Kairos stared at Nyoka’s smile for a few moments.
“You call the city a dipshit cage? Though, I guess if your house is like this, then it probably doesn’t take much to get better than this. Or am I wrong in assuming that the city is better than this place?”
Surprisingly, Jeff wasn’t set off by that comment. Instead, he just shook his head.
“It’s more complicated than that.”
Sara sat down and hugged her knees, looking to the side. She decided not to take part in this conversation. It was at this point that Nyoka decided to clear things up.
“To put it simply, as shabby as this place looks, that’s all it needs to be. Creating some sort of impenetrable fortress is just an extreme waste of resources considering how unpredictable things are, and how often you’d need to ditch it all and run. The only real purpose it has now is to serve as a landmark to know we came back to the right place.”
Kairos narrowed his eyes slightly.
“So that was also a hint to never settle down at one place too long?”
Nyoka gave a small nod.
“Yeah, pretty much. This area will probably be fine for quite a while, as this is more or less a barren wasteland for quite a while. If you were telling the truth earlier, then it was quite lucky that you ended up in such a place. If it was somewhere else… then you may have died without even knowing that there was danger.”
He suddenly furrowed his brows after that last sentence.
“Ah, well, if you can see the future, then maybe you would see it coming. But I doubt you’d be able to change anything if it’s one of the more… populated places. Regardless, the city is a little different.”
Nyoka cracked his neck. He then turned and began walking.
“I’ll tell you about it as we go there.”
Both Jeff and Sara were quick to follow, while Kairos hesitated for a second before going with them. After they walked for a bit, Nyoka started his explanation..
“For starters, just getting inside the place is a pain because you need to pay in black blood, and even then you can only stay for twenty-four hours. The walls are fairly sturdy, meaning that you are relatively safe from the monsters hiding outside. Though, it’s totally feasible someone inside the city will attack you. And so long as it doesn’t get too big, none of the guards will do anything about it.”
Kairos smirked.
“That does sound like a massive pain. So why do you want to get into this place anyway?”
Nyoka let out a sigh.
“It’s the only real place where you have a chance of selling or buying things. Though pretty much everyone is trying to scam, so you have to work your way around that. But regardless, it’s a good place to get black blood for the things you don’t need, and also get whatever equipment you do need.”
Kairos gave a small nod.
“I see. But how do you even trade black blood? It’s not exactly easy to measure how much there is.”
Nyoka fished a small black ball out of his pocket and showed it to him.
“There’s an ability from a core that allows you to store black blood and even preserve it. It isn’t the most common, but it’s not all that hard to find someone that has it. Regardless, this is the agreed upon way to trade.”
Kairos scratched the side of his head.
“Ah, I see. Well, since I obviously don’t have any of that, I don’t see much of a point in going to this city.”
Nyoka laughed and shot him a sidelong glance.
“You said to show you around, no? Maybe all you’re going to do is check the place out, but it’s still nice to get a little view of the place. Unless you’re really going really really far, this is probably the only city you need to worry about.”
Kairos blinked a few times before giving an approving nod.
“Can’t say you’re wrong on that. How much does it cost to get there?”
Nyoka shrugged his shoulders.
“It’s one ball of black blood for every twenty-four hours. It’s a bit hefty, but it’s not like anyone is forcing us to go into the city.”
Kairos rubbed his chin.
“For reference, how many balls of black blood would that flower from earlier contain?”
Nyoka laughed, which confused Kairos quite a bit. What exactly was so funny?
Eventually, when Nyoka realized that Kairos was getting a little annoyed, he spoke up.
“All of the black blood from that thing wouldn’t make up a single orb, even if you counted the stuff in its eye.”
Kairos raised an eyebrow.
“Then how much of a single orb would it make up?”
Nyoka sighed helplessly, but still had a smile on his face.
“If we’re being generous here, maybe a tenth.”
Kairos clicked his tongue.
“Getting black blood sounds like a pain.”
Jeff smiled bitterly after hearing that.
“That’s what every damn living thing down here’s been doing every moment. You have to get used to it…”
Kairos massaged his temple with the tip of his finger.
“Then before you bring me to the city, could you take me to some places where I can get this black blood?”
Nyoka waved his hand dismissively.
“Don’t worry about that. To get to the city in the first place, we are going to meet monsters whether we want to or not. After we deal with them, then we can split them based on contribution.”
Kairos nodded.
“Sounds good.”
From there, Nyoka began talking about things that Kairos didn’t really care about, like what kinds of things he did to pass time, whether it was together or when he was alone. Kairos only half paid attention to what he was talking about.
This entire time, he was actually circulating the mana in his body, hoping that there might be some mana somewhere. But one thing he did notice was that the mana in his body had increased ever slightly.
It was tiny enough that it could’ve easily just been a mistake, but he was fairly confident in his own judgment. If he had to guess, his regeneration while circulating his mana was similar to his mana regeneration on the surface world when he wasn’t circulating his mana, except worse.
Losing the ability to lob as many spells as he wanted was a huge detriment to him as that was the main way he fought, but at the very least it wasn’t like he couldn’t use them at all.
He let out a soft sigh.
And that’s when Nyoka suddenly spoke up with excitement and pointed upwards in front of them.
“Haha, you got some pretty good luck man. This one is a pretty nice warm-up for you to get familiar with the monsters down here.”
Though, despite looking in the direction he was pointing, Kairos could not see this monster. He snuck a glance at Jeff and Sara who were both looking intently at something, clearly not having the same problem.
He pulled out his spear and walked forth.
“I can’t even see the damn thing, I gotta get closer.”
Jeff didn’t seem to mind, but called out.
“Be careful!”
Kairos waved his hand dismissively as he continued forth.
“I can see the future, remember? Let me try to fight this thing on my own.”
As those words slipped through his mouth, he saw an incredibly fast black blur in his future vision shooting towards him. With all his strength, he preemptively swung his spear with both hands.
A distinct boom resounded.
Kairos continued to press against the attack, trying to test how effective his strength was. As for the thing he was fighting against, it was a giant black hand that had stretched out significantly.
The immediate thing he noticed was that this giant hand had the upper hand over him. However, strangely enough, it seemed as though the hand wasn’t pressing its advantage in strength.
Instead, it gripped onto the spear and squeezed tighter and tighter.
Kairos wasn’t all that concerned at first, as the spear had gone through so much without breaking. However, the red veins in the spear began dimming considerably. Seeing this, Kairos began trying to pull his weapon away, but then a second giant black hand grabbed onto the spear as well, making that feat a tad bit too difficult for him.
Nyoka called out to him.
“How are you doing? Need any help?”
Kairos narrowed his eyes.
“Not yet, but I might soon.”
The red veins rapidly disappeared until all that was left was gray stone, and that too wasn’t spared either as many hairline cracks formed across it. These cracks were actually rapidly mending as they were being formed, but despite that, it looked like it would break soon.
With that in mind, Kairos let one hand go from the spear and began openly channeling the fire spell.
The instant the ball of light appeared, he felt that it was incredibly blinding. Both Jeff and Sara also seemed to think the same as they screamed out like they were being burnt alive. In fact, even the monster let go of the spear and let out a guttural roar as it backed off.
Nyoka clicked his tongue.
“That thing again… how can you even do that?”
Kairos smiled bitterly. His vision rapidly adapted to the bright light, making it very bearable.
“It’s a thing people on the surface learned to do after the apocalypse struck.”
After channeling for only a second, the fireball had expanded to become just over a meter wide. He threw it forth at the monster, causing a rather large explosion. The monster cried out in pain once more, and while its body was covered in flames, Kairos could finally clearly see it.
It was a relatively humanoid monster that was six meters tall. On top of that, it had four different arms that were quite long and were in the process of extending outwards, though two of those arms looked deflated. Many lacerations covered them as the two arms hung limply at its sides.
Though, that was the least of its problems as it was currently wildly flailing around to put out the fire around it.
Kairos did not wait, instead running towards it at full speed. He thought about decapitating or breaking its skull like how he did with many other monsters before, but its head was rather large and its neck was thick.
He then naturally thought of the heart and rushed forth with the intention of piercing where its heart was.
By now, his spear was fully restored to its original condition, so he wasn’t worried about that. The monster was none the wiser about his approach, letting him leap into the air and easily shove the spear straight through its chest.
It should’ve hit the heart, but Kairos felt like something was wrong immediately. The monster just seemed more aggravated than anything, and two of its hands shot towards him.