Tai furrowed his brows with confusion. Though he understood very basic English, they were just a random assortment of words that he just so happened to learn with the help of his family.
Unfortunately, one of those words was not jump.
As such, he did not understand what Chase was screaming about, and needed Ling to translate. Ling himself had been shaken up considerably, feeling too afraid to say anything.
After all, he was a child, and a very timid one at that.
When Chase yelled at him, while it did break him out of his stupor, he was still having trouble. Frankly, Ling was just not a brave person in general.
In the end, he still couldn’t say anything.
Chase was panicking because the reprieve brought by Kairos’ fireball would soon disappear, meaning he couldn’t carry out the next part of his plan.
Though Tai didn’t understand exactly what was going on, he could tell that Ling was troubled. He suppressed his grunts as he cut through the monsters.
“Ling.”
Tai spoke rather solemnly, almost like he was cutting through monsters like a farmer culling wheat.
“I believe you always try best.”
He spoke in English, despite the fact that they were both fluent in Chinese simply because he knew Ling was more used to it.
“I never blame you.”
With broken English and in a poorly spoken accent, he spoke as best he could, trying to get the meaning out.
Ling pressed his lips together. Though it wouldn’t be easy to understand exactly what his grandfather meant for the average person, he had gotten used to his broken grammar by now. As such, he fully understood what he was trying to say.
Tai was basically saying that he didn’t blame Ling for all the times that he had messed up.
Although Ling had gotten quite used to being yelled at, there was still a part of him that felt insecure because of all of that yelling and berating. It made him feel quite incapable, that he should be blamed.
In fact, Ling was also the reason why his parents died.
He was too afraid to say anything when he saw the monster when he was the only one that saw it. And because of that, his parents ended up getting torn apart and eaten. Ling could only hide away and cover his ears, trying to deny the experience.
With all those thoughts in mind, he came to realize that this was not the person he wanted to be.
So even though it was scary, he spoke.
Ling told his grandfather to jump.
Tai did not understand why he was saying so, and even thought that was a terrible idea. However, he followed it without hesitation, leaping into the air and doing a backflip.
That was when Chase whipped around, with his giant mana arrow at the ready. While his hair was still in the air from the sudden turn, he let the arrow loose.
Grazing just under Tai’s back, the mana arrow shot through the air, creating a miniature vacuum. While traveling through the air, it began to destabilize, becoming far bigger than it was originally and losing its form. It looked as though the arrow was actually made of sugar and began dissolving in water.
But as messy as it was, it was powerful.
It had reached over five meters in width and pulverized any of the monsters that were in its way, and even killed some of them that were just barely caught at the side.
The mana arrow gradually lost momentum as it traveled, and by the time it got close to where Kairos and the others were, it had dissipated entirely.
When Tai landed on his feet, he quickly realized what happened. A path had been cleared for them, though it would only last a little while.
Tai rushed forth, keeping an eye on the monsters nearby.
Chase followed closely from behind and spared a glance at Ling from over his shoulder.
“See? You can do it if you try.”
Ling was trembling slightly.
“Y-Yeah.”
The corpses of the monsters that had been hit by the mana arrow were all torn into pieces, but those pieces were pushed towards the side and had gathered quite a bit. It wasn’t something that Chase was expecting, but it was a nice surprise as it made the monsters have difficulty getting over it.
However, it wasn’t as though it was an actual wall, so the monsters had soon gotten past it.
Tai swung his glaive at the nearby monsters, but didn’t use the orange energy this time. He was under far less pressure compared to before. Even more so than the smaller count of monsters, the fact that his footing was clear helped far more.
Earlier he had to step over the corpses he killed to make any progress, forcing him to split his attention lest he slipped.
Kairos was watching all of this happen from above. Though the people below were in danger, he couldn’t help but think of all the points he had gotten. From his rough calculations, he got more than five points from just a fireball.
While he would get double from just barely entering the top ten for some achievement and he had gotten even more from recklessly killing the monsters in the freezer, those situations were different.
Kairos was quickly realizing that as one rose in rank, the difference in power between ranks grew immensely. Along with that, meant it would be harder to kill those that were at a higher rank.
As a consequence, while they would need more points to max their stats, it would also be harder to get those points. This made him incredibly tempted to cast more fireball spells, but he held himself back for now.
Kairos watched as Chase and the others ran back. A small frown formed on his face.
“…As powerful as that mana arrow was, I don’t think that it was enough to get them all the way here.”
The monsters were closing in again, while there was still quite some distance from the building.
Tori tilted her head to the side.
“They should be able to just barely make it. They were doing fine before too, right?”
Kairos sighed.
“But the problem is they have no reliable way of getting up here. It will be difficult to do so while surrounded by monsters.”
He looked toward Tori.
“It seems that we are going to need your wing spell. Quickly add as many points as you can to mana capacity.”
Tori was slightly taken aback, but acted quickly.
She opened up her status panel before pressing on the mana capacity option rapidly.
Soon, it reached from its original 1.0 to 4.2.
Kairos let out a soft sigh.
“Alright, you’re going to need someone to help clear the nearby monsters so that they don’t get to you instead. I will take care of that while you focus on flying the others up.”
He then turned to Nicole and Sydney.
“You guys stay here, if you go down there, we will have more people that need saving.”
Though Nicole seemed reluctant, she also understood that by going down there she would probably only be a burden, thus she kept her mouth shut.
Tori looked at Kairos, then at the ground.
“Alright, so when are we moving?”
In response, Kairos took a deep breath.
“Whenever I say go.”
He took off his glasses and threw them to Nicole, who promptly caught them. Along with that, he set his sharpened bone down on the ground. Kairos took a deep breath, pushing his future vision to become two seconds long. The strain in his mind was immediately apparent, but that extra two seconds let him see far more.
He jumped off and used the pulse spell in his future vision, testing out how large of an effect various amounts of mana would have.
Channeling for a second and a half would kill almost all of the monsters in the vicinity, and also cause a massive crater to form on the ground. However, that was also probably a waste of mana.
He then tried it for slightly less than a second.
This had similar results, but the ground was more or less unscathed in this scenario, but the monsters were still dead.
Kairos then jumped off.
“Go.”
Mana began channeling in his hand, causing a faint blue mist to appear. The monsters saw Kairos and rushed toward him, but were none the wiser to their fate.
When he was only a meter above all of the monster’s heads, he let the pulse spell loose.
A deafening bang ensued.
[Killed Creature – 0.1 points awarded] x 29
[Multi-Kill (Type – Normal) – 0.3 points awarded]
The monsters underneath him were turned into bone fragments and a bloody paste, while thin cracks appeared on the pavement below.
For a second, the surrounding monsters took a step back and froze, perhaps a bit shocked by the sudden death of so many. But right afterwards, they charged in recklessly once more.
Tori landed by his side at the next moment.
Kairos pointed towards Chase and the others who were getting near.
“You take care of the monsters towards them and pick them up when they get close. Try to save as much mana as possible.”
Tori nodded and faced in that direction.
Kairos preemptively rushed forth. He took into consideration that his glaive had a miniature spike on the other end, which meant he might accidentally hit Tori by accident if he didn’t make some space.
He tried to recall how the old man used the glaive, holding his hands in the same position. Though, he still felt a little out of place because he didn’t really know how to use the glaive.
To remedy this, Kairos extended his future vision to two seconds and tried out a slash. He was able to behead two monsters, but it still felt a little clunky. Kairos stopped himself from doing so, causing his future vision to warp.
Then, he tried something else.
In the end, he was able to try out four different swings before needing to actually act. In those swings, Kairos found that the glaive was relatively heavy, which made downward swings a little cleaner. Though he could still overpower it easily because of his points in strength.
Kairos held the glaive low, sweeping upwards in a diagonal slash before quickly following up with a diagonal downwards one.
The sound of flesh being ripped open filled the air.
[Killed Creature – 0.1 points awarded] x 5
At the same time, Tori’s katana flashed.
Over ten heads flew into the air. It seemed as though the monsters didn’t even realize that they had died once before it had already happened. Tori’s arm was trembling fiercely after that attack, but she still held onto the katana firmly.
The monsters were pushed back, while Chase and the others had gotten closer.
Tori was panting heavily, but forced herself to swing once more. As for Kairos, he was finding it easier to use the glaive the more he did so. It quickly became apparent to him that the range it provided was very useful, especially so against these monsters.
[Killed Creature – 0.1 points awarded] x 7
That was when Tai had finally broke through the monsters, meeting up with Kairos and Tori.
He was not in good condition to say the least.
There were several claw wounds across his body and even a nasty chunk bitten out of him. Chase himself wasn’t in much of a better condition. The only person relatively better was Ling, who had a few scrapes over his body.
Kairos called out.
“Take them, now!”
Tori’s wings suddenly appeared out of her body. Without explaining, Tori sheathed her katana and reached out to pick up Tai. While still half in a daze, the two of them shot into the air.
Kairos sighed.
“Now all we have to do is wait for our turn.”
Yet, as though that was a signal, a strange cry suddenly came out from the distance.