n

n

nKairos furrowed his brows, turning his head towards where the brushing sound was coming from. There wasn’t anything at first, but after a few moments, he saw something far off in the distance.

nIt was those strange monsters that were humanoid, but were walking on all fours and inverted legs. There were also strange long thick black hair-like things on their backs. They would twitch slightly, and rub against each other to make the strange brushing sounds.

nChase was currently beating a monster down with his fists. However, despite abusing the fact the monsters wouldn’t come over the edge, he was still having a tough time. In the end, his fists really just weren’t enough to beat the monster down.

nIn the end, he resorted to wrestling. He was able to reverse their position before strangling it. Though it took a minute, Chase was able to choke it out and kill it.

nAs for Tori, she had already killed quite a few, while Sydney was gradually losing it. She ripped apart all of the monsters with just the sharpened bone at first, but then she started to use her hand as well.

nThe monsters easily tore her apart one of her arms as she recklessly strangled some in return, but at the same time, she was able to kill a few of them that way.

nChase couldn’t help but stare on with a bitter smile.

n“…How exactly is this fair?”

nRegardless, it didn’t take them long for them to kill most of the monsters. While this was happening, Kairos kept his eye on those strange monsters with those long hair-like things.

nHis first instinct was to call out and tell everyone to run away, but those monsters seemed to be rather oblivious. They were scouring the general area around them, but didn’t seem to notice that they were fighting against several monsters at the moment.

nKairos looked over to his father.

n“Hey, remember when you cleared out those monsters while we were hiding underground?”

nSam looked back towards him.

n“Ah, yeah. Why do you ask?”

nKairos furrowed his brows.

n“Was there anything special about them?”

nSam raised an eyebrow.

n“Huh?”

nHe paused for a moment to think for a few moments.

n“I do remember that they strangely seemed unable to see or hear me. It was only when I was maybe a meter or so close to them that they started to lunge towards me, but I was able to cut through all of them fairly easily.”

nKairos rubbed his chin with a bit of confusion.

n“Hmm… but how would things like this even survive if they were only able to notice things so close to them? Unless there was something else about them.”

nSam nodded.

n“Now that you mention it, I find it a little strange that they are even rank E in the first place. Maybe it’s because they have extremely strong offensive power that I never got to see before killing them.”

nOnce they finished their conversation, the others had also finished killing all of the monsters that stayed near the border.

nAs Kairos walked over, Sydney’s gaze snapped towards the monsters in the distance. With her eyes wide open and heavy breathing, it was fairly clear what she intended to do.

nIn his future vision, Kairos saw her step past the boundary. And right when she did so, the strange monsters that were over thirty meters away immediately turned to her direction and began shrieking with their hair-like things stretched out taut.

nKairos acted, quickly grabbing onto Sydney’s shoulder and pulling her back.

nAt first, Sydney turned back with quite a bit of aggression, but once she saw it was Kairos, she calmed down.

n“What is it?”

nKairos looked over to the monsters and frowned.

n“…I don’t think it’s a good idea to walk out of this strange boundary.”

nChase turned to him with a bit of confusion.

n“And why is that?”

nKairos took a deep breath, trying to piece things together.

n“Don’t you remember how we were almost found? I remember they were talking about leaving their minions or something, which are the same as those monsters.”

nNicole nodded.

n“They are the same…”

nKairos paused for a moment.

n“I just don’t think it’s a good idea to alert them.”

nTori shrugged her shoulders.

n“Alright, so just try to take the long way around them.”

nKairos saw that she ended up taking a step forward, which also caused those strange monsters to have the exact same reaction. Before it actually happened, he pulled back on her shoulder.

nTori looked at him strangely.

n“…Is there something you want to tell me?”

nKairos took a deep breath.

n“I just feel like there must be something more to those things.”

nChase let out a soft sigh.

n“So are we going to go back because of these things?”

nKairos hesitated.

nThere was a part of him that wanted to just say yes, but that would make their journey out here rather lackluster. By now, the strange monsters had filed out onto the street by quite a bit.

nKairos saw in his future vision a hooded figure appeared among the creatures. He cursed internally.

n“Hide.”

nWithout explaining himself further, he then ran towards one of the nearby buildings and tried to hide behind it. Nobody questioned him and tried to do the same, but there simply wasn’t enough time.

nA few of them were unable to make it within one second, causing Kairos to feel a lot of anxiety. However, there were no sounds, making it sound as though they were undetected.

nWhile everyone was now in the alleyway, Sam looked at him with a questioning look.

n“What happened?”

nKairos took a deep breath.

n“I… had a bad feeling. Like there was something watching us.”

nTori furrowed her brows.

n“I caught a glimpse of someone and they turned to look at us while we got behind here.”

nKairos grit his teeth.

n“We have to leave then.”

nHe turned towards the other end of the alleyway and intended on running there.

nHowever, he froze in place.

nAs the hooded figure was already there.

nThe person standing there had most of their face obscured, showing only the mouth and chin. However, that was enough to show that the person had become a monster from the strange redness and deformation.

nThe hood that covered this monster’s body was a dark red color and draped over the monster like a cloth. It covered the majority of its body, hanging just above the knees and torn at the edges.

nTori looked at the hooded figure and nodded to herself.

n“Ah, that’s the same person I saw before.”

nChase drew back a mana arrow while his eyes narrowed. Nicole’s eyes widened, but the fear didn’t stop her from taking out her red watch and putting it on.

nKairos pointed his finger towards the thing and began casting the fire spell.

nThe hooded figure didn’t seem that concerned, still standing there, but slowly raising its head. And soon enough, it revealed two hollow eye sockets, showing the fleshy interior of its head.

nKairos had made a fireball that was roughly thirty centimeters wide and intended on throwing it.

nBut then he heard Tori speak.

n“Wait, that’s not the same one.”

nKairos hurriedly stopped himself from channeling the fireball any further, as he couldn’t afford to be so reckless with his mana.

nEspecially considering he just used it to show off back at the city.

nChase similarly held onto his arrow and clicked his tongue.

n“It’s a fake?”

nThe hooded figure suddenly bolted forth, as though to challenge that statement. Kairos was at the front and saw that its arms would come out from under the cloth.

nHowever, there were no hands on these arms, replaced by a tip of sharpened bone.

nKairos wanted to hold onto the fireball, but saw no other choice, thus released it. He shouted as the fireball shot through the air.

n“Fake or not, it’s still going to attack us!”

nThe hooded figure dashed forth at the same time the fireball was launched and ended up smashing its face against it.

nA violent explosion ensued, prompting everyone to back off as the flames rushed towards them. However, another hooded figure was waiting behind them.

nChase was the last person into the alleyway, thus was also the first person rushing out.

nSeeing the hooded figure standing outside, he did not hesitate to release his mana arrow. In a flash, it broke straight through the hooded figure’s head, shattering it into flesh and bone that scattered into the air. Now the hood deflated like a balloon as it rested on top.

nAlong with that, the hooded figure even took a few steps back.

nBut then, it caught itself, despite having no head.

nChase frowned as he looked at the figure in front of him, but continued to run forwards without hesitation. He brought his arms back while twisting his body to the side, preparing for a shoulder tackle.

nThen, he slammed into the hooded figure, causing it to be shoved back, and pushing a way back out of the alleyway. However, as the hooded figure was shoved back, two sharp bony arms came out and jabbed themselves into Chase’s stomach.

nAs it was blown back, a nasty gash was ripped out.

nThe skin ripped apart to the point that it revealed his organs, showing his intestines mostly. They also suffered a little bit of damage, but it was nothing too serious. Nonetheless, this was the first time he had gotten such an injury, and was caught off guard as a result.

nWhile Chase was in a daze, Sydney rushed out to the front, slamming her sharpened bone against the headless figure, piercing through its chest and causing a bit of blood to come out. With that, it was shoved back once more, but tore through Sydney’s arm in the process.

nThough, that injury basically healed immediately.

nOn the other side, the explosion from the fireball had settled down, though the flames continued to rage on. And in the back of those flames, a figure began rising up.

nIt was the hooded figure from before, but now it looked rather different. The hood had been burned away completely, while the flesh covering its body had charred considerably and hardened.

nSome of the flesh began falling off of its body, revealing the bones underneath.

nThis was especially so for its skull, which only had a few patches of black flesh on top of it.

nPart of its rib cage was revealed, and if one paid attention closely they would see a few hairline cracks within, a result of the explosion.

nFrom all this, it was easy to tell that its method of movement was not through the muscles in its body. It began running through the flames, straight towards him.

nKairos narrowed his eyes.

nThere had to be someone or something remotely controlling these things, but where was it?

nHe looked around himself for a second, but quickly refocused on his front, to deal with the charred body rushing towards him, while still on fire.

nKairos was thinking of casting a pulse spell, but had noticed the hairline cracks on the rib cage of the monster in front of him, mostly by chance. As such, he wondered if he could take advantage of it.

nHis mana was only enough to cast one spell with fairly decisive power and one spell with relatively weak power. As for the fireball he had just cast, that would be a relatively weak spell.

nSeeing as these things were puppets of some sort, he didn’t want to waste those few casts on them.

nKairos bent his knees and held the sharpened bone out in front of him. One hand was on the base while the other one held onto the side to stabilize it. He took inspiration from the proper form to shoot a basketball.

nOnce the charred corpse got close, he pushed against the base of the bone as hard as he could, letting it fly out.

nWith a crunch, the rib cage of the skeleton had shattered.

nOne of the arms had even directly fallen off.

nBut the other one shot towards Kairos’ skull.

n