Kairos set his glasses down next to the bag. The reason why he took them off in the first place was that he never actually needed them to see.
However, there was a reason why they were still precious to him.
Long ago, when he was a child, he found a fairly large clear stone. Though it looked like glass, it was far tougher. And when he looked through it, he found that any visions of the future through that stone would be blurred.
The reason why this was so significant to him was because he frequently had headaches. His only method of stopping such headaches was to close his eyes, greatly limiting the amount of information his brain was receiving.
However, closing his eyes all the time was obviously inconvenient. And so, when he was a child, he begged his parents to make him a custom set of glasses without magnification using that very stone.
Kairos’ parents were very reluctant, but after making a deal of no Christmas presents or birthday presents for that year, they agreed. It was especially expensive and troublesome because that rock wasn’t easy to cut, like normal glass.
As such, they had to go through a lot of trouble just to get someone willing to take care of it.
It was damn expensive and Kairos knew that. Considering that they weren’t the most well-off family, he was thankful his parents listened to his request, even though it sounded like the whims of a child that would get bored of it later.
These glasses helped Kairos function like a normal being with far less stress and were a hassle to get his hands on, thus he treasured it very much. Considering the disasters that should happen soon, he figured that this was the last pair he would ever get.
However, they also limited his ability. And right now, a little bit of stress was not worth anything compared to his life.
Taking off his glasses immediately made his head hurt just a tad, but that stress paired along with the adrenaline snapped him to focus.
Kairos took slow steps forward despite the rushing monster in front of him. He kept his eyes wide open, not daring to blink for a moment.
Then, he saw it clearly.
The monster swung its left claw at him.
Kairos ducked to the right, underneath the monster’s other arm before it even attacked. By the time the monster was even halfway through its strike, its target was already gone.
Kairos slipped past, but not without cutting into the waist of the monster. He made a small wound into the side of the monster
Without hesitation, he began running, but furrowed his brows along the way.
In actuality, Kairos didn’t want to do such a shallow cut, especially when he was given such a good opportunity while he was close.
However, with his vision of the future, Kairos saw that his blade would get stuck into the monster. Given that this was his only weapon, there was no way he was giving it up now.
Thus, he decisively went for a smaller cut instead, though its effects probably wouldn’t be as good.
After missing, The monster immediately turned around and roared. Kairos frowned from the excessive volume, but thanked it for being stupid enough to waste a second roaring instead of chasing.
In the back of his mind, Kairos was concerned about the monster ruining his glasses and supplies, but that was an unnecessary worry. It couldn’t care less about those things as it fully intended on charging towards him, leaving a small trail of blood behind.
Although Kairos had a head start, the monster closed the gap in a matter of seconds. Realizing that he didn’t have enough time to run into some room, he preemptively turned around and decided to try the same thing again.
The monster rapidly closed in and swung with his right arm. Kairos ducked towards the left, but as he was trying to pass the monster, he felt a sharp pain coming from his shoulder, like it was being torn apart.
Kairos was already shot with lots of adrenaline, but that fresh pain kicked it into high gear. He immediately stopped himself from moving forward.
A moment later, the monster’s jaws snapped right in front of his face.
Kairos could feel the uncomfortable heat from that monster’s breath as he looked into its eyes.
Although nobody ever looked at him longingly in the eyes like this before, this was not the kind of affection Kairos was looking for.
He saw the monster take a step forward and lunge with its jaws again. Knowing that the monster was much faster than him, Kairos did not have confidence in running away. The immediate solution that came to his mind was impairing the movements of the monster.
All of these thoughts flashed by in less than a second, meaning the monster had yet to move forward in reality.
Kairos grit his teeth, bent his body back, and sent his knife towards the monster’s kneecap.
The monster lunged forth and snapped with its massive jaws, but found that its target was just barely out of reach. On top of that, as it tried to step, a knife lodged itself into its knee.
Kairos used the monster’s own momentum against it and was able to stick the knife in between its bones, causing it to pierce deep.
Although Kairos had little knowledge in the medical field, he had a pretty damn good understanding of the human body.
After all, he got very familiar with where the bones were placed within the body and how to get into the gaps with a knife. As Kairos backed off, he thanked himself for going through all those pain endurance sessions, as hard as they were to get through.
The monster roared loudly and tried to move forward. For a moment, it really seemed like Kairos was doomed considering how quick it was. However, the monster also completely neglected the knife that was lodged inside of it.
As it took a step forward, the muscles and ligaments within its knee pressed hard against the knife, until they were cut altogether. The monster’s calf directly split off with an uncomfortable sounding squelch, causing it to collapse onto the ground
One might say that it used to be an adventurer, until it took a knife to the knee.
Kairos let out a sigh of relief as it landed right at his feet, but still hurriedly backed off. The monster may have lost one of its legs, but it would still crawl with all it could towards him. While Kairos did give up his weapon, at least now he was a little bit faster than the monster.
Kairos ran into the kitchen instead of his room, as that would only corner him. Along the way, he had to pass by the entrance to the house, but for whatever reason, the red light did not go that far, so he was unaffected by it.
Kairos didn’t remember seeing more than one knife in the kitchen, but did a brief scan anyway. From the entire kitchen, he saw the fridge and a nearby dining table. The only somewhat feasible thing that could be used as a weapon was the chair.
Left with little choice, Kairos picked up the chair and turned around to face the monster that frantically crawled towards him.
As he still had some time, he lifted the chair up all the way up by its back. The monster made some strange guttural sounds as it approached.
Kairos didn’t plan on slamming the chair down just yet, but he saw the monster pounce with his future vision. His hands tensed up considerably and he flung the chair down a bit earlier than planned.
As it traveled downwards, the monster pounced forth.
Two crisp bangs rang out one after another.
The monster essentially slammed its own head against the chair, before slamming onto the ground itself. As for the chair itself, a large crack formed on the seat as it was flung towards the ceiling.
Kairos knew he could not keep his hold on it, thus did not try.
The force behind the monster’s pounce forced him a few steps backward, but he had no intention of slowing how fast he was backtracking.
After all, the bloody monster was still alive.
There was a fairly bad wound on its head that began to spew out blood, but that didn’t stop it from moving.
The monster let out aggressive and disorganized groans as it twisted its head around uncomfortably. It almost sounded like a baby that didn’t get a toy, but just far more deep and disgusting.
Kairos picked up another chair and raised it once more, expecting it to pounce like before. However, the monster seemed to be disabled to a certain extent. It crawled over, but at a much slower pace than before, almost like it couldn’t piolet its own body properly.
This made Kairos feel a little relief. With how this battle had been going, it was clear that this thing was tenacious. However, it wasn’t unkillable.
He could bet that many more people had transformed into these weird things so knowing that they were mortal made them far less scary.
Despite all this, Kairos decided to keep his guard up and wait for the monster to approach. He intently focused on his future vision, trying to look out for anything unexpected to happen.
However, he was just overthinking it.
Kairos slammed the chair down on the monster’s head once it was in range, letting out a rather brutal fleshy sound and making it let out a cry of pain. He continued to repeat this several times, scattering blood and flesh around.
Until eventually, a frightening crack resounded.
The monster’s skull cracked open and the contents were crushed.
[System booting up…]
Kairos raised an eyebrow as he saw a strange blue panel appear in front of his eyes. However, it disappeared soon after. He was extremely confused, but decided to chalk it up to hallucinations from the heat.
If it really was something else, then he could deal with it when it came to it.
Kairos’ breathing was terribly ragged. Though at some point, the creature stopped moving, he just really wouldn’t feel reassured until its head caved in. And so, he continued pounding until he could confirm that it was dead.
By now, his hands were trembling violently, sore from the strain he put on it. While Kairos did exercise to a certain extent, it was basically the bare minimum. His actual physical strength was probably less than the average male his age.
Sweat poured down from his head like a waterfall, drenching him and the top of his clothes. Doing such strenuous movements when the temperature only continued to climb wasn’t the easiest in the world.
Kairos let the bloody chair fall to the floor and sat down on the table to catch his breath. After about thirty seconds, he got back up because it was best not to waste time and the bloody smell from the corpse was disturbing him.
Once again, he passed by the entrance to the house and took a peek outside. The red light made everything seem like it was coated in a thin layer of blood. However, except for that, it all seemed normal outside.
Though Kairos didn’t feel safe just the place this opened, he also didn’t dare approach the door. There was a consideration to make a fortification at this point, but the sound it may make in the process could attract more monsters, which he was not ready for right now.
This was both in part because the last fight took quite a bit of Kairos’ stamina and his head hurt from overusing his future vision. He went back to retrieve his knife that was now bloody along with his backpack and glasses.
After comfortably putting it back on, Kairos went up to his room.
His first course of action upon getting there was checking his phone to see why it suddenly started to ring. He never set any alarms of his own before and the one that did occur was far louder than any alarm he had heard before.
Upon looking, Kairos let out a helpless sigh.
That alarm was actually an alert sent out to every device that had reception.
‘Please avoid any and all contact with sunlight until further notice. Currently, a strange phenomenon is occurring in which the sunlight may be lethal to those exposed to it.’
Although it was something that surely saved many people’s lives, it was quite inconvenient timing for him.
Right as Kairos was about to shut his eyes, the blue status panel appeared once more.
[System activation complete].