After Sara and Jeff spent a few more seconds to recover, the group set off once more, but slightly off track. Nyoka took the lead, with a smile on his face.
“Now, I will say there is a high chance we may encounter other people. Chances are if we don’t back down from the monsters, there’s going to be a fight.”
Kairos narrowed his eyes slightly and tapped his chin.
“Is it a fight that I should be worried about?”
Nyoka tilted his head to the side.
“Hm… that is a good question. It’s definitely not one that we are worried about, but it could be for you.”
The corner of Kairos’ lip twitched.
“For reference, how much stronger are they than the monsters that I just killed?”
Nyoka let out a soft sigh and shrugged his shoulders. He looked to the side with a bitter smile.
“To put it into perspective, the monster we are looking for is stronger than the one you just killed. On top of that, we are going against people that are confident in killing those monsters without taking advantage of their weakness to get their core. And on top of that, they are also doing it knowing full well someone else is going to sabotage them.”
Nyoka raised a finger in the air before tilting it to the side.
“So, you can imagine that they aren’t all that weak.”
Kairos took a deep breath, though it sounded like a sigh.
“That does sound pretty bad. What exactly is this core anyway?”
Nyoka raised up one of his arms, which had a distinct gray color like it had been desaturated. Suddenly, a small patch blackened, with a slight wrinkly texture like tree bark. He then tapped on that small patch with one hand, letting out a clear tapping sound.
“It lets you harden your skin, and it doesn’t take all that much black blood. Generally speaking, it’s something everyone could use. Some people consider it a staple.”
Kairos gave a small nod.
“That would be quite useful. How will we distribute the cores?”
Nyoka held out one hand with a smile.
“How about we gather four? You take one, while Sara gets three of them. Neither Jeff or I need them much, but she could use them to upgrade her core.”
Kairos had no complaints.
“Sounds fair to me.”
With that, they continued walking. Out of curiosity, Kairos opened up his status panel to check on how much time had passed.
[Time Left Before Teleportation: 29 days, 17 hours, 23 minutes, and 19 seconds remaining]
He was quickly able to gather that it was a little over six hours. Though, as he closed his status panel, Sara suddenly spoke up.
“Wh-What was that?”
Kairos shot a glance at her. He was a little surprised, as Nyoka didn’t seem to be able to see his status panel from earlier, and it seemed Jeff couldn’t either. So why could she do so? Though, just to be sure he asked for confirmation.
“What exactly are you talking about?”
Sara flinched after he said that, before turning forth quickly.
“Nothing!”
Kairos’s eyebrow twitched. He wanted to press for answers, but doubted that he would be able to get any even if he did so. That would only antagonize the rest of the group. After thinking about it for a few moments, it was totally reasonable that Sara thought she saw something in the distance.
After all, Nyoka told him before that there were always monsters lurking around in the darkness. Though if Sara was really able to see that status panel, that would have implications he wouldn’t yet understand.
He shook his head thinking that it wasn’t all that important.
And so, after walking for an hour or so, they eventually came across what looked like a demon. It was a black figure that reached seven meters in height, with two large black horns jutting out from the sides of its head. Currently, it wasn’t facing them, but as the group got closer it quickly turned around to face them.
It had two glowing red eyes if it didn’t nail the demonic appearance well enough.
Kairos pointed at it.
“Is that the thing we’re trying to kill?”
Nyoka chuckled.
“Not exactly. It’s a person that transformed. Though, that’s not to say we won’t get any cores from killing him.”
Kairos looked up at the seven-meter tall demon once more and tried to process the fact it was actually another person instead of a monster. As for the demon, it simply stared back at the rest of the group, almost like it was daring them to take another step forward.
The corner of Kairos’ lip turned up.
“Well, if he has a decent amount of cores, wouldn’t killing him save us a bunch of time?”
Nyoka gave a small nod.
“Pretty much. Wanna try?”
Kairos raised his hand in a claw formation.
“Why not?”
Nyoka laughed.
“Alright then.”
For starters, Kairos began channeling the darkness spell, just to see what it would do. The moment a small dark ball formed in his hand, it suddenly began violently expanding. The devious smile and eyes formed almost immediately, while the thing actually began laughing. With how it looked, its laughing was actually more normal than not, but now that it was actually doing it felt strange to Kairos.
He could tell that his Alone passive was active, meaning that he and Nyoka’s group obviously didn’t trust each other enough to be considered allies. But regardless, the Alone passive alone was definitely not enough to do something like this.
It seemed that this environment was somehow invigorating to the darkness spell, not that Kairos was complaining.
Though pretty much everyone was looking at the darkness spell with confusion, it wasn’t hard to tell that it meant some form of hostility. The demon suddenly rushed forth, intending on taking him down before he could finish casting the spell.
Kairos had only channeled it for a second, but it already expanded to become over a meter wide. This was enough for him, thus he let it loose.
The laughing dark ball shot forth as fast as ever, but the moment it hit the demon, instead of just disappearing inside its body like how it normally worked, it wrapped itself around the demon, almost like a piece of gum. The face stuck out from behind its shoulder almost like a mischievous little kid, still laughing.
Nyoka rubbed his chin with interest.
“That is an interesting ability.”
While it was originally charging forth, it suddenly stopped in its tracks and let out a roar. From there, the demon desperately clawed at the face, but it moved out of the way before it could ever get a grasp on it.
Seeing the opportunity, Kairos rushed forth all the while pulling back his spear. He leaped up into the air to reach where the black heart of the demon should’ve been and threw his spear forth with all of his strength.
Yet, to his surprise, the moment the spear hit, only a loud dink resounded as it bounced off.
One of the demon’s claws suddenly turned into a long blade and swept towards him. As he clicked his tongue, he jumped off the thing once more. After landing back with the others, Nyoka let out a laugh.
“Didn’t I say you can’t target the heart if you want to preserve the cores? Let me show you how it’s done.”
After saying that, he pulled out his black fang while a projection of a snake appeared behind him. Shortly after, the snake went into Nyoka’s figure, after which his body suddenly burgeoned unnaturally. His hair melded into his skin, while his skin suddenly expanded, becoming black and filled with scales. His mouth stretched out wide, while two gleaming fangs grew out the top of his mouth.
Dangerous creaking sounds filled the air as this transformation happened, like the sounds of bones being pushed to their absolute limits.
But once the transformation finally finished, Kairos found himself staring at a fifteen meters long black snake with, strangely enough, glowing black eyes. Like a bolt of lightning, it shot towards the demon, clamping down on one of the demon’s arms, lifting the entire thing up into the air.
A large tear formed in the side of its shoulder that grew deeper as it was thrown up into the air.
Suddenly shifting its momentum, the snake shot downwards like a meteor. With an explosive bang, the demon slammed onto the ground, flat on its face. As for the arm, it was ripped off.
The snake tossed it aside, next to the others. Jeff and Sara both began eating it, drinking the blood like it was completely natural. Kairos couldn’t help but note that the way they drank blood was awfully reminiscent of vampires, taking a large bite and sucking the black blood out.
Neither of them seemed concerned that Nyoka would be in any danger, not even casting a glance in his direction.
Kairos refocused his attention on the battle and saw the snake opening its mouth wide, revealing the fangs, and lunged towards the demon’s head, right in between the two horns. After sinking its fangs in deep, the two horns on the demon’s head suddenly moved, piercing into both of the snake’s eyes.
The snake pulled out of the way while letting out a cry of pain, but the demon still seemed worse for wear. The previously red glowing eyes had dimmed considerably, and while its arms twitched in an attempt to move, it was clear that the demon could no longer muster up much strength anymore.
In fact, the darkness spell from earlier had wrapped itself around the entire body, restricting what little strength it had left.
From there, the face appeared once more, laughing as it had always been. Then, it lunged towards the demon’s eyes, suddenly disappearing after making contact.
And at the same time, the red glow from its eyes disappeared immediately.
The giant snake looked down at the corpse for a few moments before slithering back over to the group. Painful creaking sounds filled the air as Nyoka gradually turned back into a human, changing from a slither to a casual walk.
Kairos smiled bitterly. The strength displayed made him see Nyoka in a new light, along with all the other monsters in the place. Though he felt weak on the surface too, he was at least confidently stronger than most.
But if it was here… it seemed as though he was at the bottom of the barrel if he just looked at his physical strength. He did have his spells, but he couldn’t rely on them because his regeneration was greatly limited. His mana capacity was still mostly full, but that didn’t mean he could rely on it.
He needed to learn how to get a transformation as well.