Damsel

The blue mana arrow tore through the air, going straight for the giant monster's head.

Both Tori and Kairos had their weapons raised, and swung when they saw that arrow.

A clear bang rang out.

The monster was hit hard on the head by the mana arrow, forcibly ripping off some of the flesh and revealing a cracked skull. It couldn't keep its balance, slamming its head against the aisle it was eating from.

At the same time, both Kairos and Tori swung towards the monster's ankle, both having the same idea.

Both of them pierced through easily, but Tori found it difficult to pull her blade out from the monster's thick flesh. While Tori's agility let her have strong piercing power, her lack of strength still hampered her in the end.

The monster pulled its head out from the aisle it just crashed into, then let out a thundering roar that shook the ground.

Kairos saw the monster suddenly whip around and hit Tori hard, immediately killing her. Originally he expected for her to use that strange move that let her turn into mist, but it seemed she could no longer do that for now.

Kairos decided to try and save her life. He was confident enough that if he felt strong amounts of pain he could stop himself in time, so that his life wasn't lost.

And as such, in the span of one second, he pushed hard off the ground, grabbed Tori's arm, and pulled her out of the way.

Almost immediately after, the monster's hand slammed against the ground with a large crash, scattering shards of pavement everywhere. The katana was still stuck within the monster's ankle, however, Tori didn't care about that right now.

Her eyes were wide open while her heart beat frantically.

After all, she almost died just now.

Tori stuttered.

"T-Thanks."

Kairos frowned.

"Thank me by picking up one of the weapons on the floor."

Tori snapped to and looked at the weapons at her feet. The people from earlier were all consumed by the monster, but their weapons were still left behind, though they were bloody.

The two weapons within reach of Tori were a baseball bat and a small knife. Without hesitation, she picked up the small knife before getting some distance from the monster. Kairos was a little confused by her choice, but prioritized getting away.

The monster screamed angrily as it reached out towards the two. However, it stumbled as it tried to take a step forward. It was clearly hampered by the injuries it had taken to its ankles.

Kairos even had the time to peek at Chase, to see his state.

Though it was hard to see Chase from this far away, it wasn't hard to tell that he was a little out of it. Chances are, he wasn't used to shooting so many arrows within the same day.

However, Chase still had both hands on the bow, just not drawing an arrow back right now.

Kairos assumed that he needed more time to recover. He turned to Tori.

"Focus on stalling."

Tori nodded and took a few steps back.

The monster was still trying to walk forwards, but ended up tripping and falling down onto his knees with a loud thud. It let out a groan of frustration, staring at the two of them with its large yellowed eyes.

The monster used its hands to forcefully drag himself towards the two. However, while it wasn't that slow, both Tori and Kairos had enough agility, thus were able to run circles around it easily, leading it into various directions one after another.

Kairos was anxious at first, but realized that it didn't have the same frightening regeneration that Sydney had, thus was still crawling around. Eventually, he was even beginning to feel pretty confident.

Yet, as though he was jinxing himself, he suddenly saw a vision of blood red rain pouring down from the skies.

Less than a second later, it shifted to a vision of him soaked in that blood red rain, screaming and turning into a monster.

And finally, it showed him reaching out to touch a few drops of that rain, then him staring at this finger changing.

Kairos suddenly came to, gasping for air. The monster seemed to realize that and charged towards him.

Suddenly, it reached out with its hand, attempting to grab Kairos. However, while he was in a muddled state, that didn't mean he wasn't going to react. His future gave him plenty of warning time to jump up out of the way.

The hand slammed down hard on the place he was just in.

However, Kairos was not the most concerned about this. Instead, he looked up into the sky and noticed that a dark cloud was coming, and fast too.

He spoke as loudly as he could.

"Don't stay outside, it's going to rain!"

The others seemed a little confused, but the faint sound of rain gradually became clearer. Kairos panicked slightly when he noticed this. The raincloud was moving way too fast to be normal.

And so, he dashed into the grocery store, stepping right over the dead bodies.

The monster promptly followed, slamming against one of the aisles as it entered.

As for Chase, he began running towards the grocery store. Though he didn't understand why Kairos suddenly charged in, he felt that there must've been a reason that was enough to do so. On the other hand, Tori was feeling rather hesitant, but remembered that Kairos had saved her life earlier.

And as such, she dashed into the grocery store.

Kairos ran down the aisle as the monster behind him repeatedly slammed into them. Eventually, the monster seemed to realize that it wouldn't catch up, thus directly uprooted one of the aisles and threw it towards Kairos.

It shot through the air fast, but it wasn't like Kairos wasn't paying attention to what the monster was doing. His future vision was enough to know what was going to happen, plus the loud creaking sounds.

Kairos was currently in the middle of two aisles, so he grabbed onto the side of one and pulled himself up, flipping over it.

A loud crash and metallic screech reverberated where he just was.

After landing down, Kairos immediately continued running away. As for the monster, it directly smashed through the aisle to get to Kairos, roaring angrily as it did so.

It did not take long for the two of them to begin approaching the end.

Kairos decided to pick an arbitrary direction, dashing off towards the left. As for the monster, it decided to take a shortcut by directly breaking down the aisles in his way, traveling less distance than if it were to walk around.

It wasn't enough for the monster to catch up to Kairos, however, it got closer.

Kairos began sweating, not knowing how exactly he was supposed to deal with the thing behind him. Though he was fine now, it would eventually catch up.

Soon, he reached another dead end and was forced to turn.

With the strength of the monster, its movement was hardly impaired even when it was required to bust through obstacles to move forward.

And as such, it got even closer.

Kairos could feel the thumps of the monster's crawling from behind him, causing cold sweat to form on his back. He could tell that after one more turn, the monster would catch up.

To make matters worse, when he looked towards the front of the grocery store, he saw Nicole run inside, while her parents followed after her.

When he told them to go inside, he meant for them to go inside a house. However, it seemed that his earlier comment about counting on Nicole made her a little overambitious.

While Kairos was going through countless scenarios that could somehow salvage this situation, Tori suddenly leaped up from a nearby aisle, landing onto the monster's back.

The monster attempted to reach for its back, but Tori was able to nimbly avoid it and even climb up towards his neck.

After doing these crazy gymnastics, she had gotten right next to the messy wound left by Chase's arrow. Then, she slammed the knife with full force, straight into the exposed cracked skull, pushing it in partially and leaving it there.

Almost immediately after, the monster roared in pain. It reached towards its neck, attempting to catch Tori, but leaped off right after, doing a backflip in the process.

The monster turned around, ignoring Kairos completely, and then rushed towards Tori.

Yet, as it pivoted, a mana arrow shot from across the store, shooting straight towards the knife.

...But missed ever so slightly, landing onto the skull, further cracking it. The knife was lodged a little deeper, but it was still not enough.

Kairos couldn't help but raise both eyebrows when he saw what Tori did. He didn't even consider that as a method of combat before, running on top of the enemy. Though it seemed that his methods were too limited in view.

The monster's attention was now completely taken by Chase. It bulldozed straight through all the aisles, rapidly approaching him.

As for Chase... he still had that confident smile on his face. However, he wasn't moving.

In fact, he even ended up falling onto one knee, while his hand grasped onto his heart.

"Shit... it seems I have overdone it."

Chase could tell that the monster was rushing over to him. After all, that thing was five meters tall. However, he also didn't know what was left.

Chase began crawling towards the side with one hand on his heart. However, with how slow he was going, he wouldn't even be able to outrun a toddler.

It was a symbolic struggle, more than anything else.

As the sounds of destruction came closer and closer, Chase cursed under his breath.

"...I should've just stayed put."

He looked up to the side, seeing the giant monster right next to him, letting out a loud roar.

A bitter smile formed on Chase's face.

"And I already told myself I wouldn't be a hero."

His eyes narrowed as the monster reached for him.

"I'm an idiot, aren't I?"

Yet, right before he was about to be smashed into a pulp, a figure flashed by and swept him up out of the way.

As a loud crash echoed from behind him, Chase's eyes widened in surprise. He quickly calmed down and smiled.

"Haha, thank you, pretty flower."

He tilted his head to the side.

"Though I always thought that it would be me holding you in a princess carry as I saved you, not the other way around."

Tori clicked her tongue.

"Do you want me to drop you?"

Chase chuckled.

"Sorry, sorry."

The moment Tori saw that arrow fly through the air, she knew that the monster's attention would be shifted to Chase. Initially, she didn't care all that much, thinking of a way to use that diverted attention to kill the monster.

However, Tori also thought about the time Kairos saved her by just a hair. Though she didn't understand why he did it, that fact touched her. And as such, she decided to try and save Chase as well.

Though, that might've not been the best decision.

After all, now the monster was charging after Tori while she was carrying someone, all the while strength wasn't her strong suit.