Ines held onto the spear like it was a stick and waved it around like she was a kid.
From how her eyes weren’t truly focused, it seemed that most of her rationale had already disappeared.
Kairos wondered if he should’ve let himself be electrocuted so that he could keep the spear, but quickly discarded that thought as holding on would’ve made him extremely susceptible to her attacks, and that this wasn’t really the time to be thinking of such things.
Ines pounced towards him, prompting him to throw his body to the side.
As she passed him, he could hear the clear crackle of lightning in his ears. Kairos quickly realized the big problem with his situation. If he tried to attack her, even if he landed a successful hit, his body would seize up under the lightning.
Yet, he couldn’t defeat her if he never fought back.
While stuck in this strange situation, Kairos continued to evade all of Ines’ attacks, whether they were swiping with her claws, biting down with her teeth, or using his own spear against him.
During this time, he suddenly came to the realization that Ines wouldn’t be able to use her lightning ability forever. It should eventually run out. Considering she had been using it for quite a while before, and that she had cast another spell earlier, her mana must be relatively limited.
And so, Kairos continued dodging.
Ines wouldn’t do anything like a feint or even hold back with her attacks so that she could easily follow up with another one. As such, while it wasn’t the easiest to dodge a full power attack, on the whole, it wasn’t terribly hard.
Kairos’ eyes narrowed slightly as he felt the spear brush by the top of his head, causing his hair to flutter.
He then slammed his foot against the ground, forcibly twisting himself to avoid the claw that shot toward him.
Though it was close, Kairos was able to dodge everything with the help of his future vision.
Yet, it seemed he was a little naive to believe that this situation would just consistently repeat itself. The lightning on Ines’ body had grown stronger by several times, to the point that the arcs of lightning began reaching out into the air and even began traveling up the spear.
She might’ve seen through Kairos’ plan of evading until she ran out of mana, or perhaps she had just become impatient.
Regardless, Kairos was quickly put in a bad position.
Ines swung the spear and Kairos originally had the intention of dodging. However, he was able to see in his future vision that even if he did dodge, the lightning would jump out into his own body.
To make matters worse, his body would be restricted even more than usual, making him at least seventy percent slower. Perhaps even more.
In that brief moment, Kairos’ thoughts raced, before bringing him to make a rather risky decision, to match the risky situation.
He threw himself forwards, and slightly to the side.
As he did this, the spear ended up ripping into his chest, brutally tearing up his flesh. However, Kairos had no time to think about that now.
The lightning rapidly began traversing through his body, seizing control over it.
However, before it fully took over, he slipped past Ines, before hooking his arms from underneath her armpits, almost like he was trying to stop a drunk friend from picking a fight.
As the lightning rampaged through Kairos’ body, he could almost feel his entire body tearing apart. However, he was still not in the worst possible situation.
The lightning forced his body to contract involuntarily, but he didn’t try to resist it, instead also trying to contract his muscles further. It caused his arm to squeeze together and ball his hands tightly in a fist.
This way, he was able to restrain Ines, meaning it would be hard for her to fight against him.
Kairos considered it risky to try and wrap around to restrain from behind, however, he figured it would be way worse to try and do it the other way, considering Ines would very likely bite his face off.
Though, that didn’t mean she was unable to do so altogether.
Ines strained her neck, forcibly twisting it to the side before biting down on Kairos. It was quite painful, though most of it was masked by the pain of lightning coursing through his entire body.
Regardless, Kairos couldn’t just sit here and do nothing.
After all, more than the problem of Ines biting through his arm, he had the bigger problem of the lightning slowly destroying his entire body.
It was getting quite hard for his mind to even process basic commands, which made Kairos start to become a little desperate.
Realistically, he only saw one way to attack Ines.
And that was with his teeth.
With nothing else to truly think about, Kairos slowly opened his mouth, resisting the force of lightning trying to contract it.
Once he had opened it enough to take a proper bite, Kairos lunged forth, biting down on the back of Ines’ neck.
Biting down was far easier than opening his mouth, especially since the lightning was now helping him contract his muscles as opposed to resisting it.
Though this wasn’t the first time Kairos had done something like this, he still felt quite strange.
Perhaps it was because Ines was a human, despite her various features that had become monsterized.
Nonetheless, it was far too late to think about those things now.
Red veins began to bulge in Kairos’ widened eyes. A strong taste of blood filled his mouth and eventually had nowhere to go other than down his throat.
Until eventually, he bit off a chunk from the back of Ines’ neck.
Yet… she was still alive, and very much still struggling, causing the lightning to rampage through his body and also tearing through his arm with her teeth.
Kairos felt the lump of flesh in his throat and was greatly unsettled by it. He tried opening his mouth to spit it out, but he was only able to open his mouth so far and wasn’t able to make enough space for the flesh to fall out on its own.
Kairos began choking on all the blood seeping down his throat, and in the end, that choking made him lose what little control he had.
And so, the lump of flesh pressed against his esophagus.
Kairos could’ve still resisted, but if he wanted to be able to breathe properly, then he would need to swallow. More blood began to pump to his brain, making his head radiate an uncomfortable warmth.
As the adrenaline ran through his veins, Kairos made his decision.
And swallowed the lump of flesh.
…It definitely felt strange and uncomfortable. For one, it was human flesh, and for the other, he really didn’t chew the lump of flesh at all, making it kind of hard to swallow in the first place.
Nonetheless, Kairos couldn’t contemplate that now.
He had already opened his mouth enough to take another bite when he was trying to get the flesh out of his mouth.
And so now, he did not have to wait before biting down once more.
Kairos felt his teeth push through the muscles until eventually getting caught on something. He quickly identified it to be the spine.
As more blood continued to pour down his throat, he felt he was losing more of his sanity.
It was moments like these that Kairos really hated the fact that he had his future vision, making him experience all of these things twice.
His desperation grew as his teeth locked themselves onto Ines’ spine. From there, he began pulling.
Countless messy fleshy sounds rang out.
Kairos pulled harder, until he felt the spine was breaking.
Then, a strangely wet sounding crack resounded.
As Ines’ head came off of her body.
[Killed Creature – 0.1 points awarded]
[Dungeon Bonus – 0.4 points awarded]
[Dungeon Currency Transfer – 2 added]
The lightning stopped almost immediately, while Kairos ended up collapsing to the ground, spasming violently.
He still held onto the end of the head in his mouth, though he didn’t want to do so.
It was only until a few seconds later, and after an unknown amount of blood had traveled down his throat, was he able to finally let go of the head.
Kairos immediately began gagging, trying to spit out the blood he had swallowed. However, he was only able to expel the blood in his mouth. It seemed that everything that went to his stomach had already been used up, and spread through the rest of his body.
As this was all happening, there was a faint chuckle in the distance.
“I thought you said you had done something like that before? From how it looks, this is your first time trying to eat someone else.”
Kairos’ vision was blurry, while he wasn’t really listening. However, he could still make out that Oliver was speaking to him.
After spitting a few more times, Kairos sat up and began panting heavily.
“…I just… choked.”
Lucy laughed.
“If anything, it looks like you couldn’t stand it, so you forced yourself to choke.”
The corner of Kairos’ lip twitched.
He reached around, before eventually grabbing onto his bag of green orbs that he had dropped during the battle.
Oliver spared a glance towards the bag, but soon lost interest.
“Why were you even so insistent on killing Ines, anyway? Did she do something to offend you?”
Kairos blinked a few times, slowly recovering.
“She… decided to be enemies with me. And I don’t like having enemies.”
Lucy rolled her eyes.
“So if we declared that we were enemies with you, then you would begin chasing us down?”
The corner of Kairos’ lip twitched.
“…Maybe.”
Oliver laughed, twirling his chain and scythe.
“Even if that meant you would die?”
Kairos fell silent.
Though he wanted to say something back, he had to admit that he didn’t have the confidence to kill both Oliver and Lucy. If it was only one, then he could consider it, but otherwise it was simply too much.
He coughed while wiping away the blood that had covered his mouth and began dripping down to his neck.
“It weighs down on your mind when you have people that may turn against you. That’s why I said I wanted to tie up loose ends.”
Oliver raised an eyebrow.
“And that’s why I said that you should at least have the confidence that you can grow faster than your enemies.”
Kairos’ face twitched.
“But there are no guarantees.”
Lucy sighed.
“Don’t you know that there will always be risks? Why are you being such a dummy?”
Kairos’ face twitched. He had no clue why he was being lectured by some kids. Perhaps this was why Ines had referred to them as the ‘dipshit twins’.
He let out a long sigh.
“I guess maybe.”
Oliver shrugged his shoulders.
“Me and Lucy here have countless enemies. We were kids on the street with nowhere else to turn to. And because we weren’t just going to sit down and die, we stole a whole lot.”
Kairos blinked a few times, and continued to wipe the blood off of his body.
“So… you made a lot of enemies.”
Lucy chuckled.
“That’s an understatement. Sometimes I would even go out of my way to provoke people and find ways to beat them up.”
Kairos’ eyelid twitched.
“That sounds like going too far. You have to at least somewhat think about it, right?”
Oliver smirked.
“It’s because we have confidence in ourselves. We know that no matter what, we will get through it like we always have. That’s why none of our burdens weigh us down, because they don’t cause us to doubt.”
He shrugged.
“If anything, it’s only proof of how far we’ve come.”
Kairos couldn’t help but think of his past after hearing that.
