n

n

nKairos wondered if he should make up an excuse to send Tiana away, but before he could think of anything, Tori spoke up.

n“Ah, we are going together to practice our team coordination!

nTiana tilted her head to the side.

n“Oh! Then why don’t I join in?”

nKairos raised an eyebrow.

n“But you plan on staying inside the city for most of your time, no? I don’t think there’s much point.”

nTiana rolled her eyes.

n“I don’t plan to stay in the city forever, you know? I want to explore the rest of the world as well.”

nKairos blinked a few times.

n“…But someone will have to stay to guard, right? That will probably mean we will have to stay, so we will be working independently anyway.”

nThe rest of the group seemed a little confused as to how Kairos’ point made sense. After all, although they saw Tiana as relatively powerful, she was also only one person. Yet the way Kairos was talking made it seem like she was at least on par with all of them combined.

nHowever, while Kairos hadn’t seen Tiana truly fight her hardest, he knew that she would be quite terrifying to deal with. Even ignoring her trump card, which would allow her to temporarily raise her rank, there was the strange mana connection that she had with everyone.

nFrom what he could tell, she was able to use it to transfer mana between people, meaning she had access to all of the mana from people within her city.

nEven if the farmers each only have a few points in mana capacity, she could probably get a total mana capacity that reached the thousands.

nKairos was unsure if it would work if she was far away from the city, but with how strong spells were, it would allow her to do quite a bit. The only real drawback to spells in the first place was how limited mana was, but once that was taken away, there was little to stop them.

nTiana gave him a strange smile that seemed to see through all of what he was thinking.

n“It’s not ready now, but soon I will be able to leave the city and still be able to protect it easily.”

nKairos blinked a few times.

n“…It seems like with just a bit of time, you can do anything.”

nTiana smirked.

n“Heh, you’d be surprised just how far I can go.”

nKairos rolled his eyes.

n“Whatever. I guess you can come if you agree not to make too much interference.”

nTiana crossed her arms.

n“Che, I’m going to help you out more than you can imagine.”

nAmidst their conversation, Sydney walked in.

n“Hm? What’s happening?”

nKairos shrugged his shoulders.

n“Tiana decided that she’s coming as well. Since all of us are here, we might as well go.”

nWith that, the group began walking out of the city. In the corner of Kairos’ eye, he caught onto a rather large stage that a few people were building. It seemed like Tiana had taken Quinn’s suggestion to make a room for the musical trio to perform in.

nHe wondered what else she planned on doing.

nPerhaps she would also call him up to actually do something for once.

nOnce the group had exited the city, Kairos spoke up.

n“Since it doesn’t really matter where we practice, we might as well do so here. However, for the sake of being adaptable, we won’t permanently be using this place.”

nHe then raised a finger.

n“For starters, Tori and Chase, the two of you should try to learn how to work together and shoot at faraway things while flying. If you see any monsters, just do that. Sydney, you should begin just trying to create a wall of earth. Nicole, try to use your invisibility to sneak up to me and tap my shoulder. Try your best to avoid getting noticed by me.”

nAfter saying all of that, the others went to do their thing. Though, Tiana looked at him strangely.

n“So what should I do?”

nKairos shrugged his shoulders.

n“Watch, I guess?”

nTiana raised an eyebrow.

n“You assigned everyone else something, but not me? This is obviously singling me out.”

nKairos sighed.

n“I also don’t understand what your powers, strengths, or weaknesses are. How am I supposed to devise any sort of plan?”

nTiana clicked her tongue.

nHe was discreetly implying that she would have to explain all her abilities, but Tiana didn’t seem to want to disclose that information. A small smile formed on her face.

n“Then I’ll just come up with something myself!”

nKairos shrugged his shoulders.

n“Alright.”

nRight after he said that, Kairos suddenly took a step back. Nicole let out a surprised gasp.

n“Y-You saw me?”

nShe gradually became visible in front of him. Kairos raised an eyebrow.

n“Last I remember, it took quite a while for your invisibility to activate.”

nNicole scratched her cheek.

n“W-Well, I found a way to sort of prepare part of the spell beforehand. I can’t cast other spells that way, but the frost spell doesn’t seem to be that useful for fighting anyway.”

nKairos nodded.

n“Hm… well done.”

nNicole pouted.

n“But could you tell me how you saw me?”

nKairos coughed.

n“I could faintly hear your footsteps.”

nNicole pressed her lips together.

n“Mm… I couldn’t even hear them though.”

nIn reality, Kairos was lying. He hadn’t noticed any of the physical signs, but because he was able to see mana, and the spell was unable to cover up mana, he was able to vaguely distinguish Nicole. There was also a mana cord connecting Tiana and Nicole, which made it a bit easier.

nOn top of that, there was even his future vision, so if he did end up letting his guard down he would still be warned anyway.

nHe purposely wanted to make it really difficult for Nicole, because taking on the role of an assassin was extremely risky. If one was found out, they would be surrounded on all ends by enemies. At the very least, the person holding the frontline would have allies to fall back to. As for an assassin, they were completely on their own.

nNicole put on a determined expression.

n“I’ll try again!”

nShe went off into the distance and began turning herself invisible once more.

nTori hooked her arms underneath Chase’s, while wings sprouted out from her back. She then took to the air, flying quite fast. The position was quite awkward for Chase, making it hard for him to draw his bow back properly, but Tori also made adjustments to help out.

nThere was a monster far off in the distance, so Chase aimed at it. He put a little bit of mana into an arrow, pulled it back while aiming the best he could, then released it.

nIt was quite off, but he curved the arrow so that it hit its target anyway. Chase’s archery definitely wasn’t bad, and with his increased agility he was far above his peak. However, Tori was not only flying at a fast speed, but not in just a single direction.

nKairos noticed that Chase had used his curve to hit his target and called out to him.

n“Don’t rely on your curving ability to hit your target! What if you need to use it afterward to adjust?”

nChase clicked his tongue and shouted back.

n“If it wasn’t for the unstable flight pattern, I could easily do this!”

nKairos was unforgiving.

n“The flight pattern will always be unstable if you need to dodge an enemy’s attack, just work on it!”

nChase let out a sigh.

n“Fine!”

nHe drew back another arrow and began aiming once more.

nAs for Sydney, she was standing in between two buildings and had cast the earth spell. The ground pavement underneath suddenly broke apart as a thick wall of earth began rising out of the ground.

nIt took roughly five seconds for her to create a wall between the two buildings that was three meters high and a meter thick. She couldn’t help but look at it with a bit of shock. Sydney hadn’t used her spell before, thus didn’t really understand it. Nonetheless, she felt it was quite strong.

nKairos called out to her.

n“Move to the side, I will test its durability.”

nHe pointed two fingers towards it before releasing a strong torrent of water. With a loud bang, the water beam slammed into the wall. It held on for roughly a second, but in that time it was deformed greatly. Then, the beam pushed through the wall and broke out the other side.

nAfter that, he promptly stopped casting the spell.

nKairos cleared his throat.

n“You need to work on two things. Try to make the wall faster, and also make it sturdier.”

nSydney blinked a few times.

n“Eh? But… I’m not sure how to do that.”

nKairos shrugged his shoulders.

n“You’ll just have to continue trying. Experiment with things.”

nTiana was just watching and couldn’t help but speak up.

n“You seem to have unreasonable standards.”

nKairos shook his head.

n“I know they won’t be able to do the best job at first, but their goal should be reasonably high. With how strong our enemies are now, and how some monsters are, this much will only be the start.”

nTiana let out a small chuckle.

n“…You actually expect them to be able to fight those kinds of things?”

nKairos blinked a few times. It seemed like despite living inside the city the whole time, she was still aware there were things out there that couldn’t be provoked.

n“…I’m not sure if they will ever be able to, but it doesn’t hurt to try.”

nHe couldn’t help but think of his mom, with her unbelievably unfair power of stopping the time of the things around her. Kairos was unsure if there was even something stronger than her that currently existed.

nThough, that kind of standard was just too unfair to compare with. But when Kairos began thinking of the church of evolution, he still felt that they would be unable to defeat even just one of their so-called disciples.

nKairos remembered one of them simply had hard bones before and was essentially a shield. But in just a short amount of time, it had become a nearly invulnerable giant skeleton.

nAnd then there was the one with way too many eyes on its face, able to possess other people if they just looked at one of the eyes it created.

nKairos pulled out the red prism and stared at it. Currently, it was completely dull and nearly black in color. The main source of conflict between his group and the others was the object in his hand right now.

nThey didn’t really need walls anymore with the city, so it didn’t serve that much use to them. He considered the possibility of handing it over to cut ties with that group.

nYet, Kairos also felt that was the wrong path.

nHe wasn’t exactly the most honorable person, but something he knew from experience was that there was only so much one could run before one had to face the problem head on.

nAnd if one was going to face the problem anyway, it was best to do so while they were at their strongest, not after they gave up what they had to run.

nKairos put the red prism back into his pocket.

nTiana looked at it curiously, but wasn’t interested enough to ask about it.

nKairos randomly twisted himself to the side, while Nicole let out another surprised gasp. She let out a soft sigh.

n“I seem to be doing this wrong…”

nKairos rolled his eyes.

n“It’s your first time doing such a thing, so getting it wrong is quite normal. There is a reason why we are practicing in the first place.”

nTiana tapped her chin a few times as she watched the others.

n“Hey, I have an idea of what I can do.”

nKairos raised an eyebrow.

n“And what is that?”

nTiana giggled.

n“…You all fight me.”

n