Chapter 100 Outside The Box

Kairos decided to ignore the rooms that didn't contain a blue figure within them altogether, considering them to be a waste of time. That meant he would even discard rooms that seemed rather easy to complete in favor of fighting those with actual techniques.

This also meant he no longer cared enough to extend his future vision beyond two seconds while closing the door behind him. However, he ended up using it more in the end because he used it to give him a brief moment of time to consider whether or not he wished to learn the specific technique.

The first time he found a room with a mana figure inside, the person in question was holding a spear. However, he also found that this particular person didn't have the highest proficiency with said spear.

While said skill was still above Kairos, it was quite rough and crude.

This was where he found out that not all of these mana figures were created equal. Some of them had lousy techniques, making them not the most useful to learn from.

For these, Kairos would simply fight as he normally would. After stabbing the figure nearly ten times, it had disappeared.

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He continued on, trying to find more.

Kairos had come across people holding all sorts of weapons, such as spears, swords, and daggers. There were also the occasional strange ones, such as people holding wooden staffs and metal pipes.

For the more obscure weapon holders, he would simply fight as he normally would. If there was nothing particularly interesting, then Kairos would eliminate them. Unfortunately, it was still quite a bother as he needed roughly ten strikes to kill said people.

Considering that the first time only required two, it seemed that there was some relation between how much he got hit and the number of times he had to hit the mana figure.

Most of the rooms he went through didn't end up having the mana figures within, and roughly half of the ones that did ended up being useless since there either was no technique, or it was on an obscure weapon.

However, Kairos eventually came across one that he did find useful.

It was a person holding onto a bow.

The arrows that said person pulled back were created out of mana, which made Kairos rather nervous. After all, his impression of mana arrows was that they were rather scary, as Chase's had been quite powerful all of the time.

However, upon watching them fire, he realized his worries were for nothing.

Though they were indeed made out of mana, they acted very much like normal arrows, flying through the air at a reasonable speed as well as being able to do a relatively small amount of damage.

Out of all the tactics that the bowman mana figure employed, Kairos found himself most interested in how he leaped away while firing a shot.

He was originally thinking of trying to see a new way to use the bow but was instead focused on that.

Kairos decided to intentionally miss his attack every time the mana figure used that particular technique instead of letting himself get hit.

And it worked out pretty nicely.

Though the mana figure wouldn't continuously use the same move, it would still use it relatively often, letting Kairos eventually pick up on it.

He followed how the figure moved their knees and shifted their weight.

By the end, he was still panting fairly heavily, fatigued from all of the strenuous movements he had been doing up till now.

However, Kairos had figured out the gist of the technique.

First, one would bend their knees while drawing back the bow. Then, at the point when one's knee was bent enough, they would release the arrow before abruptly leaping in a direction.

Since Kairos didn't have a bow, he couldn't imitate the exact movements that the person did. However, he didn't intend to perfectly imitate it in the first place.

While several meters away from the mana figure, Kairos bent his knees and pulled back his spear.

Then, a mana arrow fired toward him, prompting him to swing his spear before leaping to the side.

He was able to dodge the arrow easily, however he found that his swing was a little awkward.

Considering he was quite far away, it obviously didn't hit, but that wasn't his concern as of now.

Kairos continued to practice doing the same thing, but each time he found it kept feeling quite awkward. Though, that was also quite reasonable.

The way the bowman moved, made it so he had a split second of stability to properly fire the arrow. However, that brief duration didn't really help the swing as there was more to it than just releasing the arrow.

And so, he found himself trying over and over again, trying to find that missing piece.

Kairos suddenly threw his head to the side, letting a mana arrow fly past.

His brows were furrowed, but not because of the attack. In fact, he wasn't even really paying attention to the mana figure in general.

Instead, he was just mulling over how he could properly apply the same movements for the sake of using a melee weapon.

Kairos was sure there had to be some way to do so, but kept finding himself stuck because of the fundamental difference between the two.

His eyes glazed over slightly, but as his vision focused on the bow, he couldn't help but be reminded of another time, when he was with Nicole.

Kairos was with Nicole, in his room. Nicole was in his bed, kicking her feet leisurely. She had a piece of paper on top of a textbook and was drawing random doodles.

As for Kairos, he had the textbook open in front of him as he sat down at a desk. Though it was a math textbook, there was this random section labeled "Thinking Outside The Box". Within, contained a question.

With nine dots shaped in a three-by-three square, how can one hit all of the dots with four straight and continuous lines?

At first, Kairos didn't think much of it at all, imagining the answer to be quite easy if anything. However, the fact that the four lines had to be continuous made him stumped.

If they didn't have to be continuous, he could easily just use three lines to do that problem, but that factor made it so that he was always missing one or two dots.

This frustrated Kairos greatly. He felt like this question was somehow challenging his pride.

And so, he worked at it, trying out various combinations that seemed to make intuitive sense to cover more ground. However, they all failed.

Then, he decided to try and brute force it, trying every single combination he could think of.

And before he knew it, he had spent nearly three hours just trying to solve that problem that looked so simple, without even being able to solve it in the first place.

Kairos frustratedly leaned back into his chair and let out a sigh filled with distress.

Nicole perked up slightly, before turning to look at Kairos.

"What happened?"

Kairos took a peek behind him, seeing that Nicole had drawn a picture of his room, with him sitting at the desk. He didn't care all that much, and let out a sigh.

"I can't solve this problem no matter what I do. There isn't even an answer section for this question, so I can't even find out if there actually is a solution."

Nicole tilted her head to the side.

"Hm... what if I try to do it?"

Kairos shrugged his shoulders.

"You can try, but I'm pretty sure it's just an impossible problem."

Nicole rolled off the bed and hopped up to her feet.

"Hup!"

She then looked over Kairos' shoulder, taking a peek at the problem.

After staring for a few moments, she placed her pencil on the corner of the dot. Then, she began making a few lines. However, by the time she reached her fourth line, one dot still wasn't covered.

Kairos shook his head.

"See? It's just a problem to confuse you, when there isn't really a solution."

Nicole didn't respond. Instead, she decided to erase the pencil marks before trying once more.

Except this time, she began tracing the line outside of the box, to Kairos' surprise.

That allowed her to make a line that would catch the last dot.

By the end, Nicole scratched the side of her head.

"Hm... it kinda looks like a bow. Don't you think?"

Kairos' jaw dropped. He stared at the problem for a few moments, before looking at Nicole.

"Wait but... you can't draw the line outside!"

Nicole looked at him with innocent eyes.

"Eh? But it doesn't say that anywhere."

Kairos stammered awkwardly.

"But... but..."

Nicole giggled.

"Look, it even says to think outside the box as the title!"

Kairos opened his mouth, but slowly closed it right after. He was in denial, but knew logically that Nicole had gotten the problem he had been stuck on for three hours in just a few seconds.

He took in a deep breath, trying to calm himself down.

Nicole couldn't help but laugh at his display.

"How long were you doing the problem? This is why you should try more than once, you know?"

She then took a peek at the papers underneath him, which had countless variations of the nine dots. There were countless erased marks along with eraser bits all over the place.

Nicole blinked a few times, slowly taking it in before laughing.

"It looks like I'm way smarter than you!"

The corner of Kairos' lip twitched. He was in deep shame and tried to change the subject.

"...You wrote in my textbook, when we aren't allowed to."

Nicole let out a small gasp.

"Ah! Sorry, I didn't even think about that!"

She began erasing the pencil marks she made, but couldn't get it off completely. Upon pressing a little harder, she even accidentally tore apart the page.

Kairos looked at her, while she turned away while severely blushing.

Nicole coughed awkwardly.

"S-Sorry!"

She then scampered out of the room, like a mouse running away from a cat.

Once she left the room, Kairos sighed.

"...That's the person who just outsmarted me."

He put one hand on his head.

"It looks like I need to stop making assumptions about everything."

With how much of an impact this time had on his mentality, Kairos worked out a method so that he wouldn't get caught in the same trap once more.

The reason why he got stuck on the problem for so long was that he made an assumption. That the line wasn't allowed to go outside of the box.

However, by making that assumption, he made it impossible to solve the problem.

So he had to list out the assumptions he made before discarding them to open up new possibilities.

And that is exactly what he did as he stared down the mana figure in front of him.

First, was the assumption he needed to bend his knees.

Though, that seemed to be quite an integral part, so that might have to stay.

Second, was the assumption that he had to jump afterwards.

However, that was also the whole point of the technique, so if he no longer jumped, there would no longer be a point in executing the whole thing in the first place. If anything, it would become a completely new one.

It was quite discouraging to question extremely basic things, just to find out that they were indeed basic and required.

However, he then thought about another assumption he made.

The fact that he had to attack, right when his knee finished bending.

Kairos tilted his head to the side, dodging an arrow.

And his eyes were wide open, because he had finally come to the answer he was looking for.