-Vol 5: A New Life-

-Prediction Ability?-

When Kenshin slashed towards the ripples in the air after coating his sword with his Intent, with a booming noise, the wave completely dissipated. The shockwave that could have caused some damage either to the person or to the yacht had dissipated just like that. Although it looked easy, many factors affected such an outcome.

First was Kenshin’s reaction time, which was way advanced than normal, especially now when PHY had surpassed 1000, and his sensory perception had a fundamental evolution. With such high sensitivity, he could easily see the shock waves and react to it. The second was his Intent that was on the verge of manifesting. Due to that, he could directly or indirectly interfere with some forces of nature. The shockwave was nothing but a soundwave of higher decibels.

After dissipating that wave, Kenshin didn’t stop there and proceeded to do the same for the next wave too. From the corner of his eyes, he could see all the other hunters dealing with it by various means. Sakurai chose to go head on with his light shield. There was another man who was holding a small palm-sized hexagonal medallion. When he shook it, a counter wave emerged from it and collided with the waves, offsetting their power. There were two who were like Kenshin, directly slashing the waves to make them disappear.

Although it took so long to explain, actually, from the moment the monster used the shockwave attack to it getting dissipated by hunters, everything happened in 5 seconds. Including Kenshin, only three people chose to deal with the shockwave, as, for the other three, they attacked the monster instead.

Nobu, Joy, and Ozuru, the three hunters who didn’t block the shockwaves started to use their long distance magic skills to attack the dragon. Nobu was a middle-aged man with brick red hair cropped in military look. He had a long face and medium eyes. His eyebrows were also red and bushy. On one of his ears, he wore a green pendant shaped earring that glowed a light silver when moonlight falls on it. Nobu had an athletic body, wearing a set of black pants and a white muscle shirt, above which he wore black colored armor, he looked mildly heroic.

Cupping his arm in front of him, he gathered a huge amount of air from the surrounding and started to move it at high speeds. Before long, the gathered air looked like a burning hot plasma, with purple electric shocks flickering around it. The glowing plasma was condensed into a small marble shaped object as he guided it to the tip of his right index finger. Closing one eye, he pointed that finger towards the neck of the Dilong.

Beside him stood Joy, a bald monk-like man with heavily puffing muscles. He had the bodyline of those bodybuilders who spend day and night to make muscles, but unlike them, his wasn’t empty. He had also shaved his eyes brows and any form of body hairs. Wearing a fitting skin leather-like shirt and black tights, he looked exactly like those pro bodybuilders.

In his hands, he held a pair of brass knuckles. Assuming a boxing pose, he punched several hundred times in the empty air towards the flood dragon, then suddenly his brass knuckles started to discharge electricity. Cupping his palm, he bent back like a bow, before giving the flood dragon a vicious punch with his both hands. His brass knuckles glowed blue as a huge afterimage of the knuckle with a hand-formed behind him and went towards the snake, aiming for its midsection.

As for Ozuru, he was a middle-aged man who looks like an average salaryman. Wearing a green colored suit and red tie, he held a leather bag in his hand, he also combed his hair like a typical salaryman. Suddenly his hands flashed as he took out a small slingshot from his bag and held it in his left hand.

The slingshot was red in color, filled with various tribal looking runes that seemed to shine from time to time. Holding tightly in his left hands, he pulled the rubber wire with his right hand. Suddenly, with a flash of red light, a small marble shaped bead manifested on the rubber band that was held tightly by him. Closing his one eye, Ozuru targeted the long. His right eye seemed to glow a golden luster, before long he also let loose his attack toward’s the Dilong’s eye.

The plasma beam, the blue colored huge hand with knuckles of electric and small marble aiming at its eyes; the three hunters completely blocked the escape route of the monster with just one attack each.

As the attacks approached, the Dilong didn’t have time to think anymore. It tried to dive into the water to escape the attacks, and due to that, it missed the marble to the eye. But the same couldn’t be said for the other two attacks. Especially the plasma attack that was aiming for its neck, suddenly heading for its eye since it moved. The lion head of the creature roared once again as the hairs on its face stood like spikes.

At that time the plasma beam finally approached near its eye. Just when it was going for impact, a purple thin film formed just in front of its face, that not only blocked the plasma beam but also dissipated the plasma energy. The purple film didn’t only cover its face, but also its body. The bald man’s knuckles also impacted on it, suffering the same fate as the plasma beam. But all wasn’t in vain, due to fore of the impact of plasma beam and knuckles, the snake or flood dragon was forced to leave the closer proximity of yacht.

Joy was the first one to react. Making a long face, he said, “This damn thing unexpectedly has a force offsetting ability! It's also not weak, managing to offset both by [Thunder knuckes] and Nobu’s [Plasma Marble] at the same time.” Narrowing his eyes, he looked at Nobu and asked: “What do you think?”

“Powerful indeed. Its reaction time wasn’t slow either. It’s even able to see Salaryman’s striking trajectory before he even made the attack, later effectively avoiding it. This will be a tough fight…” Nobu said gravely, his words also resonated among everyone present.

“That’s not right!” suddenly Ozuru whose eyes were still glowing golden started to speak calmly. “It didn’t saw my trajectory, rather, it saw its own death from my direction. That’s why, even before I made the attack, it moved a few meters, avoiding my shot.” Turing around, as if to address everyone present “It seems to have some kind of prediction ability…at least for its own death…” Ozuru, nicknamed Salaryman by his peers gravely muttered.

“Prediction ability? Are you kidding me? How can that be?” Joy shouted in surprise. It's not only him, even Sakurai and the man who held the small hexagonal medallion also looked worried. Kenshin, after hearing the probable ability also felt a shred of trepidation while looking at the black flood dragon.

“Monsters of this species are strong and troublesome, to begin with! Having the prediction ability is like giving tiger wings…sigh…tough. This is going to be tough. This might even be our last battle for tonight!” Sakurai muttered as he fixed his stare at the dragon, with his face marred into a frown. Nobody knew what he was thinking about.