The soldier seemed rather ticked off by Kairos, but he couldn’t really focus on that as he was currently in the air and unable to tell which way was up or down. Just when he was about to regain his bearings, he was grabbed by the back of the head and was suddenly slammed down to the ground.
Naturally, this was done by Kairos. He let out a soft sigh after accomplishing this.
“Anyway, I’d like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.”
The soldier did his best in struggling, but the moment he did Kairos’ spear slammed through his chest, gliding right by his heart.
“Hey, you gotta be a little more careful while moving. Imagine if this thing hit your heart!”
The soldier promptly stopped struggling. But while he remained still, it was fairly clear that the man was still quite defiant. Kairos expected that much, but he felt the question he had was relatively reasonable.
“Are you all just working on your own, or are there even more soldiers somewhere out there?”
The soldier didn’t respond. This prompted Kairos to roll his eyes.
“Look, you’re going to die, that’s for sure. But it doesn’t have to be that painful, you know?”
Once again, the soldier didn’t say anything. Kairos clicked his tongue. He couldn’t help but think that he wasn’t cut out for this kind of interrogation thing. But then, he remembered something Tiana had told him rather long ago.
That it was better to be cruel and act on your threats. That way, they would know they would lose hope in being able to just slip by. The way Tiana did that was by killing their friends in front of them.
The only problem that Kairos faced was that he already killed the friend. He promptly looked around, but there weren’t any more of those soldiers in his line of vision. A frown formed on his face as he realized there weren’t many options to threaten him.
With a sigh, he raised his spear once more, pulling it out of the man’s body before plunging it into where his liver was. The man let out a muffled groan of pain and convulsed.
Once he calmed down a bit, Kairos spoke slowly..
“Losing a liver is quite painful, but at least you won’t die from it. That way it can be extra painful. Isn’t that great?”
The soldier was mute like always. Kairos narrowed his eyes, realizing that he would rather die than share any information with him, not to mention his pain tolerance was quite high. It pissed him off quite a bit. All he wanted to know was if there was another big group he should worry about.
Kairos’ eyes then landed on the other soldier’s corpse which was split in half. An idea gradually began forming in his mind.
With the spear, he dragged the soldier’s body across the ground, getting closer to it. Then, like he had done it several times before, he used one hand to pick up one of the halves by the skull, then he grabbed onto the soldier’s head to make him face it.
“Look at that. It’s the person who died right next to you. If you just reached out and pushed him out of the way, you could’ve saved him. But you let him die, all because you just couldn’t bear the risk of getting hit yourself.
The soldier grimaced.
“Shut up!”
Kairos smiled when he heard him finally speak up. Naturally, he did not stop and even shook it a little. Even while just holding up that half, the mushed-up brain gradually began leaking outwards. As for the eyes, they were extremely reddened and also distorted, all the while rolled up. The jaw hung loosely, and even ended up falling off, landing on the ground.
The soldier sucked in a deep breath.
“Really? You’re even mocking the dead?! What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Kairos laughed.
“Oh, no, no, no. I’m not mocking the dead. In fact, I’m mocking you. Just take a look at your friend here. He agrees with me!”
With that, he proceeded to bob the head up and down above the detached jaw while making an exaggeratedly deep, but shrill voice.
“Why didn’t you save me? You let me die! You let me die! How could you?”
The soldier looked rather agitated.
“Shut up! Shut the fuck up!”
Kairos didn’t realize it, but a sadistic smile gradually crept up on his face. He continued on with his little puppet show.
“You can’t even protect your friend? What kind of trash are you? One that just lets others die so you can prolong your life for just a few seconds? You should come die with me! Do you hear me? Do you hear me, you friend killer? No, brother killer!”
The soldier grit his teeth.
“I said shut up!”
He suddenly pushed off of the ground while strong electrical currents emitted from his body. However, Kairos was able to see it coming rather easily. He preemptively got off the man’s body. From there, he grabbed the man’s wrist with one hand, then pushed down on the elbow with the other.
A crisp snap rang out.
Kairos’ hands were burnt fairly badly by the lightning, but it was nothing serious for his level of endurance. Instead, he focused on pulling off the arm and tossing it to the side. As for the soldier that just pushed off the ground, he once again collapsed, not expecting this shift of events.
Without worrying about a thing, Kairos broke the man’s other arm and pulled it off as well. There was a faint smell of charred meat coming from Kairos’ palms, though he ignored it.
The soldier cursed several times, and attempted to roll around, but was prevented by the spear that Kairos had implanted within him. He sighed once more.
“Hey, it was your choice on whether or not you wanted this to be easy. All I wanted to know was if there were more than you. It’s not like I asked you where this base was, or their strengths. I don’t even care about their numbers. It’s information that I’d end up getting sooner or later anyway, yet you struggle this much just to keep it. I bet all the people you let die already saw your stupidity and are cursing you from the grave for it too.”
The soldier attempted to crawl away, using his legs. Unfortunately, he was only able to get a few centimeters forward, as the spear was still lodged into him. By now, the lightning over his body had died down. Seeing this, Kairos proceeded to snap both of the man’s legs, making sure to tear them off.
From there he brought his face next to the man.
“You already know how pathetic you are, don’t you? Why are you even holding up this false pride, trying to trick yourself into thinking you’re some sort of proud warrior? No matter how hard you try, you can’t hide from the truth. You can’t hide from your own actions. At the very least you could make something a little more convenient for someone else.”
At this point, the soldier had been crying silent tears. And after an extended period of silence, he eventually spoke.
“There are no others.”
Kairos gave a small nod before letting him go.
“I see, so this is only a small part of the force you have.”
The soldier looked back at him with confusion.
“No, I said there are no others! This is all we have.”
Kairos rolled his eyes.
“Then why is everyone suicidally charging in without consideration for the numbers? Of all ways to act on a suicide pact together, this isn’t one of them. It’s almost like you’re pressured by someone stronger for whatever reason.”
The soldier grit his teeth.
“If you were so sure of that, then why did you even bother asking?!”
Kairos chuckled while shrugging his shoulders.
“Just wanted to double check. Plus, I know the type of person you are. For all I know, you guys might’ve actually just wanted to die. But what I can be certain of, is that your kind never tells the truth when it matters.”
Before the soldier could speak any longer, his spear swept forth and beheaded him, cutting him off. At the same time, he noticed about a dozen or so other soldiers pointing at him in the distance.
It seemed they saw what he did.
A smirk formed on his face. He intended on taking care of them too, but then the crystal in his pocket began heating up. With a raised eyebrow, he took it out and channeled mana inside.
Edward’s face appeared and he spoke instantly.
“Come to the headquarters. It will be easier to kill them that way.”
Kairos blinked a few times before nodding.
“Alright.”
With that, he walked into one of the many holes within the city. Something he almost immediately noticed was that countless people had been badly injured. Although many of the soldiers had died, there were still casualties on this side.
Many people were on the floor crying out in pain because one of their limbs was blown off by a grenade. Some others were already separated into multiple pieces and charred badly. Then there were some people with their eyes wide open, staring at the sky. Large portions of their body had been charred, but they were still just barely alive.
Still staring into the sky.
To his surprise, there was essentially no resistance when he walked through the city. It didn’t seem like there was a single guard anywhere. In fact, it wasn’t just him. He could see in the distance many soldiers were having free reign, killing people left and right.
He decided to ignore it and scaled up the buildings to get to the one in the center. This time, a few people ended up seeing him and looked like they were gonna stop him, but stopped after seeing who he was.
[0)ᴠʟ Eventually, he made it up to the top, climbing up next to Edward. He flashed a small smile.
“It looks like the place is getting ruined. Are you sure you have it all under control?”
Edward slowly nodded.
“Yeah, the only people that are dying are the useless ones. None of the actual combatants were killed, so we suffered essentially no loss.”
Kairos blinked a few times, not expecting him to say that.
“…Alright. Anyway, it seems like this isn’t going to be the last of them. There seems to be even more of these guys. On top of that, despite seeing what you could do they’re still charging in.”
Edward sighed.
“That is fair enough, considering I can’t really do it now anymore.”
Kairos shrugged.
“It’s surprising you even have that much mana capacity to do something like that anyway.”
Edward stared back at him passively.
“But my mana is almost full right now.”
Kairos looked at him strangely.
“Then why can’t you cast another one?”