Chapter 40 - Futile Endurance (1)
I remained watching. Though I was slightly relaxed, I already knew this kid had something different from the start. He was different. And even worse, it was like the death of another human life had no weight on him. Or had he just not yet realized he was a killer?
Elder Huan's internal thoughts were calm but analytical.
Elder Huan commanded, "Start the sleeping gas!"
Back in the room, Kai spotted it before it even happened as the gas tubes he had noticed opened, letting out an unknown green gas.
Kai acted like he didn't know until he breathed it in and jumped up, covering his mouth while he heard the voice of the system.
[Host has come in contact with middle-tier sleeping gas.]
Kai instantly felt the world spin. This was not like the first time, where it was the lowest of the low sleeping gas.
Kai was barely standing as he tried to punch the door, but literally nothing happened. His body was lethargic.
Kai was panicking internally as he tried to use [Governor of Bloodline Essence] with [True Mana Manipulation] to control and steady himself more.
Slowly but surely, the gas's effects lessened enough for Kai to move slowly, but much better than before.
---
Elder Huan was unfazed. He had already seen Kai's uncanny ability to take a strong dose of sleeping gas to the face and stand, even fight through it, but this time it was different.
Elder Huan mentally said, "Dance. Dance, monkey! Dance for me!"
As he commandingly roared out, "Tell the hired mercenaries to attack Kai. Not to kill, but to incapacitate him! Increase the speed of the sleeping gas and give them masks!"
A minute later, the three walls shattered as the fifteen people lunged toward Kai's kneeling figure.
Kai was barely able to stand up and tried to scream out for them to wait, but they couldn't care less for Kai's condition.
Kai didn't understand why he was getting cornered like this. What had he even done to deserve this?
Kai was quickly losing hope in the so-called kindness of humanity, as they had thrown him away again and again like trash. Even when he got stronger, he was still getting bullied as if he was weak.
Kai mentally roared, determination clouding his reasoning.
"Item Box!"
In his left hand appeared from thin air a clean sword, runes etched into its very blade and hilt, snaking powerfully and glowing with a pale white aura.
While in his right hand appeared a red-edged katana, bending like the moon, red glowing runes around the bottom of the blade.
Kai grabbed them as he screamed mentally.
"OVERCHARGE!"
The mana in the room was quite low. However, the gas had a lot of spare mana, and Kai's body somehow devoured it all as his eyes glowed with a deep, predatorial and ancient gold, the color of pure mana.
Kai raised the two blades in an X-form and slashed downward as he silently and instinctively activated [Bladed Mana].
Two unseen blades left, hitting the first two mercenaries who had been baffled when suddenly two strange blades appeared in Kai's hands out of thin air.
Even more shocking was when the first two people suddenly fell, long blade marks across their bodies.
One of the mercenaries activated a skill, sending a massive ice spear hurtling toward Kai.
Kai raised his left hand and blocked the ice spear with his sword, which instantly devoured the spell.
Kai then said, "Reversal!"
The spell was shot back at the caster, straight through his chest.
[Emergency Quest: Kill all 15 mercenaries.]
[Reward: Hidden.]
Kai couldn't care less about the rewards, levels, or anything else.
He wanted blood.
He was so tired of being looked down on.
Kai slashed his blade horizontally as yet another invisible blade hit many people.
But now they expected it, coming out with cuts on their forearms instead of being dead like the first two.
Kai screamed as he rushed in.
But to his surprise, two people launched unknown attacks at him that he barely spotted in the nick of time, dodging them.
They were tiny daggers.
Kai jumped back and, with the katana, smirked and activated its special skill.
A red glowing crescent slash left the blade, hitting many of them at once, ignoring all magical barriers, equipment, and even skin, striking straight at the soul.
The first five instantly fell.
Three of them dead.
Two alive, but very much rendered useless for the rest of the fight.
Seven remained standing.
Kai embedded a thousand points of mana into the sword and pointed it at the strongest person left standing.
A singular beam left the tip of the blade, impacting the person who tried to dodge in the shoulder.
The fight continued, Kai slowly gaining the upper hand.
---
Elder Huan silently smiled and said, "Increase the sleeping gas and add another slowness gas into the mix."
The people around him rushed to change tubes and lines.
---
Kai suddenly staggered, falling onto his side.
[You have come in contact with High-Tier Sleeping Gas and Low-Tier Slowness Gas.]
[Your Strength stat is reduced by five times.]
Kai felt so damn weak he couldn't even lift the sword and katana, and decided to send them back into his Item Box.
Kai stared up as he saw one of the mercenaries coming down on him with an ice spear ready to pin him to the ground.
Kai instead used the overcharged mana within him and created a barrier completely around himself of pure mana.
So much mana that the barrier took on a golden hue.
[15,000 / 15,000]
Normally, when overcharged, he would have double the mana. But this time he had only raised it by ten thousand more.
And with that beam he had shot at the strongest opponent, he had used one thousand mana points, leaving him with twenty-four thousand.
He then embedded nine thousand mana points into the barrier around him.
Kai focused his sight toward his body, finding another kind of energy.
A mix of dark red and white.
It was only a small amount, and Kai slowly tried to push it out of his body the same way he normally pushed out mana.
Meanwhile, the eight remaining mercenaries tried their best to destroy the barrier.
It was cracking, sure, but Kai naturally absorbed enough mana and repaired it at the same time.
His mind was split between two different actions, causing a headache.
With his chest already on fire because he had overused Overcharge twice in the same day and so close together, his bloodline cores and soul were under a lot of pressure.
Kai tried his best, and yet he lost concentration on both fronts.
The barrier shattered like glass, the pieces falling apart around him.
The energy in his body was only halved, but it was more than enough to move.
Kai created a small coating of mana around his mouth to block the air like a makeshift filter.
Then around his body.
Then again to protect himself altogether.
Wasting another five thousand mana points.
He wasn't used to spending so much mana so quickly.
For only a split second, Kai used all of his [Sharp Sight] to look toward the sky above.
Noticing it was growing darker.
Kai grinned and said, "Just a bit more!"
He activated his martial arts and began to fight without mana.
[Nightfall's Magic-Martial Art]
Yet contrary to normal belief, he should have been weaker as he faced mages while relying only on his body.
He wasn't a warrior.
But Kai was stupidly strong.
Sure, the gas decreased his stats into the tens, but he was still strong enough to be lethal.
He started to fight, trying mostly to buy himself time.
Dodging.
Evading.
Waiting.
But the mercenaries noticed that with each passing minute, he was getting noticeably stronger.
---
Elder Huan watched, amused.
Kai was able to stand his ground even after all of this.
A wonderful smile appeared on his face as he muttered,
"Not half bad."
---
Kai felt his power suddenly surge back, much stronger.
It wasn't his stats returning.
It had become nighttime.
Kai's eyes shone with so much killing intent that it leaked from his body.
For the first time ever in his life, he wanted to finally be seen as something other than a weakling.
He had changed.
Kai got ready as he controlled the mana in his body to empower himself and said,
"Just one last time... Overcharge!"