I See One Second Into The Future: Loner In The Apocalypse

Kairos found it incredibly difficult to stand, his legs bending at the broken bones, almost as though he had gotten himself new joints. Yet despite essentially being crippled, he tensed up and strained his muscles to the point that they replaced the function of bones.

Then, in a blind rage, he simply ran towards the giant moth, on the verge of tripping with each step, but barely hanging in the balance.

It was awfully awkward and painful, yet despite knowing this probably wasn't the best idea, he couldn't stop himself, just like when he forced himself to engorge in flesh and blood.

Nyoka and the others appeared visibly surprised by his sudden strange tendencies, looking at him rather strangely. After all, it was as though Kairos had a life-or-death feud with the moth despite this being the first time meeting it.

As for the moth, it was very willing to reciprocate in full, blindly rushing towards Kairos while ignoring the others entirely.

Kairos could feel the moth's rage and pain very clearly. Those feelings prompted him to do his all, gathering the lightning around his body towards his jaws while he ran. If it were looked at with squinted eyes, it wouldn't be too much to think that it was a reunion between two old friends.

In a short moment, Kairos was able to gather a lot of the lightning from his entire body, enough for a meaningful attack. However, he didn't release it, instead continuing to run forth.

Even when the moth slammed into him.

A dull boom echoed in the room, with the moth aggressively slamming into Kairos, holding onto him, and using its brute strength to drag him along the ground. As for Kairos, he simply let himself get caught like that, placing his jaws against the moth's body.

While the only thing he saw was red, he released the spear inside his body along with all the built up electrical energy.

A thunderclap reverberated as the moth suddenly stopped, moving back ever so slightly.

The spear pierced through the moth's body, just barely peeking out from the other side where traces of lightning bolts were on the tip. Kairos was blown away purely from the recoil and was recovering from that.

At the same time, the moth appeared to be in quite a bit of shock, not expecting to receive such a damaging attack like that. It began fluttering its wings in an attempt to take off, though was having difficulty lifting off the ground, seemingly quite disoriented.

After just taking off a few meters up in the air, Nyoka had lunged upwards, sinking his fangs into the moth's body and dragging it downwards. The moth let out a cry while continuing to struggle, trying to lift upwards.

However, both its weight along with Nyoka was simply too much for it, causing it to suddenly lose any momentum upwards.

With a thump, it hit the ground, driving the spear through its body even further. A loud screech shook the air as the spear continued piercing through its body. It violently flailed with its wings, but that only served to drive the spear in deeper, prompting even more frantic struggles.

Nyoka made sure to hold it down. While he wasn't able to bring down the moth singlehandedly, it was still enough to keep it stuck on the spear. In the meantime, Jeff had used all this time to slowly lumber over.

After a little while, Jeff had finally dragged his golem self over to the actual fight. And when he did get there, he simply climbed on top of the moth. Naturally, it struggled in response, however the moth was simply not strong enough to move Jeff, despite easily lifting Nyoka and Kairos.

In the end, Jeff used his stone golem body to essentially sit on top of them, crushing the moth and immobilizing it.

Kairos was recovering from a daze and blurrily saw the moth on the ground. Without really thinking, he once again forced his broken bones to support his weight and ran once more in a rage.

He picked up speed very quickly as snapping sounds came from his body.

Yet, before he could truly go forth, Nyoka's tail had shot out and restricted him. Making sure to hold him back. While in his state of bloodlust, Kairos couldn't understand why he was being held back.

If anything, rather than for his own good, he thought that Nyoka had become the enemy. With that in mind, Kairos turned his attention to him and reached out with his claws, fully intending on fighting to the death.

Though Nyoka partially reverted back into a human, turning his snake head into the top half of his body.

"Calm down. The monster is already dealt with."

To this, Kairos stopped himself. He already had a logical understanding of what was happening, but needed a wake-up call to snap him out of his strange trance. A few moments later, Sara came down from the skies, once again quickly turning into a small dark spot before phasing through the golem and piercing through the moth.

It let out one final muffled shriek and a twitch, before it stopped moving altogether.

As for Kairos, he was trying to calm down, however his mind was still addled with bloodlust and a desire to kill and maim. He reverted his transformation and took deep breaths, slowly returning to a normal mental state. Very slowly, but was returning nonetheless.

One thing he noticed was that while he did feel weak from the injuries he suffered while in his avatar, his body while not in his avatar was more or less fine. He didn't question the logic behind it and was just thankful that he wouldn't have to walk around normally with crippled limbs.

As Kairos gradually calmed down, the others had also reverted their transformation and began dissecting the moth corpse. The others had spoken to him a few times, but he didn't respond, unable to really hear them with his current state of mind.

At this time, Kairos had a lot of time to think. It wasn't exactly voluntary, but rather something that came up naturally. His thoughts in particular being that he gravely underestimated how badly outside influences had on his personality.

It appeared particularly bad while the wolf was also in partial control, as his agency seemed to be weaker in that state.

Ironically, worrying about that had made him calm down far quicker, soon letting him hear the others.

"Hey, since you did the most out of everyone here, you should take this."

Nyoka threw over a pulsating glowing yellow cube at him, which Kairos caught fairly easily. He looked at it for a little while. Upon closer inspection, it was actually a cube made out of 8 smaller ones combining together. From what Kairos understood, this should provide him a skill that was one level above the standard one cube. He looked up.

"I... don't need the full reward. Besides, I wouldn't have been able to do this without your help."

Nyoka simply shrugged his shoulders.

"It's not like I gave you everything. We are still keeping some of the other stuff to ourselves along with the black blood. I just wanted to give you a little extra, since we agreed that you shouldn't participate in the next fight."

Kairos blinked a few times.

"Did I go too far?"

Jeff spoke in a monotone voice, not bothering to look over as he rummaged through the corpse.

"What do you think?"

Sara looked over and had a bitter smile on her face.

"You are simply too injured to properly participate for now, and it seems that your mental state isn't exactly the most stable. Keeping calm is the first step to winning most battles, you know?"

Kairos blinked a few times before nodding.

"You aren't wrong. I suppose I do need some time to calm down."

After that, he swallowed the cube he was given. It was definitely not the easiest, feeling as though he was trying to swallow pure steel. However, it went down in the end, and a new message appeared in front of him.

[Acquired Skill - [Screech (???)] 

Kairos had an idea of what it meant, but still opened up his status panel to see the description.

[Screech (???)]

[Appears to be a technique that distills black blood and produces a byproduct of extremely harsh sound waves. Is particularly effective against those with enhanced hearing ranges. Causes damage to the user upon use.]

Kairos blinked a few times as he read through it all.

From the sounds of it, it was a skill meant to be used in rough times. Though he couldn't really feel too happy about it.

Because he realized he could only put off this personality problem for so long before it cost him his life.