Read I See One Second Into The Future: Loner In The Apocalypse Chapter 51 online for free - AllNovelFull

The minigun crawled out of the hole it was in, but did not begin firing immediately. This gave enough time for people to get out of the way. Though, not everybody did just that.

Sydney decided that instead of running, she was going to charge towards the minigun, raising her sharpened bone.

Kairos couldn't help but be baffled by this sudden courage that just looked like a suicide attempt to him.

Didn't she see earlier how the minigun just took down an entire building?

And now, she was charging at it with just her own vulnerable body.

The minigun was trembling, almost like it was in pain. It fired a shot, but because of how deformed the barrel was, the bullet just hit itself, causing some blood to start leaking out of the barrel.

Seeing this, Sydney's choice of rushing in didn't seem so foolish.

However, Kairos clenched his fist soon after.

"DON'T! JUST RUN!"

Sydney turned back and hesitated, but in the end, she kept going. Kairos' eyes widened tremendously as he watched what happened next.

The minigun didn't seem to care anymore, making it all or nothing. It didn't hold back at all, firing as many rounds as it could. Almost immediately it began bleeding heavily. In the first moment, blood splattered out from the barrel, and in the next, it was torn off entirely, blown away by its own firepower.

Now, the minigun began shooting bullets covered in its own blood. However, because the barrel was essentially removed, the bullets had next to no accuracy, shooting off in nearly every direction that was 180 degrees in front of the thing.

Nonetheless, this was a minigun that had an incredibly large rate of fire. Normal miniguns could easily begin firing one hundred rounds in a single second, but this one surpassed that by a wide margin. It nearly shot three hundred rounds.

And so, given that Sydney was standing up in front of it, she ended up taking many shots.

She held the sharpened bone in front of her, but that would only block the occasional bullet.

Her skin was ripped through as holes appeared one after another. They pierced through less lethal spots like her stomach and her limbs. However, they also pierced through places like her heart, her neck, and even her skull.

At one point, a stray bullet pierced straight through Sydney's eye, causing it to burst into a mess of blood and other fluids.

Yet, despite everything she kept moving forward. Each time a bullet wound formed in her body, it would already begin healing at a rate visible to the naked eye.

Kairos widened his eyes in bewilderment.

"…What?"

He continued lying down on the ground, and even got one of the fragments of the black carapace so that he could block a stray bullet if it just so happened to come towards him.

Sydney's bravery was commendable, and her will to sustain the pain of her body getting ripped apart was astonishing.

However, bravery could only get a person so far.

Sydney's waist got ripped in two, causing the top half of her body to collapse onto the ground, bleeding tremendously. Nicole screamed hoarsely.

"Mother!"

Yet, even when she was ripped in two, she continued to crawl forth. Both of her eyes were widened to their limits, even when one of them was in the process of regenerating. As for her face, it was nearly expressionless, like her concentration was at its very limit.

Though, it seemed almost everyone, including Sydney herself, underestimated how strange her power seemed to be.

Because the lower half of her legs that were already detached from her body began moving on their own. The movements were clumsy at first, but then they began to push off the ground, sliding themselves closer to Sydney's waist.

It did so at a faster rate than she could crawl, so it ended up latching back onto her and quickly regenerated. After just a few moments, Sydney found herself able to stand back up and run towards the minigun.

Kairos' jaw dropped.

He simply didn't think that such a brute force method was even feasibly possible. His mind would not even think to use such a suicidal strategy of just charging forth, it would just not be considered as a possibility.

And that was even if he knew that he had some sort of super strong regeneration ability.

Everyone watched on speechlessly as Sydney continued to get closer.

However, as she did get closer, the gunfire naturally became more concentrated on her simply because the distance was not as far.

Her body was quickly ripped apart.

Her legs fell off separately, as did her arms.

However, the most frightening thing was that her head separated from the rest of her body, plopping down on the floor.

Yet, every single body part of Sydney's continued moving, almost like she wasn't even a human.

The minigun didn't seem to like this. After a few seconds, it tilted the barrel towards one of the body parts, one of the legs. In just a couple moments, it was torn into a bloody paste.

Though Sydney's regeneration power was frightening, it was not to the point that it could still save that leg. That thing was gone.

If the minigun had decided to do so on Sydney's head, she might have been gone for good. However, it seemed like the minigun had a really difficult time processing things in general.

Even when the leg had turned into a bloody paste, it continued shooting at it as though it still presented some sort of great threat.

This gave enough time for one of Sydney's arms to wrap around the minigun and pull. That arm was able to tilt the minigun upwards, but only by so much before it began falling again.

One of Sydney's legs pushed up on the bottom of the base, assisting in tilting it up further. Then, both the other arm and leg joined in, able to push the minigun up and causing it to land on its back.

The minigun hadn't paused in firing, but now, it could only shoot at the ceiling.

While it did rip apart the ceiling tiles of the grocery store, it was no longer able to shoot any of the people, which was the important part.

Sydney's waist anxiously did a snake-like maneuver to get itself closer to her head. And after a few moments, it did land itself onto her head.

The frightening regeneration did its work, and she was now a body with no limbs. At first, Sydney had sprayed blood everywhere from each part of her body, but now, the bleeding had stopped.

That's not to say that Sydney was in the perfect condition right now. While her limbs were currently holding down the minigun, both of her eyes had already rolled into the back of her head.

As for the limbs, though they anchored the minigun down, that didn't mean it stopped struggling. Almost like a tortoise on the back of its shell, it jiggled back and forth.

There was not much success because of Sydney's limbs, but they couldn't go on forever. In fact, they were quickly losing their ability to move by the second, gradually relaxing.

Kairos forced himself up onto his feet and stumbled forwards.

He wasn't sure if he would make it in time.

However, there was someone else who had the same intentions as him.

It was his father, Sam.

He had rushed forth while still covered in a lot of dust from the debris of the collapsed building. It only took him a few moments to sprint over and reach the minigun.

And once he did, Sam pulled his sharpened bone to the side as a strange white light began circulating around it like a chainsaw.

With an audible grunt, he slammed it into the side of the minigun and an unbearably loud grinding sound ensued, like a saw grinding into metal.

It was so loud, that even the blaring gunfire from the minigun was almost getting drowned out.

Sweat began to form on Sam's forehead as he continued pushing, but also tilted his head back so that he would be hit by the bullets.

He was gradually cutting through the thing, but the process was slow. Even after ten or so seconds, he had only cut a few centimeters in. It had peeled away part of the minigun, revealing a fleshy interior, but did not cause any lethal damage.

Noticing that the situation was still bad, Kairos continued to run over.

Sydney's limbs had held strong for quite a while, but now, they had all softened up, no longer able to move. The minigun rocked back and forth with more intensity, trying to flip itself over.

Seeing this, Sam gave up on trying to cut any further, abandoning the bone altogether so he could use both hands to hold the thing down.

He kept his head down as beads of sweat continued to form on his forehead.

Though the situation was bad, it still seemed to be relatively under control.

But of course, it took a turn for the worse.

The minigun seemed quite suicidal at this point. While the sound of gunfire continued, for some reason, no more bullets came out of it. However, the sides of the minigun began to bulge dangerously.

Sam narrowed his eyes as he quickly came to a conclusion.

The minigun was shooting at itself, tearing a hole through its very being so that it could shoot him.

Sam grit his teeth.

"I need some help!"

Kairos began gathering all the remaining mana he could into his palm for another pulse spell. However, he quickly found himself drained. His heart immediately felt the strain as he tried to amplify its power.

Unfortunately, it wasn't even close to the level of the previous pulse spell which was unable to kill the minigun.

But Kairos still saw an opportunity, the opening that his father created with the blade, peeling back its extremely tough shell and revealing the insides.

If he could just get closer and cast the spell, then it would all be fine.

As that thought flashed by his mind, he saw in his future vision the gunfire suddenly burst out of the minigun's side and shred his father into a bloody mess.

Kairos immediately yelled.

"Run!"

Sam hesitated. His thought process was that he couldn't just give up on holding the minigun down, else it would begin to fire at everyone else. Then everything would be a lost cause.

But that moment of hesitation was only for a split second.

Sam knew from previous experience to trust the calls of his son. That was part of the reason why he even listened to Kairos' strange text to avoid the sunlight.

And so, he tossed himself aside.

Right afterwards, part of the minigun burst, spraying blood and bullets in the air.

Sam just barely saved himself, but now the minigun was free to rock back and forth once more. Using this as an opportunity, it nearly hoisted itself up.

And if it did so, then Kairos would be the one ripped apart by bullets.

However, he didn't even flinch, as he saw what had happened.

Sydney, while still only being a body with no limbs, sat up herself and bit down on the deformed shield plating of the minigun before holding it down.

Kairos ducked down before sliding across. The side of the minigun that faced him immediately began to deform, showing the minigun's intentions.

However, it was already too late.

Kairos pushed his palm against the opening of the minigun and let the pulse spell loose.

A fleshy exploding sound resounded.

While the outside of the minigun was unharmed, blood spewed out of every orifice.

[Killed Creature (??? Kill – Undeterminable Variant) – 0.6 points awarded]

Kairos finally relaxed when he saw that message, but then quickly turned his attention to Sydney.

She was about to lose consciousness.

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Although they had defeated the unfairly strong minigun, Kairos and the others weren't out of trouble yet. Everyone quickly gathered around Sydney, inspecting her condition.

Kairos quickly got her legs and arms, putting them in the proper places so that they could reattach once more. And thankfully, they did do so. However, the pace was much slower compared to before.

Sydney's eyelids began to fall, like she was unbearably sleepy. However, Kairos felt it would be bad if she lost consciousness, so he called out.

"Don't fall asleep!"

Sydney blinked a few times, but her eyes still didn't open up very wide. She seemed to be on the verge of falling asleep.

Kairos furrowed his brows intensely as he thought of possible solutions to her condition. Then, an idea he had come up with long ago resurfaced within his mind.

"Open your status panel! I will help you add points into endurance."

From what he remembered from testing it a while ago, while adding points in endurance wouldn't heal the injury, it would still increase their overall constitution without increasing the injury.

In video game terms, it could be seen as someone taking ten damage out of a one hundred shoppingmodehp health bar. Adding one hundred points to the total health wouldn't change that the ten damage existed. However, it would change the fact that what was initially ten percent health missing, became five percent.

Kairos raised his finger, ready to press a button.

It took Sydney a second, but she did end up opening her status.

[Status]

[ID: 423632551433]

[Rank: E-]

[Objective: Survive]

[Proof Of Perfection Points: 0.3]

[Strength – 4.8

Agility – 4.4

Endurance – 5.0

Willpower – 4.6

Mana Capacity – 0.4

Magic Affinity – 0.3]

[Special Abilities: Gnawing Hunger (F), Temperance (F), Earth Spell (F)]

[Hide]

Kairos' eyes widened considerably when he noticed that she only had three tenths of a point available. He assumed that she must've added these points into her stats beforehand, though it confused him why she decided to spread her points across all the traits rather evenly.

Kairos' finger decisively shot towards the plus sign next to the endurance stat.

But then it froze.

[Points – 0.3 – 0.2]

He saw the available evolution points go down, but he was sure that he didn't do anything.

And just a moment later, Sydney's stats changed, despite nobody touching it.

[Mana affinity – 0.3 – 0.4]

Kairos narrowed his eyes and muttered.

"What?"

Though the points seemed to be automatically assigned to whatever position they wanted to be in, Kairos did not act immediately. Thoughts flashed through his mind one after another.

He remembered that Sydney's stats were suspiciously low before after she had slaughtered an extremely large amount of bunnies when they had been assaulted by a horde of them.

In fact, just by looking at all the carcasses that littered the ground at the time, Kairos was fairly certain that Sydney had killed the most bunnies. Most of the carcasses laid out across the floor hardly had anything left of them, not even the bones.

The bloody mess underneath Sydney only told a small picture, as most of the carnage had been swallowed up by her.

This made Kairos think of the gnawing hunger skill. This seemed to be the source of Sydney's strange regeneration ability.

It was quite clear that if an ability just gave one the ability to regenerate fully even from a near death state, that it would be a little unfairly powerful. Kairos would expect that sort of ability to be inborn, or an ability acquired under special circumstances.

Yet, from what he could tell, this seemed to be some conicendental mutation that Sydney got from the original transformation she had gotten from being exposed to a sliver of the red sun.

Kairos believed that it had some sort of relation to the grief she had from the death of Harold and possibly some other special features of her constitution. All in all, there were a myriad of factors that made it too hard to determine which exactly let her gain this ability.

However, all of that wasn't important.

Rather, the fact that she seemed to need these points seemed more crucial. Kairos pressed his lips together as he saw the points she had available go from 0.2 to 0.1.

He could still increase her endurance, but that may actually have a bad effect in Sydney's case.

Seeing as she was still regenerating, Kairos took a deep breath and shook his head.

"Nevermind, it seems that the points are being used for your healing."

He narrowed his eyes as he saw Sydney's agility stat go from 4.4 to 4.5.

"And they aren't even wasted, as they are being put into your own stats."

Although Sydney still looked really tired, her body looked relatively intact. The thick layer of dark red blood that coated her clothes was rather concerning, but there were no visible wounds.

Her last point disappeared, before going into her willpower stat.

Sydney parted her lips slightly.

"Hun… Hungry."

Nicole immediately stood up and saluted.

"I'll go get something!"

As she ran off, Kairos called out after her.

"Get something that doesn't need much chewing!"

Nicole gave a thumbs up without looking behind her to acknowledge she understood. Just a couple seconds later, she returned with some canned peaches and opened them up next to her.

After opening it up, she was about to pick up one of the peach slices with her hand, but quickly stopped herself once she noticed how dirty and bloody it was.

Instead, she took out one of the utensils she had, picked one up and then put it into Sydney's mouth.

Sydney almost immediately swallowed it, not even bothering to chew.

Seeing how quickly she ate it, Nicole seemed a little concerned about choking, but decided to give her another one anyway.

Once more, she swallowed it whole.

Kairos furrowed his brows.

"I think it's better if you just dump the entire thing in."

Nicole let out a soft gasp.

"Ah! O-Ok."

She then put the can next to her mouth and tilted it, letting all of the peaches fall in. Sydney made a gagging sound, making everyone a little concerned, but all of the peaches traveled down nicely.

Kairos looked at her intently.

"Do you need more?"

Sydney took a few deep breaths and shook her head.

"I-"

Though she was still speaking, Kairos' eyes suddenly snapped to the side.

It was because Sydney's points had changed.

[Points – 0.0 – 0.1]

Then, a moment later, it went back to zero. Sydney's skin originally had a few leftover cuts, but they quickly disappeared.

Then, her strength stat increased.

Sydney furrowed her brows, even blushing slightly because of embarrassment.

"Ah, I feel… hungry again."

Kairos muttered.

"You are able to gain points through eating."

Sydney's eyes widened considerably.

"E-Eh?"

Chase raised an eyebrow.

"That does seem to be the most likely case."

Tori gasped.

"Wait, how is that fair?"

Sam simply chuckled.

"This is quite ironic, considering you were never a glutton before, Sydney."

Sydney laughed weakly.

"It isn't healthy to eat more than what you need, after all."

Kairos turned to Nicole.

"Could you get some more food?"

Nicole broke out of her stupor, jumping slightly.

"Ah, yes!"

Kairos nodded and paused for a moment.

"…Thanks."

Nicole smiled a little and ran off to get more. She soon returned with a couple cans of peaches and opened them up before giving them to Sydney.

She ate them as greedily as before.

This time, it didn't increase after one can, but after another, it went up by a tenth of a point.

Soon after, that one disappeared as well as another stat was increased.

Kairos sucked in a cold breath.

"…Sydney, do you feel like you can cast either the gnawing hunger ability or the temperance ability?"

Sydney blinked a few times before shaking her head.

"No, but I do feel like I can cast the earth spell."

Kairos nodded with his chin in hand.

"It seems like those two abilities are passive, activating on their own. My guess is that your gnawing hunger ability lets you convert food you eat into evolution points and also use those points to heal yourself. Though even when healed, you still gain stats."

He furrowed his brows, thinking of all the numbers. Though he could only work with rough estimates, he could already come very close to answers with just a rough estimate in math class.

It was just something that came naturally to him, letting numbers flow through his mind peacefully.

Kairos took a deep breath.

"As for the temperance ability, it should have something to do with abating your hunger. I think it might make you need to consume less food… as well as fewer points when using your gnawing hunger ability. Or it might be giving you more points, but regardless it is increasing the conversion ratio."

He blinked a few times.

"In other words, this ability perfectly compliments your other one, enhancing both of them at the same time."

Sydney's eyes widened significantly.

"W-Wow…"

Kairos hummed.

"Well, while we are still here, I guess you should eat as much as you can. Just leave a bit for us to carry along later."

Sydney shakily got up to her feet and nodded.

"If my abilities really work like that, then I should take advantage of that."

Kairos nodded.

"First eat the stuff that will either spoil soon or is not calorie dense."

Sydney let out a small sigh.

"Alright."

With that, she headed off to begin eating. Chase couldn't help but smile bitterly.

"…Something like that really makes me jealous."

Kairos rolled his eyes.

"You were able to cheat out mana early and even got a special bow. Don't you think you don't have the right to be jealous?"

Chase chuckled.

"Yes, yes. But if we ever do find a large food source, then she will become quite frightening, no? It wouldn't be a stretch to say she may soon surpass all of us."

Kairos shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, at least she will be on our side.

Chase smirked.

"Yes, thankfully I am not on the opposite side of her…"

Tori pressed her lips together.

"…I wish I had some sort of special ability like that."

Kairos waved his hand dismissively.

"Once you evolve, you will be able to use up your points to get your own ability too."

Tori smiled brightly.

"Heh, yeah."

But then, she pouted.

"…Why can't I evolve, still?"

Kairos rolled his eyes.

"Just have a little bit of patience."

Tori sighed.

"I guess there's nothing else I can do."

Sam was looking at Sydney intently, before shifting his gaze towards the corpse of the minigun. Kairos noticed this and seemed to guess his thoughts.

"If Sydney eats too many monsters, I am fairly confident that she will turn into a monster. It's not like she couldn't, but doing so would be too risky. We should avoid it if possible."

He sighed.

"Plus, it is rather… bad for the mind to eat the corpses."

Kairos said this because he remembered one of his past experiments. Just sticking his hand into the corpse of a monster increased his evolution energy. So naturally, eating should increase it by quite a bit more.

Sam chuckled and scratched the back of his head.

"Alright, alright! But I didn't even say anything."

Chase smirked.

"I admit I was thinking of that too."

Kairos waved his hand.

"Anyways, we should get back to eating our own fill. Ah, and let's also start a fire, the thing we were trying to do before."

Sam laughed.

"That was quite crazy, wasn't it?"

Nobody was against that, so they went to work. Kairos collected some of the clothes he could find scattered by and made a small pile with them. Then, they all had a nice warm meal, making them refreshed.

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[Endurance – 4.9 – 5.5 Points – 0.6 – 0.0]

Kairos had spent his points in increasing endurance due to what happened in the last fight, where the only real damage he took was from casting a spell at high power.

He let out a soft sigh.

Kairos wiped away some of the food stains still stuck on the side of the metal pot with a disinfectant wipe before cleaning his own utensils.

Sam couldn't help but give a thumbs up afterwards.

"You guys even brought a whole cooking set with tools! That made this meal feel like there isn't actually an apocalypse going on right now."

Kairos shrugged his shoulders.

"Even though it is the apocalypse, it doesn't change how hygiene is important. If you stick a bunch of dirt and blood into your mouth all the time, then you might find yourself suddenly dying out of nowhere."

Sam nodded.

"Haha, of course, of course."

Chase casually stomped out the fire with his foot, but raised an eyebrow when he noticed the flames started to pick up on his clothes. He batted it away with his hand and was thankfully able to get it off with just a bit of trouble.

"These fires are far more potent than normal ones."

Kairos rubbed his chin with his thumb and forefinger.

"I guess magic versions are a bit better then."

Chase nodded.

"Guess so."

Sydney went off after eating to continue eating some other foods, but she clearly had far less enthusiasm compared to before.

She furrowed her brows as she forcefully shoved down some rye bread.

Nicole blinked a few times.

"Mother, are you ok?"

Sydney smiled softly.

"Yes, sweetie. I just… feel quite full."

Nicole put a finger on her chin.

"Then you should stop eating, right?"

Sydney looked down at her feet.

"But… I need to do this. What if we all die because I wasn't powerful enough?"

Kairos sighed.

"Nicole's right. If you really can't eat anymore, don't force yourself. If something really does happen, you will be able to respond better while not feeling sick from overeating."

Sydney blinked a few times.

"Oh… that makes sense."

Kairos cracked his neck.

"Anyway, we should get a change of clothes since we can. This dried blood is making me feel really uncomfortable. Then we can stock up on food and move on."

Tori tilted her head to the side.

"Why can't we just stay here? There is still quite a bit of food left over."

Chase stood up straight and cracked his back.

"The reason to convince you is that those crazy cult people are still looking for us and have some weird tracking ability."

He turned around and shot her a glance.

"The real reason is that stagnating here is just boring."

Tori let out a soft sigh.

"That does make sense. I don't really want to stay here anyway."

With that, there seemed to be no other complaints. And so, everyone changed their clothes and restocked on food.

There wasn't actually that much left in the grocery store. Most of the stuff that would last long were taken by the group, while the rest wouldn't last for much longer, possibly only a few days.

They all set out together, deciding to go deeper into the city.

Kairos turned to his father.

"Do you remember the direction that Mom left?"

Sam furrowed his brows.

"I do think I have a general idea, but it has been a few days since then. I don't think it would be that accurate."

Kairos waved his hand dismissively.

"Might as well follow it if we can. There's nothing else to really lead us, after all."

Sam shrugged his shoulders, agreeing with that logic.

"Alright, just follow me."

Like how it was before, the streets were quiet. However, all of the torn corpses that littered the ground made it feel loud… almost like they were still screaming out in pain even though they made no sound.

Kairos would occasionally take a glance at these corpses, seeing how thoroughly ripped apart they were.

In all honesty, it made him somewhat afraid. The more he thought about it, the crazier it seemed to him. From how battered these monsters were, they didn't even have the chance to fight back.

And on top of that, so many monsters were massacred just like that, all over the entire city.

More than just the devastation, Kairos couldn't help but continue to think about the implications.

As in, the number of points his mother must've acquired.

There must be very few things that could even challenge her at this point with how powerful she must've become.

And while his father did tell him that she did not lose all of her sanity, Kairos couldn't help but still feel apprehensive. What if she did end up losing that bit of sanity? Or maybe she wouldn't remember him, thus only sparing his father.

Yet, in the end, despite thinking of various bad situations, he still wanted to see his mother.

If she really wasn't the same, then so be it.

But if there really was part of her still left, then he wanted to reunite with her. Not because she was super powerful, but because she was his mother that cared for him.

Kairos sighed.

Sam turned to look at him.

"Something on your mind?"

Kairos simply shrugged his shoulders.

"It's the apocalypse, so being a little disgruntled is normal."

Same laughed.

"But that's why laughing and smiling is even more important."

Kairos rolled his eyes.

"I guess."

As they continued to go down the streets, they came across something that unsettled them. Even more so than all of the corpses spread out across the ground.

It was… the sound of people singing.

Sam was the first to stop in his tracks, prompting everyone else to do the same. There was clear hesitation on whether or not they should move forward.

The singing wasn't really anything creepy itself. It just sounded like some teenagers having a fun time with some trendy song. Yet, as normal as it was before, in the context of the apocalypse it was simply too weird.

Chase narrowed his eyes.

"Should we go meet these people?"

Tori tilted her head to the side.

"They don't sound like bad people. I can't imagine they would be that bad if they are just singing."

Kairos rubbed his chin.

"Since these people are so casually singing, they are either crazy, or competent enough to not take the apocalypse too seriously. In the first case, we can deal with them fairly easily, and in the second case we can probably have a civil conversation with them."

Nicole hummed.

"That doesn't sound too bad. Maybe we can learn something from them."

Everyone was more or less ok with this decision, even though they knew there was an element of risk. But that was quite natural, since everyone in the party had already become much stronger than what they were before.

As they got closer, they found that it really was what it sounded like. There wasn't some special type of monster emulating the sound, but rather just three teenagers around the age of Kairos and Nicole, singing.

They all had white masks that covered the top part of their faces, almost like they were at some sort of dance. Other than appearance, these masks didn't serve much purpose as most of the face was revealed anyway. Their clothes were nothing special, slightly worn down casual clothing.

One of them was a guy with short, but bright white hair. It was fairly clear from the shade of white that this wasn't someone with aged hair, but dyed hair. He was twirling around a red string with a small red ball on top.

"And I… can't see… the difference between a nightmare and my life."

Another was a girl with long blue light blue hair, tied back up into a ponytail. She had a red paddle ball in her hand that she was playing with, though the ball was rather spiky.

"So please, just save me from myself. Cause there's a side of me~"

The last one was a guy with hair a little longer than usual and light green hair. He seemed to be holding a red pole, but on closer inspection, one would see that it was actually a microphone stand.

"And no one sees it, I battle demons everyday. I can't escape my mind."

They were all sitting on the tops of the roofs of various restaurants, sitting across from each other. Their legs dangled carelessly, and they even kicked around at the very edge, clearly not concerned about the fact they were roughly two stories high.

On top of that, they all had smiles, like it was the weekend and they didn't have to go to school.

The three seemed to notice the others, but didn't really take much note of them, continuing to sing to themselves.

Nicole gave a small clap and nodded to herself.

"You guys are really good at singing!"

The guy with white hair snapped his finger, which smoothly transitioned into a raised thumb and index finger pointing towards Nicole.

"Haha, naturally."

The girl with blue hair swayed her head back and forth with a small smile.

"We've been doing it since we were eleven, after all."

The guy with green hair shrugged exaggeratedly.

"It was always us three with each other. Nobody else."

Chase laughed.

"Are you guys, perchance, a rock band?"

The girl with blue hair raised her hand into the air, pulling back her middle finger and ring finger, but sticking up her pinky and index finger.

"Hell yeah!"

The guy with white hair caught the little ball he was spinning with and smiled.

"Maybe not the most popular one yet, but give us some time and we'll be the biggest one out there!"

Tori could not help but blink a few times, pausing for a moment before speaking.

"In the apocalypse?"

The guy with green hair laughed, raising his microphone stand high into the air.

"Nothing's ever stopped us before, and we sure as hell ain't letting no apocalypse stop us either!"

Though Kairos couldn't help but think they were stupid for having such ambitions, there was a part of him that could respect such determination.

A very small part of him, but a part of him nonetheless.

He adjusted his glasses.

"I don't want to be rude, but sound has a chance of attracting monsters. I doubt you will come across many here, but there is always that small chance."

The girl with blue hair giggled.

"If a monster really comes, then we will just deal with it."

The guy with green hair swung his microphone stand like it was a sword.

"I'll just bash its skull open, and that will be that."

The guy with white hair put a hand on his knee as he arched his back over.

"And if that doesn't work, we can always run."

Sam smiled as he looked at those three.

"So how do you plan to become the biggest rock band of the apocalypse? There's going to be a pretty big roadblock of exposure now that people aren't exactly on the internet and everything."

The three of them fell silent for a few moments.

The guy with white hair shrugged his shoulders.

"No idea what we should do, but we are sure as hell going to try."

Sam rubbed his chin.

"Then wouldn't you have to go around to various places yourself to make your name known?"

The three of them began thinking.

Kairos narrowed his eyes at that statement and turned his head towards his father.

"You aren't trying to bring them with us, right?"

Sam smirked.

"Nothing wrong with taking people with us, if they aren't a burden, no?"

The three teenagers looked at each other, and seemed to have come to an agreement despite not speaking any words.

The white haired guy turned to them.

"Sounds like one of you wants a band on your side, while the other thinks we will just be a burden. How about we show you what we can do?"

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Kairos blinked a few times. In all honesty, he knew that logically it wouldn't be too bad to team up with some others that had some sort of skill. However, he just didn't like the personalities of those three.

He couldn't exactly put his finger on it, but he just didn't like them very much.

Since it would be too much of a hassle to explain, Kairos didn't bother to.

"So what exactly are you proposing?"

The guy with white hair jumped off the building. He then landed with a soft tap, bending his knees ever so slightly.

"We can just have a friendly fight. If you get hit twice, you sit out. How about that?"

Sam shrugged his shoulders.

"That sounds pretty reasonable."

Both the girl with blue hair and the guy with green hair jumped off too, landing behind him.

Kairos blinked a few times.

"All of us against you? If a person is out after getting hit two times, that wouldn't be the fairest, would it?"

The guy with white hair smirked.

"Hah. How about we try it and see how unfair this is exactly?"

Chase smirked.

"Honestly, I think I have the disadvantage here, I usually kill on the first hit."

The guy with green hair shrugged his shoulders.

"If you can kill on the first hit, then just do it."

Chase sighed.

"Well, if it's just a friendly match, then there is no need to use my weapon. I'll just go barehanded."

The girl with blue hair giggled.

"So it's more or less fair then. It seems nobody has any issues?"

A second of silence passed, seemingly showing everyone's agreement.

The girl smiled and began hitting her paddleball back and forth.

"Well, what are we waiting for?"

The guy with green hair held onto his microphone stand close to himself, and kept the microphone close to his mouth, almost like he was getting prepared to sing.

As for the guy with white hair, he began twirling the red ball attached to a string once more and walked forth.

They were in no rush, and neither was Kairos. He thought about taking off his glasses, but figured there was no reason to take this too seriously.

However, his eyebrow couldn't help but twitch the next moment.

The guy with green hair yelled into the microphone, which was amplified by the device.

"Let's rock!"

Everyone on their side couldn't help but feel a little dizzy from the excessive volume. And it was that moment that was taken advantage of.

The girl with blue hair hit the spiked ball with her paddle hard and the string that attached the ball to the paddle ended up extending far beyond its original length. It snaked right towards Chase's forehead.

It almost hit him, but at the very last moment, his head snapped to the side, letting it pass by him.

The ball almost immediately retracted, going back towards Chase. Despite not seeing it, he seemed to have somehow predicted it and ducked down, avoiding it once more.

On the other hand, the guy with white hair whipped with his arm, letting the red ball attached to the string fly out towards Sydney. She averted her head before it came, but the red ball didn't seem to follow normal physics, suddenly shifting its direction while in mid-air.

The ball tapped Sydney on the forehead as she didn't expect this.

"Ah!"

The guy with white hair smirked.

"One!"

Sydney's eyes flew open wide as she snapped to attention, trying to get away from the red ball. Though it only hit her a while ago, it already began shooting back towards her the next second.

Sydney was able to duck in time this time, but that ball was relentless, chasing after her like it was alive. She widened her eyes to their limits just to follow it.

Though that didn't mean the others were standing still.

The people that weren't being attacked were rushing forth. Kairos was the first one to sprint forth, without even taking any precautionary measures to dodge.

Upon reaching the guy at the front, he swung his sharpened bone, aiming for his abdomen. Though he didn't put much strength into it as the guy dashed backwards as though he was on rollerskates.

Kairos diverted the trajectory of his attack, swinging it towards the string, but when it got close, the string shot back, almost like it was a magnet being repelled away.

While that was happening, Sam followed up, chasing after the guy with white hair that was fleeing. He was noticeably faster than Kairos, and thus was able to catch up to him relatively easily.

Once in range, Sam swung with the sharpened bone at the guy's chest.

But the guy suddenly threw his head back, and once he did, the base of the microphone stand flew over.

A deep boom resounded.

Both the sharpened bone and base of the microphone stand collided with each other before freezing in place. From how loud the sound was, it wasn't too hard to tell that both sides had high strength values.

The guy with green hair smirked as the microphone stand trembled in his hand.

"You're pretty strong, aren't you?"

Sam laughed.

"You're not so bad yourself."

Just a few seconds later, the microphone stand was retracted smoothly. It seemed like he didn't care too much about winning the confrontation. As for the guy with white hair, he had already scurried off.

During this time, the red ball that was trying to hit Sydney, which she dodged by ducking under it. But then, it abruptly expanded. While it was originally at the size of a ping pong ball, it had become larger than Sydney herself. On top of that, a jaw formed on the red ball, with clear prominent teeth. The teeth parted ever so slightly, but closed right after, as though it was controlling itself.

Sydney ended up getting hit on the back of the head. She blinked a few times, as though unable to believe she had gotten out this quick.

The guy with white hair chuckled while at the very back.

"Two!"

The red ball immediately shrunk back down to its original size and whipped back.

On the other side of this battle, the girl with blue hair was actually fending off Tori, Chase, and even Nicole all on her own. After Chase dodged the ball that had rebounded, both Tori and Nicole tried to close in on the girl.

But that was when the ball pulsated strangely.

And spikes abruptly shot out from all ends. The overall thing had expanded into a spiky sphere with a radius of about five meters. The spikes pierced into the pavement below, sending cracks throughout.

Tori noticed something was off the moment it pulsated, thus backed off early, while Nicole had the red watch on and was thus also able to react in time.

The girl with blue hair pouted when she saw this.

"Aw… I thought I could get a two for one deal!"

She smiled soon after.

"Guess I just have to do it the traditional way."

The spiked ball suddenly retracted, ripping through the street as it shrunk. By the time the ball had come back, it had shrunk back into its tiny size once more.

She pulled the paddle back all the way and swung with all her might, throwing her shoulder into it and nearly tripping over her own foot.

A clear thwack rang out as the ball shot forth once more.

But this time, it expanded into a spiked ball straight away. The pretense was shed.

Both Nicole and Tori stepped back once more, splitting off to separate sides to dodge it. As for Chase, he didn't bother trying to step up and backed off.

He raised an eyebrow.

"That is quite a unique attack."

Tori and Nicole both dashed towards the girl, but on opposite ends.

Seeing this, the girl with blue hair just smiled without the slightest concern. She pulled the paddle back and over to the side. The spiked ball rebounded backwards, ripping across the pavement, and went straight towards Tori.

Despite seeing the giant ball of death coming for her, her expression remained neutral. The rumbling sound continued to get closer, and when it was less than a meter away from her she leaped upwards.

Tori threw herself back and did a backflip. Right when she was at the peak and sticking her stomach up into the air, the spiked ball rushed right past her. Then, she landed on the road.

The girl with blue hair narrowed her eyes at this display. She quickly came to the conclusion that this wouldn't be an easy person to deal with, thus she shifted her attention to Nicole.

While running backwards, she pulled her paddle back. The ball had shrunk once again once it got closer to her. A strange glint flashed by her eyes as the paddle in her hand whipped forth, thwacking against the ball and grabbing onto the string with her fingers.

The spiked ball expanded once more, rushing towards Nicole like a truck.

She had little confidence in replicating what Tori had done, thus she threw her body to the side, attempting to dodge. Yet, the very moment her eyes turned to the side, the girl with blue hair tugged onto the string.

The spiked ball kept its forward momentum but was now also sliding to the side, right towards Nicole. Seeing this, Nicole wanted to try and backtrack, giving up on running forth. However, she was simply too slow.

In the end, she could only watch as the spiked ball mercilessly rushed towards and tore through the ground.

Right as the adrenaline peaked, the tips of the spikes suddenly became pads, smacking against Nicole softly. It was not lethal. Though that didn't change the fact that Nicole was thrown to the side with the air knocked out of her lungs. Before she could recover from her daze or even stop flying through the air, the ball rebounded back and slammed into her once more.

Nicole spat out some saliva as her eyes widened all the way.

She rolled across the ground a little while her head began to spin.

Now, she was out as well.

Tori was running towards the girl with blue hair the entire time, but despite the fact that the girl was running backwards, Tori was having great difficulty catching up.

Once she did close the distance by two meters, the girl with blue hair blew her a kiss.

"Seeya!"

The girl leaped upwards, clinging onto the side of a building before scaling up with more proficiency than a monkey.

Tori tilted her head to the side, letting the shrunken spiky ball pass by her head and go back to the paddle. Then, she leaped up and climbed after the runner.

The girl giggled mischievously as she ran across the roof, and by the time she got to the end, she turned around and winked, before letting her body fall off the side.

Tori was originally a few meters away, but since her target spent some time taunting, she was able to close that gap to less than a meter. Tori pulled back her katana while the girl was falling and grabbed onto the ledge with her free hand.

Then, she brought herself over the ledge.

As for the girl with blue hair, she had one eye closed while her free hand was pointing a finger gun towards Tori.

"Pow!"

She swung the paddle, sending the spiked ball forth.

However, Tori was prepared for this. She swung her katana, smashing it against the spiky ball as it was expanding, throwing it away.

Yet, right when she did that, the corner of the girl's lip turned up. She lowered the thumb of her finger gun.

A bang resounded.

Tori found the clothes at the top of her shoulder ripped open along with some of the skin. She quickly realized that this was her first hit.

Meaning the next one would get her out.

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Tori still saw this as an opportunity as the girl had just used both methods to attack her, so she swung her katana, focusing on speed more than anything else.

There was no need to go for a killing blow, all she had to do was take advantage of this opportunity to hit the girl once. Even if she were to take a hit after, it would still be better than nothing and not a complete loss considering that they had the advantage of numbers, so it was still a relatively fair trade.

Unfortunately, before her katana even made it halfway, the paddle in the girl's hand whipped forth.

And slammed against the side of her face.

The girl was simply much faster than Tori, giving her no chance.

Somewhere along the way, Tori had forgotten that the girl didn't have to only use the ball attached to the paddle to attack and that the paddle itself could actually be used.

Her last thought as she was blown to the side, was that she was still too weak.

She became quite dizzy.

Back on Kairos' side of things, they were still trying to deal with the two guys.

He and his father were right up close, but it also felt far because of how difficult it was to hit them. Chase was approaching, but not in any super big rush. In technicality, it was still three versus two, so they had the numbers advantage.

However, Chase really did have a bad disadvantage in this fight as he wasn't going to use his bow, while they had already lost Nicole and Sydney without even trading back a single hit.

At this point, Kairos had to acknowledge that their abilities were definitely more than he expected. In fact, he could tell that each of them had already evolved simply from their basic physical stats.

The only person that could compare, was his father.

And that wasn't exactly his own effort, but more so that Kairos' mother spoon-fed him kills whether he wanted them or not.

Kairos decided that it was a fight worth taking off his glasses for, thus he did so, clearing up his future vision.

It was at that point, he saw the guy with green hair detach the microphone from the stand. The microphone had a tiny little string at the end, which the guy grabbed onto, and in just a few moments it extended out to be a meter long.

Kairos couldn't help but wonder why all three of them had string-like tools, but decided to focus on closing the distance.

He saw with his future vision that the microphone would whip out and wrap around his sharpened bone. Then, the microphone would morph into some sort of latch that would bind it in place.

Not wanting that to happen, Kairos moved his sharpened bone out of the way. The microphone flew past him. His father followed up, swinging his own sharpened bone.

The guy was forced to block with the stand, causing the two of them to be in a deadlock once more. However, because Sam was using both hands while the guy was now using one hand, Sam was slowly gaining the advantage.

Kairos didn't even blink as he rushed forth, wanting to take advantage of this opportunity.

However, with his future vision, he saw that a red ball would shoot over, wrapping itself around his target's waist before pulling.

Kairos saw himself missing with the sharpened bone, thus decisively chose another option.

He began casting the fire spell, but injecting the bare minimum mana required.

Once the red ball shot over, wrapping the string around the guy's waist, a tiny fireball had formed on Kairos' finger.

Then, he let it loose.

The guy with green hair widened his eyes as he tried to sidestep out of the way, but the fireball was too fast, landing on his abdomen, bursting into flames. He quickly slapped them, putting them out the next second, before laughing.

"Alright, alright, you got me once. Was not expecting that!"

Kairos tilted his head to the side, dodging a microphone that had come back for him.

"…You guys really like your strings, don't you?"

The guy with white hair smirked.

"Naturally, we gonna pull on some heartstrings, yo!"

Kairos rolled his eyes as he considered his options, and quickly realized that they were in a bad position. Those two simply had a way of attack that was far more flexible compared to them rigidly swinging some bones around.

On top of that, their teamwork was nearly seamless, despite it only being a few days in the apocalypse. Though it wasn't like Kairos wasn't close to his father, there was no way they were going to have that much coordination in the way they fought.

Kairos took a peek behind him, at Chase who was just a few meters away.

If he couldn't do something, then they would probably lose the spar.

Kairos continued to take the initiative to approach, as if they really began creating more distance, then they could just harass with their far greater range. Sam seemed to have the same idea and took the lead due to naturally being faster.

The guy with white hair decided to take the front this time, letting his teammate get behind him. Then, he let the red ball in his hand loose towards Sam, letting it expand into a giant set of jaws.

Sam narrowed his eyes and shot off to the side, while Kairos shot off towards the other side. That red ball still had a surprising amount of flexibility, able to change its direction and chase after Sam.

Though, it was definitely far more sluggish as compared to when it was smaller.

Sam slammed his sharpened bone against the giant set of jaws, forcibly keeping it at bay. Then, after a split second of hesitation, he pulled out one of the other bones on his belt and lunged forth to slash.

Though the guy with white hair naturally wasn't going to stand there, so he dodged to the side.

Seeing this, Kairos decided to try and throw his sharpened bone to get a hit in. Worst case scenario, he could get the other bone on his father's belt.

However, in his future vision, he saw that a microphone would whip out and the cord attached to it would grab onto the bone.

Kairos immediately stopped himself from throwing the bone.

Instead, he decided to continue running forth.

Since the guy with white hair dodged to the side, it gave Kairos enough time to catch up normally.

And once he was one meter away, a microphone whipped towards him. In his future vision, he wasn't able to keep up, and got hit in the face. However, since he saw it happen, he was able to dodge to the side.

And right after, he saw in his future vision that the ball would collide with his back.

Kairos furrowed his brows and threw his body to the side, but that still wasn't enough. He then did the same thing that his father did, slamming his sharpened bone into the giant set of jaws coming back for him.

Sam lunged forth swinging with one sharpened bone, which the guy with white hair easily dodged. But then, he followed it up with another swing which forced the guy to lean back, temporarily forcing him to remain in place.

That was when Chase dashed in from the side.

But before he could get too close, a microphone stand whipped in his direction, forcing him to back off.

And through all of this, Kairos finally saw another chance, by using his hand to attack.

After all, the lethality didn't matter so much as getting the person hit in the first place, since that was the rules they were playing by.

His hand shot out, fingers outstretched like a sword. The guy with white hair immediately recognized his intentions, thus he tugged on the string with both hands, causing it to bend in a strange way.

In Kairos' future vision, he saw that the string would bind his arm tightly. Then, instead of getting a hit off, he would be the one completely vulnerable instead.

However, Kairos didn't decide to dodge the string. Instead, he bent his fingers slightly and moved his hand to the side, just barely avoiding the coiling string.

Then, Kairos grabbed onto it and tugged.

The guy with white hair wasn't expecting this and was even pulled forth. Kairos then grit his teeth and whipped his head forth.

A clear bang resounded.

Kairos butted heads with the guy with hair and did not hold back for the sake of moving faster. The end result was that the two of them were somewhat disoriented due to the force put behind that strike.

The guy with white hair and his companion both retrieved their respective weapons and backed off to recover themselves. While completely focusing on retreat, only Sam could barely keep up, so they made quite the distance.

The guy with white hair held onto the side of his head and smirked.

"We both got hit, but cause you were the one that reeled yourself back for it, I'll give you that one."

The corner of Kairos' lip turned up.

"I see you have either a lot of confidence or sportsmanship."

The guy with white hair raised an eyebrow.

"Heh. The secret is that it's both."

That was when someone else's voice called out from afar.

"Confidence is the first step to success, after all!"

Kairos looked over to see the girl with blue hair standing on top of a roof. She had the paddle in one hand and held onto Tori's body with the other. As of now, Tori seemed to be in a half conscious state. She seemed to be trying to resist, but was having difficulty in moving her body in general.

She was hit on the head a little too hard.

The girl with blue hair gently laid down Tori on the roof before hopping down, landing with a light tap.

Kairos' eyebrow couldn't help but twitch.

It seemed like it had already become a three versus three. Though Kairos somewhat expected the others to fall, he didn't think it would be this easy.

Their advantage of numbers was already lost.

But at the very least, two of them had already been hit once, and for now, the girl with blue hair was still quite far away.

Kaios clicked his tongue and called out while rushing forth.

"Finish off those two while the last one can't catch up!"

All three of them ran with that very intention, but the only problem was that those two guys really were fast.

It was then that the guy with white hair surprisingly stopped, turning around to face them. He flung out the red ball once more, but kept it at its small size. He let it shoot out towards Kairos, who promptly dodged.

It then twisted while in mid-air, forcing Kairos to dodge once more, but that was expected because of both his future vision and what he had seen before from this ball.

Yet, all of a sudden, Kairos' eyes flew open despite dodging the ball.

He felt a sharp pain tear through his leg in his future vision.

Kairos shifted his foot to the side jarringly, affecting his balance and almost getting himself hit by the ball.

And it was then, the ground beneath him broke apart with a bang.

Almost like someone shot a bullet.

Kairos looked over his shoulder and saw the girl with blue hair pointing a finger gun at them with one eye closed. Her paddle was casually laid down at her side. It was clear that she never actually intended on getting closer to attack, but rather staying at the back and shooting at them.

Kairos quickly realized that this fight was actually going to be even harder than he expected.

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"Dodge the person shooting at us!"

Kairos shouted that as he twisted his torso to avoid a small red ball shooting towards him. Because of all the dodging he had to do, he was naturally unable to close the distance.

On the other hand, both Sam and Chase were now next to them.

Sam started it off, swinging with one of his sharpened bones towards the guy with white hair. Unfortunately, like every other time, his target dodged with a confident smile plastered across his face.

Sam quickly followed up with another swing, but missed once more. As that happened, the red ball began ignoring Kairos entirely, shooting towards Sam instead.

Naturally, Kairos warned him.

"Dodge!"

Sam looked over his shoulder and twisted his body out of the way. Kairos wanted to use this moment of reprieve to step forth, but felt a fresh pain rip through his leg in his future vision.

Kairos quickly stopped himself, and once he did, the pavement in front of him exploded, scattering pieces of street everywhere. He spared a glance over his shoulder towards the girl with blue hair once more.

She still had a casual smile on her face, but her eyes were locked onto Kairos intently. It seemed like she already figured out that Kairos could somehow predict her shots.

And used that to force Kairos back.

Chase attempted to rush forth as well, but the guy with green hair had set his eyes on him, not willing to let him do as he pleased.

The guy with green hair waited patiently, until Chase was three meters away. Then, he flung his microphone, sweeping the ground underneath him. Chase promptly jumped up, avoiding it entirely.

However, the guy with green hair wasn't done with that. As the microphone was sweeping out, he held out the microphone stand to get caught in the middle of the cord.

And in that way, the cord wrapped itself around the pole, which then made the microphone whip around once more.

Chase frowned.

Despite knowing that it was almost impossible to get out, Chase tried to move his foot out of the way. Unfortunately, not only was he too slow, but he was also midair, making dodging basically impossible.

Chase's ankle got caught. The cord wrapped itself around, and then the microphone soon transformed into a strange latch, attaching itself to his ankle.

Practically immediately, Chase realized that he wasn't going to get out of this hold unless the guy with green hair wanted him to. And with that realization, he acted the moment the guy with green hair attempted to tug on the end of the cord.

Chase pulled his caught leg back, forcefully straining the cord and screwing up his balance. Although the guy with green hair seemed caught off guard, he only stumbled a little bit forward.

Still, he decided to swing with his microphone stand, aiming for Chase's shoulder.

Chase did not even try to dodge. In fact, he even tugged on the cord with his free hand, both pulling himself forwards and the guy towards him.

Then, his hand shot out like a spear, and tapped him on the chest right as the microphone stand crashed into his shoulder.

Chase's expression twitched.

And in the next moment, he grimaced as he felt a ripping sensation through his leg. He had been shot by the girl with blue hair.

The guy with green hair laughed.

"Guess we are both out."

Chase smiled bitterly, brushing some of the blood off from the new injury.

"Guess so."

The two of them walked to the side to watch the battle that was still going on.

Kairos continued to run forth with the small gap where he wasn't being attacked. At the same time, Sam was using both of his sharpened bones to fend off the red ball that was snaking around him. Dodging the red ball itself wasn't too difficult for Sam. In fact, he wouldn't even need to use his sharpened bone for that sake.

However, the guy with white hair wasn't holding back his trickery anymore. He was causing the string to twist elusively, trying to wrap itself around either Sam or his weapon.

Sam constantly slammed his sharpened bones against the red ball to forcibly divert its trajectory so that he wouldn't have to move his body too much in order to avoid getting caught by the string.

Kairos chose a slightly more roundabout way to approach so that he wouldn't get caught up with the string.

But that was when he saw his father duck down in order to avoid the red ball, but pay the price of getting shot in the leg. He wanted to tell his father to dodge but quickly realized that it was pointless.

Sam either had to get caught by the red ball or get hit in the leg. Either way, that essentially guaranteed that he would get hit.

Kairos kept his mouth shut and continued advancing, all the while contemplating over the teamwork that they had shown. Though their attacks weren't the most flashy, like his max power pulse spell, they were very reliable because of how they worked together.

It was reliable in the sense that it forced a person to choose either one unfavorable situation, or another. Though there may have been one that wasn't as bad as the other, it still meant that the person wasn't getting off scot-free.

Sam grunted as his leg was torn open by the girl's bullet.

At the same time, Kairos had reached the guy's side and swung with his sharpened bone. The string distorted to stop his attack, but Kairos saw how it would distort, and snaked his way past.

The guy with white hair raised an eyebrow as he shot backwards, dodging his attack.

At that point, Sam let the string wrap around one of his sharpened bones. Then, he let out a grunt as he threw his sharpened bone towards the guy.

The guy with white hair was already a little off balance from doing a hasty dodge, and grit his teeth in order to forcibly shove his body to the side, just barely dodging the bone.

But that was when the corner of Sam's lip turned up.

He pointed towards the direction that the guy was moving in before a sudden stream of water shot out. It was rather thin, perhaps not even five centimeters wide, but it shot with decent speed and hit the guy with white hair right in the chest, whose eyebrows both shot up from shock.

Though at the same time, another invisible and silent bullet ripped through Sam's leg.

Both the guy with white hair and Sam were out.

Noticing this, Kairos immediately looked behind him, towards the girl with blue hair. She was looking back with the corner of her lip turned up, clearly still quite confident despite being the only person left.

She pointed a finger gun down towards Kairos' foot before letting her thumb fall down.

"Pow!"

The bullet was both silent and invisible, but Kairos could tell that it would rip through his foot if he continued to take a step forth. And so, he stepped to the side, avoiding it.

Kairos couldn't help but think that this ability was quite unfair. If it wasn't for the fact he had the ability to see the future, his own unfair ability, he would be helpless.

But thankfully, the girl with blue hair wouldn't be able to hit him unless he was negligent.

She had tried to predict his dodge by shooting towards the side. However, whenever that happened, Kairos would just continue forth without dodging.

The girl quickly realized that Kairos really could tell where exactly the bullets were going to hit. She decided to continue shooting anyway for fun, but didn't run away.

After all, the only way this fight would be decided is when the two of them began fighting within close quarters.

And so Kairos continued to dash forth with the steady beat of his feet slamming against the pavement. He would occasionally dash to the left or right, avoiding the miniature explosion at his feet.

His shirt flapped wildly in the wind, while his face was expressionless as ever.

Kairos' dead eyes stared right into the girl's cocky eyes.

It did not take long for the distance between the two of them to get closer. And now, Kairos was only about twenty meters away.

It was at that time the girl pulled her paddle back before whipping it forth, causing the spiked ball to shoot forth. Kairos watched as it expanded to a diameter of five meters and ripped through the ground in his future vision.

He threw himself to the side and twisted his body, letting it brush right past him. At the same time, he felt a strong pain rip through his leg once more.

Kairos bent his knees slightly before straightening them out, causing both his feet to slide backwards. It almost seemed like he was trying to dance.

Then, pavement flew up into the air from the spot where he just was.

Kairos continued to close the distance, but also took note of the loud ripping sound coming from behind him. He went forth while the girl closed one eye, aiming at his leg.

Then, she let her thumb fall.

Kairos suddenly felt a ripping pain in his leg, thus he moved it to the side. However, because he did that, he killed his momentum and could no longer dodge the rampaging spiked ball behind him.

His mind quickly whirred as he suddenly thought of something ambitious.

He looked behind him, but only in his future vision.

Then with that knowledge, he swung behind him with the sharpened bone.

With a clack, it hit the end of one of the many spikes on the ball, pushing both Kairos forth and keeping it at bay. Considering both the spike and the sharpened bone were both very thin, the margin of error was almost next to none.

In other words, had Kairos even been slightly off, it would have missed, he would've swung the sharpened bone for no reason.

In reality, it looked like he had kept his eyes on the girl the entire time, but swung his sharpened bone back, hitting the spike magically. Almost like he was a psychic.

The girl with blue hair raised an eyebrow for the first time and began backpedaling. Originally, Kairos would have been slower than the girl, but with the help of pushing on the spiked ball, he was able to steadily close the distance.

The girl seemed to notice as she tugged on the string, causing the spiked ball to slide to the side, causing Kairos' sharpened bone to disconnect.

Kairos naturally expected this, thus pulled back at the right moment.

As the spiked ball rushed to one side, the girl then pulled on the string the opposite way, causing the spiked ball to pull in and bulldoze its way towards Kairos at an angle.

And as that happened, she pointed another finger gun at him.

Kairos could immediately tell that the situation he was in wasn't the best. However, he wasn't going to give up now.

He looked towards the spiked ball and counted on his future vision to tell where the bullet would go.

With a small frown, Kairos focused hard as he held the sharpened bone somewhat horizontally to block the spiked ball. He suddenly felt a sharp pain at the top of his shoulder.

Kairos then quickly moved out of the way.

However, the expected shot did not come. There was a brief moment when his future vision warped. And in that time, Kairos did not sense the bullet go through his leg.

And as such, he suddenly felt a ripping sensation through his leg, but not in his future vision. At the same time, the giant spiked ball collided with the bone, which just barely remained in place, pushing Kairos forth.

He narrowed his eyes.

Kairos had now been hit once, while the girl hadn't.

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Kairos' future vision wasn't the most perfect ability, as strong as it was. Whenever Kairos decided to do something different based on something he saw in the future, there was a split second where his future vision would warp to shift to the new version.

And that split second was something like a blindspot for him.

That was why he wasn't able to notice that he had been shot through the leg before it already happened. Though he was able to feel the aching that came from after the injury, it was hard to distinguish it since his body was already aching from straining it to move all this time.

The girl with blue hair's eyebrow jumped ever so slightly, like she was surprised that she was actually able to get a hit off. With this, she was encouraged to continue shooting, and so that's exactly what she did.

Kairos rushed closer towards the girl, using the momentum of the spiked ball to make him go faster. At the same time, the girl once again pointed a finger gun right at his legs.

This time, Kairos was not going to make the same mistake.

He suddenly felt a pain rip through his leg, so naturally he moved it. Right when he did that, Kairos saw that the girl actually shifted the trajectory of her finger gun, predicting where he would go.

And so, while his future vision was warping, he tensed up his leg and made it twitch back.

A bang resounded right next to his foot.

A few fragments of scattered pavement grazed against his skin, but didn't do much else. Kairos lunged forth after she had shot, reaching out with his hand.

The girl with blue hair leaned back, just barely getting out of reach.

But that was when Kairos injected the bare minimum amount of mana to cast the pulse spell. It was released almost immediately.

A clear thump resounded.

The girl was struck in the abdomen. Although the damage caused was next to none, it still counted as a hit. Now, they were on even terms. The girl clicked her tongue as she gave up on shooting any more bullets.

Instead, she began pulling on the string that connected the paddle and the spiked ball. The spikes ended up grinding against the bone Kairos was holding. He clenched his fists until his knuckles turned white just so that he could keep holding it properly.

At the same time, he gathered mana to create another pulse spell, and let it loose.

The girl with blue hair tensed up as she went to the side, trying to dodge. However, Kairos had already seen that happen, thus was able to release the pulse spell promptly.

Then, it whipped out.

…Before doing nothing.

The girl with blue hair was caught off guard, seemingly thinking that she had lost. However, it only lasted a second before she continued to run away.

Kairos clicked his tongue.

He thought that maybe the spell had hit, but he just couldn't tell. Though from how the girl looked, that probably wasn't the case. This was because while the pulse spell was strong and quick to cast, it had very little range. Especially so when not charged up.

Compared to the fireball spell, the difference was obvious.

The girl was not willing to relent knowing that she still wasn't out. She continued to pull the string, causing the spiked ball to shift to one side once more. Then, she reversed her pull, causing the spiked ball to tear through the pavement and rush back to Kairos.

At the same time, she raised another finger gun, pointing it towards his legs.

Kairos narrowed his eyes.

He needed to look at the spiked ball if he wanted to defend against it, but he also had to look straight to tell where exactly the girl was shooting. It seemed that the girl had somehow figured out a way to work around his future vision.

And so, what he did was look at the spiked ball with his future vision, but continuously stopped himself from actually doing so.

It was quite difficult to pull off. There were several times where he almost accidentally looked at the spiked ball in reality, but he was able to do it nonetheless.

The girl with blue hair narrowed her eyes before firing the bullet.

Kairos was able to move his leg out of the way preemptively, even without the support of his future vision.

And then, the spiked ball slammed into his bone.

The girl with blue hair widened her eyes and hurriedly tugged on the string. However, Kairos wasn't going to give this opportunity up. He pointed his finger forth, letting a tiny fireball coalesce on top.

The girl with blue hair threw her body to the side, but Kairos wouldn't miss when he could see her actions a second ahead of time.

The fireball shot out.

And burst into a small flame onto the girl's abdomen.

…But at the same time, the spiked ball slammed into Kairos' back, creating a few tiny holes in his back.

The girl hurriedly shrunk the ball while also patting out the flames that had caught onto her shirt.

Kairos had seen that the outcome would be a tie. It definitely wasn't a victory like what he would've preferred, but at this point it was more than what he could ask for. That was simply because the girl was faster than him.

If she continued to run away, then he would have to use the fireballs to hit her. Although the fireball traveled fast, it wasn't fast enough to reach her over long distances. The only reason he somewhat kept up was that he strained his arm to push against the spiked ball that nearly killed him.

Kairos sighed.

"…Well played."

The girl with blue hair continued to pat out the flames.

"Yeah, you too! …Hot! Hot, hot!"

The guy with white hair and the guy with green hair were the first two that rushed over, both eager to hear about the result.

The guy with green hair spoke up.

"Did we win?"

The girl with blue hair shook her head.

"Nah, sorry."

The guy with white hair then sighed.

"Did we lose?"

Kairos shrugged his shoulders.

"Not exactly."

Sam, Chase, and the others also got closer, wanting to hear the results. Kairos looked at them and blinked a few times.

"It was a tie."

The guy with white hair let out a chuckle and waved his hand dismissively.

"Damn, at least it wasn't a loss, man."

Sam laughed.

"I suppose we are quite the even match."

Kairos pulled his glasses back out and put them on.

"If it truly was a life or death battle, then it would be hard to say who wins. However, I do have to admit that both sides would face deaths."

Nicole looked down at her feet, fidgeting a little bit. She was eliminated without being able to do anything herself, so she felt quite embarrassed. As for Tori, she was holding onto the side of her head, trying her best not to look at the girl with blue hair.

Kairos sighed and looked towards the guy with white hair.

"I suppose in the end, I was wrong. You guys are far from a burden from what I've seen."

In response, the guy smirked.

"You ain't so bad yourself! I bet if you made those spells stronger, you would've blown us away!"

Kairos nodded.

"Anyway, my name is Kairos."

The guy with white hair put two fingers on his forehead before whipping them to the side, almost like some sort of strange salute.

"Sup, Kairos. My name's Eric."

The girl with blue hair raised one hand, waving enthusiastically as the other continued to play with the paddle ball.

"Hey! My name is Jenny."

The guy with green hair made a peace sign.

"It's Nick over here."

The other people in Kairos' group introduced themselves, just not as casually as them.

After getting to know each other, Eric tapped his chin as he swung the red ball around.

"So, back on the topic we were on a while ago. Where are you guys going?"

Kairos shrugged his shoulders.

"Not any particular direction, honestly."

Nick put one hand on his hip.

"Hah, same here. The main priority is still becoming the most famous rock band though."

Jenny smiled.

"You guys want to hear our performance?"

Kairos' eyebrow twitched as he really didn't want to start listening to them playing their music. He raised a finger.

"I think if you guys want to become more popular, you will have to find a big crowd that can listen."

Eric raised an eyebrow.

"What are you proposing?"

Kairos cleared his throat.

"It would probably be best to find a rather large settlement. That way, you can perform once, but reach many people. We should hurry and try to find a place like that."

What he didn't specify was the fact there was almost no way that a settlement had formed by now. After all, it was just a few days into the apocalypse.

How in the world would there possibly be some sort of settlement when people are just barely able to survive in the first place?

Those were his thoughts as he made that suggestion.

Nick nodded to himself when he heard that.

"That sounds like a great idea! Let's find that settlement, then!"

During this time, Sam had laid his hand down against the floor, in a section where the road wasn't torn or covered by corpses.

After a few moments, he spoke up and pointed one way with his finger.

"From what I can tell, there are quite a few people that have walked in that direction."

Jenny crouched down next to him and also laid a hand down next to his.

"Huh. I can't tell anything at all. You must be pretty good at tracking!"

Sam smiled awkwardly.

"Haha, no, no. I just have an ability that lets me see those kinds of things."

He stood up and looked off in the direction he pointed.

"I couldn't exactly catch what they looked like too closely, but there were quite a few people going in that direction. If nothing else, I could make out that they were humans instead of monsters."

Nick put the microphone stand on his shoulders and hooked his arms on top.

"Then what are we waiting for? Let's go!"

Eric raised an eyebrow while smiling.

"Hah! I can already see the crowd cheering for us!"

While Sam was taking the lead, the group walked on ahead. The three that had joined the group walked in a line, spread a few meters apart. Honestly, Kairos was expecting them to remain bunched up with each other.

Even if it wasn't for the sake of safety, he still expected people close to each other to separate themselves from the others.

After all, that was what he had seen.

However, it seemed that these three were rather open, even to people they had just met.

Jenny began humming to a tune, and eventually, she began making a steady beat with her paddle and ball.

Both Eric and Nick gradually began nodding their heads to it as well.

And in just a few moments, the very thing Kairos was trying to avoid, happened.

Eric began twirling the red ball to the beat, and began singing.

"Say, oops I got ninety-nine problems singing bye, bye, bye."

Nick rocked his head back and forth.

"Hold up, if you wanna go and take a ride with me better hit me, baby, one more time."

Kairos felt a little irritated at first, but he couldn't help but admit they really did know what they were doing, with nearly perfect coordination.

If he had to choose, listening to them sing was still better than just walking in silence.

And before he knew it, they came across something unexpected.

A settlement.

Kairos stopped in place and looked up with wide eyes.

"…What?"

They were still in the city, but there was a wall far up ahead in sight. It was a mixture of gray and brown while the wall itself was incomparably smooth. The walls encapsulated quite a large area, so much so that Kairos couldn't actually make out the end of the walls easily. As for the height, it should've been at the very least thirty meters high.

Surrounding these walls were various collapsed buildings. This created quite a large clearing surrounding the place, which made it stand out even more than it already did.

In a certain sense, it appeared as though it had just plopped itself down, and destroyed everything nearby. Basically, it just felt unnatural.

This made Kairos feel a little strange about this place.

He couldn't help but think this wasn't something humans constructed, thus he thought that it may have been some sort of natural phenomenon that was potentially dangerous.

On the other hand, Eric didn't seem to share the same sentiment.

"Woah! I didn't think we would get to a settlement already!"

He snapped before pointing a finger gun towards Sam.

"You really are good at finding things!"

In response, Sam chuckled.

"It was just a coincidence. I'm not actually that good."

Nick shrugged his shoulders with a smirk.

"Well, you are a hell of a lot better than us."

Jenny began walking up with her arms outstretched, not even slightly concerned about what it could have been.

"Helloooooo~"

She did not hold back, casting her voice loud enough so that it could be heard to anyone inside.

After a few moments, the top of a man's head appeared from the wall. He held a pair of binoculars and looked down at them. Though it wasn't visible to Kairos and the others, a small frown formed on the person's face when he saw that the voice was coming from a teenager, and even deepened when he further scanned to see many more kids.

"Get out of here! This is not a place for people like you!"

After declaring that, the person stopped poking their head out.

Jenny put her hands on her hips and pouted when she saw the person's attitude.

"People like us? How can you assume that you know everything just when you take a look at a person?"

The person at the top didn't bother poking their head out again, but still rebutted.

"So many of you are just useless kids! We don't need any more people like you in here!"

Jenny narrowed her eyes as her frown deepened.

"Why don't you come down here and see how useless we are for yourself?"

The person at the top was rather dismissive.

"Not going to waste my time!"

Kairos walked up and adjusted his glasses. From the sound of things, it really was a settlement. However, there wasn't any clear entrance, unless climbing up the wall was considered one.

"May I ask how this place was formed?"

The person at the top scoffed.

"It was created by an angel that is far out of your reach!"

Right after that was said, another voice came from the top of the walls. However, it was far more feminine and young.

"And yet you consider this angel a useless teenager?"

The person seemed rather panicked.

"Ah, no! I-"

Another person walked up from the ledge, revealing themselves. It was a girl with violet hair, with two cute unbraided pigtails on the side of her head. Her eyes were light blue, and even from so far away seemed to gleam slightly.

The girl was wearing a school uniform, and other than being slightly ruffled up, it was fine.

There was a calm smile on her face, one that spoke of confidence over the situation.

She waved her hand leisurely.

"Ah, Kairos! I thought I recognized that voice."

Kairos blinked a few times with confusion.

"You know me?"

The girl laughed.

"Yes, yes. It is expected you have no idea who I am. After all, we never spoke!"

Kairos furrowed his brows, then gradually thought of this one person. It was a classmate he had shared a few classes with, Tiana. The impression of her wasn't too strong, but there were a few things that made him remember her.

First off, was her violet hair. It stood out a fair amount because of how different it was, but also wasn't too flashy because it could almost be black. It was a pretty big contrast compared to Eric and his friends who all basically had neon colors for hair.

The second thing was that she was always a little strange. Gym class was separated by gender, so the guys and girls would both have their own separate periods. Yet, for some reason Tiana would always show up for the guy's gym class. The teacher had expressed that she shouldn't be doing so, but was quickly shut up after a simple threat.

Kairos gathered that she was either from a rather influential family, or had a relative in the higher ranks of the school.

And so, Tiana would always watch whenever they played sports. It was rumored that she liked Chad, and that was why she decided to cut in gym class all the time.

Kairos was actually quite surprised that Tiana even knew his name, much less recognize him by voice. After all, she never really looked at him.

He paused for a moment.

"Tiana?"

Tiana laughed.

"Wow, I'm really surprised you actually remember me!"

Nicole couldn't help but flinch before looking between the two.

Kairos simply sighed.

"Of course, it's not too hard to remember the only person who dyed their hair in class."

Tiana tilted her head to the side and smiled.

"Haha, and what if I were to tell you that it was natural?"

Kairos raised an eyebrow.

"Why does that even matter?"

Tiana brushed aside her bangs.

"Ah, you are right! I got off topic a little here. Anyway, why don't you all come in?"

Before any of them had the chance to ask how exactly they were supposed to get inside, part of the walls began to shift. Part of the wall began sinking into the ground, creating a small pathway near the bottom.

Kairos was rather surprised how easily she came to that decision.

As for Eric, he didn't really care. Instead, he flashed Kairos a smile.

"Sick! You know the people of this place? What other connections do you have?"

The man at the top of the wall seemed rather concerned as well.

"Wait! We can't take any more baggage in!"

Tiana turned to the man and raised an eyebrow.

"Are you questioning my decision?"

The man seemed rather afraid, but was still insistent.

"There are too many burdens on us already! We should minimize them if we want those that matter to survive!"

A strange smile formed on Tiana's lips.

"You're right, we should discard the burdens."

The man sounded a bit relieved.

"Thank you for under-"

Yet, before he could finish his sentence, Tiana had grabbed onto his shoulder. Then, she picked him up by one hand and cast him over the edge, almost like he really was just a piece of trash.

For the first second, the man didn't seem to process what happened.

But right afterwards…

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH."

Kairos and most of the others looked above with incredulity. The only person that acted differently was Chase, whose smile deepened slightly as he held onto his chin with his hand.

Jenny was originally leisurely walking towards the small pathway, but frowned when she saw the man falling from the sky. She immediately pulled back her paddle before slamming on the spiked ball hard.

As it traveled, it quickly expanded to a diameter of five meters. The man saw this as he was going down, but to him, it didn't seem like good news, only making him scream even louder.

"WAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH."

However before he was skewered by those spikes, the ends had become soft pads, which caught onto the man.

From there, the ball began falling down at a relatively fast speed, but one that was still safe. The man grit his teeth until eventually hitting the floor, bouncing up a little from the ball.

He rolled down onto the ground while clutching his chest, seemingly trying to calm his beating heart. His breaths were heavy, while sweat began pouring down from his brows.

The man was in camouflage clothing along with an assault rifle strapped onto his back, indicating that he was probably from the military.

After shaking his head, he slowly got up to his feet, albeit trembling. He noticed pretty easily that it was Jenny that saved him and bowed to her.

"Th-Thank you for saving my life."

Jenny rolled her eyes.

"Not so useless now, huh?"

The man hurriedly shook his head.

"No, no!"

Jenny then lost interest, instead opting to look up towards Tiana with a frown.

"Hey, you can't just throw people off buildings! That's rude!"

Tiana looked down silently for a few moments before sighing.

"If people aren't punished, then they will only get more out of hand."

Nick pointed a finger at her accusingly.

"Yo, even if you want to punish someone, it doesn't have to be killing them!"

Tiana took a deep breath.

"…Whatever."

The man couldn't bring himself to look up at her, and simply began shivering without knowing what to do.

Tiana clicked her tongue.

"Hey, useless. Since these guys want to give you a second chance, you got yourself one. But next time, I won't give you another chance no matter who vouches for you."

The man looked up and blinked nervously before pointing at himself.

"M-Me?"

Tiana smirked.

"Yeah you. Isn't useless a perfect name for you? You use it so much after all. From now on your name will be useless."

The man's face twitched. He first looked out towards the surroundings, as though contemplating whether or not he should leave. But he almost immediately gave up on that notion, bowing towards Tiana.

"O-Ok. Useless thanks the angel for her benevolence!"

Kairos decided to tune out that conversation.

As for Sam, he was frowning deeply.

"…I'm not sure if we want anything to do with someone willing to cast aside a human life so easily."

Jenny walked forth, taking exaggerated steps.

"I don't care about all that, I'm going up there to give that girl an earful!"

Eric shrugged his shoulders as he walked up, twirling the red ball.

"I'm up for that. That Tiana girl needs to know that's really uncool, yo."

With that, Eric, Nick, and Jenny began walking in through the pathway, while the man from before kept his head down and hurriedly followed after.

Kairos turned to the others that were still in place.

"We can at least check the place out, right?"

Nicole pressed her lips together as conflicting emotions arose within her. But to Kairos' surprise, she seemed to have come to a decision.

"Yeah, we should."

She began walking forth, prompting Kairos to follow. Sam sighed and shook his head, but still followed as well.

In the end, the group walked through that small pathway.

Kairos noted that the length was about five meters. In other words, the walls were five meters thick, which definitely wasn't anything to scoff at.

And once they did walk past, they were greeted with a rather giant space. At the center, there were still a few tall residential buildings, but all around them was large amounts of overturned earth.

There were currently numerous people of all kinds working on that earth, tilling it with things like metal poles, baseball bats, or wrenches.

Nicole's eyes widened in excitement.

"…Wow."

From the corner, Tiana peeked her head out, already down from the wall that was thirty meters high.

"Hey!"

Jenny was about to speak, but Kairos did first.

"Why did you let us in?"

Tiana giggled with her hand over her mouth.

"You see, I have been watching you for a while…"

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Kairos couldn't help but furrow his brows.

"…You were watching me?"

Looking at her closer, Tiana had a life-sized butterfly pin in her hair. She tilted her head to the side and smiled.

"Why do you think I would always go to your gym classes?"

She put one hand on her cheek along with a knowing smile.

"I was there to watch you."

Kairos couldn't help but feel confused.

"Huh? Why me?"

He was never the star player or even that athletic for that matter. It was frankly rare to find him even truly participating, as nobody would ever pass to him. The only thing he would do was occasionally catch the ball before tossing it to the nearest person.

And as for the times where he had to participate because of the nature of the event, he would hardly ever do a good job, though that was on purpose.

That was why he could hardly fathom why Tiana could even want to watch him. After all, there was practically nothing to watch.

However, Tiana smiled almost like there was poison coating her lips.

"I can see that you are always thinking ahead. No matter what, your eyes would never be on the ball itself, but where the ball would be. Somehow you always seemed to be able to calculate the results of something a second before it actually happened."

Kairos' eyebrow twitched violently.

He honestly had no conscious awareness that he was doing that. Though now that he thought about it, that was something he did all the time. After all, why would he look at the ball directly when he had already seen where it had gone?

The only interesting thing to look at would be to see the new result, rather than the old.

…And it seemed someone somehow picked up on that.

Kairos pushed his glasses up as he made a mental note to be wary of that from now on.

"I'm pretty sure you are mistaken. Even if I have some basic sort of calculating ability, it isn't something that someone else couldn't have."

Tiana giggled.

"Oh, but it extends even further than that. Even when you are just walking around, it's as though you can tell whenever anything happens, whether it's avoiding bird poop that falls from the sky, or avoiding a car that drove a little too recklessly."

Kairos opened his mouth, and found himself at a loss for a moment.

How did she even know all of that?

"I… don't remember seeing you watching me?"

Tiana laughed.

"Just because someone has their head down staring at their phone, doesn't mean they aren't paying attention to their surroundings. Though, everyone assumes that. Frankly, I'm always watching everyone."

Kairos blinked a few times.

"That's creepy."

The corner of Tiana's lip curled up.

"Thank you for the compliment."

Kairos rubbed his temple.

"So you really decided to take all of us in because I was a little more calculating than the average person?"

Tiana shrugged her shoulders.

"I know what I know."

She then turned to the man and shooed him away.

"Go back to manning the walls, useless."

The man flinched, but hurriedly saluted before running away.

Jenny pouted after watching the man go away.

"Couldn't you have been a little nicer?"

Tiana rolled her eyes.

"Kindness only begets people that will act out of line. If they aren't afraid, then how can you expect them to do what they're told?"

Nick furrowed his brows.

"That's where you encourage them. They ain't gonna do their best if they are afraid all the time."

Tiana smiled and clasped her hands together.

"And what do you do when that encouragement fails?"

Nick did not have a rebuttal.

However, Eric spoke up instead.

"What if my two friends and I here try something?"

Tiana raised an eyebrow. She pondered over it for a moment.

"…You can try if you wish."

She then raised her finger.

"But!"

Tiana slowly pointed towards Kairos.

"That is under the condition that you become in charge of the logistics. Otherwise, you have to work on a farm to be here."

Kairos was almost rendered speechless, but decided to hear more about the farm.

"When you say work on the farm, what exactly do you mean?"

Tiana tilted her head to the side with a smile.

"Ah, I will give anyone that becomes a farmer a plot of land which they can grow crops on! Then, they will only have to pay by giving ninety percent of their yield to me."

Sam's head physically recoiled slightly as he blinked a few times.

"Sorry, did you say ninety?"

Tiana nodded.

"Yes. You will get ten percent of any food you grow!"

The corner of Sam's lip twitched.

"…I thought getting taxed twenty-five percent was quite unfair, but it seems my vision was a bit too limited."

Tiana chuckled.

"It was always a choice! All of these people understood the terms and did not have to choose to agree. They decided completely out of their own free will."

Chase smiled.

"I suppose when you know there will always be someone that agrees, you don't have to care too much about creating lenient conditions."

Sydney frowned and lowered her head.

"But… that doesn't mean it's right to take advantage of them."

Tiana walked up to her and lifted up her chin with the tip of her index finger.

"And what? You think I should be running a charity in the middle of the apocalypse?"

Nicole hurried over and bowed towards her.

"Please don't touch my mother!"

Tiana lowered her finger with a soft sigh before turning to Nicole.

"And on what grounds do you have to tell me what to do?"

Nicole fidgeted, but stayed strong.

"I don't think I have grounds to. I couldn't create anything close to what you have made. But still, while I respect your actions, I don't want you getting too touchy."

Tiana raised an eyebrow and stared at her for a few moments. It seemed as though she was going to say something harsh, like usual. Though reality turned out to be a little different.

"It seems you aren't as worthless as you made yourself out to be."

Nicole let out a small gasp.

"Eh?"

Tiana shrugged her shoulders.

"From what I've seen before, you never seemed to be the type of person to stand up for yourself, much less others."

A small smile spread out on Nicole's face.

"I… I guess some things changed."

Tiana sighed before turning to Kairos. She had both hands on her hips along with a smile.

"So, are you willing to take on the position?"

Kairos shrugged his shoulders.

"Could you give me a quick briefing on what I will do and what I will get from it? Also, are there any caveats if I want to quit?"

Tiana smirked.

"You will make decisions on how we spread out the city's resources, which at most will be once a week. You will get more than what you need for food, and when we establish a monetary system, you will get one of the highest pay. There are no restrictions on quitting, as long as you inform me beforehand."

Kairos raised an eyebrow.

"That sounds relatively… lenient."

Tiana winked.

"Let's just say I am confident in your ability."

Kairos deliberated over whether or not he should accept this. It sounded like a fairly good deal, and there was also the untold benefit of having a position of power. Though he couldn't be sure about how much power it would give him and what exactly he could do with it, resources were surely important during the apocalypse.

Thus, managing those resources should be quite useful.

In a certain sense, this was essentially most of what he could ask for. Originally, he was planning on fighting hard to barely survive and create a somewhat sustainable shelter. At the earliest, he figured it would take a month.

Yet here it was, right in front of his very eyes.

Ironically, his main concern wasn't the benefits, potential traps, or even Tiana's character.

It was whether or not he could actually perform an adequate job. After all, what Kairos said was pretty much true. He did not have some sort of innate talent in calculating things.

Tiana simply misinterpreted his ability to see in the future as extremely high proficiency in that regard.

Kairos closed his eyes and took a deep breath, staying silent for ten or so seconds.

Then, he opened his eyes.

"Sure, I will try my best."

Tiana smiled brightly.

"Great! Now, let me assign you to the rooms in the building! I assume all of you are Kairos' friends, so you will also have your own rooms and a decent amount of food allocated."

With that, she began leading the way to the center of this miniature city, while the others followed behind.

Kairos couldn't help but notice a few people off in the distance farming had begun staring at him quite intensely. Their gazes seemed to indicate jealousy, but also fear.

Kairos grew curious about how Tiana managed to herd these people. It seemed that there were two cases. She was either extremely powerful, enough to overwhelm them completely, or charismatic…

And relatively powerful.

Either way, he decided to try and stay on Tiana's good side. She would be quite frightening to have as an enemy, but also an extremely useful ally.

Soon, Tiana made it to the ground floor of the apartment complex. She pointed towards one of the rooms on the first floor.

"That will be your room, Kairos."

She then turned to the others.

"As for you all, your rooms will be on the third floor."

Tori tilted her head to the side.

"Could I get a room on the first floor instead? It would be more convenient."

Tiana smiled strangely.

"Haven't you realized that the reason you can't get a more convenient room is that you are only a friend to someone that has a higher position? If you want a room on the first floor, prove your abilities to me, and I shall grant you one."

Tori blinked a few times, wondering why she had gotten such a strong response. She didn't think that it was that big of a deal.

"Um… ok."

Tiana led the group to the third floor and showed them each to a room. Most of them decided to check them out. One exception was Eric, Nick, and Jenny, who seemed to have formed their own plan that they wanted to execute.

Tiana looked towards Kairos, once the two of them were alone in the hallway.

"Should I show you what you will be doing for your job?"

Kairos blinked a few times.

"Alright."

Tiana brought him back down to his room and opened the door, revealing the interior.

"I will get someone to deliver you information on the status of the city at various points in time. As for delivering your decision, I hope that you can send it straight to me. My room is the opposite of yours, so it will be rather easy to do so."

Kairos was trying to pay attention, but was having difficulty doing so. That was because the interior of the room was just way too luxurious. It wasn't as though everything was inlaid in gold, but he was able to instinctively recognize that everything was very expensive.

The room was generously large, probably enough for four people to live without feeling cramped, with quite a few sofas, carpets, and various paintings. He could even make out a second floor just in this one place.

Ironically enough, Kairos was pretty sure he wouldn't be able to live in a place like this if it wasn't for the apocalypse happening.

Talia laughed.

"Is it high end? I feel my family didn't do the best job of making these places."

The corner of Kairos' lip twitched.

So she was from a wealthy family.

Talia smiled strangely as she picked out the butterfly pin in her hair… which began fluttering its wings.

"Now that it is only the two of us, I hope we can talk about some more secretive manners."

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Kairos raised an eyebrow.

"Secretive manners? You mean how the logistics work is going to go?"

Talia waved her hand dismissively.

"You will just have to make decisions based on the information you get, and sometimes I will come to personally consult you on decisions. It isn't anything complicated."

Kairos couldn't help but think it was fairly complicated, especially since he hadn't done something like this before, but decided to keep quiet. He looked at the butterfly that was now gently fluttering its wings on top of her finger.

"So… that's a real butterfly?"

Talia giggled.

"Well, not really."

The butterfly had a purple color and began glowing ever so slightly. She let out a soft sigh while looking at it.

"You see, it's a lie detector."

Kairos narrowed his eyes. He didn't really believe in lie detectors as a concept. In his eyes, it didn't really make sense for something to be able to sense that sort of thing, especially considering all the special nuances in what could be considered lies, half-truths, and actual truths.

The best he could think of was a machine that would measure various factors like heart rate, expression change, and other functions. But that was far from a lie detector in his opinion.

Nonetheless, he also didn't think it would be possible for someone to be able to build these giant walls just a few days into the apocalypse, so perhaps he was just being too narrow-minded.

Kairos looked towards the butterfly.

"So I'm being interrogated?"

Tiana put one hand on her cheek.

"Interrogated is a bit of a harsh word. I prefer to use… interviewed."

Kairos let out a sigh.

"Fine, what do you want to know?"

Tiana smiled.

"Haha, don't look so glum. I will tell you some things about myself too, and you will know that it won't be a lie as long as the butterfly doesn't glow red. For one, I've always had the ability of lie detection, even before the apocalypse has started.

Kairos' eyelid jumped.

"That's… surprising."

Tiana leaned in and narrowed her eyes ever so slightly.

"And it's not too different for you, right?"

Kairos adjusted his glasses. He decided to test a few things.

With his eyes firmly planted on the butterfly, he spoke.

"No."

He saw it glow red, but that was only in his future vision. He quickly stopped himself from talking in reality, leaving him staring at Tiana awkwardly.

Kairos took a deep breath and tried something else.

"Not really."

Once again, the butterfly glowed red, prompting Kairos to hurriedly stop himself in reality. He lamented over it, but decided to answer honestly, as in reality, he had been silent for two seconds.

"Yeah."

Tiana smirked.

"I thought so. Also, I'm quite surprised that you didn't lie."

Kairos shrugged his shoulders.

"Didn't you say I was good at calculating things?"

Tiana giggled.

"Yes, yes. I did."

Kairos rubbed his chin. He wondered if it would also work on her.

"Though I don't know if it really works. Could you try telling me a lie?"

Tiana raised an eyebrow, but didn't seem too offended.

"I am a male."

The butterfly proceeded to glow red. She tilted her head to the side.

"Satisfied?"

Kairos nodded, though he still couldn't completely trust her. For all he knew, it was just a color changing butterfly that she was able to control.

"Do you mind if we exchange questions? One for one."

He was trying to see if Tiana's goodwill towards him truly extended that far, and honestly wasn't that confident. But…

"Sure. I'll even let you ask the first question."

Kairos nodded.

"Thank you. May I know how you created the walls of this place?"

Tiana put a finger on the bottom of her lip.

"That is quite interesting, isn't it?"

Kairos did not respond. He quickly figured out she was trying to slip in casual questions within her sentences. This made him quite concerned as the only reason she would try to do something like this is if she actually had a lie detector.

Tiana seemed a little disappointed by the lack of an answer, but continued anyway.

"It was created by a special artifact that I have found. There is a special synergy it has with my own power that allows me to create such a place."

She raised the butterfly in her hand ever so slightly.

"Do you have your own special artifact?"

Kairos decided to try his old tactic.

"No."

However, the butterfly turned red in his future vision. He hurriedly stopped himself in reality, then spoke some other words.

"Yeah."

Tiana nodded and didn't pry any further. Kairos realized that she wasn't being too unreasonable, still allowing him to keep a certain amount of privacy.

He decided not to pry too much either.

"Are you truly confident in supporting such a large group of people with the current food supplies?"

Tiana laughed brightly, almost like the soft jingle of bells ringing in the air.

"You could've just asked me after, you are the logistics person after all."

Kairos shrugged his shoulders.

"The truth of this question is important to me."

Tiana rolled her eyes.

"My parents were quite paranoid people, so far beneath the apartment complex is a huge food storage that only I know how to get to. Even if we only had to survive off that, there would still be plenty to feed everyone here for six months. And that is taking into consideration that some may evolve and get hungrier."

She extended her hand out to the side.

"Not to mention, many of these rooms used to be inhabited by people, meaning that they still have some food in their fridges. As for where those people are now, they aren't in the complex. As for water, I'll just have to ask you to trust me that I have a method."

Kairos untensed a few muscles he didn't know he was straining before nodding.

"Alright."

This place gave him a strong sense of stability already, and that was one of the things he desired. Though, he definitely had no plans of staying here all the time.

Tiana walked into the room before sitting down on one of the sofas. She then looked over to him.

"Are you afraid of me?"

Kairos blinked a few times. Though he definitely planned to be cautious around Tiana, it would be an overstatement to say he was afraid. He was still pretty confident in his own abilities, and the warning that his future vision would give him.

Kairos figured if there really was a high chance of him dying, that his ability would warn him beforehand, like how it warned him of the red sun and the red rain before.

Yet, at the same time, he felt it would be better for him if Tiana did think he was afraid.

Kairos began walking over to the opposing couch and decided to try something.

"Yes."

He saw that the butterfly would glow red in his future vision, thus he quickly stopped himself.

Kairos then sat down on the couch as though he wasn't planning on speaking in the first place. As a side note, he was rather surprised by how soft the furniture was.

"Of course…"

The butterfly began to glow red.

But Kairos quickly followed up another statement afterwards.

"-not."

Tiana looked at the butterfly, then at Kairos a little suspiciously. She raised an eyebrow as she looked at him.

"You decided to lie now?"

She leaned over and held onto her chin with the base of her palm while resting her elbow on her knee.

"If it wasn't for the butterfly, I would've believed you. Your fear really doesn't show."

Kairos simply kept quiet, while sighing in relief on the inside.

He started off by saying a lie, which triggered the reaction from the butterfly. However, he quickly added a word that changed the meaning of the sentence.

And in that way, it looked like he lied about not being afraid.

Kairos decided to follow up with his own question, pretending nothing happened previously.

"What kinds of people are you planning on letting into the city?"

Tiana continued to stare at him for a few moments, but decided to go along with his subject shift.

"The plan is to add controllable powerful people and smart people. Along with that, I want to take in a few F-ranked people for every new addition to work on the farms. That way, there should be enough food to support those experts."

Kairos blinked a few times.

Tiana saw his look and then laughed.

"Ah, sorry, I called you controllable implicitly. You are an exception, rest assured."

Kairos took a deep breath.

"Alright."

Tiana tilted her head to the side.

"Now… what do you think of the conditions I gave you for your job?"

Kairos shrugged his shoulders.

"Better than expected."

Tiana smiled.

"I'm glad."

He shot back a question right after.

"Would you consider it violating the conditions of my job if I leave the city?"

Tiana giggled sweetly.

"Aww, you wanna be well behaved?"

Kairos did not respond.

After a second of silence, she continued.

"As long as you come back once a week, then you can do as you wish. In fact, I encourage you to explore the outside."

Kairos nodded.

"Understood."

Tiana took a deep breath.

"Do you like Nicole?"

Kairos physically recoiled a little, feeling this question was a bit out of left field. However, he quickly found it in him to answer.

"No."

Tiana looked at the butterfly on her hand intently, then raised an eyebrow with a slightly confused expression.

"…Strange."

Kairos adjusted his glasses.

"…What is your current relationship with your parents?"

His aim in asking this question was to get a general grasp on whether or not he should avoid provoking her parents, even if they were weak.

However, Tiana ended up falling silent for a few seconds. She took a minute before laughing weakly.

"There isn't much of a relationship. After all, they turned into monsters."

Tiana took in a shaky breath.

"And I killed them."

Kairos was unable to respond for a moment.

He began to somewhat understand why she was so cruel now.

"Sorry."

Tiana smiled bitterly.

"Don't worry about it, I'm fine."

The butterfly began glowing red. Kairos did his best to ignore it.

Tiana shook her head, quickly regaining her bearings.

"Anyway. What is your id number?"

Kairos froze in place.

He understood the implications of that sentence and ran through several possible answers, but none of them had the effects he wanted. In the end, Kairos could only remain silent for the next five seconds.

And then, there was a knocking sound at his door.

"Kairos?"

Tiana stood up with a smile.

"Haha, I'll be going now. Don't worry about answering that last question, as I already got the answer."

Kairos narrowed his eyes without responding. It seemed that she was asking about the id number because she knew about the top ten rankings. Since he didn't respond, he basically said that he knew about them too.

Tiana opened the door.

Sam was on the other side with a casual smile on his face that froze.

"Ah."

Tiana waved her hand.

"Don't worry about me, I was leaving just now."

She walked past without another word.

Sam looked over his shoulder with a bit of confusion.

"O-Oh. Alright, bye."

He stood there a little awkwardly.

Kairos sighed.

"Come in."

After a bit of hesitation, Sam walked in and closed the door behind him. He walked over to the sofa.

"Hey Kairos, how you holding up?"

Kairos shrugged his shoulders.

"Fine."

Sam sat down.

"Haha, I guess so. You were given a position out of nowhere, and even got us in by proxy!"

Kairos nodded.

"Yeah."

Sam's expression gradually fell down.

"…You do understand that dealing with power is complicated, right?"

Kairos looked up.

"Yes, but I don't understand the specifics."

Sam smiled bitterly.

"That's normal."

He sighed.

"Why don't I brush you up on the basics?"

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