Chapter 152: Switching Forms

Judging from the power of its attacks, Adam was able to tell that the gargoyle anomaly was a level three anomaly, and quite a powerful one, at that.

Even at the height of his powers, he wasn't confident that he would've been able to defeat such an opponent in a one-on-one battle, and he certainly had no chance of winning in his current state.

Should I release Camera to fight it?

Adam was quickly pondering what course of action he should be taking next.

Camera was an anomaly with extremely skewed attributes, possessing incredible offensive capabilities, but downright pitiful defenses. On top of that, it was already injured, so it could easily meet its demise if had to go up against such a formidable foe.

Camera was one of Adam's most important trump cards, so he had to preserve it at all costs if he wanted to have any chance of beating Oni no Hanzou in their upcoming match.

Let's assess the situation first before making a decision.

Before Adam had a chance to decide what he was going to do next, his opponent seized the initiative to jump on the attack.

First came a blast of black flames out of its mouth, followed by a series of attacks from its sharp claws.

Even though Adam was in terrible condition, he still had his basic defenses intact. As such, the sequence of attacks didn't worsen his injuries by much, but his mobility had become even more limited.

At this rate, defeat was inevitable. After being sent flying over and over again by his opponent's attacks, Adam undid his fusion with Mummy while still in mid-air, then invoked Clown before fusing with it.

With this new fusion, his injuries were neutralized, instantly healing most of them.

In this form, there was no way that Adam would dare to directly oppose a level three anomaly, so he immediately turned and fled, hoping to use the complex layout of this office building to his advantage.

The gargoyle anomaly naturally gave chase, but as it did so, it discovered that its opponent had split up into dozens of identical clones that were all rushing away in different directions.

Through his recent efforts, Adam had evolved Clown back to the peak of its powers, and its clone conjuring ability had also fully recovered. With this ability, it was able to completely confound the gargoyle anomaly.

Right as the gargoyle anomaly was wondering which clone it should've been pursuing, the shadow behind it suddenly began to twist and warp, following which a burst of immense distortive force acted upon its body.

As it struggled to resist the distortive force, a clown pounced onto its body, locking a hand around its throat while stabbing at its eyes using a dagger that it was holding in its other hand.

The gargoyle anomaly howled in pain as it thrashed violently from side to side. The combined power of a pair of level two anomalies was naturally no match for a level three anomaly, and it didn't take long before the gargoyle anomaly managed to throw them off. However, right as it did so, the air around it suddenly began to congeal again.

A scythe arm came swiping down from above, followed by a crisp crack...

The gargoyle's defenses certainly weren't lackluster, even among level three anomalies. Even after having its eyes stabbed multiple times by Clown's dagger, it had still only sustained minor injuries, but just a single strike from Camera was enough to split its body cleanly into two halves.

After being cleaved into two, an incredulous look appeared on both halves of the gargoyle anomaly's face, following which the two halves of its body began to slowly fall away in either direction.

After collapsing to the ground, the two halves of the gargoyle anomaly's body suddenly began to glow brightly, and Adam hurriedly withdrew Camera back into his body upon seeing this.

As it turned out, he had done so not a moment too soon. Almost in the exact same instant that Camera vanished on the spot, a violent explosion erupted.

Adam and Distortion were sent flying back several dozen meters by the explosion of black energy and powerful shockwaves.

After coming to a rest, Adam immediately began to cough up violently while throwing up large mouthfuls of blood. In contrast with Mummy, Clown's defenses were almost nonexistent, and he almost perished from that explosion.

Blood was still gushing out of his mouth as he struggled to his feet, but he was only able to take two steps before reaching his limits. As a result, he had no choice but to swap out Clown with Nun, and only then was he able to recover sufficiently to not pass out on the spot.

However, the recovery effect from switching to a different form was less effective than before. Ultimately, his invoked entities were still just manifestations of his psychic body, so there was a limit to how much he could recover given the terrible shape that his psychic body was in.

With that, I should be able to evolve Nun into a level three anomaly as well!

After taking a moment to catch his breath, Adam hurriedly rushed over to the epicenter of the explosion. At this point, the dust had already settled, and sure enough, there was a great deal of anomalic power lingering in the area.

However, what was very strange was that this anomalic power was rapidly dissipating.

There seemed to be an invisible black hole in the air that was devouring the energy at an alarming rate.

What's going on here?

This was the first time that Adam had encountered a situation like this, but there was no time for him to think. He hurriedly released all of his anomalies at once and instructed them to fight over the anomalic power with the black hole in the air.

The band of anomalies immediately pounced onto the anomalic power like a pack of starving wolves, but they were only able to absorb a small portion of it, while the majority vanished into thin air.

Adam was left sorely disappointed and perplexed by this.

Ideally, it would've been best to allocate all of the anomalic power to a single anomaly. Splitting it among everyone resulted in all-round enhancements across the board, but there was virtually no chance that any of his anomalies would evolve from such a distribution strategy. However, the urgent nature of the situation just now meant that he had no choice but to do this.

After absorbing the anomalic power, Adam's anomalies were able to recover from most of their injuries, and their physical constitutions had also been enhanced. Adam fused back together with Mummy, then withdrew all of his other anomalies before rushing to the other building as quickly as he could.

He had seen the tentacles that had just dragged Nie Yiyi away. Those tentacles belonged to the alien anomaly, which was a level three anomaly that Nie Yiyi was definitely no match for.

However, she wasn't the one that he was most worried about. Her combat prowess was only second to Adam's in their group, and she had Fighter Li on her side as well, so she most likely wasn't going to be in any life-threatening danger.

However, the same couldn't necessarily be said about the others.

Shae, Sato, and in particular, Hook, were all quite mediocre when it came to their combat prowess. If any of them were to be attacked by a level three anomaly, there was a chance that they could be killed in an instant.

Please be safe!

Adam was praying with all his might as he rushed frantically to the other building.

However, scaling a building that was several hundred levels tall took far too long, and by the time Adam arrived on the scene, all he saw were piles of wreckage and rubble, indicating that an intense battle had taken place here. There were also some trails of blood at the scene, as well as some severed limbs, but none of the anomalies or his allies were anywhere to be seen.

What happened here?

Adam picked up a metallic arm from the ground, and he identified it to be one of Hook's arms.

Did he die?

"Is anyone here?" Adam yelled, but he received no response.

Thus, he had no choice but to leave the psychic world for now.

As soon as he returned to the real world, he was greeted by the sight of his allies' limp and unconscious bodies.

Fighter Li was naturally laying on his bed as usual, but everyone else was also laying sprawled out on the ground in an unconscious state.

Adam's heart sank slightly upon seeing this, and he hurriedly inspected everyone's psychic condition.

"Don't worry, none of them have become vegetables." Fighter Li was the only one aside from Adam who was conscious. "They've all sustained severe injuries, but none of them are dead."

"What happened in there?"

"There were so many anomalies, about five or six in total. I didn't get a clear look at all of them. They were all extremely strong, and they seemed to know one another very well, displaying outstanding teamwork. We were no match for them, and..."

Fighter Li's voice abruptly cut off as he erupted into a violent coughing fit. His physical condition was already far from ideal to begin with, and having sustained damage to his psychic body, his lifespan was reduced once again.

"Take your time."

"Even if those anomalies had been fighting on their own and hadn't been working together, they would've still been able to easily overwhelm us."

"That's no surprise. Overall, they're all comparable to level three anomalies on average."

"Level three anomalies? What's that?"

"It's my own ranking system. A level three anomaly is roughly on the same level as I am."

Adam was thinking back to the anomalies that he had previously encountered in Sithu's psychic world, and all of them were extremely powerful.

They had dared to venture into his psychic world on this occasion as the majority of the anomalies that Adam had previously encountered were quite passive. Those anomalies couldn't sense anything outside of the psychic world of their host, so they didn't know when the psychic world was going to be invaded.

Thus, Adam had thought that they would've been able to divide and conquer the anomalies one by one.

However, this time, the anomalies seemed to have predicted the arrival of Adam and his group, and they had set up an ambush in advance that had almost resulted in Adam and his allies being completely wiped out.

Could this have had something to do with him?

Adam turned his attention to the man chained to the wall.