Kairos saw a building in the distance and pretended he was just curiously walking over to it. The rest of the group followed behind, wondering what he wanted, though Kairos waved his hands in an attempt to tell them to go away.
This only made them more confused, but they decided to comply. Nyoka began going on forward, while Kairos ran over towards a building in the distance. There wasn’t anything special about this building, not that any of those other ones had anything in particular either.
Though, one defining feature might’ve been the fact that there was a gap at its front, acting like a door. Kairos didn’t want to get inside, assuming that anything happened. Yet, as he passed by the place, he saw a pair of eyes glaring at him, waiting like a camper in a First Person Shooter.
Kairos didn’t pay attention to it and got behind the building, out of sight. From there, he began gagging. Not that he actually needed to gag, but this was the idea he came up with.
After all, it would be a little suspicious if he just went back here and told the others not to come for no reason. The other option he had was taking a dump, but he couldn’t exactly do that even if he wanted to.
And so, he resorted to doing this.
He continued to hack away for the next minute or so, but nobody ended up jumping out to him. However, Kairos could still feel the gazes. Though, that wasn’t the thing that convinced him. It was the fact he could smell them.
As a precaution, he increased his future vision to two seconds. He thought about doing it for longer, but he wanted to be able to keep it up for longer.
He knew they were getting closer, and could vaguely tell the direction that they were coming from.
With enough gagging, he was actually able to vomit out a small chunk of half-digested bone. From there, he shook his head. Kairos could feel that they were close and would launch an attack soon, but they were still holding off.
Though he was willing to stay for longer to wait them out, his act would seem a little strange if he didn’t get back to the group. And so, he decided to begin walking away, and kept his future vision at two seconds despite the fuzzy feeling in his head.
It was then he saw in his future vision that they finally made their move. A large black tarp shot downwards towards him, seemingly attempting to swallow him up. Naturally not wanting to get trapped, he sprung backwards. The black tarp proceeded to hit the ground in front of him and crumpled up like a piece of paper.
Though, Kairos still wasn’t in the clear. Far from it, in fact.
Several black blurs flashed by the air, all of them aiming at his limbs. Kairos wasn’t used to people attacking those kinds of spots, but naturally wasn’t caught off guard because of his future vision.
He continued to dance around, while loud cracking sounds resounded around him.
Upon getting a closer look, Kairos noticed that they were actually arrows along with blades that slammed into the ground next to him. They punctured through the ground and caused it to crack, though some attacks were clearly stronger than others.
Kairos was a little frustrated as he still couldn’t see any of his attackers, though he knew where they generally were.
He thought about approaching them, but figured that would cause them to back off. Wanting to get them to come forward voluntarily, he began moving away from all the attacks.
Unfortunately, the ground underneath him suddenly became incredibly sticky, like super glue. The situation had suddenly become quite bad, as he had great difficulty just lifting his feet off the ground. Though, one thing Kairos noted was the lack of coordination these people had.
If they changed his terrain earlier on, then dodging would’ve been far more difficult.
Another few black blurs shot towards him while he was stuck. He could also tell that he wasn’t going to be able to pull himself out of the way in time. With that in mind, he immediately used his harden ability on the exact spots where he would be hit, using very little black blood.
Clangs resounded, as the foreign objects bounced off of him.
It looked like he didn’t take any damage at all. Though, Kairos definitely felt the weight behind those attacks. His skin may not have been penetrated, but the blunt force still disoriented him a bit.
Regardless, he still focused on getting away. With great effort, he peeled away his claws from the ground and placed them further away. It was essentially a futile effort given how slow he was going, but Kairos actually thought that his situation wasn’t bad at all.
Because the people hanging back so far were finally getting closer.
With the ground like this, he had an excuse to be going slower, letting the others catch up. Several objects were still launched at him in the meantime, but he continued to harden the specific parts of his body that needed it.
The damage was negligible.
However, he noticed that the attacks were beginning to get more aggressive. Almost like the people attacking were on a timer. Just to block everything that was being thrown at him, he had to harden a decent portion of his body, and his internals were complaining about the damage they were facing.
But soon enough, Kairos was able to pull himself out of the sticky section, finding himself on normal ground again. He promptly spun around, and once he did, he was greeted by the sight of at least a dozen people staring at him like some sort of treasure, though they still had their eyes on each other as well. Behind all of them were their respective avatars.
Then they began merging with them.
This was the situation that Kairos had wanted. For them to get closer to fight. However, as he watched the dozen or so people’s bodies all contort strangely and mutate to become several times larger, he couldn’t help but wonder if he had made a mistake.
Kairos underestimated the strength of these guys greatly. His thought was that if Nyoka and the others were able to scare them off with only their avatar, then at most these guys also only had their avatars as well.
Seeing this, he began to understand that the kind of strength Nyoka and the others had was beyond his initial imagination. They seemed to have a reputation among people, even those that were quite strong on their own.
However, that didn’t mean he was completely helpless.
He brought out his own avatar, after which a confused wolf appeared. It looked around with curiosity before realizing the situation it was in. Despite the difference in strength, the wolf bared its teeth and seemed to get ready for a fight.
But still, it looked like a baby trying to fight against several adults.
Naturally, that wasn’t what he was relying on. He dug into his own skin to reach his pockets, which held fourteen nature cores. Although it was ideal if he didn’t use one up before the first day had even passed, this was coming sooner or later.
Making sure to not outwardly reveal the nature core, he put it into his mouth and bit down with his sharp teeth.
At the same time, he began aggressively changing his red blood into black blood. In just the first second, his body was getting overwhelmed. However, something quite miraculous happened. Most of the excess black blood funneled into his second stomach and was processed there. It allowed him to continue to confidently channel the conversion spell.
Just when he was feeling weak from lack of blood, the nature core worked wonders, letting him replenish all of his blood in less than a second. And so, he continued to do this for five seconds, after which the nature core’s effects began to wear off.
It was also at this time that the dozen or so people had completed their own transformations.
Despite being transformed, it was still easy to discern confusion from their expressions. It appeared as though Kairos having an avatar confused these people. This made several of them hesitate despite already being transformed.
That hesitation seemed to spread, almost like a virus. It was obvious that there was distrust among the group. They were all waiting for someone else to go first, not wanting to take all the heat in this strange scenario.
It was at that time that Kairos felt his own body begin shifting greatly. He had involuntary spasms within his body as he felt the black flesh rapidly develop into its own kind of muscle mass. As those muscles grew, larger bones formed to house them. For some reason, fur began growing on his body, covering the majority of him.
By the end, he was several times larger.
His avatar began contorting around as well, growing longer fur, sharper claws, and even elongating its teeth. Its muscles were also growing rapidly as well and became clearly defined. New features began arising out of it too. The tail grew longer while the fur on the tail became sharper. Spikes grew out of the wolf’s knees. As for the eyes, they narrowed unnaturally, making it look as though the wolf was glaring.
Just as Kairos was getting accustomed to the sudden power he had gained, he felt another being enter his own mind. It took him a second, but he realized that the wolf was attempting to merge with him.
Kairos decided to accept it, and his body which was already over three meters long began expanding once more, tripling in size again.
The people that were initially trying to attack him seemed to have gotten the message that something strange was happening. Not wanting to bite off more than they could chew, they began running away all the while still transformed.
As for Kairos, he found it incredibly difficult to control himself. The wolf that had invaded his mind thought barbarically and instinctively. It appeared as though it didn’t even really understand that it was sharing control with Kairos.
The wolf’s thoughts only consisted of chase and kill.
And that’s what they ended up doing. The once incredibly sticky ground now just felt like normal ground to him. Kairos’ newly formed giant body lunged toward the others in a blind rage, just going for the one that was closest. That one just so happened to be what looked like a relatively humanoid flower.
Its mobility seemed to be the lowest of them all.