when he failed, he didn’t mull over it or get depressed. Instead, he saw it as learning.
Every time he failed, was just a step he took towards learning.
And he failed many times. He was grazed countless times and ended up getting hit directly several times, one for each limb. The sensation of pain was coursing through his entire body, but that only served to increase his adrenaline. Despite the number of times he messed up, that only made him feel more invincible.
And at some point, he wasn’t getting directly hit by the gale spells anymore. He would still occasionally get grazed, but even then, it wasn’t as serious as when he first got grazed.
Then eventually, nothing could touch him.
It no longer felt like he was attempting to make it through an obstacle, but more so he was just a part of the system, drifting through because that was supposed to happen. Nothing more, nothing less.
He wasn’t able to bask in this feeling for all that long, because he did eventually make it to a room, which was a relatively safe space. After opening his eyes, Kairos looked down at his wounds.
He was still bleeding a little, but after a few seconds, it all stopped. There were still large scars all over his body. They were closing up, but it still looked like he had quite a bit of trouble.
Kairos sat down and waited for his condition to get a little better. He figured his current condition wasn’t the best, but it wasn’t worthy of using a green orb. Though he would probably feel hungry afterwards, his wounds would heal.
As he was waiting for his wounds to heal, he heard sounds coming from somewhere else. There were many metal clanging sounds, but through all of it was the clear sound of someone roaring loudly.
After a few moments, Kairos watched Pablo stomp into the same room and slam his mace into the ground after doing so. He was cut in several areas and bleeding fairly badly, and he was also panting quite hard.
Pablo looked over at Kairos.
“Ah… you made it too…”
Kairos gave a small nod.
“Seems like you had to deal with swords.”
Pablo raised an eyebrow after hearing that.
“You had to deal with something different?”
Kairos shrugged his shoulders.
“Some sharp wind.”
Pablo sat down and frowned.
“I thought the exit would be here, but it turns out it’s just you.”
Kairos shrugged his shoulders.
“Tough luck, I guess. At the very least, we know the exit isn’t on the path you came from. And it’s not the one next to me either.”
Pablo clicked his tongue.
“…That still leaves two choices.”
Kairos blinked a few times.
“Well, we may find ourselves with even more choices after we go down one of these paths.”
Pablos’ eyebrow twitched.
“It can’t possibly be that big, right?”
Kairos sighed.
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
Pablo frowned.
“I still don’t forgive you for making us come here by the way. I got hit by some strange gas that hurt like hell.”
Kairos coughed.
“Sorry. It wasn’t intentional.”
Pablo narrowed his eyes.
“You tried really damn hard to get us to get closer to that thing though.”
Kairos smiled bitterly.
“Come on, you can’t tell me you weren’t tempted by some treasure or something like that.”
Pablo let out a resigned sigh.
“I suppose it isn’t the worst thing in the world. It seems we can directly buy points and even food. No idea how to get these damn points, but it looks like we can still get food for everyone.”
After hearing that, Kairos remained silent. From his memory, the food that was provided in this dungeon seemed fake. It tasted like food, and also gave him that feeling of fullness.
However, the one thing it didn’t seem to provide was nutrition. Or at least, not as much as it lets on. The people running around the dungeon had a timer. They could buy food, but the majority of its effect was placebo rather than helping them survive.
Kairos was not personally worried about this. After all, he had sixteen nature cores he could freely use that doubled as an emergency food source.
Once Pablo’s wounds had more or less stitched up, he stood once more.
“I’m going. If you want to stay here to die, then be my guest.”
Kairos cracked his neck.
“You say that like you’re implying we go together.”
Pablo raised an eyebrow.
“You sure you can make it through all by yourself?”
Kairos shot him a glance.
“Two people in a corridor with traps sounds like a recipe for disaster. The only thing we would do is get in each other’s way.”
The corner of Pablo’s lip twitched.
“Fine then.”
With that, he looked between the two options that he or Kairos didn’t come from. One of them was an extremely wide corridor, enough for five people to walk side by side and over five meters high. On the other hand, there was another corridor that one person could fit in if they stretched their hands out all the way, and was maybe three meters high.
Pablo looked between the two of them and ended up settling for the larger one, simply because it had more area to dodge, thus it would then logically be easier. However, Kairos honestly thought that choice was rather poor because he knew by this point the dungeon wasn’t just randomly created.
If there was space like that, it was given for a reason.
Once Pablo stepped in, nothing happened at first. He kept walking forwards with a pleasant expression.
“Huh. It looks like not all of them are filled with traps.”
Yet, as he was saying that, a meter-wide fireball came barreling toward him. Pablo furrowed his brows and swung his mace towards the fireball. Kairos couldn’t help but feel that was quite the ridiculous response.
The fireball exploded once the mace hit it, and reddened significantly. However, it and Pablo were fine. When Kairos looked a little closer, he noticed there was a faint blue barrier around him.
It seemed that he had some protective ability.
After that, Pablo began rushing through the corridor as several large fireballs were thrown at him. Like a barbarian, he swung his mace towards all of the nearby fireballs and kept going.
Kairos looked as his figure got further and further in the distance before letting out a dry chuckle.
“I guess that’s one way to do that.”
He had confidence in going down that same route, but the only slight issue was that confidence stemmed from having his future vision. Realistically, the fire spell was easier to detect than the gale spell, but if he was directly hit, then the injury wouldn’t be something he could just walk off.
Kairos looked at the narrower pathway. He then got up and walked into it.
And as he walked through… nothing seemed to happen.