Chapter 128: Gentle

As the lowest level of competition, there were many new contestants entering F tier matches. The overall skill level was very uneven, but the ceiling wasn't very high, and encountering an opponent of Fighter Li's caliber was very much a low-probability event.

𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

After winning his first match, Adam was quickly arranged a second match by Hailey. This time, his opponent was very weak, around the same level as the combatants typically seen in the extraneous matches. His psychic body was a very ordinary muscular man, and aside from possessing more strength than the average person, it had no other abilities.

An opponent of this caliber wasn't even comparable to the average psychic aberration, so Adam was able to conclude the fight in just two seconds, and that concluded the first day of matches for him.

During the next few days, Adam continued to participate in matches, and due to the consecutive victories that he was able to score, he was quickly promoted to the E tier, then promoted once again to the D tier.

At this level, Adam could clearly sense that the quality of his opponents was becoming far more consistent.

Most of the contestants who managed to reach the D tier possessed powers comparable to level one anomalies, and due to the fact that the vast majority of them were artificial adapters, they employed a diverse range of tactics in battle, making Adam's matches far more technical in nature.

For example, the opponent that he had faced earlier in the day was an illusion conjurer who was capable of making any object reflective in order to disrupt his opponent's senses.

During the early stages of his battle against Adam, he didn't unleash any offensive abilities. Instead, he used his signature ability to clean up the entire warehouse so that all of the containers became reflective, and the ground was also polished to a mirror finish. Even the metal ceiling up above was reflecting everything down below.

As a result, there were reflections everywhere, and as a result, Adam was completely unable to discern where his opponent was. The attacks were coming from all directions, but out of the countless attacks, only one was real, and Adam found himself constantly being struck.

Thankfully, his opponent wasn't very powerful. Otherwise, there was a very good chance that Adam would've lost that match. Even though he had been honing his telegnosis this entire time, it had always been one of his weakest suits, so the only way that he could combat an illusion conjurer opponent was through the use of brute force.

He made repeated use of his Fountain of Contamination, throwing up gushing waves of sewage that polluted everything around him.

His opponent's attacks weren't very effective against him, but even the slightest contact with his sewage was too much for his opponent to bear. There was simply an insurmountable gap in power between them.

As the sewage flowed through the warehouse, all of the pristine containers were polluted and corroded. Adam didn't know where his opponent was, so all he could do was release his Fountain of Contamination randomly in all directions. Before long, an agonized scream rang out, and he knew that the match was over.

Sure enough, by the time Adam tracked down his opponent, they were already completely unfit to continue, laying beside a puddle of sewage in an extremely feeble state with rotten ulcers all over their body.

At this point, the referee immediately announced the conclusion of the match.

"Lean Mean Killing Machine! Lean Mean Killing Machine!"

Upon emerging from the psychic world, Adam was immediately greeted by the sound of enthusiastic cheering from the spectators.

Spectators were already beginning to show up for D tier matches, and the match venue had also become a lot more official, with rings that were surrounded by spectators.

Due to Adam's spotless record and his special identity as an adapter, he was already accumulating a group of fans.

These people were avid fans of both psychic combat and gambling, and there was one thing that gamblers really liked to do, which was to find a dark horse and support them for monetary gain in the form of winning bets.

Adam was someone who could earn them money, so they naturally weren't going to be stingy with their cheers and applause.

"Lean Mean Killing Machine is a total badass! The name's a little stupid though..."

.

"No, it's not! All top-level professionals have names like this! Death Tornado, Terror Bulldozer... Those are both names of S tier combatants!"

"I reckon he's going to get promoted again soon. They clearly can't find any good matches for him in the D tier!"

"I hope he gets promoted soon. The odds for D tier matches are very low, so there's not much money to be earned."

Adam made his way down from the ring amid a chorus of cheering and spirited discussion. This time, only Nie Yiyi and Shae were waiting for him.

Nie Yiyi was already itching to register two days ago, and now that she could see that the quality of Adam's opponents was only improving as he moved up the ranks, she was even more eager to join in on the action. "Screw it, I don't think there's any danger. The northern and southern congresses are still duking it out, and the news stories are all focused on them. No one's going to notice small fry like us. I want to register!"

"My advice is to wait and see for now. I can't shake the feeling that there are hitmen from the Oni Organization here in this city."

"I don't want to wait. The people you saw may not necessarily be the people that you think they are."

While Nie Yiyi was speaking, Hailey suddenly rushed in from outside.

She wasn't even present to watch Adam's match, so she had to have made a more important discovery.

"F... tier... Strong... Really strong..." Hailey was sweating profusely, and she was panting so heavily that she couldn't even string together an intelligible sentence.

"I don't know what you're saying. Take a moment to catch your breath first."

"There are... really, really strong combatants... F tier match..."

"Are you saying that a really strong combatant has appeared in the F tier?"

"That's right. He only just popped up yesterday, and he had a match scheduled for today, so I went to take a look," Hailey replied. "He was incredibly strong! I'd say he can easily claim a spot in the S tier."

Adam had full trust in Hailey's professional judgment. She was quite young, but her ability to rate and classify combatants was immaculate.

The first time that Hailey had seen him in action, she told him that he wouldn't be able to qualify for the battle royale. After that, she told him that he would be able to just barely scrape his way into the event, but the process was going to be very arduous, and he would have to choose the right opponents. Her assessment had always been very reasonable and level-headed.

Having watched just a single F tier match, she was already convinced that he was strong enough to rank alongside S tier combatants, so he definitely had to be extremely formidable.

A thought occurred to Adam upon hearing this.

"Let's go take a look."

After emerging from the venue for D tier matches, they made their way around the stadium to the F tier venue.

There weren't supposed to be any spectators here, but it seemed that there was already some hype building for the combatant that Hailey had mentioned, as evidenced by the small crowd of spectators that had gathered here.

Adam squeezed his way through the crowd of spectators, and sure enough, the sight that he was greeted by was one that he had expected to see.

In the ring was a muscular middle-aged man who had a very old and wizened appearance, and as soon as he stepped down from the ring, he was replaced by a woman with a pale complexion and a fox mask on her face.

That same sense of familiarity welled up in Adam's heart again, and the woman's intuition was even sharper.

She immediately turned to Adam from afar, picking him out with her gaze among the crowd, and Adam was struck by a tremendous sense of discomfort as their eyes met.

Powerful adapters possessed powerful personas, and due to the massive disparity in the power of their personas, their auras were completely different. At this moment, Adam felt like a kindergartener being scrutinized by an authoritative teacher. He couldn't articulate exactly what was wrong, but he felt extremely uncomfortable all-over.

"I recognize you, kid!" The woman spoke to Adam from afar, and surprisingly, her voice was very gentle and alluring. "The differences between us will be settled sooner or later."

After that, she turned and connected herself to her opponent.

What's going on? Why didn't she attack us? If she's here, there's a good chance that Oni no Hanzou is also here, and if they strike now, we're dead for sure!

Adam, Shae, and Nie Yiyi were all quite perplexed.

One had to realize that the Oni Organization was an organization of professional hitmen. In the civilized world, even Mechguard was powerless to do anything about them, and they were even colluding with the southern congress.

The organization always acted virtually without any fear of repercussions, and given the way that they conducted themselves, it only made sense for them to kill Adam and his friends on the spot.

Regardless of why they were here, it certainly couldn't hurt their objective to get rid of a few pesky enemies who could potentially get in their way at some point.

Why are they suddenly so subdued? What could they have gone through?

Adam was very curious, and at the same time, the match in the ring commenced.