8 A Monster Part II (1/2)

Oskar felt his face distort into despair and time seemed to slow down as he thought to himself.

'This can't be happening.'

That phrase kept repeating itself inside Oskar's head.

This can't be happening.

It just can't be.

It's not possible.

It shouldn't be possible.

What had just happened.

This entire sequence of events.

It shouldn't have happened.

It couldn't have happened.

This has to be a dream.

But this feeling.

This sensation.

Everything around Oskar, from the sweat on his forehead to the ominous and malevolent aura surrounding the little girl told him the cold truth.

That this was reality.

That everything that just happened was reality.

The fact that this girl's psionic level was over nine thousand, a psionic level That which classed her as a C-Class psionic, if not even more.

The fact that this girl could conjure and perfectly manipulate green flames, a feat only accomplishable by prodigies, or people who spent their entire lifetime cultivating and training their psionic abilities.

The fact that this girl could mentally react to his entire squad spontaneously opening fire and effortlessly negate it, an achievement that highlighted just how terrifying this little girl really was.

All of that really just happened.

All of that was reality.

Oskar didn't want to believe it, but he knew that it was the truth.

The weapon he used to fire at the girl was an 'MB-2256 Gauss Rifle,' one of the newest and most advanced weapons developed by the Russo-Chinese Federation.

It fired extremely heat resistant armour-piercing projectiles at hypersonic speeds thanks to gauss technology.

Just one pull of the trigger and the bullet fired would have already reached the target before Oskar could even blink.

But that girl was not only able to perceive Oskar's and his comrade's attack with their extremely potent weapons but she was able to react accordingly, creating a 'flaming green shield' that disintegrated their rounds before they could touch her.

She also just proved that her green flames were the real deal and not some illusion that she cast.

The 'extremely heat resistant' description of the projectiles fired by the MB was no lie, these bullets could supposedly persist through heats as high as 2000˚ C and yet they were still instantly disintegrated the moment they touched the green flames.

Just what the hell was she?

What kind of monster did he discover?

She was not just a prodigy, even they needed at least ten years to be able to just conjure green flames, let alone manipulate them.

She was a prodigy among prodigies.

Why?

Why did this have to happen to him?

He was supposed to have only one last mission left before he could retire from 'the Family' thanks to old age.

From there he should have been able to return to his 'real family.'

In order to increase his odds of returning home, Oskar even went out of his way to ensure that his last mission was relatively safe and risk free.

One last, easy and safe job before he could return home.

That was what was supposed to have happened.

That was what should have happened.

But that isn't what happened at all.

Instead, he encountered a threat that excluding 'him' was the gravest threat that Oskar has ever faced.

Especially now that he had exhausted all of his ammo.

It would take him around two seconds to reload his rifle.

With the speed that she just displayed, she could probably attack and kill all three of them in that time frame.

Even if he or one of comrades were somehow able to reload and open fire being engulfed by the girl's green flames, there was no guaranteeing that the bullets fired from this second volley would be able to successfully evade her green flames and kill the girl.

It was truly a precarious situation.

But Oskar still knew that he had to do something.

He was so close to returning home.

He can't afford to die now.

Anything would do, anything that could save his life.

He didn't even care about accomplishing the original mission objective of kidnapping the little girl for the Family anymore.

There was no way he would risk his life capturing something as powerful as 'that.'

She was simply too dangerous.

Should he just sacrifice Jordan and Tracy to buy himself some time?

That solution was indeed a possibility.

It was a hard choice to make but if he were to leave the duo to deal with the girl, then he could possibly buy himself twenty, no maybe even ten seconds.

By then he should be out of harm's way.

It didn't matter how psionically gifted this girl was, there was still the limits of her human body.

As a mere child, there was no way she would be able to catch up to Oskar if he ran at his full speed, especially with a ten second head-start.

However, there was another inherent problem with this plan.