Read I See One Second Into The Future: Loner In The Apocalypse Chapter 91 online for free - AllNovelFull

Originally, Kairos decided to ignore the third hallway, with all of its doors. However, he also began wondering if that was really what he should've done.

Frankly, as nice as points were, he had no intention of staying here for any longer than he needed to. Getting points this way was frankly not what he wanted to do. From what Aria had said earlier, it was some sort of taboo to go towards the doors.

Yet, at the same time, none of them were able to advance to the next floor.

Perhaps that meant there was some sort of mechanism there.

…Though at this point, he was feeling really hungry and stressed out as well. His encounter with the person in the pitch-black hallway made him quite averse to eating, but that couldn't change his needs.

Kairos decided to try one of the doors. Considering he had his future vision to back him up, he should be able to back out if something bad happens.

And so, Kairos walked into the hallway of repeating doors.

He didn't choose right away, opting to walk down several more doors until he arbitrarily decided on one. After opening the door, he was greeted with an empty room that had the same flower-pattern wallpaper outside. A white light shined brightly at the top of the room.

Kairos decided to briefly extend his future vision to two seconds and see what would happen if he shut the door behind him.

The moment the door shut with a soft click, a hazy blue figure appeared on the opposite side of the room.

Kairos quickly canceled his actions, keeping the door ajar.

He rubbed his chin in contemplation.

…It didn't seem particularly dangerous. Though he might've been underestimating the blue figure's ability.

While remembering this spot, he decided to walk back into the hallway and try out the door opposite to the one he was just at. After opening the door, he was greeted with the same empty room.

He peeked into his future vision to see what would happen if he closed the door, and was greeted with countless bullets materializing in thin air and raining down on him from every angle.

Kairos hurriedly stopped himself from closing the door in reality.

He came to realize it seemed like some sort of pandora's box. There would be some random surprise for him on the other side.

Thankfully, it seemed that his ability would actually help tremendously in this scenario so that he wouldn't have to take any huge gambles.

Kairos was really feeling the stress at this point, once again underestimating how debilitating extending his future vision felt. Not to mention, he really should eat something.

He decided to take a break before coming back to the doors.

Upon getting back to the room where the spiral staircase was located, he saw some familiar faces.

It was Aria, Alice, and Kyle.

Kairos looked at them strangely. However, they were all paying attention to the other pathways, not even noticing he was in the same room as them.

After walking a little closer, he raised his hand.

"Um, why are you guys here?"

Almost like they were some sort of kpop band, they all jumped up before turning around at the exact same time.

Their expression was first shock, but quickly transformed into a normal casual one. Aria laughed awkwardly.

"Ah, Kairos! We were just waiting for you here to see if you were ok!"

Kairos did not respond immediately, instead opting to take a closer look at the people in front of him. They were all wearing clothes that had covered their entire body. Aria's suit made it hard to see the body structure underneath, as it had its own structure.

As for Alice, her clothes were rather baggy.

And Kyle had clothes that were basically rags covering his entire body.

In other words, Kairos couldn't see if their bodies were normal, or skin tight like everyone else.

"…You don't need to come and check on me next time."

Aria looked at him for a good few seconds, analyzing him closely. Then, she laughed.

"Ah, but we are in an alliance, no? It's only natural to check up on each other!"

Kairos shook his head.

"There's no need for that, really."

The corner of Aria's lip twitched.

"Alright, alright. So, how did your point gathering session go? And… where did you come from?"

Kairos blinked a few times.

"I tried to go down the bloody path to kill some monsters, but a guy wouldn't let me pass unless I gave him some food, which I didn't have. Then, I tried the pitch black pathway and was able to find a single red crystal, but that was it."

Aria clapped her hands gently.

"Ah, so you were able to get a point?"

Kairos nodded.

"Yeah, it seemed fairly easy."

He then looked over to the pathway with hallways and doors.

"And then I tried walking down that place a little bit."

Alice's face twitched.

"Why did big brother go there? It's too dangerous!"

Kyle seemed a little baffled.

"…Did you not hear that's how almost everyone died?"

Kairos raised his hands in the air.

"Hey, hey, I never entered a room and closed the door. I only checked it out a little bit."

Aria smiled bitterly.

"Um, I think it's best just to stay away from that place anyway."

Kairos shrugged his shoulders.

"Ok, I didn't do anything anyway. I'm going to go back now."

Since the three were standing at the top of the spiral staircase, he decided to jump off from the other end, landing at the side.

The other three looked a little anxious but simply followed after him casually.

Kairos walked a little quicker so that he was decently far away from the others. This seemed to prompt Aria to hurry up a little, which then made Kairos break out into a full sprint.

Alice called out.

"Wait, it's not safe to go so fast!"

Kairos responded without much care.

"Don't worry, I have good control over my steps."

That wasn't exactly the truth, but he would rather keep his distance from the others.

He continued to travel down the steps, almost feeling like he was traveling down a slide, just more dangerously.

Once he eventually felt he was about fifty meters up in the air, he simply jumped off.

For a few moments, he felt the wind wildly blow past his clothes.

And eventually, he slammed down on the ground.

Kairos bent his knees, landing with one end of his spear on the ground.

Despite landing with a pretty hefty impact, the ground was undamaged. As for Kairos, he felt the shock travel through his body, but there didn't seem to be any injuries.

After getting back up on his feet, he began walking back to his room.

Another slam resounded behind him soon enough, the sound of someone else landing.

"Wait, do you want to take a shift for sleeping now?"

It was Aria.

Kairos spared a single glance behind him.

"Not yet, I'm going to eat something before trying to get more points. I don't even have a bed or blanket, after all."

Aria blinked a few times.

"There's no need to buy a blanket or bed! It would be better to get some more points for food first. After all, you can't survive without eating!"

Kairos nodded.

"Ah, well either way I'll go back up after having a meal."

Aria stopped chasing after hearing that.

"Haha, ok, ok!"

She then began walking back to Kyle and Alice, who didn't jump off. They seemed to be discussing something, but Kairos didn't care.

As he made his way back to his room, he could overhear two people arguing with each other in the distance.

"What the hell is taking Mark so long?"

"I don't know, he was carrying all the food we had prepared for the red crystal expedition."

One was a man with short blonde hair, and upon catching sight of Kairos, he glared. The other was a woman that had short black hair, but it was messily cut. It seemed like she had messily cut it with a blade.

She turned to look at Kairos as well, and simply observed for a good few moments.

Kairos felt like he was being analyzed, almost like he was a zoo animal in a cage. Deciding not to think about it too much, he got back inside his room.

Unfortunately, there was no door to close, so the privacy aspect was really lacking. It definitely wouldn't get a high rating online as a place to stay.

After taking a peek behind him, he only saw people far off in the distance.

From there he walked over to the projection, prompting it to open his status panel once more.

[Status]

[Floor Level: 1]

[Dungeon Currency: 51]

Kairos blocked it with his body.

"Open the shop."

The same shop had greeted him, offering both food and something to sleep on.

From there, he hesitated for a second before buying the bread and water, costing him one point. Blue mana coalesced around the counter in front of him before suddenly becoming a loaf of bread and a large glass of water.

Though it wasn't that small of a portion, it definitely wasn't worth an entire evolution point.

He took a sip of the water.

It definitely felt like water, but there was no refreshing sensation despite him being fairly thirsty.

He then took a bite out of the bread.

It was hard, dry, and had little to no taste.

That was more or less what Kairos had expected. It did not take him too long to finish.

By the end, he no longer felt hungry.

However, Kairos frowned when he took a closer look at his body. It was rather… muscular looking.

His skin wrapped quite tightly around his muscles, not that he didn't have any fat, but it had reduced considerably from when he had first entered this dungeon.

Kairos shut his eyes tightly.

He wasn't entirely sure if it was his imagination, but his body seemed to get smaller after he had eaten the bread. Even if there was some sort of difference, it was an unbelievably small one.

Several red flags raised in Kairos' mind, slowly connecting together. He began to find it suspicious that both the bread and water were formed out of mana.

…There probably weren't any calories in mana.

Kairos hedged a bet.

That the food provided was actually fake.

…But it also seemed like the other people had been here for a while. Maybe not entirely fake, but definitely not what it looked like.

Maybe the only real food that was here, was actually the green orbs that Kairos had on him.

Kairos pressed his eyelids tightly together and took a deep breath.

Then came to a decision.

After clicking on the 'more' tab in the shop, he spent all 50 of his remaining currency on evolution points.

As reckless as a move this was, Kairos felt it was the right one.

Though he did it for the sake of not wasting his resources on useless things, it was more so for the mentality he wanted to take.

This place was a hellhole, and that was even relative to the fact the rest of the world was plunged into the apocalypse.

It seemed that all the others on the floor were focused on surviving before anything else. However, ironically enough, by avoiding risk, their lives were all whittling away.

Kairos had no plan to be like all of the others on the floor with him.

As for the mystery ten, they probably did something different, exploring the strange rooms. And by doing that, they either advanced to the next floor, or died without a trace. It was a gamble to follow after them, but this was the only option he saw.

Without a single dungeon currency to his name, he walked out of the room.

And he had no intention of ever coming back.

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As Kairos made his way back to the spiral staircase, he noticed that the two people arguing earlier had already begun making their way there.

As for Aria and the others, they were in the way, but hurriedly scampered off to the side after noticing the others making their way forth. Kairos didn't think too much about it, instead opting to go towards the staircase at the same pace he had before.

It did not take long for Aria and the others to see where he was going and decide to meet up with him once more.

Aria smiled cordially.

"Hey, you are going back to get some points, right?"

Kairos nodded absentmindedly, not even pausing in his travels.

Kyle did not make direct eye contact, but spoke up roughly as well.

"We can help you with the acquisition process so that we would all have an easier time with it."

Kairos did not pause, instead waving his hand dismissively.

"I'm just going to try and find some more red crystals, alright? I won't need much help."

Aria cleared her throat.

"Um, one thing I forgot to tell you earlier is that those red crystals are very rare. Your best bet will be to find a way to kill the monsters."

Kairos sighed.

"But I don't have the points to give that guy the food that he wants."

Alice balled her hands into fists.

"Don't worry! With all of us here, he will have to listen! That's why we should go together."

Kairos furrowed his brows.

"…There's no need."

The longer he spent with those people, the more he wanted nothing to do with them. That was what discouraged him from accepting their offer, but the biggest reason was that he wanted to try out the hallway with doors.

Kairos had no intention of wasting his time trying to kill monsters.

Nonetheless, the three were persistent.

Kyle coughed roughly.

"This is simply so that we can all gain points. We can split them fairly regardless of who obtains them."

Aria nodded enthusiastically.

"Yes! This way, we can not only live, but live comfortably. Buying comfort items is not out of the question either!"

Kairos took a peek at the people behind him before turning forwards once more.

"You seem to put a lot of trust in me."

Alice raised one hand high into the air and waved it around.

"That's because big brother looks like a trustworthy person! We know he would never betray us."

Kairos' expression twitched when he heard that.

"…So you trust me enough to let me get all of the points?"

Alice fell silent, not knowing how to respond. That was when Kyle responded curtly.

"Of course, if the situation calls for it, you will kill the monster thus gaining the respective points. However, for the sake of everyone's survival, whoever can end its life should be the one doing it."

Kairos shrugged his shoulders.

"I suppose that could make sense."

Aria clapped lightly.

"Alright, then let's get to it then!"

Kairos rolled his eyes.

"I'm not exactly used to working with other people, so I think it would be better for me to do things by myself."

Aria laughed.

"Oh don't worry about that, this will be the perfect opportunity to learn!"

Kairos narrowed his eyes.

"…Then don't blame me for any mistakes that I make."

Alice giggled.

"Don't worry! Everyone makes mistakes!"

Kairos tilted his head to the side.

"I guess…"

He cursed internally, unable to find a reasonable excuse to reject the three that were being as unreasonable as they were. Though they did seem rather pathetic, Kairos still didn't want to make an enemy out of them yet.

After all, to reach this place, they had to have cleared the first floor.

Though Kairos wasn't sure if they had some other version, it couldn't have been much easier. And frankly, if it wasn't for his future vision, he wasn't sure if he could've even cleared the first floor.

It meant that each person here wasn't one to be taken lightly.

And so, the four of them walked up the spiral staircase. Though there would be occasional attempts from Aria to bring up a casual conversation, Kairos shut them all down rather flatly.

From there, the group reached the top.

"You killed Mark, didn't you? Are you looking down at us?"

In the bloody hallway, the man that had short blonde hair grabbed onto the shoulders of the starving one guarding the way. To the side, the woman with messily cut short black hair crossed her arms.

"You really are willing to do anything, aren't you?"

The man that was so hostile to Kairos earlier had raised both hands in the air.

"I didn't do anything! I've just been standing here…"

The woman narrowed her eyes while holding onto a roughly woven together bag.

"Then how is Mark dead, huh? I bet it's because your crippled ass saw the opportunity and decided to kill him!"

The man being corned frowned.

"I didn't do anything!"

He then caught a glimpse of Kairos and pointed at him accusingly.

"Wait, I saw him go down there, to the black hallway! He must've done something!"

The man with blonde hair turned around, before glaring at Kairos.

"The new face is so bold?"

The woman turned around and raised an eyebrow.

"Tell me, twenty-five, is the dumbass here telling the truth?"

Kairos raised his hands in the air.

"I did end up going into the hallway with red crystals, but I can assure you that I did nothing myself."

The woman frowned and walked a few steps forward.

"So you did do it, but you're just too scared to admit it?"

Kairos rolled his eyes.

"The only thing I did was get a red crystal from inside the place, alright?"

He then furrowed his brows.

"…I would prefer not being reminded of that."

The woman tilted her head to the side slightly, while her eyes widened.

"Reminded? Reminded of what? How you killed Mark?"

Kairos clicked his tongue.

"When I was walking through the place, I heard whimpers. There was a person mumbling to himself about wanting to be fat and how the food no longer sated him. Then I heard some gurgling sounds before I felt a head roll next to my feet."

The man with blonde hair was still holding onto the other person.

"What? Are you trying to say Mark killed himself?"

Kairos massaged his temple with the tip of his finger.

"Not necessarily, I'm just telling you what I know."

The woman frowned.

"The dipshit twins are still fighting monsters right now… so the only person that could've been in the black tunnels would be Mark."

Kairos shrugged his shoulders.

"I guess it was Mark then."

The man with blonde hair shoved the person he was holding onto before rushing forth.

"The hell? Mark wasn't the kind of guy to kill himself, you lying sack of shit!"

Kairos' eyelids couldn't help but fall, showing how annoyed he was getting.

"I haven't lied about anything. I just told you about what I know, alright?"

The woman clenched her fist tightly.

"…I was wondering who dared mess with us. Of course it was a newbie that didn't know of our reputation."

Kairos sighed.

"And of course, you aren't listening to me."

The man with blonde hair cracked his fists.

"Heh, there's no need to listen anymore, we already know the truth. Next time, you should do a background check on people, Twenty-five."

A confident smile appeared on his face.

"Because I'm so nice, I'll let you know who you fucked with. The name's Darren, the fifteenth person to reach this floor."

A small smirk formed on the woman's face.

"And my name is Ines, the thirteenth person to clear the first floor. Do you understand who you've messed with now?"

Kairos watched as the man that blamed him scampered away before laughing to himself.

"I've messed with a lot of people, but the only thing I understand now is that the two of you lack the basic intelligence to function as a human would. You must be monkeys, and with that consideration, it truly is impressive you learned how to communicate. I'm sure many scientists would go crazy to meet you."

The woman smiled dangerously, while her hand spasmed violently, growing claws.

"Piece of shit, you asked for it!"

Aria, Kyle, and Alice were all quite far away from Kairos, right next to the pitch black pathway.

Upon seeing the situation get out of control, Aria called out.

"Hurry! Get inside here and they won't be able to see us!"

Without so much as looking back, the three of them all dived into the black pathway, disappearing from vision.

Kairos clicked his tongue.

"Some alliance that was."

A strange smile formed on his face.

"This is why I hate people. It would be so much better if they were all dead…"

He considered following after the others. However, he preferred being able to see his surroundings.

And so, Kairos leaped back towards the hallway with doors.

Unfortunately, that was when Darren's figure blurred before appearing in that hallway. The ends of roughly ten or so red nails suddenly appeared from the palms of his hands, almost like they were hiding inside.

Kairos furrowed his brows and stopped in place.

Ines jumped down onto the spiral staircase before leaping up once again with a claw reaching out towards him.

In the end, Kairos ducked to the left, avoiding the claw.

Darren took this opportunity to rush forth and try to pierce him with the nails coming from his hands. However, Kairos didn't have too much trouble evading it by twisting his body out the way. Nonetheless, he was off balance, meaning he was fairly open to getting hit.

Instead of pressing this advantage, Ines opted to back up.

As for Darren, he let one of the red nails fall out of his palm and held onto it between his two fingers. Then, he let it whip forth.

Kairos threw his head back, letting the nail shoot past him.

At the same time, he ran around the spiral staircase. Ines slid over with a smirk, blocking his path.

"Are you sure you want to come closer?"

Kairos narrowed his eyes, before whipping his spear back.

A metallic clang resounded as it hit Darren's hand filled with nails. Despite his attack being blocked, this didn't discourage him. His other hand plucked nails out of his palm before whipping them.

Kairos was able to dodge them fairly easily, despite facing both projectiles and swings. However, he was also being forced to take steps back to dodge, which brought him closer to Ines.

Once he was just two meters away, Ines suddenly lunged forth, opening her mouth wide as her teeth rapidly grew into fangs.

Kairos intended on turning around and piercing Ines through the heart. However, he saw in his future vision that she would just continue without so much as flinching.

And so, Kairos abandoned that idea, instead sweeping with the spear, trying to trip her.

Ines jumped over it easily, and she aimed to claw out his eyes while Darren aimed to pierce his back.

But Kairos immediately slid underneath Ines, almost like he was a baseball player desperately trying to reach home base.

His assailants seemed rather surprised, and taking advantage of that he began running to make some distance.

Ines spun around, while Darren's figure blurred.

Kairos thrust his spear forth towards the air with furrowed brows.

A loud series of clangs resounded.

Darren suddenly appeared, holding his hands close together to block the spear.

Ines let out a roar awfully reminiscent of a monster before rushing forth as well. Lightning began coalescing around her body, while gales of wind began forming around Darren.

Kairos frowned as he quickly realized he could no longer hold back using his own spells, thus began charging up the pulse spell.

His eyes widened slightly as he reached out with his hand.

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After charging for a second, Kairos released the pulse spell.

A soft swish rang out before a loud thump.

Darren didn't seem prepared for it, getting struck in the chest and launched backwards. However, the winds around him rapidly slowed his momentum.

Kairos' spear whipped backward, intercepting Ines' electrified claws. Yellow arcs of lightning erratically jumped out,

Kairos let himself be pushed forth, opting not to have a confrontation.

Though, Darren wasn't just going to let him go. The winds picked up the various red nails lying on the ground, allowing Darren to easily pick them back up, now with several nails in between his fingers.

He threw a nail toward Kairos' upper arm. This almost prompted Kairos to throw his body to the side, but he saw in his future vision that it had slightly shifted trajectory and went for his head.

And thus, Kairos tilted his head to the side, letting the nail fly past.

Darren seemed rather surprised but continued to throw the nails while the wind began bringing back the ones that were thrown away. It seemed that he wasn't able to stir winds great enough to move the nails fast enough to be lethal on their own, thus had to supplement it by throwing.

However, he was still able to use the spell well because it allowed him to retrieve the nails and also change their trajectory.

Kairos felt several nails pierce his body, but thankfully that was only in his future vision. He was able to dodge the nails rather easily, approaching Darren quickly.

Kairos thrust his spear the moment he got within range, prompting Darren to gather his nails together to block.

A crisp clang rang out.

Despite Kairos trying to shift the trajectory, Darren was able to easily block the spear, letting it get caught in between the nails in his hands. The worst thing that happened to him was sliding back a bit.

A wild scream came from behind as Ines lunged forth.

Kairos grit his teeth and did the trick where he looks behind him, but only in his future vision.

Using that information he stepped to the side, letting Ines' claw pass by his side. As it passed by, Kairos wrestled onto the arm, immediately feeling the voltage pass through his body and run rampant, making his muscles seize up.

Straining his body as much as possible, Kairos forced it to move, carrying Ines' claw forth further, towards Darren.

Kairos figured that since she seemed to lose most of her rationality, she wasn't going to hold back with her attacks at all, also meaning it would be hard for her to retract them. As such, it would be rather easy to push her attack further to attack her ally.

Darren furrowed his eyebrows before bringing the nails in front of him.

A sharp clash resounded, followed by uncomfortably loud metallic grinding sounds.

Darren was able to interlock Ines' fingers with his nails, blocking them. However, he began finding difficulty moving his own body as the electrical current passed through to his own body.

Kairos grit his teeth, trying to force himself to move, but underestimated the effects of the lightning around Ines' body. It had reduced his speed by at least half, though at least Darren wasn't faring too well either.

Unfortunately, Ines was doing just fine.

Against Kairos' expectations, she didn't just recklessly try and attack him once more. Instead, she pressed her weight against him, forcefully shoving him towards the spiral staircase.

Kairos' eyes widened as he realized her intention. She wanted to throw him off the staircase.

He immediately let go of Ines and got away from her, but the effects of the lightning were still rampaging through his body. Though the only way he could truly separate was by jumping onto the spiral staircase, thus he did exactly that.

Ines gave chase immediately, while Darren backed off a little. Pulling back his hand to get ready to throw the nails once more.

Upon landing, Kairos immediately twisted around while holding his spear horizontally. Ines came down with an overhead strike as she jumped down as well.

A crash resounded.

Kairos could feel his own eyes getting bloodshot, but it was nothing compared to how many red veins snaked in Ines' eyes. In fact, her entire body had large bulging blue veins that squirmed like live worms.

Despite having his strength maxed out. Kairos could immediately tell he was losing the clash, and thus backed off. Though, as he retreated, he felt pain coursing through his leg in his future vision. Kairos shifted his foot at a strange angle, and a nail slammed onto the staircase where his foot was going.

Ines used that time to lunge toward Kairos with both her arms spread out, almost like she was trying to give a hug. There was even a smile on her face, though it looked more sadistic than loving.

Seeing this, Kairos decisively jumped off himself. He bit down on the bag he was holding using his teeth, freeing up a hand to hold onto the side of the staircase.

Ines couldn't stop her own momentum, but didn't try to. She instead jumped, landing down on the opposite side and further down the spiral staircase.

Before Kairos could even begin pulling himself back up, he felt a sharp pain shoot through his hand in his future vision.

Without hesitation, Kairos swung himself forth a little before letting go of the ledge. Right as he did, a nail slammed onto the staircase where his hand was.

For a moment, Kairos was suspended mid-air without a single thing to hold him up. It wasn't a sensation he was used to. While the effects of Ines' lighting had worn off by now, the anxiety nearly made his body seize up regardless.

However, Kairos had already thought of a plan and thus was able to easily reign his panic in. He began charging the pulse spell, letting it build up.

He shifted the grip on his spear before raising it up, almost like how someone would raise a flag up. Though, he also tilted it back, letting it catch onto the stairs above him. With a grunt, he forcefully hoisted himself up.

Several nails shot towards his spear, trying to offset it, but they all ended up missing by a small margin. Darren frowned over missing, but that was fair enough given how thin the spear was.

While that was happening, Ines wasted no time in rushing up the steps.

Kairos ignored her, instead opting to focus on the person harassing him from afar. He then jumped up, to which Darren threw a nail.

Unfortunately for him, Kairos was able to catch the nail, holding onto it between his two fingers. Without delay, he threw it back. Darren was easily able to dodge it, using both the wind to divert the trajectory and stepping to the side.

However, that was exactly what Kairos wanted him to do.

He was able to land right next to Darren. Faint blue mana had already gathered around his palm and by now his hand was even giving off a faint glow.

When Kairos pressed his hand against Darren's chest, he frowned, realizing what was about to happen.

His figure suddenly blurred, before appearing a few meters back.

However, Kairos had not released the pulse spell.

After all, he could see that Darren would disappear at that point.

Kairos did not hold back in rushing forth, while Ines jumped up and was following closely behind.

Darren clicked his tongue, throwing several nails forth, but Kairos was able to sidestep them rather easily. In the end, one of them ended up piercing Ines's arm instead, though it didn't even slightly faze her.

Kairos was able to catch up rather easily despite Darren backing up, as it was naturally slower to run backwards.

Without delay, he once again brought his hand right next to Darren's chest.

A severely panicked expression appeared on his face immediately. However, he was unable to suddenly shift his position again so soon.

Though Kairos didn't know beforehand, he could see it all happen in his future vision. The glow coming from his hand suddenly became a little brighter.

An ear-splitting explosion reverberated.

Kairos had released the pulse spell after charging it for several seconds, causing the air to shake. Hairline cracks formed on the ground underneath him, but disappeared as fast as they formed. As for Darren, he was blasted backwards like a bullet, leaving a thick trail of blood as he flew through the air.

He just so happened to shoot back into the bloody pathway, quickly disappearing in the distance. Though from what Kairos saw, his condition was extremely bad.

Darren's chest looked oddly deflated from his shirt, evidence that the man's rib cage had shattered. The rest of his body didn't seem too good either, as his skin had ruptured, causing his blood to splatter everywhere.

His muscles should've been damaged too.

Nonetheless, while Darren wasn't going to be a problem for now, there was still Ines rushing towards him.

She lunged forth, trying to bite down on his neck with her elongated teeth.

However, Kairos abruptly twirled around and threw his head back, just barely avoiding it. The bag that he was still holding with his teeth was almost implicated as well. He pulled his foot back before slamming it into Ines' stomach, forcefully pushing her back.

Unfortunately, despite putting all his strength into it, he was only able to shove her backwards by the length of his leg. On top of that, the lightning all over Ines' body discharged onto him as well, causing his body to seize up and slowing his actions considerably.

Ines took advantage of that, grabbing onto his leg with both claws before pulling.

Kairos decided not to resist, instead, he used his other foot to push forwards, bringing himself closer, letting him feel an uncomfortable warmth emanating from her, similar to the overheated body of monsters.

Ines did not seem to mind suddenly being so close. In fact, her mouth opened wide to reveal her long and sharp teeth, and lunged forth to bite down on him.

Kairos pulled his head back as beads of sweat formed on his forehead. However, he wasn't doing so to dodge out of the way.

While Ines lunged forth, he did the same, holding nothing back.

A crisp bang filled the air.

Kairos had slammed his forehead against Ines'. He could feel blood dripping down from his forehead, while Ines' only had a bruise. However, she also did not expect the hit, and her head ended up snapping back.

She even ended up letting go of his leg and stumbling a few steps toward the ledge.

Kairos was still having difficulty moving, but forced himself to move forth, keeping up. He once again pulled his foot back, raising it up for a kick.

Ines had just regained her footing, when her heel went over the edge. This caused her to completely lose her balance, about to fall off herself.

But Kairos, as the gentleman he was, spared no hesitation in helping her fall down.

His foot suddenly shot out, landing on Ines' stomach hard.

For whatever reason, Kairos had a strange inclination to declare that this was Sparta, despite being a dungeon.

Ines was launched like a cannonball. As she was falling, her back slammed against the staircase before sliding off, leaving her to free fall.

Ines grit her teeth in frustration, but there wasn't any fear.

Mana began gathering around her mouth. After a few seconds, she abruptly oriented her body straight with her face looking away from the staircase.

Then, a violent gust of wind shot out of her lips, causing her to recoil back towards the staircase.

She once again slammed onto the stairs, while the natural incline nearly caused her to slip off again, but she grabbed onto the edge before that happened.

Ines was still very much alive and kicking.

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Kairos saw that while Ines had fallen quite far, she was still able to land back onto the spiral staircase. Practically immediately, she began scampering up once again. However, as fast as she was, it would still take quite a while for her to get back up.

Kairos hesitated for a moment, but turned around before rushing down the bloody pathway.

From how he saw it, this was a good opportunity while they were separated to finish one of them off. Since Darren seemed pretty badly injured, that was naturally the one he wanted to go fight.

Not to mention, he didn't have any contingency plan if he fell down the spiral staircase, so he had no plans of trying to fight with Ines for now, who was more or less fine.

Kairos squinted slightly. After walking a decent distance into the bloody path, he found his eyes felt uncomfortable. There seemed to be some sort of faint mist lingering in the area, almost like a light foggy day.

It obscured his vision somewhat, but he was still able to see one hundred or so meters ahead of him.

Though most of the blood was dried and nearly black, there was still a line of fresh blood. Kairos assumed that there was left by Darren, and thus followed it.

The trail was initially straight, but eventually became a rather large splotch of blood. From there, there was no longer any bloodstain. Kairos furrowed his brows.

He began considering if it was possible that Darren had somehow died and was then swallowed up by the dungeon, like how it did with the other corpses.

But then again, it would probably be much faster for blood to be swallowed up rather than an entire corpse.

As Kairos stared at the blood in front of him, he witnessed it rapidly disappear.

He quickly came to the conclusion that Darren was still alive, and somehow able to stop the bleeding. Kairos furrowed his brows before looking around him.

There were no signs, so he decided to randomly choose to go to the left. His rationale was that Darren probably went to the side rather than fleeing directly away since he worked so hard to get rid of the trail.

After a moment of hesitation, Kairos went left.

He jogged briskly, squinting his eyes because of the uncomfortable mist. Eventually, he was able to come across sounds far off in the distance. Thinking that it was a good sign, he shifted his direction slightly to get closer to those sounds.

Along with the clear tapping sounds of his footsteps, roars came from the distance.

Kairos presumed that these were the monsters. Which then led him to wonder how strong they were exactly.

Soon enough, he found himself able to see the situation for himself.

There were two little children fighting against a massive ogre-like monster.

Kairos cursed internally once he realized that he had completely lost Darren, but decided to stay to watch the scene go down.

The monster was nearly ten meters tall, but while it was high, its bloated shape was far more notable. It seemed that this particular monster was obese, though it was definitely also muscular. Along with that, its skin was in a darker shade than usual, and red veins snaked through its entire body, squirming strangely.

There was a giant club in its hand, which was at the same height as it. As it swung the club around, violent gusts of wind would follow right after. The weight was clear, but the monster was swinging it around like a toothpick.

Unlike other monsters, this one seemed more human, mostly because…

"Hahaha, some little kids want to try and kill me?"

It was talking, and also the cocky smirk on its face as it fought. This was quite startling to Kairos, as he imagined most monsters to have completely lost their rationality.

At any rate, it was even difficult for people that were considered humans to retain coherent thought, which made it that much more impressive.

The ogre-like monster swung its club at a little boy, who was hovering in the air. The club was by no means slow. If Kairos wanted to dodge, he would probably only be able to do so by using his future vision.

Yet, that boy glided through the air, suddenly soaring upwards, and dodging it. He had short and rugged brown hair. Though practically nobody tried to maintain their hair in the apocalypse, from how messed up it was, it seemed like he had always had extremely messy hair.

"Judging people by their age is the first mistake many make."

Despite being engaged directly in a battle, there was a rather monotone expression on his face. It appeared as though he was bored. In fact, his eyelids were hardly open, almost like he was on the verge of falling asleep.

Yet as though to contrast that fact, there were bright green pupils underneath, that gave off light almost like it was a wolf's at night.

Along with that, the kid was holding a long chain in his hand, which was over three meters long. At the end, there was a meter-wide scythe.

Kairos couldn't help but wonder where someone could even find a weapon like that.

The chain almost seemed to be dancing in the air. In fact, it seemed alive, almost as though it was actually an eel navigating its way through the ocean. There was a dangerous glint coming from the blade as it abruptly shot towards the monster's neck.

However, despite how large it was, the monster was also agile, able to step to the side, avoiding it entirely. In fact, its steps were essentially silent, which was quite strange for such a large being.

Despite not having landed a hit earlier, the monster's confidence was as strong as ever.

"Hahaha, you have some sort of inferiority complex because of your age, don't you? Frankly, even the people you would consider to be old grandpas look just like children to me, so no need to take it to heart, brat."

Its club whipped through the air, which the little boy was confident to dodge. However, the corner of his lip quickly turned down as he watched the club fly through the air.

It was heading for his chains, rather than him.

The boy let out a grunt, trying to whip his chains out of the way, but it was simply too long. The club smashed against the chains, wrapping them around it. The blade even ended up hooking itself onto it.

The boy furrowed his brows as he felt the chains suddenly stretch taut. As for the club, it continued to snake through the air. At this rate, the weapon would be forcibly pulled out of his hand.

Yet…

"So you're saying that you're nothing but a feeble old grandpa, huh?

A deafening bang resounded.

The club was knocked away, while the chains were forcibly stripped off. A little girl pulled back a giant war hammer, nearly four meters in length. It looked quite strange given that it was several times her size, but that didn't seem to bother her.

She had fairly long purple hair that came down to just above her waist. There was a very similar bored expression on her face, which would make most connect the two that they were related in some capacity.

Her eyes also glowed brightly, but were blue instead.

She definitely looked more muscular than most kids, but that didn't change how slender her body was. Her child-like features were still what stood out most.

Yet, the way that she easily wielded the hammer, that fact almost seemed like an illusion.

The boy let out a soft breath while twirling his chain and scythe around in the air.

"I almost thought you weren't coming, Lucy."

Lucy clicked her tongue.

"You were the one that always brags about being able to stand on your own, don't you Oliver?"

Oliver chuckled.

"Ok, ok."

The monster grunted while holding both hands around the handle of its club. It was straining its hands to regain control over the club, as it was flung to the side from Lucy's strike earlier.

The monster narrowed its eyes as it took a step forward, swinging its club once more.

"You really think you have time to be arguing in front of me?"

Lucy and Oliver suddenly split apart, letting the club swish through the air between them. They only had rags covering their bodies, with countless old tears and stains that seemed to have seen years of use. There were no wings, so their ability to fly seemed to directly stem from some sort of magical spell.

On top of that, they swooped through the air more deftly than actual birds themselves.

The monster scoffed before a cocky smile returned to its face.

"Don't think you can evade forever!"

As Oliver glided through the air, he twirled his chain and scythe before sparing a glance at Lucy.

"Hey, there's another roach trying to take our kill."

Lucy let out a sigh.

"I already know that. I will take care of it later."

Kairos quickly realized that they were talking about him. He snapped out of his stupor, realizing he had just been staring awkwardly.

He waved his hand nonchalantly.

"Ah, I'm not trying to steal any kill. Rather, I'm trying to kill this guy with short blonde hair."

Then, he tilted his head to the side slightly while holding onto his chin.

"Ah, speaking of, have you seen that guy?"

Oliver raised an eyebrow before pointing off into the mist, close to the direction that Kairos had come from earlier.

"Darren? That asshole is right over there."

Kairos turned to look, but could only see the mist.

"You can see that far?"

Oliver shrugged his shoulders.

"Yeah, I'm not blind."

Lucy clicked her tongue.

"Oliver, you just gave out that information for free when we could've used it to our advantage!"

Oliver rolled his eyes.

"I don't like that Darren guy anyway, and I'm too lazy to kill him myself."

After saying that, he suddenly dipped down, letting a club soar over his head.

The monster ground his teeth noisily before shouting.

"Dammit! Don't ignore me!"

As its club glided through the air, Lucy had already raised her hammer up high in the air and was just above the club's trajectory.

When it whipped around to her, she let out a grunt before letting her hammer slam downwards.

A deafening smash resounded, while the dungeon shook slightly.

The club slammed down onto the ground, causing a large line of cracks to appear around it.

At that time, Oliver shot towards the monster's legs before letting out a soft sigh.

"Finally."

Kairos began running towards the location pointed earlier, but couldn't help but turn back to look at their fight.

Oliver whipped the chain in his hands forth, causing it to wrap around the monster's legs. He ended up abandoning the end he was holding entirely, instead catching the other side as the scythe whipped around.

The monster let out a deep roar.

"This won't work on me!"

It began to struggle, trying to separate its feet. But while it was distracted in doing that, Oliver tossed the blade of the scythe upwards. Somehow, it began to automatically extend itself, reaching up all the way to the top of the monster before starting to wrap around his neck.

The monster realized that, and abandoned its club so that it could use both hands to cover his neck.

The chains ended up wrapping around, while the blade pierced through the monster's flesh, but only its hands.

Despite its predicament, the monster still seemed confident in itself.

"This won't work! It's simply too weak!"

It began to forcibly break out of the chains that wrapped both around its legs and hands.

However, Oliver wasn't panicked in any way. He had one hand on his hip as he called out to Lucy.

"Hey, it's my turn to get a point."

Lucy rolled her eyes.

"Yeah, I know."

While the scythe had implanted itself in the ogre-like monster's hands, right before they were about to pierce its neck, Lucy had soared through the air.

And got next to the monster, with her hammer drawn back.

The monster seemed to notice what was going on.

"Wait!"

Unfortunately for the monster, Lucy did not wait. Her hammer shot forth, slamming against one end of the blade with a dull thump.

With that, the scythe pierced through the monster's hands cleanly, before seamlessly going through its neck as well.

The monster's head and fingers landed on the floor with rather splotchy sounds while the body slowly tilted backward before slamming down onto the ground as well.

And the very moment they had killed the monster, both Oliver and Lucy had rushed over to one of the arms.

Oliver pulled back his chain and scythe before grabbing one end to peel off the flesh that was on the monster's body. Then from there, he split it in two, giving one to Lucy.

Kairos had already somewhat expected what they were going to do, but was still surprised when he saw both of them nonchalantly begin eating the flesh from the monster. As for the corpse that was on the ground, it rapidly began disappearing.

"You uh… aren't afraid of any drawbacks?"

Oliver wiped his bloody mouth using his sleeve.

"What? The drawbacks aren't a big deal for us right now. This is the only way to actually have a proper meal."

Kairos' eyelid twitched.

"I suppose I can't say too much as I've eaten some monsters before myself."

Lucy chuckled. She smiled genuinely, but it looked rather creepy because of the blood splattered across her face.

"And we've eaten people before as well. Before everyone turned into big red things."

Kairos blinked a few times.

"…You did?"

Oliver shrugged his shoulders.

"If you care so much about what other people tell you is right, you aren't going to survive very long."

Kairos smiled bitterly.

"I guess that's true…"

With that, he turned around and began running in the direction that Oliver had pointed out to him earlier, the way to Darren.

Kairos hardly held back, running swiftly through the mist. If it wasn't for his future vision, he might've crashed into something along the way since he could only see one hundred meters ahead of himself.

Though there were only occasional rocks that appeared and were quite small, so at most it would be a tripping hazard.

Kairos ended up traveling farther than he expected. He began wondering if he had missed Darren just barely, but that was when he saw a trail of blood.

It rapidly disappeared just as he had seen it, but Kairos had seen it nonetheless.

Since it led in the same direction he was already going, Kairos simply followed it.

And eventually came across Darren.

He was standing, but clearly in a pretty bad mess. The nails that he carried before were embedded into the flesh and organs of his own chest, which was already deformed from Kairos' pulse spell.

From the way he was slightly swaying and the blood all around him, Darren seemed to be on the verge of death.

Nonetheless, he was still alive.

In fact, Darren was working on slowly pulling the nails out of his body, using his trembling hands.

Without too much hesitation, Kairos dashed forth, pulling back his spear like a sword.

Darren noticed this practically immediately, while a rather distraught expression was on his face.

"Wait, please wait!"

Kairos raised an eyebrow and was already on the verge of losing the patience he mustered up to listen.

"What?"

Darren coughed up blood, before hurrying to speak.

"Please don't kill me! It's not like I can even do anything anyway! Just look at me!"

Kairos was hardly moved, and Darren could clearly see that. As such, he quickly followed up with another plea.

"I can use all of my points for whatever you want to get, I have five right now, so you can buy whatever you want with them."

Kairos raised an eyebrow, before remembering something he was able to do.

There was a blurry status panel next to Darren. After that, he extended his future vision for a brief moment.

[Status]

[Floor Level: 1]

[Dungeon Currency: 11]

Kairos clicked his tongue.

"Lying even when your life is at stake, huh? That must mean you are confident in taking revenge."

Darren's eyes widened considerably.

"What? But how do you-"

Before he could say anything more, Kairos' spear swept forth and horizontally split the man in half.

Darren's eyes widened in horror as the top half of his body splattered against the floor.

Then, they fell limp.

[Killed Creature – 0.1 points awarded]

[Dungeon Bonus – 0.4 points awarded]

[Dungeon Currency Transfer – 11 added]

Kairos took a short glance at the system notifications before realizing that he now could gain more evolution points if he bought them. He felt a little awkward, since he resolved himself so completely to never come back, yet now he had a very good reason to do exactly that.

Kairos sighed before roughly guessing the location of the exit to this place before running there.

Before long, he found himself back at the entrance.

As for Ines, she was nowhere to be seen.

Kairos raised an eyebrow and assumed he must've missed her. And now, he could've easily ran over to the place with all the doors which was his initial goal.

However, he was quite bothered by the feeling of having an enemy that was alive.

With that said, Kairos also realistically felt her chances of making it out of this dungeon alive were also quite slim. Thus it wouldn't be too big of a deal to try out the doors, and hopefully get out.

Yet, as much as logic told him what he should've done, Kairos found himself turning around and going back into the bloody path, getting covered by the strange mist once more.

He had no idea how he was supposed to find her other than running aimlessly, so he did just that.

And so, he traversed the misty place blindly.

After ten minutes or so of running, he couldn't help but think about how sparse the monsters were in this place. What he initially imagined was that there would be quite a few monsters, to the point where a swarm could happen.

However, that was clearly not the case.

As those thoughts were filling his mind, he ended up hearing the sounds of battle in the distance once more. He decided to go towards those sounds without too much thought, and by the time he got there, he witnessed another giant monster falling down to the ground.

Its head had exploded, leaving only its body on the floor.

And there were two people floating above it. Lucy and Oliver.

Lucy spared a glance at Kairos.

"Sorry, there's no kill for you to steal here."

Kairos massaged his temple with the tip of his finger.

"Ah, no… I'm just trying to find and kill this girl called Ines."

Oliver blinked a few times.

"Huh. You seem pretty vengeful. What could she have even done to make you want to kill her this badly?"

Kairos tilted his head to the side.

"…I just don't like keeping enemies alive."

Lucy rolled her eyes.

"You have such low confidence in your own strength and growth that you think they will eventually come back and kill you?"

Kairos shrugged his shoulders.

"It's more the fact that I find it annoying not to tie up loose ends."

Oliver looked at him strangely before pointing off in a direction.

"Then just go there, and you'll find her if you aren't too slow."

Lucy glared at Oliver.

"You didn't even try to ask for something?"

Oliver closed his eyes and turned away.

"It's a waste of time to wait, if anything."

Lucy clicked her tongue.

"Even so, giving help for free…"

Kairos hesitated for a moment, before extending his future vision to see the status of the two before him.

[Status]

[Floor Level: 1]

[Dungeon Currency: 134]

[Status]

[Floor Level: 1]

[Dungeon Currency: 133]

Kairos' eyebrow twitched when he saw such an exaggeratedly high amount of points. He guessed that there must've been quite a few monsters in this place before, but these two twins must've killed nearly all of them.

He shook his head, deciding to hurry off over to Ines.

And just as Oliver said, he soon came across Ines, who was currently breathing heavily to herself. She was holding the side of her head with frustration, seemingly unaware that the claws were digging into her scalp.

For now, Ines seemed unaware of Kairos' presence.

He saw an opportunity through that.

Kairos stuck out his hand, keeping his four fingers together. Mana began gathering towards the tips of his fingers, charging up to become a gale spell.

After a few seconds, the faint sound of whipping wind could be heard from his fingers.

Combined with the spells he had casted previously, Kairos quickly found himself nearly out of mana.

He decided that he needed to add points into his mana capacity later. Doing so right now might starve him to death, which he wasn't really fond of right now.

Kairos narrowed his eyes, then released the gale spell.

It hardly made a sound as it shot through the air, and other than a slight distortion in the mist, it was completely invisible.

Ines just barely noticed it in time, bringing her arm up to block.

An ear-piercing crack resounded.

Ines immediately cried out in pain, but immediately reigned it in. Her arm had bent severely, almost like it had another joint.

She was still partially transformed into a monster, and when she turned to look at Kairos, her eyes told exactly the same story. Ines looked like her mentality had completely devolved into one of a beast.

Though, her skin was still far from red, like how other monsters were.

Kairos decided not to question it, instead rushing in to seize the advantage early.

As for Ines, despite having her arm badly injured, she didn't seem against it either. Lighting began to gather around her body once more, appearing as many tiny little arcs that jumped around her body. She crudely bent her arm, causing it to snap back in the proper orientation.

If a normal person did that, it would probably come off completely, leaving the person armless.

However, the moment the arm was placed back into place, it began to stitch itself together.

Seeing Ines' impressive regeneration ability, this only furthered his resolve to kill her. Kairos suddenly dashed to the side. As he did, Ines lunged to the spot where he just was.

Kairos wasted no time in spinning around and thrusting his spear forth, piercing into the back of Ines' heart.

However, despite that, there was a frown on his face.

He quickly pulled his spear out before taking a step backwards, just barely avoiding Ines' strike as she suddenly whipped around.

Despite not hitting Kairos, and only taking hits herself, Ines didn't seem the slightest bit discouraged. She let out a deep roar before rushing towards him once more.

Kairos narrowed his eyes before sweeping his spear at Ines' feet, causing her to trip and fall onto the ground. His spear shot for Ines' head, but he saw that she dodged.

Despite shifting his trajectory with the information from his future vision, Ines was still able to move out of the way, perhaps with powerful instincts.

Ines then grabbed onto the spear.

Kairos frowned, not expecting this as he couldn't see it while his future was warping to change. He then abruptly let go of the spear, while his eyes narrowed.

Right when he did, violent currents of lightning suddenly came out of Ines, climbing up the spear despite the fact it didn't conduct electricity before.

A smile formed on Ines' face as she tilted her head to the side. It was almost like she was mocking him.

He had lost his weapon.

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Ines held onto the spear like it was a stick and waved it around like she was a kid.

From how her eyes weren't truly focused, it seemed that most of her rationale had already disappeared.

Kairos wondered if he should've let himself be electrocuted so that he could keep the spear, but quickly discarded that thought as holding on would've made him extremely susceptible to her attacks, and that this wasn't really the time to be thinking of such things.

Ines pounced towards him, prompting him to throw his body to the side.

As she passed him, he could hear the clear crackle of lightning in his ears. Kairos quickly realized the big problem with his situation. If he tried to attack her, even if he landed a successful hit, his body would seize up under the lightning.

Yet, he couldn't defeat her if he never fought back.

While stuck in this strange situation, Kairos continued to evade all of Ines' attacks, whether they were swiping with her claws, biting down with her teeth, or using his own spear against him.

During this time, he suddenly came to the realization that Ines wouldn't be able to use her lightning ability forever. It should eventually run out. Considering she had been using it for quite a while before, and that she had cast another spell earlier, her mana must be relatively limited.

And so, Kairos continued dodging.

Ines wouldn't do anything like a feint or even hold back with her attacks so that she could easily follow up with another one. As such, while it wasn't the easiest to dodge a full power attack, on the whole, it wasn't terribly hard.

Kairos' eyes narrowed slightly as he felt the spear brush by the top of his head, causing his hair to flutter.

He then slammed his foot against the ground, forcibly twisting himself to avoid the claw that shot toward him.

Though it was close, Kairos was able to dodge everything with the help of his future vision.

Yet, it seemed he was a little naive to believe that this situation would just consistently repeat itself. The lightning on Ines' body had grown stronger by several times, to the point that the arcs of lightning began reaching out into the air and even began traveling up the spear.

She might've seen through Kairos' plan of evading until she ran out of mana, or perhaps she had just become impatient.

Regardless, Kairos was quickly put in a bad position.

Ines swung the spear and Kairos originally had the intention of dodging. However, he was able to see in his future vision that even if he did dodge, the lightning would jump out into his own body.

To make matters worse, his body would be restricted even more than usual, making him at least seventy percent slower. Perhaps even more.

In that brief moment, Kairos' thoughts raced, before bringing him to make a rather risky decision, to match the risky situation.

He threw himself forwards, and slightly to the side.

As he did this, the spear ended up ripping into his chest, brutally tearing up his flesh. However, Kairos had no time to think about that now.

The lightning rapidly began traversing through his body, seizing control over it.

However, before it fully took over, he slipped past Ines, before hooking his arms from underneath her armpits, almost like he was trying to stop a drunk friend from picking a fight.

As the lightning rampaged through Kairos' body, he could almost feel his entire body tearing apart. However, he was still not in the worst possible situation.

The lightning forced his body to contract involuntarily, but he didn't try to resist it, instead also trying to contract his muscles further. It caused his arm to squeeze together and ball his hands tightly in a fist.

This way, he was able to restrain Ines, meaning it would be hard for her to fight against him.

Kairos considered it risky to try and wrap around to restrain from behind, however, he figured it would be way worse to try and do it the other way, considering Ines would very likely bite his face off.

Though, that didn't mean she was unable to do so altogether.

Ines strained her neck, forcibly twisting it to the side before biting down on Kairos. It was quite painful, though most of it was masked by the pain of lightning coursing through his entire body.

Regardless, Kairos couldn't just sit here and do nothing.

After all, more than the problem of Ines biting through his arm, he had the bigger problem of the lightning slowly destroying his entire body.

It was getting quite hard for his mind to even process basic commands, which made Kairos start to become a little desperate.

Realistically, he only saw one way to attack Ines.

And that was with his teeth.

With nothing else to truly think about, Kairos slowly opened his mouth, resisting the force of lightning trying to contract it.

Once he had opened it enough to take a proper bite, Kairos lunged forth, biting down on the back of Ines' neck.

Biting down was far easier than opening his mouth, especially since the lightning was now helping him contract his muscles as opposed to resisting it.

Though this wasn't the first time Kairos had done something like this, he still felt quite strange.

Perhaps it was because Ines was a human, despite her various features that had become monsterized.

Nonetheless, it was far too late to think about those things now.

Red veins began to bulge in Kairos' widened eyes. A strong taste of blood filled his mouth and eventually had nowhere to go other than down his throat.

Until eventually, he bit off a chunk from the back of Ines' neck.

Yet… she was still alive, and very much still struggling, causing the lightning to rampage through his body and also tearing through his arm with her teeth.

Kairos felt the lump of flesh in his throat and was greatly unsettled by it. He tried opening his mouth to spit it out, but he was only able to open his mouth so far and wasn't able to make enough space for the flesh to fall out on its own.

Kairos began choking on all the blood seeping down his throat, and in the end, that choking made him lose what little control he had.

And so, the lump of flesh pressed against his esophagus.

Kairos could've still resisted, but if he wanted to be able to breathe properly, then he would need to swallow. More blood began to pump to his brain, making his head radiate an uncomfortable warmth.

As the adrenaline ran through his veins, Kairos made his decision.

And swallowed the lump of flesh.

…It definitely felt strange and uncomfortable. For one, it was human flesh, and for the other, he really didn't chew the lump of flesh at all, making it kind of hard to swallow in the first place.

Nonetheless, Kairos couldn't contemplate that now.

He had already opened his mouth enough to take another bite when he was trying to get the flesh out of his mouth.

And so now, he did not have to wait before biting down once more.

Kairos felt his teeth push through the muscles until eventually getting caught on something. He quickly identified it to be the spine.

As more blood continued to pour down his throat, he felt he was losing more of his sanity.

It was moments like these that Kairos really hated the fact that he had his future vision, making him experience all of these things twice.

His desperation grew as his teeth locked themselves onto Ines' spine. From there, he began pulling.

Countless messy fleshy sounds rang out.

Kairos pulled harder, until he felt the spine was breaking.

Then, a strangely wet sounding crack resounded.

As Ines' head came off of her body.

[Killed Creature – 0.1 points awarded]

[Dungeon Bonus – 0.4 points awarded]

[Dungeon Currency Transfer – 2 added]

The lightning stopped almost immediately, while Kairos ended up collapsing to the ground, spasming violently.

He still held onto the end of the head in his mouth, though he didn't want to do so.

It was only until a few seconds later, and after an unknown amount of blood had traveled down his throat, was he able to finally let go of the head.

Kairos immediately began gagging, trying to spit out the blood he had swallowed. However, he was only able to expel the blood in his mouth. It seemed that everything that went to his stomach had already been used up, and spread through the rest of his body.

As this was all happening, there was a faint chuckle in the distance.

"I thought you said you had done something like that before? From how it looks, this is your first time trying to eat someone else."

Kairos' vision was blurry, while he wasn't really listening. However, he could still make out that Oliver was speaking to him.

After spitting a few more times, Kairos sat up and began panting heavily.

"…I just… choked."

Lucy laughed.

"If anything, it looks like you couldn't stand it, so you forced yourself to choke."

The corner of Kairos' lip twitched.

He reached around, before eventually grabbing onto his bag of green orbs that he had dropped during the battle.

Oliver spared a glance towards the bag, but soon lost interest.

"Why were you even so insistent on killing Ines, anyway? Did she do something to offend you?"

Kairos blinked a few times, slowly recovering.

"She… decided to be enemies with me. And I don't like having enemies."

Lucy rolled her eyes.

"So if we declared that we were enemies with you, then you would begin chasing us down?"

The corner of Kairos' lip twitched.

"…Maybe."

Oliver laughed, twirling his chain and scythe.

"Even if that meant you would die?"

Kairos fell silent.

Though he wanted to say something back, he had to admit that he didn't have the confidence to kill both Oliver and Lucy. If it was only one, then he could consider it, but otherwise it was simply too much.

He coughed while wiping away the blood that had covered his mouth and began dripping down to his neck.

"It weighs down on your mind when you have people that may turn against you. That's why I said I wanted to tie up loose ends."

Oliver raised an eyebrow.

"And that's why I said that you should at least have the confidence that you can grow faster than your enemies."

Kairos' face twitched.

"But there are no guarantees."

Lucy sighed.

"Don't you know that there will always be risks? Why are you being such a dummy?"

Kairos' face twitched. He had no clue why he was being lectured by some kids. Perhaps this was why Ines had referred to them as the 'dipshit twins'.

He let out a long sigh.

"I guess maybe."

Oliver shrugged his shoulders.

"Me and Lucy here have countless enemies. We were kids on the street with nowhere else to turn to. And because we weren't just going to sit down and die, we stole a whole lot."

Kairos blinked a few times, and continued to wipe the blood off of his body.

"So… you made a lot of enemies."

Lucy chuckled.

"That's an understatement. Sometimes I would even go out of my way to provoke people and find ways to beat them up."

Kairos' eyelid twitched.

"That sounds like going too far. You have to at least somewhat think about it, right?"

Oliver smirked.

"It's because we have confidence in ourselves. We know that no matter what, we will get through it like we always have. That's why none of our burdens weigh us down, because they don't cause us to doubt."

He shrugged.

"If anything, it's only proof of how far we've come."

Kairos couldn't help but think of his past after hearing that.

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Whenever Kairos had been picked on by other kids, he always found that they were quite relentless. It seemed that they saw his lack of resistance as weakness, thus found it only natural to bully him even further.

It took Kairos quite a long time to realize that he had to fight back in order to prevent people from trying things on him.

Though, his first experience in doing so wasn't too pretty.

He had broken the arms of three kids and had gotten himself expelled. Naturally, this made him get an earful from his parents who then told him he was supposed to avoid conflict like that.

Because it was quite the serious matter, he was even forced to go through 'homeschooling' by his parents, who forced him to write down the various things he wasn't supposed to do countless times.

And for Kairos, it was an extremely confusing experience.

He was supposed to defend himself if he wanted people to stop bullying him, but he also wasn't allowed to.

It was then he eventually learned that what he was allowed to do was notify the teachers, and so that's exactly what he did during middle school.

Yet, most of the time the teachers couldn't care less.

And even the ones that did, barely did anything other than giving a few words to the people in question.

Kairos eventually learned that there usually wasn't a clear cut answer.

And that was the case for nearly everything in life.

Even in school, people were considered to be at different statuses based on their connections with other people. Though there was no true power over others, whether that was through their position or assets, that still didn't change this difference in status.

And frankly, Kairos didn't like making friends.

As such, it was quite natural for him to suddenly find himself at the bottom of the social ladder. Then it led to him being bullied by others at school.

When Kairos had 'accidentally' broken someone's arm before, he still couldn't help but feel he needed to go further. That if he didn't, then he would end up being bullied once more.

Though Kairos wasn't sure if that was the case, he decided he wasn't going to relent.

And so, he found various ways to hurt the person that already had a broken arm even further, trying to make it so that he wasn't responsible. One thing Kairos had learned was that if he dropped his pride and apologized profusely, while it wouldn't do anything for the person he wronged, it would make other people think that he was being genuine.

He abused both that, and also sneakily used more discreet ways as well.

Such as… sneaking things into their lunches.

Before Kairos knew it, he was essentially being the bully. Though, he never really cared about all that.

Eventually, the person he was harassing all of the time transferred schools. Though, that still didn't change the fact Kairos was at the bottom. If it wasn't for the little trick he did with Chad, nearly every bully in the school would have tried to pick on him.

As for his parents, they ended up hearing about some of the things that Kairos did, and although he proclaimed it was an accident, they didn't believe him. Perhaps it was because of his track record of violently hurting others before, which made ones that appeared later seem like a pattern.

Unfortunately, he was unable to convince his parents, forcing him to listen to more of their lecturing. Though, after experiencing it for years on end, all of their words went in one ear and out the other.

He could no longer care about what his parents told him.

Regardless, he spent all of his time just harassing that one person. That led to being isolated even further, as instead of talking to others he was just plotting various little inconveniences and injuries. It soon came to the point that Kairos could no longer make any new friends even if he wanted to.

The only person that was actually willing to be friends with him was Nicole.

Kairos let out a sigh and massaged his temple with the tip of his finger.

"I suppose always getting rid of every single enemy isn't the best solution, especially when nearly everyone wants to become your enemy."

Oliver smirked, which ticked Kairos off a little bit.

"Ha, exactly. It's just a waste of time."

Lucy put a finger on her chin.

"If we had to get rid of every enemy we had made… there would be no time for ourselves."

Kairos gradually stood up and waved his hand weakly.

"…Whatever."

Lucy clicked her tongue and rested the handle of her hammer on her shoulder.

"You should at least thank us for saving you the time to find these guys."

Kairos spared a glance back.

"Thanks… Oliver."

Lucy's eyebrow twitched, but she didn't say anything.

Oliver chuckled.

"You are now in our debt, alright?"

Kairos rolled his eyes.

"Sure. I can buy you a soda later."

Oliver didn't seem overly concerned with his response, letting him go.

Kairos didn't want to waste time, but he also found that his body could barely even walk in the first place. There was a rather ghastly bite mark on his arm that was still bleeding fairly heavily.

Yet, despite looking fairly bad, it wasn't nearly as close as the damage the lightning had done internally to him. While it wasn't too easy to see directly, it wasn't too hard to tell from how he moved.

Nonetheless, Kairos pushed on.

He wanted to quickly make his way to the place with all the doors before consuming one of the green orbs to fix his condition. The biggest reason was because it seemed that the twins were able to easily see through the mist, meaning doing it in this place would just reveal that fact to them.

Since going to the place with doors was a sort of taboo, he figured that it would be fine to go there.

And so, like that, he began limping.

He didn't exactly make his way towards the entrance, but it was close enough so that it didn't take too long. Nonetheless, it still took him roughly thirty minutes.

Thankfully, it seemed his condition had actually improved during that time. He was no longer bleeding, though his entire body was still aching in pain.

With labored breaths, he stepped out of the bloody pathway, taking care not to fall down the spiral staircase.

Kairos took a peek at the completely dark pathway, and didn't see anything, which wasn't the craziest thing. He then slowly made his way to the hallway filled with doors, which was also his initial goal in the first place.

Yet, before he could make it there, he saw someone's head poke out from the dark pathway in his future vision.

Kairos pretended he didn't notice, instead opting to straighten his posture and pretend he was casually walking on ahead. His speed had noticeably increased.

Once the person's head poked out once more, he was able to catch that it was Alice.

She didn't call out to him, despite very clearly noticing him.

And Kairos continued to walk into the hallway with doors.

He felt a little anxious, but nothing ended up happening.

Upon making it to the hallway with the doors, he didn't feel reassured whatsoever, especially since the others had seen him enter this place.

Kairos continued to hurriedly walk through various hallways, taking various turns to try and get himself deeper inside.

After traveling for roughly ten minutes, Kairos truly couldn't take it anymore, slamming his shoulder against a wall before slowly sliding down.

His eyes were tightly shut, trying to subdue the pain that his future vision gave him.

From there, he pulled out one of the green orbs from the bag before cutting it open with his spear. Kairos chugged it harder than someone shotgunning a beer.

The sweet liquid rushed down quickly, and Kairos could feel the various pains of his body begin melting away. His injuries rapidly healed, while his mental fatigue had disappeared as well. His mana had restored fully and on top of that, he now felt quite full.

One of the side benefits was that the taste of flesh and blood was overpowered by its strong taste.

Kairos immediately opened up his status panel, now ready to put in points.

[Status]

[ID: 345315364923]

[Rank: 492/1500 Evolution Energy – 500 required for Rankup]

[Objective: Clear Dungeon]

[Proof Of Perfection Points: 51.4]

[Stats –

Strength – 14.9

Endurance – 14.9

Agility – 14.9

Willpower – 4.9

Mana Capacity – 9.0

Magic Affinity – 7.2]

[Special Abilities: Fire Spell (F), Pulse Spell (F), Gale Spell (F)]

[Inborn Abilities: Shattered Truth (F)]

[Hide]

Though Kairos had expected it, he was still quite surprised by how many points he had.

Nonetheless, he quickly diverted his attention to adding status points.

After a small period of deliberation, he decided willpower was more important, as his mana capacity and magic affinity should be too big of an issue for now. Though he still didn't really understand the benefit, he figured it wouldn't be too bad.

[Willpower – 4.9 – 14.9 Points – 51.4 – 41.4]

He felt his body heat up like before, except most of the heat was radiating out of his head. As the changes continued to happen, Kairos suddenly felt that his mind felt somewhat lighter than usual.

He blinked a few times, getting used to the new change.

Then, let out a small gasp.

"…It no longer hurts to keep my eyes open."

After thirty or more seconds, Kairos eventually felt slightly taxed from using his future vision, but it was nothing compared to before. At this rate, he predicted that he could last roughly five hours before feeling too tired to continue.

Though if he extended his future vision, it would probably be far less.

He wished he added more points earlier, but it was too late to consider that now.

Kairos wanted to continue adding points considering he already had so many, but found that increasing his willpower made him feel quite hungry again. He was slightly tempted to use another green orb to add more points, but decided against it.

Kairos let out a soft sigh before standing up once more, now feeling refreshed, despite being covered in blood.

He opened up the closest door to him before entering it.

Kairos quickly closed the door in his future vision before examining what would happen in his future vision.

He saw a couple arrows shoot towards him.

Thinking that wasn't too much to deal with, he committed to closing the door before dodging to the side.

Several clear thwacks resounded as the arrows hit the wall. Unfortunately, that wasn't all, as more mana coalesced, forming arrows that continue to shoot towards Kairos.

He continued to dodge them fairly easily, considering that the arrows were mostly just pointed straight at him. However, as time passed, the arrows began to shift their trajectories.

Now, they weren't directly aimed at him, but instead predicting the path that he would dodge.

Kairos furrowed his brows. While the arrows were much faster than he could move, he was still able to dodge with the help of his future vision.

He saw an arrow shoot towards his left, thus went right. Upon hitting a wall, he was about to dash away from it, but waited just a moment for an arrow to hit where he was about to go, then flew out of the way when another shot straight towards him.

Kairos had held back his instinct to block using his spear several times. As much as he wanted to use it, the spear was simply far too thin. He had actually tried to block an arrow with his spear, but saw in his future vision that the arrow would only have its trajectory slightly shifted before continuing towards him.

It wasn't enough to warrant using it.

And sooner than he expected… the arrows stopped shooting.

[Dungeon Currency Transfer – 1 added]

Kairos rubbed his chin.

It was easier than he expected, though…

He began wondering over the purpose of this place.

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Kairos frankly didn't believe that the dungeon was made so that people could get stronger. There were just too many strange things that made it far too weird. First of all, participants had to pay for proper food. Assuming that cannibalism or eating monsters weren't resorted to, that was the only realistic source of food.

Yet, that food wasn't really even food.

Kairos furrowed his brows as he opened up the door, going back into the hallway. Out of curiosity, he tried to go back into the room he just was in and closed the door once more.

However, nothing happened.

Kairos didn't think about it too much before going to another door, opening it up as well.

He extended his future vision briefly before beginning to close the door.

Once he did, Several beams of water suddenly shot toward him. He stopped himself from closing the door and blinked a few times.

The beams of water weren't directly aimed toward him. While one targeted him directly, the others instead shot towards his sides, trying to block off his path to dodge.

Kairos couldn't help but recall the time he was back on the very first floor, dodging spears to get through the hallway. At first, the spears simply shot toward him directly, but over time they began shifting.

Like it was learning.

Kairos narrowed his eyes before eventually coming to that conclusion. It seemed that this dungeon was some sort of method to learn combat techniques in a rather crude way.

Pure trial and error.

As for the bloody pathway with monsters, he was pretty sure that the dungeon was somehow using the flesh that it consumed after the corpse was dealt with. On the other hand, he couldn't come to any conclusions about the dark pathway.

With the conclusion Kairos had come to, he wondered if he would be able to 'teach' the dungeon incorrect ways of fighting. Though he doubted the effect would be too big, he still figured it was worth a shot.

And so, Kairos closed the door.

When the water beams shot towards him, he leaped upwards.

With a dull thump, the beams of water slammed against the wall behind him, spraying droplets of water into the air. They obscured his vision slightly, but not enough to meaningfully stop him.

Kairos slammed his spear into the wall behind him and clenched it tightly, flexing his muscles hard. His body then raised once more, dodging another beam of water that shot towards him and completely avoiding the other water beams that shot towards his sides.

Kairos found himself right next to the roof now, with no higher to go. He once again slammed his spear into the wall, this time throwing himself to the side.

He just barely dodged a water beam that shot towards him. The beams of water hadn't shot to either side of him. In fact, there was one that shot towards the roof, seemingly predicting that Kairos would become spiderman and crawl on the ceiling.

The water beams that had been shot before were still active and continued to slam hard against the walls. The droplets of water had gradually turned to even thicker mist. As for the water that had gathered on the ground, it disappeared as soon as it hit the ground, thus not making the place flooded.

Kairos furrowed his brows as he found the area he had to dodge had reduced considerably. Nonetheless, he had no time to wait.

More water beams continued to shoot toward him while he was still in the air. Kairos saw that they only aimed towards his sides and above him. As such, he slammed his spear into the wall before flinging himself downwards, avoiding them all.

However, it was now that Kairos found himself in an awkward predicament. To his left was a wall. To his right was a water beam that had been fired earlier.

And above him, were the water beams that had just fired.

In other words, he no longer had any space to dodge.

Kairos saw in his future vision that one water beam would shoot towards his torso, while the other would go towards his legs. In response, he bit down on the bag of orbs with his teeth so that he could hold his spear with both hands.

At the same time, he took an awkward position with his legs almost like he was a sumo wrestler getting ready to fight.

Then, the water beams shot out.

One slammed right below him, dangerously close to making him a eunuch. However, he had no time to contemplate over that, as another one had smashed right onto his spear.

Kairos stuck his arms out while holding onto his spear vertically. The beam of water struck the spear violently, before splitting into two separate ones that shot towards his side. Unfortunately, due to how thin his spear was, it was not enough to divert the trajectory of the split water beams enough to avoid his body completely

As such, the sides of his rib cage were now being battered with a constant gush of water.

The droplets of water had become so dense, that Kairos could no longer even see, making the other sensations of pain even more noticeable.

He could feel the spear breaking through the skin of his palm, another disadvantage that came from how thin it was.

Eventually, the flesh of his palm started to tear apart, forcefully pushed aside.

Kairos could feel his mind spinning, as he gradually felt it was his very bones pushing back against the spear to divert the beam of water.

There was even a point where Kairos forgot about the water beam below him, nearly causing his legs to buckle. However, the intense pain from his future vision reminded him of that clearly, making him keep his legs up even though they had begun trembling.

And right when Kairos felt that this was going to be endless…

[Dungeon Currency Transfer – 1 added]

The water beams suddenly disappeared.

Kairos began panting, now completely drenched. The ground was more or less dry, but the air was still incredibly humid.

Blood began forming from Kairos' palms, dripping down his spear. There was blood before, but it had been washed away by the water.

He took several deep breaths before composing himself once more.

"…That was much harder than the last one."

Kairos slowly let go of the spear, letting it hit the ground, and wiped away the water in his hair with the back of his palm.

For a few moments, only the sound of dripping was in the room.

Kairos was intently paying attention to the wounds on his palms. The process wasn't the fastest, but the bleeding had indeed stopped after a while. When he tried to pick the spear back up, it was quite painful.

Kairos decided to take a small break. Resting against the wall with his eyes closed.

Using a green orb for these kinds of injuries would be an overreaction. He still had eleven of them, but that wasn't too much for Kairos. And so, he waited for his wounds to naturally heal a little before moving onwards.

He couldn't help but wonder what was happening with everyone else.

Kairos still remembered that he had tossed Nicole his glasses, and hoped that she kept them safe. He also began wondering what happened to the city that Tiana had created. And what the music trio, Eric, Nick, and Jenny had done during this time.

Though, the only way he would ever get to know is if he got out of this dungeon.

After a bit of time, he looked down at his palms, which had scarred over. Though it was uncomfortable, it was no longer painful to hold onto his spear.

For Kairos, that was enough. And so, he went into another room.

He once again used his future vision to see what would happen if he closed the door, and saw that a green gas would fill the room. Nearly immediately, his flesh would begin corroding and there wasn't even a sensation of pain, as his nerves would die before they could process it.

Kairos stopped himself from closing the door while beads of sweat began forming on his forehead.

It appears that this was the reason why this place was so taboo.

While it could let one get points relatively easily if one was lucky, it could also kill the person in question.

Kairos left the respective room before trying another one.

This time, he was able to see a figure made out of mana appear, holding onto a sword.

Kairos stopped himself from closing the door. He hesitated, as it didn't seem to be the most dangerous. Though, the last experience made him a little more cautious.

He closed his eyes for a few moments.

Then, decided that there would be at least some risk no matter what, so he should take chances when he could.

Once the door clicked shut, Kairos turned around to meet with the blue figure holding onto a sword. While the figure appeared to be conjured from mana completely, the sword it was holding appeared to be made out of metal.

The figure did not move immediately, and neither did Kairos.

They looked at each other for a few moments, before the figure appeared to lose patience and dash forth.

Kairos also dashed forth, before suddenly stopping.

The figure swung its sword and ended up missing Kairos. However, it twirled around right after, with deft movements, bringing it down once more.

Kairos' eyes widened, as he brought his spear up to block.

A loud clang resounded as the sword hit the spear.

Kairos pulled back before sweeping horizontally.

The figure proceeded to dash backward, avoiding it.

Kairos raised an eyebrow before continuing forth, thrusting his spear forwards. The figure seemed unprepared and was stabbed. Kairos noted that the sensation was greatly different from normal, almost feeling like he stabbed through water.

As for the figure, it simply retreated once more after being hit.

Kairos did not chase this time.

"…How am I supposed to kill this thing?"

He raised his hand and pointed a finger toward the figure.

"Maybe…"

A fireball coalesced at the tip of his finger. At this sight, the figure seemed provoked, rushing forth once more.

Kairos ended up only having a brief moment to channel the fire spell, but he threw out the small fireball nonetheless.

The figure was able to duck underneath it and quickly followed up by sweeping with its sword.

Kairos slid back slightly to move out of the way.

Despite missing, the figure still seemed prepared, bending one knee and shifting most of its weight on it before whipping around once more.

Though Kairos wanted to counterattack, that strike was too fast, forcing him to block.

Another clang resounded.

Kairos narrowed his eyes, trying to channel mana for a pulse spell. While it shouldn't have been visible to the average person, the figure seemed to notice, suddenly increasing the strength from its sword several times over, forcing Kairos to disengage and leap away once more.

He stopped channeling the spell which seemed to calm the figure.

Kairos clicked his tongue.

"So no magic?"

The figure did not respond, instead bending one knee slightly while raising its sword above its head.

This was the same position it had taken earlier, though Kairos hadn't noticed before.

He decided to challenge it, opting to thrust his spear forth.

Kairos saw in his future vision that the figure would deflect his spear and follow up with another strike.

He thus stopped his spear thrust, instead opting to sweep with it.

Then, the figure responded by suddenly flicking its sword downwards before bringing it up in a diagonal slash, deflecting his attack.

Kairos stopped once again, narrowing his eyes slightly.

He had somewhat sensed it before, but the figure seemed to have a sense of swordsmanship.

Though it was a bit strange, since it seemed both practiced, yet also an amature at the same time.

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Kairos narrowed his eyes as he watched the mana figure in front of him move by slowly inching closer towards him. He didn't really notice it before, but the sense of finesse had disappeared.

For whatever reason, it seemed like the figure was extremely proficient at the techniques themselves, but was unable to chain them together properly.

Kairos imagined that if in their several clashes, the figure followed up with a strike like it did before, he would be in far more trouble.

However, that didn't seem to be the case. Instead, the figure would awkwardly pause after each time.

While he was thinking, the figure suddenly shifted its stance, raising its sword up and shifting the weight of its foot.

Kairos narrowed his eyes, before abruptly bringing his spear up, but not in the trajectory that the figure was swinging.

That was when the figure's swing suddenly shifted, twisting strangely.

However, it ended up hitting his spear.

Kairos backed up after blocking, to which the figure simply stared awkwardly. If the figure was actually a master, it would've just continued with its original strike since he had been wide open to the feint.

As he stared at the figure, he gradually came to a conclusion about what the figure was.

Kairos' thinking shifted vastly. The person wasn't actually some sort of conscious entity. Rather, it was a set of disjointed techniques.

It seemed that the dungeon had somehow picked up on the moves of someone that was actually proficient with the sword. As for how, there were too many possibilities that Kairos could think of.

Regardless, it seemed that the dungeon was experimenting with using those techniques, trying to see how to use them properly.

The corner of Kairos' lip turned up suddenly.

He realized that this was actually a great opportunity.

Kairos was a relatively normal high schooler if you didn't consider his ability to peek into the future and his tendency to break arms.

And… several other things.

Regardless, he wasn't the type of person that understood proper technique. In nearly every fight he has had, his moves were purely out of intuition. Though they were usually effective enough, they were also rather crude.

It wasn't as though he never had any fights with professionals. In fact, he has had quite a plentiful amount. However, the problem with professionals was that Kairos had to take them very seriously, even taking into account his future vision.

There was hardly a split second he could lose his concentration.

As such, while he had directly experienced their techniques, he also had no clue what they had done.

On the other hand, while this blue figure had the technique itself perfectly executed, it had no idea when to execute it or what purpose they were supposed to be used for.

In other words, Kairos would have plenty of time to observe the actual execution of the technique.

With those thoughts in mind, Kairos rushed forth towards the blue figure but abruptly stopped before getting too close.

The figure took a long stride forward before bringing its sword down rapidly.

Which missed entirely.

Kairos tried to note the movements of the figure, but it didn't seem like anything too special. Despite seeing it twice as well, he tried to remember all of the movements, but wasn't able to catch them in their entirety.

Kairos wanted to see it again and thus tried to back up before rushing in once more.

However, this time the figure pulled back before lunging forth with the sword like it was a spear.

This was easily dodged once more.

Kairos furrowed his brows, trying to catch the movement from earlier, but his memory wasn't so good that he could remember absolutely everything with just one demonstration.

He attempted to repeat the same actions to get the figure to repeat the technique, but once again, the figure attempted to use a completely different one.

Kairos clicked his tongue.

After a few more attempts, Kairos eventually realized that the figure had almost never repeated any technique whatsoever. After thinking about it a little longer, he realized that for every attack he had dodged, the figure would never try the same one again.

As for the ones he had blocked, while the figure would try them, it wouldn't do so many times. In fact, he hadn't seen it do the same technique more than three times in general.

Kairos came to realize that this dungeon seemed to care more about results more than anything. That would be its first goal before anything else.

In other words… if he were to get hit, the figure would probably do it again.

Kairos' thoughts began to divert into strange territory. He imagined that he should let himself get hit.

It was thought that was quite different from what people would usually think.

Though, considering he had used his future vision to feel the pain of stabbing himself with a knife before, it wasn't too outlandish.

Kairos had the intention of letting himself get hit with the next strike, but at the last second, he suddenly dodged out of the way.

Another consideration had popped into his mind. He could only let himself get hit so many times before it would become quite dangerous. Though he had the green orbs, that didn't change the fact there was a limited amount of injury he could take.

As such, he couldn't just take injuries willy-nilly.

If he had picked a technique that was extremely difficult to follow, then he wouldn't be able to learn it quickly enough in order to learn how to execute it himself.

Kairos hesitated for a moment before extending his future vision to two seconds. Although his increased willpower reduced his stress considerably, it didn't change the fact Kairos felt it was very taxing on his mind.

From there, he began examining all of the techniques that the figure would throw at him.

The figure did a swing that caused its grip to suddenly shift, causing it to change from an overhead attack to a sweeping attack. Kairos dodged it, deeming it to be too difficult to learn.

Then, the figure performed a swing that appeared to start from down low before suddenly going upwards. However, it was actually a sweep. Kairos dodged this one too, as he caught the fingers of the figure moving in a particular fashion.

Though he wasn't sure, he frankly did not think he could learn a technique that required his fingers to shift in a certain way to learn.

The figure continued to do several more techniques, all of which Kairos felt were either too advanced or simply not that useful in general.

But eventually, there was one that caught his eye.

The figure swung its sword forth while holding the handle in a reverse grip. It made it seem as though the sword was going to slash, as though it was getting ready to fling in that direction.

However, the hand that was shifting directions suddenly stopped, before reversing and shooting toward him like a dagger.

Kairos could've actually dodged this rather easily, just by standing still.

However, he instead decided to pretend he was trying to get away from the slash and brought his arm up.

A sharp bang resounded followed by a quiet dripping sound.

The sword had pierced into Kairos' forearm but was stopped by his bone. His blood began dripping down onto the ground, while the figure paused momentarily, seemingly shocked.

Kairos backed up, while the figure immediately performed the same strike in an attempt to hit him once more, but he had already gotten too far away.

The figure then rushed forth, moving its arms in a way that obviously showed it wanted to do the same thing again.

Kairos narrowed his eyes as he stopped extending his future vision.

It definitely hurt to get slashed by the sword. And also the fact his palms were still scarred meant his previous actions with the spear also hurt.

However, he couldn't even really focus on them.

Because there was a debilitating headache that he was experiencing, which was far greater than any pain he had experienced.

Though Kairos had gone through various painful experiences, the worst part of them was actually the surprise factor. It wasn't that they hurt less than his headaches, but the pain would eventually dull and go away.

Instead, it was the constant pain on his mind that felt so much more taxing. Like he was being slowly tortured.

However, that could finally be put to rest.

Kairos' eyes widened slightly as he brought his arm forth once more.

A slash resounded, soon followed by a splatter.

He had gotten hit once more. Quite a bit of his blood had splashed, landing on the floor. Though there was no mess made as it rapidly disappeared the moment it touched the ground.

Kairos could feel adrenaline coursing through his body with greater strength.

And it didn't feel too bad.

Regardless, he didn't forget his original purpose, which was to learn the techniques. Thus that was exactly what he did.

Kairos watched the figure's initial position carefully. He didn't just take into consideration how it held the sword, but also the positioning of its legs to know how it shifted its weight and bent its knees.

Though, he did it all one at a time, focusing intently on the movement of a specific part and learning it first.

Kairos had used the same arm to defend himself, taking more and more injuries that caused his bleeding to gradually speed up. It would've actually stopped if just a bit more time was given to heal, but he didn't seem to be concerned about that.

Instead, he slowly began learning.

The grip he needed.

At what point he should cancel the momentum.

How to shift his body weight to prepare for the next attack.

And the muscles that suddenly tensed to make a thrust.

Caught up in the learning process, Kairos had taken far more injuries, almost making it look like his arm had been torn up by a wild animal repeatedly.

His breathing had become heavy, and he was even panting.

Yet, his eyes were shining brightly, filled with confidence.

Before the figure could move, Kairos suddenly took a step forward while his spear was held behind him. It suddenly shot forth, prompting the figure to bring its sword up to block.

Yet, right when the spear was about to hit the sword, it suddenly stopped.

Then, Kairos twisted his body, before thrusting it forth and piercing the figure's heart.

Though there was no tactile sensation of stabbing a person, Kairos still felt that he had done the technique more or less correctly.

Though, it felt like he was practicing on a block of water.

Nonetheless, Kairos was about to pull back and was getting prepared to stop holding back to finish this thing off. Yet, he stopped himself.

Because the figure gave him a look before disappearing all on its own.

[Dungeon Currency Transfer – 1 added]

Kairos took a deep breath before covering his arm. His muscles were torn pretty badly, while his bone was visible at most locations. Though he used his hand to cover the wound, it essentially did nothing as the injury was too big to stop the bleeding.

Kairos closed his eyes, trying to ignore the slightly lightheaded sensation he felt.

Though he thought that he might be able to minimize his injuries by using only his arm to block, he quickly found his thinking to be rather naive.

It had become quite hard to move his arm, considering the very muscles needed to move it were slashed apart.

Not to mention, his excessive use of his extended future vision had effects stronger than he anticipated. Once the adrenaline from the fight had completely disappeared, he found himself in quite a bit of pain.

Though he learned a new way of attacking, it wasn't done in the best way.

However, Kairos had no plans of stopping.

If anything, he considered it to be a success. Though, it could be optimized slightly…

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Kairos decided to ignore the rooms that didn't contain a blue figure within them altogether, considering them to be a waste of time. That meant he would even discard rooms that seemed rather easy to complete in favor of fighting those with actual techniques.

This also meant he no longer cared enough to extend his future vision beyond two seconds while closing the door behind him. However, he ended up using it more in the end because he used it to give him a brief moment of time to consider whether or not he wished to learn the specific technique.

The first time he found a room with a mana figure inside, the person in question was holding a spear. However, he also found that this particular person didn't have the highest proficiency with said spear.

While said skill was still above Kairos, it was quite rough and crude.

This was where he found out that not all of these mana figures were created equal. Some of them had lousy techniques, making them not the most useful to learn from.

For these, Kairos would simply fight as he normally would. After stabbing the figure nearly ten times, it had disappeared.

[Dungeon Currency Transfer – 1 added]

He continued on, trying to find more.

Kairos had come across people holding all sorts of weapons, such as spears, swords, and daggers. There were also the occasional strange ones, such as people holding wooden staffs and metal pipes.

For the more obscure weapon holders, he would simply fight as he normally would. If there was nothing particularly interesting, then Kairos would eliminate them. Unfortunately, it was still quite a bother as he needed roughly ten strikes to kill said people.

Considering that the first time only required two, it seemed that there was some relation between how much he got hit and the number of times he had to hit the mana figure.

Most of the rooms he went through didn't end up having the mana figures within, and roughly half of the ones that did ended up being useless since there either was no technique, or it was on an obscure weapon.

However, Kairos eventually came across one that he did find useful.

It was a person holding onto a bow.

The arrows that said person pulled back were created out of mana, which made Kairos rather nervous. After all, his impression of mana arrows was that they were rather scary, as Chase's had been quite powerful all of the time.

However, upon watching them fire, he realized his worries were for nothing.

Though they were indeed made out of mana, they acted very much like normal arrows, flying through the air at a reasonable speed as well as being able to do a relatively small amount of damage.

Out of all the tactics that the bowman mana figure employed, Kairos found himself most interested in how he leaped away while firing a shot.

He was originally thinking of trying to see a new way to use the bow but was instead focused on that.

Kairos decided to intentionally miss his attack every time the mana figure used that particular technique instead of letting himself get hit.

And it worked out pretty nicely.

Though the mana figure wouldn't continuously use the same move, it would still use it relatively often, letting Kairos eventually pick up on it.

He followed how the figure moved their knees and shifted their weight.

By the end, he was still panting fairly heavily, fatigued from all of the strenuous movements he had been doing up till now.

However, Kairos had figured out the gist of the technique.

First, one would bend their knees while drawing back the bow. Then, at the point when one's knee was bent enough, they would release the arrow before abruptly leaping in a direction.

Since Kairos didn't have a bow, he couldn't imitate the exact movements that the person did. However, he didn't intend to perfectly imitate it in the first place.

While several meters away from the mana figure, Kairos bent his knees and pulled back his spear.

Then, a mana arrow fired toward him, prompting him to swing his spear before leaping to the side.

He was able to dodge the arrow easily, however he found that his swing was a little awkward.

Considering he was quite far away, it obviously didn't hit, but that wasn't his concern as of now.

Kairos continued to practice doing the same thing, but each time he found it kept feeling quite awkward. Though, that was also quite reasonable.

The way the bowman moved, made it so he had a split second of stability to properly fire the arrow. However, that brief duration didn't really help the swing as there was more to it than just releasing the arrow.

And so, he found himself trying over and over again, trying to find that missing piece.

Kairos suddenly threw his head to the side, letting a mana arrow fly past.

His brows were furrowed, but not because of the attack. In fact, he wasn't even really paying attention to the mana figure in general.

Instead, he was just mulling over how he could properly apply the same movements for the sake of using a melee weapon.

Kairos was sure there had to be some way to do so, but kept finding himself stuck because of the fundamental difference between the two.

His eyes glazed over slightly, but as his vision focused on the bow, he couldn't help but be reminded of another time, when he was with Nicole.

Kairos was with Nicole, in his room. Nicole was in his bed, kicking her feet leisurely. She had a piece of paper on top of a textbook and was drawing random doodles.

As for Kairos, he had the textbook open in front of him as he sat down at a desk. Though it was a math textbook, there was this random section labeled "Thinking Outside The Box". Within, contained a question.

With nine dots shaped in a three-by-three square, how can one hit all of the dots with four straight and continuous lines?

At first, Kairos didn't think much of it at all, imagining the answer to be quite easy if anything. However, the fact that the four lines had to be continuous made him stumped.

If they didn't have to be continuous, he could easily just use three lines to do that problem, but that factor made it so that he was always missing one or two dots.

This frustrated Kairos greatly. He felt like this question was somehow challenging his pride.

And so, he worked at it, trying out various combinations that seemed to make intuitive sense to cover more ground. However, they all failed.

Then, he decided to try and brute force it, trying every single combination he could think of.

And before he knew it, he had spent nearly three hours just trying to solve that problem that looked so simple, without even being able to solve it in the first place.

Kairos frustratedly leaned back into his chair and let out a sigh filled with distress.

Nicole perked up slightly, before turning to look at Kairos.

"What happened?"

Kairos took a peek behind him, seeing that Nicole had drawn a picture of his room, with him sitting at the desk. He didn't care all that much, and let out a sigh.

"I can't solve this problem no matter what I do. There isn't even an answer section for this question, so I can't even find out if there actually is a solution."

Nicole tilted her head to the side.

"Hm… what if I try to do it?"

Kairos shrugged his shoulders.

"You can try, but I'm pretty sure it's just an impossible problem."

Nicole rolled off the bed and hopped up to her feet.

"Hup!"

She then looked over Kairos' shoulder, taking a peek at the problem.

After staring for a few moments, she placed her pencil on the corner of the dot. Then, she began making a few lines. However, by the time she reached her fourth line, one dot still wasn't covered.

Kairos shook his head.

"See? It's just a problem to confuse you, when there isn't really a solution."

Nicole didn't respond. Instead, she decided to erase the pencil marks before trying once more.

Except this time, she began tracing the line outside of the box, to Kairos' surprise.

That allowed her to make a line that would catch the last dot.

By the end, Nicole scratched the side of her head.

"Hm… it kinda looks like a bow. Don't you think?"

Kairos' jaw dropped. He stared at the problem for a few moments, before looking at Nicole.

"Wait but… you can't draw the line outside!"

Nicole looked at him with innocent eyes.

"Eh? But it doesn't say that anywhere."

Kairos stammered awkwardly.

"But… but…"

Nicole giggled.

"Look, it even says to think outside the box as the title!"

Kairos opened his mouth, but slowly closed it right after. He was in denial, but knew logically that Nicole had gotten the problem he had been stuck on for three hours in just a few seconds.

He took in a deep breath, trying to calm himself down.

Nicole couldn't help but laugh at his display.

"How long were you doing the problem? This is why you should try more than once, you know?"

She then took a peek at the papers underneath him, which had countless variations of the nine dots. There were countless erased marks along with eraser bits all over the place.

Nicole blinked a few times, slowly taking it in before laughing.

"It looks like I'm way smarter than you!"

The corner of Kairos' lip twitched. He was in deep shame and tried to change the subject.

"…You wrote in my textbook, when we aren't allowed to."

Nicole let out a small gasp.

"Ah! Sorry, I didn't even think about that!"

She began erasing the pencil marks she made, but couldn't get it off completely. Upon pressing a little harder, she even accidentally tore apart the page.

Kairos looked at her, while she turned away while severely blushing.

Nicole coughed awkwardly.

"S-Sorry!"

She then scampered out of the room, like a mouse running away from a cat.

Once she left the room, Kairos sighed.

"…That's the person who just outsmarted me."

He put one hand on his head.

"It looks like I need to stop making assumptions about everything."

With how much of an impact this time had on his mentality, Kairos worked out a method so that he wouldn't get caught in the same trap once more.

The reason why he got stuck on the problem for so long was that he made an assumption. That the line wasn't allowed to go outside of the box.

However, by making that assumption, he made it impossible to solve the problem.

So he had to list out the assumptions he made before discarding them to open up new possibilities.

And that is exactly what he did as he stared down the mana figure in front of him.

First, was the assumption he needed to bend his knees.

Though, that seemed to be quite an integral part, so that might have to stay.

Second, was the assumption that he had to jump afterwards.

However, that was also the whole point of the technique, so if he no longer jumped, there would no longer be a point in executing the whole thing in the first place. If anything, it would become a completely new one.

It was quite discouraging to question extremely basic things, just to find out that they were indeed basic and required.

However, he then thought about another assumption he made.

The fact that he had to attack, right when his knee finished bending.

Kairos tilted his head to the side, dodging an arrow.

And his eyes were wide open, because he had finally come to the answer he was looking for.

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