Chapter 32 - Horde

After taking some time to count, Kairos found that there were forty-two monsters. He furrowed his brows.

"It seems we are attracting more of them by fighting these monsters. Let's start running before things get out of hand."

Tori let out a soft sigh.

"But they are worth so many points..."

Chase clicked his tongue.

"It is a lot of points, but at the rate that they are coming we will end up dying."

Tori nodded before running. She only said that out of pity for what they could've gotten, not because she actually wanted to stay.

Kairos was fairly certain that they could get into the wilderness after going in a certain direction, thus led the group that way. He quickly found that while he was able to outrun the monsters easily, some of his group members lagged behind, moving at a pace that was slower than the monsters.

Kairos clicked his tongue.

"Continue going in this direction. I will take care of the monsters behind us."

He then turned around, moving past the group. From there, he began gathering mana towards his palm, feeling it quickly rise to the absolute limit.

It did not take long for the monsters to get close. They were fairly grouped up, meaning that his attack with an area of effect should get them all.

And right when they were all in front of him, he let the spell loose.

A whipping sound filled the air before an explosive bang rang out.

[Killed Creature x42 - 4.2 points awarded]

[Multi-Kill - 1.0 points awarded]

All of the monsters were blasted away, torn into pieces that shot backwards at varying degrees, from a few meters away to being sent like a home run hit. Along with that was essentially a curtain of blood, splashing up down onto the ground below.

In fact, even the pavement below Kairos was caught up within the impact, evidenced by the cracks lined across it.

He couldn't help but marvel at the effects of the spell he just cast. Granted, that took more than half of his mana, meaning he could not replicate until his mana regenerated slightly.

Though the only upsetting thing was that while the points were sizable, they were far lower than what he used to get for killing such a large amount.

But before he could worry about that more, he could hear the cry of even more monsters.

Kairos could see a horde begin to form. Though he had been confident enough in his strength before to casually walk outside, he was not confident he could deal with the amount he saw coming.

He had become overconfident just because he evolved earlier on.

Kairos clicked his tongue and began running. He pulled out the red prism from his pocket and let it hover just above his hand. In the next moment, a long set of stone bars with red veins on them slowly came up from the ground, almost like prison bars.

They reached six meters in height and had a sharp tip.

Kairos lined those bars up between the school and a faraway house. After confirming he didn't leave any gaps, Kairos caught up with the rest of the group. Yet, he found that his group members were also engaged in a battle of their own.

They were currently fighting against six monsters, and from the corpse on the ground, it seemed that they had already dealt with one.

Tori cut off the head of a monster while gritting her teeth. As for Chase, he shot a mana arrow, but from the frown on his face, it seemed like he was reluctant to do so. Another monster's skull exploded, leaving only four.

Nicole let out a grunt, swinging her fire axe with all her strength, and was able to split the skull of another monster.

Harold and Sydney were both hitting this one monster with all they had, but while they tried to hit its head, their strikes ended up landing on their limbs.

Kairos frowned before slipping past them, beheading that monster before doing the same to another. As for the last one, Tori took care of it.

Harold gasped.

"Ah! You surprised me, I almost hit you!"

Kairos shook his head.

"No time. We need to go."

He looked over his shoulder towards the bars he had set up earlier.

The monsters were climbing up the poles as well as stacking over each other, forcefully getting themselves over the barrier. However, once they reached the top, they didn't do the smartest course of action and just tried to lunge over.

This led to the sharp tips ripping into their bodies.

Some of them got their leg caught, before falling down the pole, skewering themselves. Other monsters ended up tearing several long gashes across their torso as they forced themselves over, slowing their approach considerably.

Kairos let out a sigh of relief seeing his strategy had worked, but those weren't the only monsters. There were quite a bit approaching from nearly every direction.

He took up the front and killed a straggler that charged towards him.

[Killed Creature - 0.1 points awarded]

Kairos was originally running down the street, but suddenly stopped. It was because he heard the sound of a car. Nicole, who was right behind him, seemed a bit confused.

"Why are we stopping?"

Right as she finished her sentence, a car drove by in the distance, trying to go around all of the monsters. Right behind were an extremely large group tailing behind.

The driver was doing pretty damn good considering how many monsters were on the road, however, it didn't last too long. At one point, the car slammed right into a monster, killing it, but also making the car lose a fairly large amount of speed.

Not only that, but driving over the corpse made it lose even more speed.

This meant that many more monsters could reach the front, blocking it entirely. The driver was still able to kill a few more monsters with a few bangs and cracks, but in the end, the vehicle was stopped right in its tracks.

All of the monsters surrounded the car before smashing the windows while extremely loud beeping sounds filled the air.

A series of begging came from within the car.

"No! Don't come in! Don't! Get away fr-"

And just a second later, blood-curdling screams filled the air, attracting even more monsters.

Kairos clicked his tongue and pointed towards a direction without as many monsters.

"Let's go down this alleyway."

After the group passed through, he used the red prism to create more sharp bars out of the ground, blocking off the monsters that came for them. This way was a detour from their original destination, but there wasn't too much of a choice.

If Kairos had a bottomless supply of mana, he would gladly blast through all of the monsters. However, even just one cast was enough to use up the majority of his mana.

He began sweating slightly, trying to take the long way around.

The sound of the car beeping was still audible from the distance, so it should attract a lot of monsters towards it. As long as they got away, there shouldn't be as many.

And so, Kairos began running across a street, killing the monsters he came across, getting him a few of points here and there. The others behind him were also forced to occasionally kill a monster due to the sheer number. The two people that did that job were mostly Tori and Nicole. Chase would shove them here and there, but not much other than that.

Thinking that they had gotten fairly far from the beeping car, Kairos shifted their direction to be more on track towards the wilderness.

The number of monsters decreased considerably, making it seem rather promising.

Yet, Kairos ended up pausing once more.

"...What the hell is this?"

Off in the distance was a police station. From the sound of it, the police seemed relatively promising during the apocalypse. However, that was definitely not the case now.

Though most of the streets were bloody, they were still mostly not covered in red. However, it was a completely different story for this place.

For an entire thirty-meter radius, there was not a single spot not covered with blood in the form of dried stains and still slightly wet ones. It was clear to tell that an extremely large amount of things died here.

And as of right now, just outside the police station was a large pile of monsters. They were all above other corpses, eating up their flesh. Despite the giant pile, it didn't seem like there was enough to go around as the monsters began fighting each other, clawing at each other's flesh to take a little bit more food.

In the end, more corpses filled the ground, attracting even more monsters, and making the process repeat itself.

Kairos sucked in a cold breath.

"...It seems we have to take another detour."

Tori furrowed her brows.

"But the monsters are killing themselves there. It shouldn't be too hard to get rid of them if they work against each other."

Kairos grit his teeth. That was true to an extent. While there were a lot of monsters, their numbers also reduced rapidly because of how they were turning on each other. Compared to the horde they had to run from earlier, it was far fewer. However, he also felt that this much blood and noise would surely attract something bigger.

As Kairos deliberated about this, he suddenly bolted down another alleyway.

"We are going! Now!"

Before the others could even ask why, an incomparably loud high-pitched shriek resounded from the pile of monsters.

This prompted them to run as well, not asking why.

Suddenly, large spikes shot out from inside the pile. Countless monsters, both dead and alive were skewered. Any of the monsters that were alive before were immediately killed.

The spikes continued to extend out, lifting up all of the corpses. It revealed a monster that had a black back, where all of the spikes were coming from. The monster wasted no time in eating all the flesh that it could, even tearing up its own mouth in order to consume more.

By the time all that happened, Kairos had only reached the edge of the alleyway, and he couldn't help but glance at the monster. In his future vision, he saw that the monster's head immediately snapped towards him.

Kairos stopped himself from glancing, not wanting to attract the monster's attention.

Unfortunately, a few of the others ended up taking a glance.

And the monster looked over anyway.

The monster stopped eating and looked at the people who left into the alleyway with its pupilless eyes. Its torn open mouth remained half agape, letting blood and flesh slowly fall down from it.

Then, it retracted the spikes, letting all of the corpses smack onto the ground. With that, it shot towards the gap that the group had left in with terrifying speeds.

The group had only gone a few meters when the monster latched onto the side of the wall within their alleyway. Tori couldn't help but grit her teeth.

"Shit! Can you deal with that?"

Kairos looked over his shoulder, watching the monster crawl towards them on the side of the wall.

He cursed under his breath.

"If I can't handle it, then I guess we're all dead."

He jumped up, scaling on the side of the wall to get behind all the others.

Then, Kairos began gathering mana towards his palm.