Chapter 64 - Possession

Kairos saw in his future vision that the corpse's sharp bone arm pierce through his skull. Despite the debilitating pain that wreaked havoc in his mind, he tilted his head to the side.

The sharpened bone ripped through his cheek, tearing it open and revealing his teeth. While the outcome definitely wasn't ideal, it definitely could've been worse.

The charred corpse continued to move, but Sam acted before it could do anything else. He swung at it with his hand that had been coated with a white light.

With a bang, it landed on the skeleton's shoulder before letting out uncomfortably loud grinding sounds. In less than a second, the arm was cut off, leaving the corpse with basically nothing left.

As though realizing this fact, whatever was controlling it suddenly stopped, letting the charred corpse fall limp to the ground.

Sam shot Kairos a glance.

"Are you ok?"

In response, Kairos sighed.

"More or less."

He held onto his torn apart cheek, trying to stifle the blood flow. Unfortunately, that just caused most of it to go into his mouth, filling it with a strong copper taste.

However, that was still not Kairos' concern.

"We need to find whatever is controlling these things."

After saying that, he looked around for a moment before jumping up and stabbing the sharpened bone into the wall. After hoisting himself up, he used his other hand and legs to get what traction he could on the wall before stabbing the sharpened bone in a higher position.

Although it was rather clumsy, he began scaling up the wall that way.

While Kairos was doing that, most of the other group were still trying to deal with the headless puppet. Sydney was still at the front, slashing into the monster's flesh and getting slashed in return.

It was rather bloody, but it more or less worked out.

As for Chase, he was hunched over with an arm covering the nasty gash on his stomach. The other hand continued to hold onto the bow, but it didn't seem like he would be able to use it anytime soon.

On the other hand, both Tori and Nicole had circled around Sydney on opposite ends. They then swung their weapons.

The headless puppet backed up from Sydney and used both arms to try and defend against their strikes.

It was able to block Nicole's fire axe relatively easily, but Tori's was just barely able to snake by and slam hard into his shoulder joint.

Sydney did not wait to follow up, bringing down her sharpened bone onto the headless puppet, forcing it to kneel down.

Tori grit her teeth and pulled back her katana despite not cutting through the skeleton's shoulder. She simply did not have enough strength.

However, there was still a clear dent made, which she fully intended on taking advantage of after.

The three of them were very quickly overwhelming the headless puppet. Tori had pulled back her katana, wanting to take a decisive slash that would cut through this one's arm, but suddenly had the urge to step to the side, thus she did.

And as that happened, two sharpened bones shot towards where her head and heart were. The source being another hooded figure.

Tori clicked her tongue as her katana flashed.

The hooded figure used both of its arms to block, and while it was close, the katana was stopped in place by one of its arms.

She was not discouraged, and continued to swing her katana around. Unfortunately, none of her attacks were able to get through, but at least the hooded figure was unable to unleash one of its own attacks.

While that was happening, both Sydney and Nicole were swinging at the now kneeling headless puppet.

Sydney's attacks were random, down more in a fit of rage than anything. As such, she wasn't targeting any of the crucial joints, mostly focusing on ripping apart the puppet's flesh.

As for Nicole, she was trying her best, but the puppet would focus mostly on defending and attacking her. In fact, there were several occasions where the puppet would let its body get torn open by Sydney just so its bone could shoot towards Nicole.

There were various occasions where the bone got a little too close to Nicole, but the slow down of time brought by the red watch was enough for her to safely dodge.

By now, Kairos had gotten on top of a three-story restaurant, with the bleeding from his cheek now gone. He observed the situation, seeing most of the others fighting against two puppets.

Next to the boundary that they were taking advantage of earlier, were several of the strange monsters with long hair-like things. They shrieked while their hairs stood up straight, almost like cats.

However, they would not step over the line.

It seemed like they were too afraid, just like the other monsters. Originally, Kairos wasn't too concerned about them, but then he saw a rather startling sight.

One of the strange monsters began to convulse violently. The flesh on its body both bloated and contracted, making it look like it was on the verge of exploding. However, that never came to pass.

Instead, the flesh on its arms were ripped off, leaving sharpened bones. That flesh then turned into a hood that covered the rest of its body. As for the legs, they forcefully twisted and made the monster turn into a bipedal.

Like that, another hooded figure began running into battle.

Considering that two were already making the group go into a stalemate, another would break the balance and overwhelm them.

Chase seemed to notice this.

He was still bleeding since the gash on his stomach was very messy, making it hard to heal. If he removed his arm, then there might be some unforeseen consequences in the near future.

Yet, a mana string formed on the bow anyway.

But then, something Kairos didn't expect happened.

Chase tilted the bow sideways and bit down on the string with his teeth. As he pulled back, a mana arrow formed.

Then, he let it loose onto the faraway hooded figure.

A loud bang resounded.

The mana arrow exploded onto the figure's chest, turning it into a mass of flesh, blood, and bone. Almost all of the torso was now gone. With that, its arms had disconnected along with one leg.

The hooded figure was essentially rendered useless.

Kairos took a deep breath and pointed his finger towards the group of strange monsters. It would probably be better to kill those before they turned into more of the puppets.

With those thoughts in mind, a fireball appeared on the end of his finger.

As he channeled mana into it, Kairos suddenly felt a strange sensation of being watched. His head snapped to the side, and on the floor next to him, he saw an eye.

The eye was partially inside of the floor, with eyelids consisting of cement. As for the iris, it was blood red.

That eye was very familiar to Kairos. Although it wasn't impossible for multiple eyes with red irises to exist, he couldn't help but compare it with the giant eye he saw in the sky before.

They were vastly different sizes, but they were the same.

Kairos immediately brought his sharpened bone down. However, as he did so, the eye shut its eyelid, disappearing entirely. In the end, he smashed into the roof, causing a crack to form.

He was pretty confident that he did not hurt the eye.

Kairos stood up and shouted.

"There is an eye somewhere around here!"

By now, the fireball at the end of his finger had expanded to be forty centimeters wide. He didn't think that this would be enough to kill all of the monsters, but since they decided to bunch up, it should have a fairly strong effect.

Kairos let the fireball go, letting it speed through the air.

The strange monsters were oblivious, until the fireball was right in front of their faces.

An explosion ensued.

[Killed Creature - 0.1 points awarded] x 4

The explosion itself was roughly two meters wide, which instantly killed four of the monsters. After that, the flames that spilled out from the explosion caught onto many of the other monsters.

They ended up shrieking in pain and scattering away from each other. Though even in their panicked state, they did not cross the boundary as though doing so would be worse than losing their own life.

[Killed Creature - 0.1 points awarded] x 5

The flames were able to burn most of the closest monsters to death. There were still more than ten of them left, but each of their bodies had charred considerably. More than half of them were gravely wounded, while the rest were still not in the best condition.

Kairos immediately felt more piercing glares on him.

He took a quick scan around and saw that there were three eyes looking at him from various positions. One replaced the entire window of a nearby building, while another was about the size of a basketball on a building across the street.

However, the most notable one was probably the eye that rested on ground beneath him, nearly as large as the roof itself.

Kairos was standing at the edge of the building, thus found himself at the edge of the eyelid. He was honestly frozen in shock by the appearance of three eyelids, especially the one below him.

However, after being exposed to it in his future vision one second in advance, he was able to overcome it before it happened in reality.

Seeing the giant eye beneath him made Kairos want to blast it away with all the mana he had left using a pulse spell. However, the fact that there were multiple eyes extinguished this desire immediately.

He thought that maybe the eyes were the 'true' body of sorts, but seeing several made him feel like it was not so simple. Nonetheless, this apprehension did not stop him from stabbing the eye with his sharpened bone.

Kairos honestly expected that the eye would somehow evade or deflect his strike.

So when he heard an uncomfortable squelch, he couldn't help but be surprised.

The sharpened bone had pierced into the eye, causing some blood to spill out. However, the eye did not seem perturbed. Instead, it just continued to look at Kairos passively, almost like it could not register anything else.

Although the eyes all looked at him neutrally, Kairos could not help but feel resentment behind them.

Along with that was just the overall creepiness of them.

Kairos decided to leap off of the building in order to evade them. Though he wasn't looking at the eyes, he could still feel their pupils following him.

With a slam, he landed down on the pavement.

Tori was still engaged in a battle with a hooded figure, and while she was able to make various nicks and dents in the sharp arms of the monster, they were still very much stuck in a stalemate.

Kairos was behind Tori's adversary and decided to help out, rushing forth with the sharpened bone. The hooded figure suddenly turned around and did the same thing. Tori seemed a little surprised by this sudden change, but only waited a split second before taking advantage of it.

Kairos saw where the sharp bone arms would go in his future vision, thus promptly evaded one of them and parried the other one. At the same time, Tori swung her katana with full force.

Her instinct was to go for the creature's neck when it decided to turn around, showing such a vulnerable side to her. However, she quickly remembered that these things still moved without their head.

And so, she swung towards its arm.

With a thunk, one of the hooded figure's arms fell off.

At this time, Chase was focusing on the basketball-sized eye off in the distance.

He drew back another mana arrow using his teeth, intending on destroying it.

But out of nowhere, the pupil suddenly turned towards him.

Then, Chase began aiming the mana arrow towards Kairos.