Seeing the two claws coming for him, Kairos didn’t waste time slamming his feet against the monster’s chest. He shot like a bullet out of the way, dodging its attack. However, while the two arms missed initially, they continued to chase after him like homing missiles.
He jumped over one of them right before it hit him and pushed off the arm with his spear to send him flying out of the other one.
After that, he backed up a little, getting out of the fight for a moment. Though, there was a frown on his face.
“How are you supposed to kill these things?”
Nyoka cleared his throat.
“Ah, sorry for not mentioning something else. The main weakness of most monsters is their black heart. The exact location depends on the monster, but for most humanoid ones it’s a little lower than where you just stabbed, like at the center of their body.”
Kairos clicked his tongue.
“So these ones just have a weird heart placement.”
Nyoka smiled bitterly.
“Er, actually, this is one of the normal ones. Whenever an Untainted gets converted, usually they lose their normal heart which is then replaced with a black one.”
Kairos paused for a moment, feeling a little weirded out. However, he snapped back to attention right after, as the monster from earlier was approaching. Once it was fairly close, two giant claws shot out towards him once more. Though, they definitely didn’t have the fervor they originally did. In fact, they weren’t even directly aiming at Kairos and were off their mark by a decent amount.
He only had to dash to the side to dodge both of them, and after that he leaped up on top of one, running across it. Strangely enough, the monster didn’t even seem to notice, its arms retracting languidly.
It wasn’t hard at all for him to reach the monster. And this time, he followed Nyoka’s advice, piercing the thing straight through its center. Right when he did so, he felt the monster suddenly weaken considerably. Knowing now that he wouldn’t get notifications after killing these kinds, he figured that this would be the end.
This was supported by the fact that the monster’s body seemed to be withering somewhat. Yet, the claws that had just finished retracting suddenly became far larger, to the point they were nearly bigger than the monster itself.
Kairos was confused but wasn’t caught off guard thanks to his future vision. Those two large claws suddenly shot towards him, several times faster than when the monster was normally at its fastest.
In response, he did a backflip, letting the two arms just barely miss him, instead only blowing a rather intense wind at him. If he still had hair in his abyss form, it would be flailing.
With a heavy thud, both claws slammed into their own body. For a few moments, it remained there still, almost like it was getting ready to fight again at any moment. However, it gradually tilted back before slamming into the ground.
Kairos looked at it for a few more moments before turning to Nyoka.
“Is it dead?”
Nyoka gave a small nod.
“Yeah, more or less. Now that I think about it, I also forgot to tell you that most things do what some call a swan song. Basically, when something is fairly sure it’s going to die, they have their death throes in an attempt to take their killer down with them.”
The corner of Kairos’ lip twitched.
“You couldn’t have told me that before?”
Nyoka shrugged his shoulders.
“I’m not used to teaching other people, normally everyone here knows the drill, they wouldn’t have gotten here otherwise. These things are basically common sense. Plus, I was distracted by how much you screwed up both Jeff and Sara.”
Kairos raised an eyebrow, but then he heard the hisses of pain coming from the distance. Upon walking closer, he noticed that both Jeff and Sara were crouched on the ground rubbing their eyes like some poison had entered them. At first, he had no idea why they were like that but then thought of the fireball he had casted earlier.
“Are they like this because of the fireball?”
Nyoka smiled bitterly and nodded.
“Pretty much. I don’t know how you were able to make such a strong concentrated ball of light, but it’s really hard when we’re used to almost complete darkness.”
Kairos smirked.
“You don’t seem all that affected by it though.”
Nyoka waved his hand dismissively.
“Haha, that’s just because my will is stronger. It’s not like it doesn’t sear my eyes too.”
Jeff’s panting calmed down as he gradually stood up.
“Don’t… do that again. Ever.”
Sara shakily got up to her feet, but it was fairly clear she was shaken up.
“I-I would prefer it if you didn’t do that.”
Kairos raised his hands up like he was surrendering.
“Sorry, sorry.”
Though, while he said that, he fully planned on casting the fireball once more. He was a little worried before about needing more mana than he could handle, but since just the light from the fireball was that blinding, it seemed like he wouldn’t need too much.
Probably because he wasn’t what Nyoka called “Tainted”, the light didn’t blind him as badly as the others. Though, he wasn’t planning on relying on that as Nyoka seemed to be rather resilient to it.
His gaze slowly shifted over to the dead body.
“So uh, do you mind if I eat it all?”
Nyoka waved him away.
“It’s all yours. But if a core somehow survives, then you gotta give it to me.”
Kairos clicked his tongue.
“I have no idea what it looks like, so if there is one, take it yourself.”
After that, he walked over to the corpse he had just killed and stared at it awkwardly for a few moments. Compared to the petals from before, this was definitely far more than before. It was a little jarring to look at it all, to say the least.
Nyoka let out a sigh when he saw how reluctant Kairos looked.
“You gotta start now, or we’re going to be here all day.”
Kairos clicked his tongue.
“Yeah, fair enough.”
By now, he had gotten pretty hungry anyway.
With that, he no longer hesitated, resolutely taking a large bite out of the corpse. It tasted quite similar to the monster corpses he had eaten before. Though, those times were out of desperation because of the situation more than anything. Now that it wasn’t completely necessary, it was definitely harder.
But one thing he noticed was that while the flesh was as nasty as ever, the black blood wasn’t as bad as before. It was still definitely unpleasant, but at the very least he could stomach it without too much gagging.
He went onto the second bite and began chewing once more. His face distorted significantly, but he was still more or less fine. As he went on, he continued to eat it faster and faster, trying to finish all of it as quickly as possible.
Kairos noticed that Nyoka was doing something to the corpse, but he decided not to focus on that. Instead, he just kept eating, and eating, and eating.
Until eventually, there were only black blood stains on the ground next to him and across his face.
By the end, Kairos felt incredibly dizzy. He felt like he was going to fall over at any moment. But before he could even think about that, he felt bile rising up from the pit of his stomach.
He forced his mouth shut with both hands, stopping it from coming out. Then, he forced himself to swallow his own vomit. After that, he collapsed onto the ground still with a warped expression. Even now, the nasty taste was still ever so present in his mouth.
Jeff slowly spoke up.
“You… ate the flesh too?”
Kairos put one hand on his forehead.
“Yeah, I was hungry. If I didn’t eat that, then there isn’t much else for me.”
Jeff raised an eyebrow before looking back and forth between him and the remains of the corpse.
“But black blood is enough for hunger, right?”
Kairos clicked his tongue.
“If that was the case, then I wouldn’t have been hungry. I already had some black blood.”
His stomach churned uncomfortably, but it soon died down. Though it probably wasn’t the most nutritious, the decayed flesh was digested and his hunger died down. As for the black blood, it coursed through his system and added itself to the black flesh in his body, causing it to expand somewhat.
After calming down, he looked over to the side and saw that Nyoka was holding onto a small glowing gray cube with two of his fingers.
“Is that the core? Why did you want it?”
Nyoka smirked.
“It’s a core that lets you stretch out your body if you use some black blood. You saw it earlier. The ability itself isn’t all that bad, but most people have found the black blood price is too steep to use it normally.”
Kairos blinked a few times and sat up.
“So why the hell do you want it?”
Nyoka let out a soft laugh as he turned the glowing cube over in his hands a few times.
“In my human form, it’s pretty much as useless as it is for anyone else, but there are a few tricks once I activate my transformation.”
Kairos looked at him strangely.
“Your transformation?”
Nyoka stared back at him cluelessly, until he suddenly realized that Kairos was new to this place once more.
“Ah, right. You remember the snake behind me from before?”
Kairos slowly nodded. He remembered when they sparred, there was just an ethereal snake randomly behind him acting like an extra hand.
“So that’s the transformation?”
Nyoka smiled bitterly and shook his head slowly. He paced around as he explained.
“Er, that’s called an avatar. It’s the first main evolution people go through after consuming enough black flesh. After that, there’s a second evolution that allows one to directly transform into their avatar.”
Kairos stood up and cracked his neck.
“Ah, I think I get it. Since your avatar is a snake, the ability to extend yourself lets you bite people easier.”
Nyoka smirked.
“Well… that’s one of the uses. Honestly, I didn’t think that the core would survive, since you pierced it straight in the heart. But it looks like that spear you got is thin enough and missed it.”
He then tossed the core in his mouth and swallowed it whole. Kairos massaged his temple with the tip of his finger.
“So these cores reside in the black heart?”
Nyoka gave a small nod.
“Yeah, but they are really easy to destroy if you hit the black heart. When people are killing for cores, generally they maim the body surrounding the torso.”
Kairos rubbed his chin.
“Could you take me to one of these monsters with a core I could use? They sound quite interesting.”
Nyoka blinked a few times.
“Well, I can’t directly take you to one, but… there is a hot spot for a decent core.”