Kairos really wanted to call the man a dumbass for implying that it somehow wasn’t his own fault that he was in that situation. Nonetheless, he doubted the man would listen.
If anything, he had probably just blamed Kairos in order to delude himself.
And once a person says something like that, there is no point in trying to convince them.
Kairos could tell that the situation had become dangerous, thus he extended his future vision to two seconds despite the strain. The man’s hair rapidly transformed to become gray and feeble. As for the sword, some sort of purple energy began coalescing around it.
Kairos decided not to wait around, and charge up a pulse spell.
A light blue mist began forming around his hand. On the other hand, the man’s sword had completely changed, appearing to be nearly black with purple energy festering around it. One side of the blade had become jagged while the tip of the blade curved upwards.
Kairos continued to watch intently, and he suddenly felt a strange cold pain in his heart.
He suddenly realized that the man had shot forth at unbelievably high speeds, to the point that he didn’t even register him moving. However, while he didn’t catch the movement, his future vision was still enough to tell him when to dodge.
And so he did, abruptly stepping to the side.
A deafening bang shook the room right as he did so.
The man shot forth like a lightning bolt, but his purple sword only ended up hitting the wall. However, he was not discouraged despite the fact he had missed, instead opting to try and slash Kairos once more.
However, before he could do so, Kairos had retaliated with his own spell.
The pulse spell released, making only a soft swish at first.
Before becoming an ear-piercing boom.
The man was blasted back, spitting out blood as he slammed into the wall. His purple sword shot off into the distance before gradually turning back into the normal steel sword.
The man slid down, where his feet hit the ground first, before landing on his rear. A messy bloodstain appeared on the wall where he had slid, but it disappeared rather quickly.
Kairos walked a little closer and let out a soft sigh.
“You really couldn’t have just tried to clear the floor with me, huh?”
The man tried to speak but only coughed up blood in the process. Though that was fair enough given his ribcage didn’t even hold up its original shape, clearly broken, and giving his torso a strange overall shape.
Kairos held his spear at his side and pulled it back slightly.
The man choked out more blood before raising a hand.
“W-Wait, I’ll clear the floor!”
Kairos rolled his eyes.
“And how are you going to clear it like that? You’re literally a cripple.”
The man cringed.
“No, no, I swear I can!”
Kairos narrowed his eyes.
“Well, I don’t want you to.”
He saw in his future vision that the man would lunge out toward him in a last desperate attempt. Kairos decided to wait for that.
And once the man did lunge out, Kairos’ spear whipped through the air.
A disturbing fleshy sound filled the room.
The man’s head was torn off of his body, landing to the side. As for his body, it collapsed and slid on the floor for a few centimeters.
[Killed Creature – 0.1 points awarded]
[Dungeon Kill Bonus – 0.4 points awarded]
[Dungeon Currency Transfer – 11 currency added]
Kairos raised an eyebrow.
“…It is quite rewarding to kill people, it seems. And now I should have at least twelve of that currency too.”
After taking that into consideration, he once again took a closer look at the pathways around him.
He obviously wasn’t going to go down the one with spears, as he knew that would be a dead end. However, he wasn’t entirely sure which of the other ones he should try. From what the man had said earlier, it sounded like he did not go through the incredibly thin pathway, where one would have to walk sideways to fit through.
After a bit of consideration, Kairos picked up the decapitated head from the floor and shoved it into the thin pathway.
After gaining some distance inside, a dagger suddenly shot out of the wall, piercing the head. Afterwards, the head blackened significantly. The flesh quickly rotted before falling off.
Kairos let go, and by the time the head hit the ground, the only thing left was a skull. After a few moments, that skull was swallowed up by the floor underneath. Any trace of the head was now gone in its entirety.
Kairos furrowed his brows before turning to the body of the man.
It had not begun rotting, but all of the blood around it had disappeared. Kairos picked up the body by the collar bone, trying to ignore the spine that was jutting out awkwardly.
He then took a look at the side that was on the floor.
He was greeted with a fleshy layer. Kairos furrowed his brows. The reason why he knew that was strange was that the organs of the body were gone. It seemed that the dungeon had already consumed them.
Kairos found out the reason why there were so many bones resting just outside of this place.
It was because after their dead bodies were consumed, the dungeon would spit out the bones left over.
After a bit of hesitation, Kairos tried throwing the body into the largest pathway. A fireball suddenly shot out and exploded onto it, torching the body and burning it to ash.
The residual fire quickly died off, and in just a few seconds only bones were left of that corpse as well. They began sinking into the ground just like the skull before disappearing entirely.
And just like that, all traces of the man were gone.
Their fight from earlier didn’t even cause a crack in the wall, so the only proof that he actually existed was the steel sword laying on the floor.
Kairos thought about taking the sword, but he frankly didn’t think that it would outperform his spear.
For a few minutes, he took several deep breaths while his eyes were tightly shut. He underestimated the effects of how bad using his future vision was.
He didn’t even feel slightly hungry even now. The wound on his shoulder had already stopped bleeding and even sealed up.
But the stress his mind was facing was like a nightmare haunting him in reality.
That didn’t mean Kairos was going to use one of the green orbs. He waited for the stress to subside while his eyes were closed before moving on. After all, nearly starving to death wasn’t his plan. It clearly didn’t work out for the last person.
He then tightened his grip on the bag of green orbs before turning sideways into the thin hall. Almost immediately, Kairos realized that the bag wouldn’t fit. After a bit of deliberation, he tried to bunch them up so that they would get through. With a quick yank, so that the green orbs wouldn’t become a pile again, he pulled it into the thin hallway.
Almost immediately in his future vision, he felt something pierce through his knee. Kairos quickly shifted the position of his leg, letting the dagger hit air. It was then he thought of how the bag might get stabbed open by the daggers.
The hallway of spears had far more space compared to this. It made it so that there weren’t actually many occasions at all where he had to reposition the bag so it wasn’t stabbed by the spear.
On the other hand, the bag here was spread out, meaning it would easily be pierced by the daggers
Kairos furrowed his brows.
He definitely wasn’t willing to give up one of the green orbs just like that.
Kairos spent a few seconds thinking. He realized that he would have to go fast enough so that the daggers wouldn’t shoot out again to hit the bag, but slow enough so that they didn’t tear through the bag while they were retracting.
…It would be far easier if he extended his future vision to be two seconds long.
Kairos frowned.
But then, he came to a sudden enlightenment.
There was literally no reason to keep his eyes open when the only thing he could see was a small part of the wall. He could extend his future vision while keeping his eyes closed, and the effects of stress should be very small.
And so, that was what Kairos did.
He saw in his future vision that his leg was pierced by the dagger, and quickly moved it. After that, he dragged his bag with him.
Suddenly, he felt a strong pain in his head, prompting him to tilt his head to the side to avoid it. At the same time, he felt the bag get caught by the dagger. Kairos stopped himself from pulling the bag, waiting a little longer.
Yet, he saw that once he tried pulling the bag once more in his future vision, it had already gotten pierced by a dagger.
Kairos grit his teeth and pulled earlier, just barely getting it out of the way.
That was when he felt sharp pains in his chest and arms.
Kairos quickly repositioned them so that they wouldn’t get hurt.
Beads of sweat formed on his forehead. It was far harder to do this than expected, but the important point was that he was doing it successfully.
Kairos honed his focus as he gradually dragged the bag of green orbs with him. He was forced to split his concentration into both dodging the daggers but also maintaining the integrity of the bag.
It was quite difficult, to say the least.
In fact, he was quickly finding this to be nearly impossible. Though closing his eyes reduced his stress, he could still feel his head burning in pain. It was getting harder to tell which sensation was his future vision and which was reality. With his focus spread so thin, he was forgetting to even breathe multiple times now.
This reminded Kairos of one time when he tried to write with both hands at the same time. It was just like this time, very difficult. Many times he found himself just not writing with one hand, unable to do the same for the other.
However, he was quite bored at the time, so he decided to stick with trying it. As he continued to try, he was able to write the same letter and the same time fairly quickly and neatly.
Then, as quite a bit more time passed, he was able to write a word with both pencils writing a different half of the word.
After a few days of just doing so, he was able to write two different words at the same time.
It was quite the useless skill, as he could essentially match the same speed with just one hand and also put less focus into it. However, Kairos also remembered reading that a scientific article said it was impossible to multitask.
He didn’t actually read the article itself, but he definitely remembered seeing that.
After doing some more research, he realized that the article was actually a very poorly conducted experiment, where just a few people were told to try doing two things at once.
And with one trial, that was it.
Kairos searched through more articles and eventually found that it was found certain people can multitask better than others. And for people with split brains, doing two things at the same time was actually completely natural, though there were many other negative effects of having split brains.
It was then Kairos realized he shouldn’t stick to the knowledge that he knew, as countless times it could very well be false.
Which is why he decided never to believe something was impossible.
And so, he decided he was going to overcome this and keep his bag intact, even if the logical odds were almost zero.