Chapter 105: How Does It Know Everything?
*Alright.*
*It knows everything.*
*It knows my lethal mode activates from killing intent.*
*It knows that if hosts charged with that intent reach me, I’ll kill them without being able to control it.*
*And it decided to use that as a weapon.*
*Good.*
*It’s more sophisticated than Liaraen anticipated.*
Nathan looked around.
The alpha creature stood still. Not attacking. Just waiting.
The four reinforcements that had been converging on him had also stopped. Apparently waiting for the distributed consciousness’s instruction.
Liaraen on the other side of the clearing was still fighting the eight reinforcements on her flank. The green sword continued tracing precise arcs suggesting the active enchantment. She hadn’t noticed the change in the alpha’s signature because she was focused on surviving.
And a kilometer and a half away, the residents were approaching.
All of them.
The twenty.
Including children.
With killing intent toward Nathan intensified to maximum by the parasite’s redirection.
Nathan stood straight.
Blood dripped from his left arm, forming a small puddle beside his boot.
And he ran far from the spot to keep the villagers from getting close to him, though from the clearing’s southern edge, they began to emerge.
---
The twenty residents.
All of them.
Running.
With the black eyes of distributed killing intent. With empty hands because they carried no weapons, but with hands extended like claws. With open mouths emitting the same sound the alpha creature had been emitting before. The colony’s invocation speaking through twenty human throats at once.
And among them, four figures that stood out from the rest.
The settlement’s warriors. The ones Nathan had seen during the previous night’s feast without identifying them as combatants. Now armed with short swords.
And behind the warriors.
The children.
Four. Approximately between seven and eleven years old. With the same expression of absolute killing intent. With arms extended. Running toward Nathan with the speed of children being moved by something larger than their own bodies.
Nathan froze for half a second.
With Soul Sense confirming what his eyes saw.
The children had the full killing intent signature directed at him.
If he activated lethal mode, they died.
If he didn’t activate lethal mode, the Class would adjust automatically at the moment of direct attack.
*Alright.*
*Pure containment.*
*No lethal skills.*
*Just evasion.*
Nathan activated Pale Rider at maximum.
And began to move.
Not toward the alpha creature. Not to attack. Not to eliminate the residents.
Just to avoid being touched by them.
The four warriors arrived first. Nathan dodged the first with a lateral jump. He evaded the second by ducking under the arc of its sword. He neutralized the third with a shoulder push—no active skill, just physical force—that knocked it to the ground without major injury. The fourth swung a slash that Nathan blocked with his forearm. The sword cut his skin but didn’t penetrate the bone.
Nathan felt the pain.
He didn’t care.
He kept moving.
The normal residents approached after. Nathan dodged them in groups. With Pale Rider keeping him a step ahead always. With pure evasion from someone who’d decided he wasn’t going to hit anyone who didn’t have control of their own body.
The children reached the center.
Nathan had to jump over one who lunged at his legs. The child missed and fell to the ground. Nathan landed on the other side without turning to check if the child had been hurt. Another child lunged at his back while he was in the air. Nathan turned in midair to position the child to fall on soft grass instead of rock.
His mind racing while his body moved.
*How?*
*How do I kill the creature without hurting the residents?*
*They’re close to it. I can’t use area skills. Can’t use Death’s Domain. Can’t use Death Pulse. They’d all reach the innocents.*
*Direct attacks on the alpha while evading the residents.*
*But every direct attack exposes me to the alpha’s counterattack—and even though it no longer has killing intent toward me, it’s still physically capable of killing me with a single blow if it connects.*
*I need distance from the alpha and containment of the residents at the same time.*
*It’s contradictory.*
*It’s exactly what the alpha wanted.*
Nathan kept dodging.
He checked on Liaraen with Soul Sense.
She was still fighting the eight reinforcements. The green sword continued guiding her. She’d eliminated two of the eight during the minutes Nathan had been occupied with the alpha. Six remained.
And on the other side of the clearing, the alpha creature watched.
Without moving.
Without attacking.
With all five jaws closed in a line Nathan recognized as absolute satisfaction.
It was waiting.
Waiting for Nathan to spend all his mana evading the residents.
Waiting for his body to succumb to exhaustion.
Waiting for desperation to eventually trigger lethal mode by instinct.
Waiting for Nathan to kill the children himself.
Nathan processed it.
And for the first time in the fight, he felt real fear.
*I don’t know how to get out of this.*
*I honestly don’t know how.*
He lunged again with Pale Rider toward the clearing’s edge. He dodged three more residents. He approached Yorel, who was frozen behind the large tree with an expression of absolute horror upon seeing the neighbors he’d known for decades running at Nathan with intent to kill.
Nathan spoke to him as he passed.
With a calm but quick voice.
"Yorel. Take the horse. Go south. There’s going to be more fighting. Don’t look."
"Nathan."
"Yorel. Go."
Yorel obeyed.
He ran to the horse. Untied it. Began moving south.
Nathan kept evading.
With Pale Rider constantly consuming mana.
With the System mentally checking how much he had left.
```
Remaining mana: 400/3,500.
Current Pale Rider consumption at medium
intensity: 30/minute.
Time remaining before critical depletion:
13 minutes.
```
*Thirteen minutes.*
*After that, I can’t maintain Pale Rider.*
*After that, the residents catch me.*
*After that, they kill me without me being able to kill them because the Class, in suppression mode, doesn’t give me the lethality I need to eliminate twenty coordinated hosts.*
*And if I activate lethal mode to survive, I kill all of them including the children.*
*And I’m not going to do that.*
*I’d rather die here.*
Nathan processed it with the calm clarity of someone who had reached that conclusion several seconds ago but was only now articulating it internally.