Chapter 168 Strange Man

Kairos observed the thing that crawled out. He also made sure to rotate the mana within him to increase his mana regeneration.

Blood splattered, as the last few limbs and heads were punctured through. And from within, a weak monster crawled out.

The monster had the same general figure as most, but unlike normal monsters, there were strange white bulges coming out of its body. As Kairos took a closer look, he realized that those were all mushrooms.

To be specific, parasitic mushrooms.

A frown formed on his face as he raised his hand for another pulse spell. While he channeled it, he noticed that the mushrooms were peeling themselves off of the monster, causing it to collapse soon after. Then, they began bouncing towards Kairos, like they were very excited to try and infect a new host.

Despite feeling a chill down his spine as the strangely gelatinous mushrooms began approaching him. But he waited patiently for his pulse spell to charge up a little more. He sucked in a cold breath as he saw the mushrooms lunge towards him before he released the pulse spell, shredding several of the mushrooms in front of him into pieces.

[Killed Creature - 0.1 points awarded] x 10

Despite killing quite a few of the mushrooms, a frown was still spread out on Kairos' face. That was because he noticed while all of the mushrooms ended up being blown away, not all of them died. He saw several of them creep into the cracks of rubble, making his face distort.

He didn't want those things to escape. Though Kairos didn't understand exactly what their capabilities were. They could have great difficulty in replicating themselves and may have many limitations to infect others. However, if it was able to infect something rather easily along with reproducing, then that meant several of those abominations could form if any escaped.

In fact, there may be several of them forming right now.

Kairos narrowed his eyes as he began channeling the fire spell. A fireball appeared at the end of his finger. He began backing up as it formed, not wanting to get caught in the blast radius.

However, from how the debris was moving, Kairos could tell that the mushrooms would get away soon. Yet at the same time, if he released it too soon, then the explosion might not be enough to catch them.

He furrowed his eyebrows intensely.

After channeling for two seconds, he deemed that that was enough waiting. If he waited any longer, they would definitely disappear. And so he released the fireball, causing a relatively small explosion among the rubble that scattered a large number of flames in the area.

[Killed Creature - 0.1 points awarded] x 5

His eyes narrowed when he saw those notifications. Although he did end up killing more of them, he didn't know how many were still alive after the pulse spell he casted. For all he knew, there could be dozens still alive underneath.

While the fire was still raging on, he walked in to move aside the various debris that were still within. Thankfully, it seemed that he had some resistance to those flames, and thus didn't have to worry about burning himself much. However, as he continued to remove the rocks from the top, the frown on his face only grew deeper by the second.

Because once he had cleared it all, among the debris and mushrooms, were small holes. The mushrooms were somehow able to burrow their way out, avoiding the fire. Not to mention, there were quite a few holes and they traversed in different directions.

Kairos felt a headache coming on as he grabbed onto the side of his head.

"Did I just release something like a plague?"

He clicked his tongue before pointing two fingers towards one of the holes. From there, he released the water spell, rushing forth until it reached the mushroom at the far end.

[Killed Creature - 0.1 points awarded]

Kairos let out a cold breath before shiting where he was pointing towards another. And once again, a notification popped up.

[Killed Creature - 0.1 points awarded]

He couldn't help but feel reassured, as he wasn't too sure this method could work. It wasn't as though he could burrow to chase after them, and probably wouldn't have the time to. At the same time, most of his spells weren't made to travel down tight spaces like these. As such, it made him go for a last-ditch attempt with the water spell, and it ended up working out.

He repeated this process for every single one of the holes until he heard a notification.

[Killed Creature - 0.1 points awarded] x 8

[Multi-kill (Type - Normal) - 0.3 points awarded]

Kairos felt a little relieved as he went to cast the water spell in the last hole that he found. However, the strange thing was that he never got a notification even after casting the spell for several seconds. By now, he was beginning to run really low on mana.

His eyebrows furrowed as he increased the speed several times over. As more seconds passed, he could feel his heart getting tight from the lack of mana, while his head was beginning to get dizzy. With his alone spell, the effect of his water spell was magnified three times over, but for whatever reason, the thing he was targetting was still alive.

Kairos didn't want to give up, he still continued to try, even as he could feel his body begging him to stop.

But then, he saw in the distance a geyser had formed. After connecting the dots, he realized something. The geyser had formed as a result of him casting the water spell. And if it was shooting up into the air instead of through the tunnel that was made, it would mean only one thing.

That the mushroom had already escaped.

Kairos cursed under his breath before stopping his channeling. He took unsteady breaths and circulated what little mana he had left to slightly increase his regeneration. As it would turn out, having only a small amount of mana made it harder to pull in more, which he found a little counterintuitive, but there was not much he could do about it.

Once he felt a little steady, he rushed towards where the geyser was. Though it was definitely a long shot, he figured that the mushroom might still be around there. As Kairos was rushing over though, he wondered if his effort even mattered.

It wasn't as though there couldn't be other mushrooms like that already far away. Maybe it had already spread to the point that it would be impossible to stop.

In fact, what if there were even greater threats than just these mushrooms?

Actually, there definitely were greater threats.

Kairos' pace gradually slowed down as he began to think of something. The mushrooms definitely had a strong parasitizing power that allowed them to take control of quite a few monsters and become a dangerous abomination.

However, they also provided quite a decent amount of points due to the quantity, and the fact that each one counted as the same rank as him.

More than a threat, this was an opportunity.

An opportunity for him to gain quite a few points.

Kairos continued to walk in that direction, but he wasn't in as much of a hurry as before. He scaled up on the side of buildings to avoid the majority of the monsters before slowly inspecting the area, trying to find a trace of the mushroom.

For quite a while, it was unsuccessful, but all of a sudden he caught onto something white sticking out of a monster.

It was the mushroom, which had embedded itself into the side of a monster's head. It seemed that the monster didn't even realize that its body was being taken over, instead just wandering aimlessly searching for something to eat.

Over time, the monster's actions became even more uncoordinated than usual and far stiffer.

Eventually, the monster randomly attacked a monster that was next to it. After being attacked, that monster roared and attempted to retaliate. Yet, strangely enough, its head was easily ripped off.

Kairos narrowed his eyes slightly before concluding the mushroom somehow substantially increased the host's power. From there, the monster began eating up its newfound corpse. A few nearby monsters were attracted by the smell of blood and attempted to get a bite as well, but the monster that was being parasitized killed any that came near, and began eating them too.

This had a chain effect, bringing more and more hungry monsters over.

As for the parasitized monster, it was eating ravenously despite having already eaten an unnaturally large amount. But as he was doing so, mushrooms slowly began sprouting out of its body, reminding Kairos of what he had seen earlier.

At this point, he began channeling the fire spell, wanting to kill the mushroom before it started combining with the countless monster corpses around it.

The parasitized monster was none the wiser. By the time most of its body was covered in spores, it began reaching out towards the limbs underneath it, ripping them off the bodies before forcefully attaching them to itself.

That was when Kairos released the fire spell, causing a large fireball to rush right at it.

Another explosion ensued, causing a nearby building to directly collapse and countless flames spread out, burning up all the corpses.

[Killed Creature - 0.1 points awarded] x 25

[Multi-Kill (Type - Normal) - 0.3 points awarded]

Kairos blinked a few times.

"...I probably should've used less power."

Without meaning to, he was pretty sure that he killed all of the mushrooms. Kairos simply wasn't used to the increased power that the alone spell gave him, thus his control was a little shaky.

The problem ended up being smaller than he thought. He let out a sigh before intending to head back to the city.

Yet, when he turned his head around, he saw someone was staring right at him.

It was a man with short green hair and blue eyes. His general attire looked relatively normal, but also like something that was more budget than anything. Though, considering its cleanliness, he probably wasn't someone small in the apocalypse.

There was a docile smile on his face as he looked back at Kairos. He spoke very slowly.

"Why are you killing my creations?"

Kairos blinked a few times.

"Sorry, were those mushrooms your creations? I just thought they were something that naturally evolved."

Though he looked quite friendly on the surface, Kairos could immediately tell that this person wasn't someone he wanted to make an enemy of. Something about him just seemed... off.

The man let out a helpless sigh.

"I guess you're right, I never did put my name on them... though I still believe I should be compensated for my loss, don't you think?"

Kairos stared back blankly for a few moments.

"Would you like this spear? It's been through quite a bit and still hasn't broken yet."

The man raised his eyebrow.

"You are willing to give me your trusted weapon so easily?"

Kairos shrugged his shoulders.

"It is valuable to me, but I assume those mushrooms were as well."

The man let out a laugh.

"Oh, no, no. I could easily recreate those if I wanted to."

Hearing that made Kairos' eyebrow twitch. He really wanted to ask if they were so worthless, then why was he asking for compensation. However, he kept his mouth shut. The man continued.

"I was thinking that perhaps you could help me, rather."

Kairos narrowed his eyes slightly.

"In what way?"

The man let out a chuckle.

"Oh, nothing much. I would just like you to help supply my farm with mana."

Kairos gave a small bow.

"Sorry, but I still have places I need to be in."

The man's eyes narrowed ever so slightly.

"Oh? Is that so? Then at the very least, could you give back the nature core you stole from my garden?"