Why Can't I Live In a Quiet Peaceful Life?!

Episode 22: Sought Judgement

"Brian and Styx should be coming here soon to lend us help in defeating Yuri," said Kaleb as he ran through the forest, "She shouldn't be too far."

"Do you think the four of us could stop her?" asked Jazz as she teleported from tree branch to tree branch.

"Obviously. Even though Yuri has the god ability of adaptation, it's not like she'll have an ability to defeat all of us. There's just no chance."

Suddenly, Kaleb has gotten slower and slower, and Jazz broke a tree branch, causing her to fall to the ground. Kaleb stopped to check on her.

"Oof!" said Jazz, "That was a pretty weak tree branch that I stepped on."

"You should be more careful," replied Kaleb, "Try teleporting on the ground from now on."

"I like to do the element of surprise. It's not like Yuri would be checking the trees if she saw you."

Kaleb and Jazz decided to continue on in their search, trying to find any distinctive feature of Yuri that they could find. The chances of Yuri hiding herself in this deep dark forest were very high, so they had to be on close lookout.

"Kaleb," Jazz noticed, "Is there any reason why you're going slower than usual?"

Kaleb stopped to answer her question, "Now that you've said so, I've also noticed that I'm going slower than usual. This usually isn't how fast I run."

Suddenly, Kaleb fell to his knees.

"What the?" said Kaleb in a panic as he tried to stand back up, "I can't move!"

Kaleb looked around to find that Jazz had taken advantage of him to hide herself. The chances of Yuri being near Kaleb was high. The gravity that she produces must be so strong that she can even stop the movement of Kaleb.

Soon, Yuri emerged from the shadows, holding a tree branch that was whittled into a knife-like weapon. Part of her face was covered in a black burn from Neos' explosion. She was infuriated.

"Everything has gone so wrong," growled Yuri, "This camping trip was the greatest opportunity I could've ever had into killing you all. However, the measly humans just had to step in and alert the gods!

Oh well! Big whoop! It doesn't matter if I just kill one of you! After all, that's the goal I'm trying to achieve the most!"

Suddenly, Jazz teleported beside Yuri, ready to kick her in the face. However, before she could land the hit, she was immediately pulled down to the ground, hitting the hard floor.

"Gravity is faster than teleportation," smiled Yuri as she backed away a bit, "I wouldn't want to touch you or you might teleport me to a really dangerous place. At least the easiest person for me to kill is Kaleb!"

Yuri tossed the knife above Kaleb. Due to her ability, the gravity is much more stronger, so the knife would pierce Kaleb with more power, possibly killing him.

After a few seconds, Yuri frowned.

"You're really a nuisance, Jazz," said Yuri, "You know that, right? For a shy girl, you have guts trying to do what you just did without a scratch."

Jazz had teleported beside Kaleb, teleporting him away from the knife. However, in doing so, the knife had gone down and stabbed Jazz in the back. She was pinned down to the ground by the knife, and couldn't seem to teleport without causing herself even more injury.

"At least we know who'll be dying first," smiled Yuri, "Now where did you teleport Kale—"

Yuri was interrupted by a sudden thud, pinning her to the ground! Kaleb was on top of her, pinning her down using her own gravity ability.

"What?" yelled Yuri as she gasped for air as Kaleb began crushing her with the combined body weight and gravity, "You teleported him on top of me? I swear, you're still a nuisance even when you're in critical injury!"

Yuri knew that she just had to deactivate the gravity in order to escape.

"You're thinking of deactivating the gravity, huh?" asked Kaleb, "If you do so, it'll take me less than a second to beat you up real good. No matter the decision, it'll be useless."

Yuri has no choice but to deactivate the gravity or get crushed to death by Kaleb. She had to deactivate! She did what she had to do and tried to escape, but was caught up by the numerous speedy punches that Kaleb had brought upon her.

"Useless, useless, useless, useless!" yelled Kaleb at the top of his lungs as he punched Yuri repeatedly to the ground.

Soon, Brian and Styx arrived at the scene, finding the body of Jazz and Yuri on the ground.

"No.." said Yuri as she stood up, having sustained multiple broken bones, glowing in the dark forest, "I'm not gonna lose!"

"You're not standing up anytime soon!" yelled Styx, "Time stop!"

...

"What the?" asked Styx, confused, "I'm sure I stopped time.."

"Oh you did," chuckled Yuri, "You most certainly did. Except that I've adapted into a new ability. A new ability that will allow me to take on all of you! Ahaha!"

Kaleb ran over to punch Yuri, but suddenly he was back at where he once started. Yuri took advantage of Kaleb's confusion to slam him down to the ground.

"Two down," smiled Yuri, "Two to go. Once Jazz dies from the knife wound, it'll be all over and I've achieved my mission!"