Chapter 143 New Abilities
A bitter smile formed on Kairos' face.
"Sorry, I'll be more careful from now on."
Nicole let out a relieved and defeated sigh.
"...You better."
Kairos sat up and began wondering what kind of change warranted such a large side effect.
The most obvious thing there was to do was try extending his future vision. He attempted to extend his future vision as far as possible. Pain quickly festered in his mind, but since he was only doing it for a moment, he just pushed through it.
It went from two seconds, to three seconds, then suddenly jumped to five seconds.
At this point, Kairos could intently feel a burning sensation in his head like it was on fire. He could tell that this was the farthest it would go.
He was about to cancel it, but then caught onto something he didn't expect.
[Status]
[ID: 934783245676]
[Rank: E-]
[Objective: Survive]
[Proof Of Perfection Points: 82.1]
[Strength - 14.9
Agility - 14.9
Endurance - 14.9
Willpower - 14.9
Mana Capacity - 14.9
Magic Affinity - 14.9]
[Special Abilities: Afraid Spell (F), Frost Spell (F)]
[Hide]
He could see Nicole's status panel. Once he stopped extending his future vision, the status panel soon disappeared. Kairos held onto the side of his head, but instead of focusing on the pain, he had to confirm something.
"Did you open your status panel just now?"
Nicole rubbed her eyes.
"Eh? You told me to do that before I fell asleep..."
Kairos nodded.
"I see."
He then tried to get up, but Nicole pushed him back down. She looked a bit angry.
"You just did something so dangerous, and you already want to push yourself, don't you?"
Kairos blinked a few times.
"What? Since when was I pushing myself?"
Nicole pouted.
"You stopped breathing for at least ten minutes! If that isn't pushing yourself, then I don't know what is!"
Kairos' eyelid twitched.
"I suppose that is true."
Nicole grabbed onto his hand.
"At least go to bed and take a nap."
Kairos' lip twitched. He was clearly a bit reluctant.
Nicole then gave him a glare.
"You're going to take a nap."
Kairos sighed.
"Alright, just let me get up then."
Nicole got off of him before helping him up. From there, she dragged Kairos, not letting him go anywhere else. They eventually reached the bedroom, and Nicole pushed him onto the clean bed.
From there, she casually slipped in as well.
Kairos rolled his eyes.
"Was this your plan all along?"
Nicole pressed her lips together.
"Regardless of my plans, you should be resting!"
Kairos blinked a few times.
"...I suppose I am a bit tired."
Upon laying his head down on the pillow, he actually did feel quite tired. On the other hand, Nicole had taken a nap not too long ago, so she couldn't sleep even if she wanted to.
Kairos' eyes gradually closed shut as he fell asleep almost immediately.
As for Nicole, she was a little surprised he fell asleep so quickly.
"Kairos?"
He was already unconscious, thus didn't respond.
Nicole pouted.
"...You already fell asleep?"
She looked a little annoyed.
"U-Um, this is what I wanted. Yeah, I just wanted you to have some rest."
Kairos began snoring.
Nicole looked a little despondent.
"...You're really asleep."
She puffed her cheeks up.
"That's unfair."
She then looked around the room, as though making sure nobody was peeking.
"Well if you're asleep..."
...
When Kairos fell asleep, he suddenly found himself having a dream. However, it was an extremely strange dream. For starters, he could very clearly tell that it was a dream as he remembered falling asleep. Another thing was that the sensations were very realistic, to the point he almost thought it wasn't a dream.
As for what was happening, he was simply sitting at the top of a building, with his legs hanging off the ledge. He was watching over Chase, Tori, Sydney, and Nicole all killing monsters below during the night. There was only the faint glow of moonlight, but it was still enough for him to see everything fairly clearly.
It was a rather uneventful dream.
He also didn't feel that in control of his actions. It wasn't as though he couldn't move himself, but if he tried to do so, there was a clear feeling of resistance. Simply out of curiosity, he decided to force himself to move.
Then, all of the resistance suddenly disappeared.
He jumped off the top of the building before slamming into the ground. Several monsters rushed to him, but with a simple swing of the spear, he was able to kill all of the nearby ones.
Kairos arbitrarily went through the monsters killing them.
Eventually, he made it next to Nicole, who looked at him in surprise. She raised an eyebrow.
"Eh? Didn't you say you were just going to watch? I thought you said you almost get no points from killing the monsters."
Kairos furrowed his brow.
"...Did I say that?"
Nicole slashed with her axe, killing a monster that was jumping toward her.
"Um, I think so. Are you ok?"
Kairos blinked a few times as he continued to fight off the nearby monsters.
"Could you tell me everything that has happened today since I woke up?"
Nicole blushed slightly, but didn't stop fighting off the monsters next to her.
"Erm, you gave me an angry look when I woke up."
Kairos stared at her blankly.
"What did you do?"
Nicole coughed.
"Hehe... I might've been groping you."
Kairos didn't respond immediately.
"...what happened after that?"
Nicole's expression relaxed a little.
"Um, it was almost night time, so I told you to come with us since the monsters would all be coming out soon."
Kairos slowly nodded.
"Then what happened after that?"
Nicole blinked a few times.
"Um... we just got here and started to kill the monsters. Did you want more details?"
Kairos shook his head.
"It's alright. I'm pretty sure that I'm dreaming right now."
Nicole looked at him strangely.
"Eh? B-But it doesn't feel like a dream."
Kairos nodded.
"Yes, it really doesn't."
His eyes narrowed.
"If my guess is correct, then I'm actually dreaming of the future."
Nicole looked quite confused.
"Huh?"
Kairos shook his head.
"Don't worry about it. Just focus on what you're doing right now."
Nicole stammered.
"O-Ok."
He rubbed his chin with interest before leaping up towards one of the buildings. He climbed up to the top and began channeling mana for one of his spells.
Unfortunately, his dream ended right there.
Upon waking up, he felt a familiar strange sensation. And just as expected, Nicole was feeling him up.
Kairos spoke up immediately.
"You gotta stop doing that."
Nicole flinched.
"A-Ah, you're awake!"
Kairos sighed.
"...Why do you have to do that?"
Nicole averted her gaze.
"But if you're asleep, then you don't feel it!"
Kairos clicked his tongue.
"But I still end up feeling it when I wake up. At least restrain yourself a little bit."
Nicole coughed.
"A-Alright."
She then got out and looked at the window.
"Ah, it's getting a little dark! We should go meet with the others. It's about time for us to go kill the monsters."
Kairos nodded.
"Yeah."
Things were happening just as the Nicole in his dream had said. Though, he still wasn't sure if his prediction was correct. After all, he could've just had a dream about what he thought was going to happen. He waited to see if they would go to the same place.
The group gathered together and headed out of the city. They seemed to already have a location in mind as they headed in that direction.
They took care of the monsters along the way and eventually reached a spot that was quite familiar to Kairos.
He looked at one of the buildings and scaled up. It was the one that he was sitting on in his dream. Once he got into the same position, he saw nearly the exact same thing in his dream. The only thing was that the lighting was a little bit off. But as the sun gradually set, and the moon rose, it became practically identical.
Kairos' eyes narrowed slightly.
"...It seems my inborn ability is strongest while sleeping. That's a little annoying."
He shook his head as he came to the realization. It seemed that he gained three main things from increasing the rank of his ability. The first was the ability to extend his future vision to five seconds. The second was the ability to forcibly see someone's status panel if he did fully extend his future vision. And the final one seemed to be the ability to have dreams of the near future.
Kairos didn't really know what he was expecting, but he wouldn't have been able to guess that this was what he got out of it. Regardless, it was still quite useful, though it may not be the most reliable as it seemed to just give him a random snapshot of the events.
Kairos cast his gaze downwards.
The monsters were beginning to flood the streets. From his observation, most of them were coming out of the buildings. From the number that was coming out, it seemed like the monsters must've crammed themselves in there.
He then put his focus on his own group, observing how they killed the monsters.
Nicole had the red watch around her wrist, and was going off on her own, but was still within sight of the others. Although she was basically only slashing through the monsters normally, she was still able to kill them with relative ease.
As for Sydney, she stood her ground as the monsters rushed over to her. She had given up on using a weapon, instead using her hands and teeth like the other monsters, trading blow for blow.
The monsters would rip her apart, but her body would quickly regenerate that damage right after.
Behind her, were both Chase and Tori.
Though Sydney wasn't holding back, there truly were too many monsters, so many slipped by. Tori was the one that took care of those. As for Chase, he would pull back a mana arrow and release it into the horde, killing countless monsters. Though he wasn't able to do so frequently, it was enough so that they wouldn't get overwhelmed by the sheer amount.
What interested Kairos the most, was Chase. Because of his ability to see mana, he could generally gauge the amount of mana in everyone's body. Tori, Sydney, and Nicole weren't using any of their spells, thus weren't consuming mana.
On the other hand, Chase was using it quite recklessly.
From What Kairos could tell, he was using roughly a third of his mana with every arrow shot, but did so with confidence. Then, the mana around him would begin funneling towards him at an unnatural speed.
In roughly a minute, all the mana he used would be restored, and he would be drawing back another arrow.
Kairos dug to the depths of his memories and remembered Chase got the ability called "Crystal Heart". It seemed that it was a passive one that rapidly sped up his mana regeneration.
Another thing that he saw was how the mana flowed in Chase's body and bow.
The mana would come out of one of his hands to make an arrow, but it was also coming out of the other hand, funneling into the bow.
The bow would automatically compress mana and seemed to be casting some sort of spell that was also discharged when the arrow was released. In other words, the bow was essentially taking on the burden of the spell for him.
In that respect, Chase could freely increase his magical stats, without worrying about his physical ones. After all, if he didn't face any backlash, then the durability of his own body didn't matter much.
His potential was high.
Though, Kairos wasn't sure how strong his allegiance to them was. He began thinking of a test to see if Chase would really be an ally in tough times.