Chapter 198 - The Military
Kairos shot through the air on top of a small metal platform. His hair flapped wildly with the wind, some of which got in his eyes forcing it closed. With a hand, he gently brushed the strands of hair to the side.
Yet, even then he kept his eyes closed.
A soft sigh escaped his lips as he continued on. He was lamenting over the fact that he had to leave for a whole month. In fact, he almost even ended up forgetting that he was going over to fight off some soldiers.
He wondered if Nicole would really be ok with him leaving that long. As that thought crossed his mind, a bitter smile formed on his face.
Would he even be fine on his own?
After shaking his head, he slowly opened his eyes once and continued facing forward. This was just something that he had to do.
As he was being sent forth by the platform he occasionally heard loud bangs resounding from behind him. He looked up and noticed a rather familiar strange white light trying to come crashing down on him. Unfortunately for the monsters, he was simply traveling too fast, and they were unable to catch up.
Watching that made him remember that he didn’t have his mana vision properly activated. With that in mind, he decided to pry it out of the side of his head and put it back in his forehead.
It was a little bloody, but the mess healed up rather quickly. Though, out of nowhere the metal path underneath him suddenly flung him forward almost like it was a diving board. Kairos was sent flying, just like a bullet.
And as he was flung forth, he noticed a rather noticeable concentration of mana in the distance.
It was hard for him to see clearly because it was quite far away, but from what he saw, it looked as though an extremely large amount of mana was swirling to become a giant ball. More than the large concentration of mana itself, he was more surprised by the technique.
Because it was the same one he used to replenish mana into his own body, but in this case, the mana appeared to be revolving outside of the body. It was something he had tried before, but ended up failing.
As he continued soaring through the air, he gradually came to realize he was coming up on what looked like a small town of some sort. There were walls made out of wooden planks that reached a few meters high surrounding the place, and in the middle were several buildings that continually became taller and taller as they came closer to the center.
He himself was about to glide over an apartment off in the distance, but he hooked his foot into the side of the wall to make himself stop. He ended up shattering part of the wall and dragging his foot along, which was not what he planned, but the end goal was reached nonetheless.
Kairos walked up to the edge of the building and surveyed the overall situation.
Like how Edward said, people in military outfits were indeed attacking the city, mostly lobbing grenades over the walls. However, unlike what Edward said, the situation didn’t really look like it was in control.
There were hundreds of military men surrounding the place, and they were rather extravagant with their usage of grenades and such, though none of them seemed to have any form of gun whatsoever.
Along with that, any of the wooden walls were directly blown open, unable to withstand the force of the grenades at all. In fact, a section of the walls was even burning away, possibly because someone set fire to it.
This entire scene made Kairos narrow his eyes.
Strangely enough, despite having this much firepower the military wasn’t helping out others. They weren’t even trying their best to survive on their own.
With all that equipment, they decided it was best to raid other human places and take everything that they had. This much didn’t really surprise Kairos as he figured almost every single person that set foot on the Earth was scum. Nonetheless, it still made him feel a large amount of disdain.
“…What is he doing?”
Though the situation looked bad, there was one thing that made Kairos think that there might’ve been some hope. The giant ball of mana he had caught onto earlier was actually the work of a person.
Edward.
He was standing at the top of the building in the middle. His hand was raised up in the air like he was trying to grasp something. A giant ball of mana was forming on top of it. It had condensed to the point that it could even be vaguely seen by the naked eye.
Though for Kairos, it was almost as bright as the sun.
Edward eventually slowly lowered his hand, causing massive amounts of swirling mana to gather and compress. He also ended up using his free hand to try and contain the massive vortex of mana, and surprisingly enough succeeded.
Kairos couldn’t help but smile when he saw this, as he remembered this was the stance that Edward would use all the time as a kid when he pretended to have superpowers.
Though, this time it looked like the real deal. A bright dark blue ball had formed between his two hands, refined to just over the size of a baseball.
Then, Edward suddenly brought it forward.
A massive blue beam shot out from his hands, slamming down onto some of the soldiers with an ear-grating explosion. However, it wasn’t just done there. Despite already releasing it, the blue beam continued on. Edward seemed to be sweating in his struggle but was able to actually slowly move the blue beam, causing it to raze all of the soldiers almost like it was a haircut using a laser.
The chaos among the army was sudden. They had a formation, but it crumpled apart almost immediately once the beam of death came for them. And they weren’t the only thing to crumble apart either. Many people were screaming out, but it was all drowned out by the sounds of carnage.
Kairos sucked in a cold breath watching all of this.
“…Looks like he isn’t a pushover anymore.”
Several of the surrounding buildings were caught in the crossfire, broken by their base before collapsing down, making it even more dangerous for the soldiers. In fact, the building Kairos was standing on top of was no exception.
A violent shaking came from underneath him as the building gradually began to tip downwards. Before he ended up falling with it, he jumped up. Using this time, he surveyed the general area.
Although the giant beam of death ended up killing a large number of the soldiers, the problem was that there were simply too many and that a decent amount of them had actually been able to just barely run away.
Though it seemed that their morale was pretty much crushed and it was unlikely for them to launch another attack, Kairos thought it was better to be through anyway.
“I guess he wasn’t lying when he said that he had it handled.”
He began channeling the pulse spell while in the air.
Soon enough, he smashed onto the ground, scattering a few stones. He landed next to the aftermath, which consisted of a deep pit that was pitch black, still emitting some smoke.
But that was not what he focused on. He could see several people still trying to run away with their hands above their heads, avoiding the falling rubble. Kairos dashed forth and held out his hand which already had faint traces of mana emitting from it.
A shockwave suddenly burst out of his hand, shattering the nearby rubble and causing blood to burst out of any nearby person’s orifices. All of them died rather easily.
Without taking a second glance, he continued onwards charging the pulse spell once more. He couldn’t help but think that this was going to take a while. But before he reached the other soldiers, he felt a tap on his shoulder.
He looked up to see the purple figure looking down at him.
Kairos stared at it with confusion, wondering what it wanted. But before he could think about it any longer, the floor underneath him broke open, revealing a pillar that shot him upwards into the sky.
As he did, he noticed that there were several spells thrown at him. There were a few icicles, fireballs, and boulders launched toward him, but none of them hit. The platform underneath him would shift around sporadically, letting him dodge everything without even having to move a muscle.
Kairos let out a sigh, expecting that the people attacking him were those on Edward’s side mistaking him for an enemy. Yet, to his surprise when he looked for the culprits, they were all soldiers.
Though many of the survivors were sent into a panic, there was still a decent number that were still on their feet and fighting. As for whether or not it was bravery or stupidity, Kairos didn’t care enough to find out.
And it would also turn out he wouldn’t have the chance to, as many of them were directly killed off by metal spikes suddenly emerging from the ground. Surprisingly though, most of them were actually able to dodge at least the initial spike.
After that one would come many others, eliminating more and more, until only roughly twenty were left in sight. They were all able to easily dodge the spikes.
Kairos rubbed his chin with interest.
“She can provide this much help from that far away? Huh.”
As he was thinking that, he saw an incredibly fast bolt of lightning shoot toward him with his future vision. He preemptively slid down the metal pole that Tiana made before suddenly springing off the side of it.
As he did, a bolt of lightning shot right past his location.
Kairos looked back at the person, seeing a rather burly man holding a combat knife in one hand while the other had three fingers pointed forwards. There were still faint arcs of lightning coming off of his body, making it rather clear who was responsible for launching that. He looked at Kairos with a hard expression, one that looked like it wanted to intimidate.
A smile formed on Kairos’ face when he made eye contact.
“You’re attacking me when you still have to worry about the guy that killed half your army in one move?”
The soldier scoffed.
“I think I’m doing something perfectly reasonable.”
He raised his fingers, which gradually began charging up with dancing arcs of lightning once more, like they were excited.