I See One Second Into The Future: Loner In The Apocalypse

Kairos hadn't fully charged up the darkness spell as he would've liked as he had only used a quarter of his mana, but he didn't really have much of a choice anymore when he saw the spiky ball monster rushing towards him.

After opening his mouth, he released a ball of dark mist, with a wide jagged smile on top of it. A line of long tendrils trailed behind it, making it look somewhat like a squid. Although it didn't travel particularly fast, the monster had no intention of shifting its direction, instead opting to plow right through it.

And it did just that, slamming right through.

However, the spell still retained itself, wrapping the many tendrils it had around the spikes and constricting them, preventing the monster from moving as it liked. In the end, it just remained there, shaking in its struggle but unable to do anything more. The small snakes that Nyoka had continued biting into its skin, making even more wounds that continued to bleed.

The amount of blood that it had already lost appeared to be more than its entire volume, and yet the monster continued to struggle, clearly showing signs of life.

Still, it was at least temporarily locked in place. ｂ𝚎ｄｎ𝚘ｖ𝚎𝚕．𝚘𝚛𝚐

A few moments later, the fox slammed into the ground with a bang. However, just a second after landing, it sprung up to its feet. It glanced at the eagle, Sara, before turning to Kairos, recognizing the target that it could realistically reach.

Without wasting time, the fox rushed over to Kairos, prompting him to narrow his eyes slightly. He could sense desperation, not out of the will to survive, but just to take down at least one person with them.

Unfortunately, he had just used the darkness spell he had been saving for the fox and was once again put in a perilous position. Kairos held up his claw in front of him once more, bracing himself for the first hit.

After getting in range, the fox once again swiped. Kairos swung his claw, deflecting some of the energy but his body was too large and he once again suffered damage. What remained from his harden skill did little to stop the wounds from digging deep inside. He began bleeding fairly seriously.

There was a searing pain. It didn't truly come from the wound itself, but rather the feeling of losing black blood.

After this, Kairos fully intended on rushing the fox down, but suddenly stopped himself. A moment later, Nyoka slammed into the fox, crushing it with its jaws before continuing on like a derailed train.

As he continued on, he smashed the fox against the ground continuously and shook it back and forth, disorienting it.

The fox struggled intensely, slashing whatever it could, but was unable to properly judge where to attack, thus doing it randomly. That left Nyoka with only minor wounds in the process.

Kairos was free once more and looked around. Jeff was still squaring off with the werewolf that was beating him down. Though it took Jeff a long time to move, this didn't appear to be an issue as the werewolf was intent on remaining in place, fighting until one of them fell.

Jeff didn't go for a normal swing like usual. Instead, he reached out with both arms before bringing them back to the werewolf as though wanting to pull it into a deep hug. And he did just that.

With dull clunky thuds, Jeff crushed the werewolf against himself.

The already fractured rib cage cracked once more, losing more of its integrity.

A few of the werewolf's arms were bent at awkward and painful angles, while the others were just pressed up against Jeff, unable to move. The werewolf struggled, but was more or less incapacitated, able to move even less than the bound spiky monster.

Jeff continued to slowly crush him, though all things considered the werewolf was incredibly resilient, still very much alive, and very willing to communicate that fact through wheezy growls.

They were put into a strange stalemate, to say the least.

With Jeff and Nyoka dealing with the other threats, Kairos naturally turned his attention toward the spiky monster that was beginning to break out of the restraints. He found it quite ridiculous that the thing was still alive in the first place, and from reading its emotions, Kairos could tell that it was still raring to go in this fight.

He opened his mouth and began charging the lightning. Surprisingly, the attack didn't appear to require any resource like mana, though it seemed to be a byproduct of his black blood usage by taking on the form of his avatar. Simply being in the form gave him the charge over time.

The wolf in his head helped out with the casting process, gathering the residual energy into one powerful attack.

As for the spiky monster, it seemed to realize that imminent threat, and began struggling even more intensely, pulling against the tendrils restraining it. However, it wasn't able to do much, especially because the snakes stopped biting and assisted in the restriction, matching the movements of the tentacles.

Soon enough, the darkness spell wore off, no longer holding the monster back. However, the snakes still held strong, even as their bodies were being torn apart.

And with that, Kairos released a large volume of electricity, crackling violently as it shot out.

The lightning latched on before rampaging within the spiky monster's body, causing it to spasm violently. In the end, it wasn't able to maintain its circular shape, losing the spikes and unraveling into a blob.

Kairos could still feel that the emotions were as strong as ever, but as they appeared to peak, they had suddenly disappeared altogether. The monster that used to be somewhat human had died.

Despite knowing that there was an active battle going on and the others would very likely need help, Kairos couldn't help but stare at the body for a long while, along with the wolf. And as he continued staring, he suddenly found himself salivating.

The desires of the wolf meshed with him, and before they even realized it, he had sprung to the corpse and began gorging himself in the middle of it all. The corpse didn't look appealing, with its non-analogous form, resembling slime. Slime that was still twitching after death.

And the taste matched exactly that.

Kairos ripped out a chunk of flesh with his jaws and gulped it down while hardly chewing at all. Despite his extremely hungry state, it still tasted absolutely rancid, as though he was actually eating toxic waste. Still, despite how disgusting it was, he simply couldn't bring himself to stop, taking even bigger bites and even clawing into the corpse, piercing into its sludge-like flesh, to shovel more of it into his mouth.

In a matter of seconds, he had consumed nearly a fourth of the corpse. Kairos stopped himself, though that was mostly because he was trying to suppress his urge to vomit, which was incredibly difficult, leaving him stepping back and forth while opening and closing his mouth.

Although nobody was particularly paying attention to him, there seemed to be a sentiment of pure absurdity as both friend and foe all appeared to be looking in his direction.

Kairos himself wasn't very aware of that fact, though he didn't really care to know.

While he couldn't easily eat more of the disgusting flesh, he decided to wipe his body with the blood and flesh, lathering it on his fur as though it were shampoo. Despite being different consciousnesses, both of them seemed linked at this moment as they did such a thing.

Though eventually, he began to realize how strange his actions were. It wasn't as though the wolf had normally enjoyed these kinds of things. It was usually just excited and wanted to jump around.

Not to mention, he didn't really have this kind of habit either. He didn't exactly care much for gore, much less find it this appealing. In fact, he was disgusted by it, but suppressed his reaction when it was necessary to do so.

However, this was definitely not one of those situations.

After all, there was nothing necessary when it came to bathing in the blood and flesh of a monstrosity that you killed.

Kairos stopped himself before going into a daze. He couldn't help but wonder what caused this strange shift in character. It was then that he remembered Azami's words. His experience with the memory of others was affecting his own, making him think that those were his real memories.

He truly didn't think too much of it, thinking that she must've been overexaggerating. However, it turns out his personality appeared to be partially overwritten, or at least added onto without his direct knowledge.

Kairos felt a particularly burning gaze coming from the sky, where Sara was. She was normally observing the battlefield ready to swoop down at any time, but was now focusing on him.

He shook his head.

It wasn't a problem to be addressed now. He just had to focus on the fight.

It was fine.