Chapter 65 - Think, Quickly

Kairos immediately noticed that Chase suddenly redirected his arrow towards him, instead of the red eye he was initially aiming at.

He frowned, wondering what caused this sudden change.

The hooded figure in front of him only had one arm to fight with, so it was not hard to hold it off. Unfortunately, there was now something else to deal with.

Kairos suddenly felt a strong pain in his chest. This was something he expected, so he quickly twisted himself to the side.

And right when he did, a mana arrow streaked past where he just was.

With a bang, the mana arrow smashed against a distant building.

Kairos grit his teeth and swung his sharpened bone to block the arm of the hooded figure.

"What the fuck are you doing, Chase?"

Chase did not respond.

Instead, he removed the arm that was covering the gash on his stomach, letting the blood spill out of him. Then, he began drawing back another arrow with his hand.

One thing Kairos noted was that Chase's eyes had changed from light blue to dark red. Along with that, his mouth hung open ever so slightly.

Tori's katana flashed, severing another one of the hooded figure's arms. Though that didn't stop her from noticing that they were receiving friendly fire. She turned around to look at Chase with a betrayed expression.

"You're really acting up now? What the hell is wrong with you?"

As Kairos expected, Chase did not respond.

Instead, he let another mana arrow loose at Kairos, who dodged by depending on his future vision.

Kairos narrowed his eyes.

He was wondering what could've possibly gotten Chase controlled like this. Yet, the only real thing he could think of was the fact that he had stared into the eye from earlier. But realistically, that made no sense.

After all, Kairos had stared into the eye multiple times before and nothing happened.

As those thoughts ran through his head, he saw his father approach Chase.

Then, in his future vision, he saw Sam split Chase in two vertically, spilling his blood everywhere.

Kairos quickly shoved how surprised he was out of his mind before calling out.

"Father, wait!"

Sam had both hands tightened around his sharpened bone, raised for an overhead swing. But he stopped himself once he heard Kairos' voice.

Though from the way he furrowed his brows, it was clear that Sam wasn't pleased.

"Kairos! You can't just spare the people that turn on you, even if you've created ties with them!"

During this time, Chase pulled back another mana arrow, and while it seemed to strain his body, his expression hardly changed.

Kairos clicked his tongue.

"I'm not sparing someone that turned on me!"

While saying that, he rushed towards Chase, looking him dead in the eye. At the same time, he muttered to himself.

"At least not this time..."

Sam looked confused, but decided to remain silent.

Kairos suddenly felt a piercing pain in his chest, thus he shot towards the left. As expected, once he did so, a mana arrow flew past him. By now, he was only a few meters away.

At this point, Chase's condition looked bad. His veins were bulging from his skin intensely, while his body was trembling faintly. Nonetheless, he still slowly reached towards his bow, preparing another mana arrow.

Before that happened, Kairos shoulder tackled him.

With a thump, Chase got the wind knocked out of him, while his body folded like a sheet of paper. Before he was thrown away, Kairos wrapped one arm around Chase's waist, holding him in place.

Even now, he was still thinking of what could've possessed Chase.

The few things he had thought of were things related to evolution energy taking him over. However, that was unlikely considering that Sydney still had a hold of her emotions despite several close calls, as well as the rest of them more or less being sane.

Kairos definitely believed that they were all slightly on edge, considering how quickly they broke down while trapped underground, but that was different from what was happening now.

He also thought that it might've been the bow taking over Chase's body.

Though again, he believed the chances were low. Chase had heard the story about how guns took the evolution points instead of the actual soldiers. Considering that he had been getting points all this time, Kairos was pretty sure that the bow didn't get any.

After all, the points were always distributed to the killer solely, instead of being shared.

Then, there was also the possibility that Chase had actually turned on them, perhaps because of some sort of telepathic communication. However, Kairos was fairly confident that Chase was the type of person that would've said some sort of snarky remark like, 'Sorry, but I don't plan on dying.'

Then, the only thing Kairos could think of was the fact Chase looked at the eye earlier.

While he was caught up in his thoughts, he could feel Chase struggle venomously, scratching his skin like an animal. Although his skin was torn through, because Chase didn't have particularly long fingernails, the damage was minimal.

Nonetheless, Kairos still was having difficulty keeping him in check.

Chase ended up throwing his bow to the side, and seemed to intend on scratching him with his other hand as well. Yet, as the bow was flying through the air, several black tendrils shot out from its sides before piercing into Chase's arm.

Kairos couldn't help but suck in a cold breath.

So this is what he meant by being unable to use other weapons.

Chase's body had stiffened up while the bow pulled itself back to him. Once it was next to him once more, the bow forced itself into his grasp before retracting the tendrils.

Somehow, the spots where Chase's arm had been pierced by the tendrils seemed completely fine after they were retracted, save for a few tiny red dots.

Kairos clicked his tongue.

"Hey, you awake yet?"

Chase remained still for a few seconds. Then, he began clawing away once more, but this time kept a firm hold onto the bow.

Kairos let out a sigh.

He guessed that the owner of the red eye found some way to possess Chase. But then that begged the question.

Why wasn't Kairos possessed?

If looking at the eye was really all it took, then he should've been possessed as well. His guess was that since his rank was higher, he was unaffected by the skill.

While all of this was happening, Tori took care of the hooded figure with no arms, while Nicole and Sydney were able to take off one arm from the puppet that they were fighting.

Kairos began pondering over possible solutions to get rid of Chase's possession.

"Wake up, dumbass!"

Unfortunately, Chase only continued to claw away at his back. Kairos ran towards a wall, and slammed Chase into it, causing him to make a strange gurgling sound.

"Hey! Do you hear me?"

After a short period of recovery, Chase went back to what he was doing before, attacking Kairos. At this point, Kairos was beginning to wonder if this entire thing was a lost cause.

That maybe it was better to just kill him outright.

At the same time, Nicole let out a grunt as she swung her fire axe, taking off the puppet's last arm with some difficulty. Most of the chest and gut were torn open because of Sydney.

While she suffered similar injuries herself, all of them rapidly healed.

Kairos pulled back from the wall he slammed Chase into, and as he did, a red eye formed on it. At first, the red eye glanced towards Kairos. However, just a second later, it turned to look at Sam, who was looking back with evident surprise.

To Kairos' dismay, Sam stiffened up strangely. Then, his eyes began to turn red as well.

Nicole was focusing intently on Chase, and seemed ready to kill if necessary. Unfortunately, that also meant she wasn't focusing on Sam.

In his future vision, Kairos saw Sam swing his sharpened bone horizontally as a white light coated it.

And Nicole's head come off.

Kairos' eyes widened as he looked at Nicole.

"DUCK."

Nicole seemed taken aback, but followed what he had said, causing some of her long black hair to fly up in the air. Right afterward, Sam's sharpened bone snaked past, cutting the tips of her hair.

Nicole couldn't help but shudder as she felt the wind of the strike pass by the top of her head so quickly, but did not delay in running away from Sam.

Sydney's breathing was heavy, and she turned to face Sam with determination. However, once she saw who it was, all of that determination turned into confusion. In a flash, one of Sydney's arms fell off from Sam's slash.

Tori furrowed her brows.

"Damn, weren't you the one being all high and mighty about people turning on each other?"

Kairos cursed under his breath, he was wrong about his initial predictions again.

"Make sure you don't look at the eye! It will possess you, just like how these two have been!"

Nervous expressions appeared on the rest of the group. They clearly began hesitating over whether or not they should even be looking in a certain direction.

Tori voiced her concerns.

"Damn, should I keep my eyes closed, then?"

Kairos took a second to think. After all, they couldn't just close their eyes to fight. From what he recalled, it took a few seconds for the eye to take control.

Kairos decided to take a gamble with his advice.

"If you see the eye, immediately look away."

As he spoke, an eye formed on the floor underneath Sydney. Instinctively, she turned to look, but hurriedly closed her eyes right after before turning her face away.

It seemed to have worked.

But in that time, Sam swung his sharpened bone once more, taking off another one of Sydney's arms.

Her regeneration was enough to stop the bleeding from both of her arms, but it would be optimistic to think that it could do any more.

Sydney ran away, though still half confused.

As for Kairos, he grit his teeth as he internally complained about how unfair this was.

With just a single look, someone could be turned into a puppet, and inherit all of their powers?

What was he even supposed to do?

Kairos slammed Chase into the wall once more before grabbing him by both shoulders.

"Wake up, you piece of shit! Otherwise, I'm killing you!"

As he expected, it did little to deter Chase from attacking him any longer. Kairos cursed, and slammed his head against Chase's rather helplessly.

With a frown, he glared into the man's red eyes.

"Did you hear me?"

Kairos was about to give up, but suddenly noticed that Chase's eyelids fell slightly, while his grip weakened. He blinked a few times and pulled his head back.

"Can you hear me?"

Chase immediately began struggling fiercely once more.

Kairos clicked his tongue, feeling extremely irritated. It seemed that some of the control over Chase weakened for just a moment.

But why?

Kairos brought his head closer once again, and as expected, it caused Chase's motions to dull once more. Something was causing the control to lessen whenever he got close.

Was his body in some way special?

Maybe it was somehow tied to his ability to see the future?

Or maybe the person controlling Chase was just playing with him, trying to make him hesitate more on killing.

As these possibilities flashed by in his mind, he couldn't help but panic.

While he was thinking, Sam was rushing after the others. Sydney was relatively fast, but still slower than him. As such, she would still get cut up by Sam every so often.

On the other hand, both Nicole and Tori also fled, but were both substantially slower.

They were still F rank, after all.

Kairos had to decide quick.