Overkill: Incarnations Chapter 3: Chapter 3 : Encounter

Read chapter 3 of Overkill: Incarnations by Kudo_Aosakka on NovelPedia.

CHAPTER III: ENCOUNTER His legs felt like they were made of wet concrete. "This is exhausting," Kuro muttered through clenched teeth, forcing one foot in front of the other across the cracked, desolate terrain. Smoke still curled lazily from the scorched earth behind him… ; the aftermath of a fight he had barely survived. He tried pushing forward, anyways. Debris scattered underfoot; shards of rock and blackened fragments of whatever poor creature had decided he looked like an easy meal. His eyes were sharp despite the exhaustion etched into every line of his face, scanning the horizon with the practiced vigilance as he had already learned the hard way that dropping his guard meant waking up dead . then horrifically resummoned. When he reached the edge and turned to survey his surroundings, he immediately regretted it. "...It looks like the next checkpoint is pretty far from here," he observed, his voice carrying the tone of running out of the energy required to be properly annoyed. He turned, and his expression soured further. "...And that explosion..." The crater yawned before him ….a massive, jagged, and deeply, personally offensive. His own handiwork. It kind of looked impressive in the moment, however, it now was incredibly inconvenient immediately after realising its hurdle. "...Left a huge crater to cross." He stared into it. "If only I could fly out of here." He crouched at the rim, resting his forearms on his knees, and looked down into the pit. "Well... it seems I have no choice but to use it." "Here it goes,I'll probably run out of ryoku before it tears me apart," he said flatly, stepping over the edge of a ravine and jumping straight down the crumbling slope. Above him , concentric dark rings formed in front of him while a black orb with a single point of light at its center formed behind him , heavy rotations of force warped the air around them, and propelled him forward at an exponentially increasing speed. “THIRD INTERMEDIATE ART ; PSEUDO SYNCHRONON” Kuro travelled a rather impressive distance, encroaching ever so closer to his objective Below him the barren distorted desertlike plains passed by far to high up to see what was lucking below He ceased manifesting the ‘Pseudo synchronon’ and let the momentum carry him further, it was rather, a smooth ride or flight , what could possibly go wrong,anyways? It was then… Something vast and fast and very much alive came at him from above … a creature of layered scales and membrane wings, its multiple dark eyes fixed on him . "Whoa—!" ‘Cool…’ he lampooned inwardly. Even as the thing's breath hit him like hot rot, he had the audacity to look fascinated. "It looks..." He watched the smoke clear. "...So cool!" The creature blocked another creature of the same form ,above it as the creature moved from his view the creature further above ,aimed at him . By the time he noticed something was very wrong ,it was already too late, a pity, really. "Huh," he exclaimed with shock slapped onto his poor naive face. The creature's face ...if you could call it that , hovered inches from his,as it opened its 'beak' . "What the—that was a decoy?!" The creature's eyes bore down on him,all black and absolute. It slammed into him with enough force to send them both skidding across the distorted,rocky ,desolate plain , a tangle of limbs and wings and one very put-upon young man. Kuro, somehow still conscious and largely intact, looked up at the creature pinning him down. The creature snapped its jaws near his face. Kuro tilted his head out of the way with the calm of a one who had developed a very specific relationship with imminent death. and revival. The creature had him in its claws, and it was squeezing. Kuro's voice came out strained but determined, arms braced against the scaled appendages clamped around him as it drove him into the rock below with a resonant crash... "Not yet," Kuro said, with the quiet resolve of one who chooses stubbornness as a survival strategy. He pushed back again