Chapter 171: The Super Bowl of the Underground World

After successfully recruiting King Arthur, Adam spent the next few days trying to recruit more teammates, but was unable to make any further progress on that front.

However, those few days weren't wasted. Due to the impressive power he had displayed during his match against Oni no Hanzou, many of the combatants were eager to get acquainted with him, and they were also more than willing to make non-binding verbal truce agreements.

Adam could tell that some of them those agreements were genuine, while others were fake, but even if only a third of them abided by their agreement, that was still certainly better than nothing.

On this day, the Psychic Battle Royale was finally about to begin.

This was the Super Bowl of the underground world, and it drew more attention than any other sporting event. Furthermore, due to the fact that everyone's lives were on the line and the absolute authority of the director, this was the competition that was least likely to be fixed or tampered with.

If a gambler wanted to try their hand, then this was undoubtedly their best option.

It was once said that in essence, all sporting events were war simulations, and the more intense the simulation was, the more fans it would attract. The psychic body royale was the closest war simulation among all sporting events, and it was no exaggeration to call it a miniature war.

In Uncle Lin's Fire Shop, everyone was already prepared to depart.

The Psychic Battle Royale was an all-day event, with high-level individual matches taking place during the first half of day, as well as some matches between automatons, and performances from guest celebrities were scheduled at halftime.

Even though this was a lawless city, the job was quite lucrative, and there were even some rappers who wanted to be able to boast that they had performed in Shadow City for street credit.

Hence, all of the celebrities scheduled to perform at the halftime show were top-tier entertainers.

Adam had no interest in watching the halftime show, so he left the shop rather late.

After some careful consideration, it was ultimately decided that the team of four was going to consist of Adam, King Arthur, Nie Yiyi, and Hook.

Even though Hook desperately resisted and expressed over and over again that he was useless in battle and was going to die in the battle royale, he was still forced by everyone to round out the team.

The reason for this was very simple. In high-level battles, Shae and Sato were virtually useless. Sato was slightly more useful as he had his healing abilities, but he was nowhere near as useful as Hook.

The battle royale was a competition of survival, and Hook's ability to identify problems and gather intel made it so that their team would always be in as advantageous a position as possible.

Furthermore, Hook's survival skills were actually quite exceptional. He had concealed himself on the battlefield on multiple occasions, and that was an ability that Sato didn't possess, either. Hence, for the sake of everyone's future, they had no choice but to force him onto the team.

"Would it possible for you to reconsider?"

𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

"I already told you that you have no choice in the matter. Don't make me repeat myself again," Nie Yiyi said in a cold and implacable voice. "I've already left Jiang with a message. If you don't go today, then he'll get his father to come and collect your corpse. If you don't think they'll do it, you can test your luck and see. Also, I'm in a very bad mood right now, so don't get on my nerves!"

Recently, Nie Yiyi had been in a perpetually terrible mood.

It had already been quite a few days since Fighter Li disappeared, and even through her connections in the Green Gang, she was completely unable to find him. In her mind, he was already dead. After all, for a bedridden artificial adapter, disappearing was essentially no different from a death sentence.

As for how he had passed away, Nie Yiyi had checked through all of the hospital's surveillance footage, but was unable to find anything, and that was why she was in such a foul mood.

"Alright, alright, I won't say anything anymore."

Hook made the wise decision to shut his mouth, then departed from the shop with everyone to travel to the stadium.

At this point, the stadium was already surrounded by a sea of people.

Tickets for the Psychic Battle Royale were extremely difficult to come by, and those who wanted tickets either had to have connections in high places, or had to spend massive sums of money. Many of the residents of Shadow City were extremely eager to watch the event, but all they could do was find a spot outside the stadium to watch the live broadcast.

As one of the most highly anticipated participants in the battle royale, Adam was instantly swarmed by countless people as soon as he emerged from the car he was in.

"It's Lean Mean Killing Machine!"

"Please give me a signature!"

"Why have you only just arrived, Mr. Killing Machine? Are you confident in your chances in this battle royale?"

"Yo, you better get first place!"

"How strong are your teammates?"

……

"Looks like you're a celebrity."

As soon as Adam and his group emerged from their car, they were instantly surrounded from all directions. Thankfully, they were already quite close to the employee passageway, and an armed automaton quickly forced its way through the crowd to receive them.

These privately owned armed automatons represented the will of the director, so even though it was being very violent in its movements, no one dared to resist.

After conducting a facial recognition examination on Adam, the armed automaton led them through the crowd to the employee's passageway, where a pair of mechanical guards were stationed.

Everyone outside was yelling at the top of their lungs, and some of the gamblers were even reaching out to try and touch Adam for good luck.

However, most of them were simply yelling in excitement, or recording some short videos.

I really have become a celebrity...

Adam didn't want to be famous. Even though his entire face was tattooed so it was impossible to identify him from his outward appearance alone, many people had already dug up his identity based on his anomalies and the news reports circulating in the outside world.

At this point, keeping his identity a secret was no longer possible.

Adam made his way through the employee's passageway, which was paved with red carpet, then arrived backstage. The large metal doors were closed behind him, shutting out much of the commotion outside.

"You're late."

The first one to speak to Adam following his arrival was King Arthur. She had already been waiting for Adam for quite some time.

"There's no point in coming early anyway."

Adam turned to King Arthur to discover that she was presenting herself differently from their first encounter.

Her clothes were far cleaner, and she wore a steely expression, but the lines of her face were quite gentle and elegant. Now that she was wearing normal clothes rather than a baggy cloak, Adam was able to see that she had quite an impressive build.

After briefly exchanging some small talk with King Arthur, Adam directed his attention into the stadium. He had done some homework in preparation for the battle royale, and he knew that there were a total of 136 participants, some of whom were local residents, while others were outsiders.

The outsiders had been invited to participate in the tournament by combatants who had accumulated sufficient points. Hook was an example of this. Hence, many of the participants were still complete mysteries at this point, and it was very much a possibility that there were people even more powerful than Oni no Miko among them.

Of course, adapters of Oni no Miko's level generally wouldn't participate in events like this.

The majority of the 136 participants were just here for prize money and had no intention of fighting to become champion.

As Adam made his way into the backstage area, everyone took a glance at him, but there were two people whose eyes lingered on him longer than everyone else's, and Adam responded with a provocative smirk.

"There's no hurry. We'll be able to put an end to our differences soon, Oni no Miko."