Chapter 174: Stupid Outsiders

Hook was yelling in a blind panic as he rushed toward King Arthur's dragon steed.

The dragon knew exactly what Hook wanted, and it immediately opened its mouth up wide to swallow Hook up. At the same time, a giant hand came crashing down directly onto the dragon's head, striking it with such tremendous force that the dragon's head was thrown to the side, and even a few of its teeth were knocked out.

Having already been alerted by Hook, King Arthur and Nie Yiyi immediately sprang into action, attacking the anomaly as soon as it appeared.

The first attacks to arrive were Nie Yiyi's blades of wind, which struck the anomaly at an incredible speed, slicing several gashes into its body.

However, despite the remarkable speed of Nie Yiyi's attacks, they were naturally far inferior to King Arthur's attack in terms of power.

As King Arthur swung down his giant golden sword, it came crashing down like a golden mountain, forcing the anomaly to reveal itself amid a burst of dazzling golden light.

As it turned out, the anomaly that they were dealing with was one with extremely massive arms. It was only standing at over three meters in height, but its arms exceeded four meters in length, and they were even thicker than its waist. As the anomaly was struck by the massive golden sword, the entire lower half of its body was smashed into the ground.

"Don't let it get away!"

This anomaly had to be killed.

All of the artificial anomalies had already been tortured to the point that they no longer possessed any modicum of intelligence. All they did was instinctively search for targets before hunting those targets down until one side was dead.

If they were dealing with a slow and cumbersome tank of an anomaly, then running away would've still been an option, but they definitely couldn't allow an anomaly that was capable of concealing itself to survive this encounter.

After delivering that initial strike, King Arthur raised his giant sword once again in preparation for a second strike, but before the sword could fall, it was kept at bay by one of the anomaly's massive arms.

While using one arm to ward off King Arthur's sword, the anomaly used its other arm to send Nie Yiyi flying with a punch. Nie Yiyi was able to block the punch with her blades, but still couldn't help but throw up blood from the strike due to her lackluster physical resistance.

Thankfully, at this point, everyone else's attacks had also arrived. The first one to retaliate was King Arthur's dragon steed, which spat out Hook before swinging its head into the anomaly's body like a mace. Meanwhile, the two surviving members of the other team also sprang into action, with one of them invoking vines to bind the anomaly, while the other released a technomantic carpet that wrapped itself around the anomaly's head.

The anomaly struggled with all its might against the attacks, and the vines were quickly pushed beyond their limit, beginning to snap one after another. However, at this point, Adam had also arrived on the scene, and he threw his arms around the anomaly, then released his bandages to wrap up a part of the anomaly's body.

"Finish it off!"

While wrestling with the anomaly, Adam was able to get a sense of its power, and he determined that it was slightly more powerful than him in his current form.

However, it possessed no intelligence and was acting solely on killing instinct, so in a one-on-one battle, Adam would've been able to defeat it even without using Clown.

If it were no match for Adam in a one-on-one battle, then it was obvious what the outcome was going to be with so many adapters ganging up on it at once.

After returning to the fray, Nie Yiyi resumed her assault against the anomaly with the assistance of King Arthur and the technomantic carpet, and the anomaly was completely destroyed after a several consecutive heavy blows.

Following the anomaly's demise, Adam hurriedly rushed onto the scene. Prior to entering the fray, he had been pondering two questions, the first of which was whether artificial anomalies possessed anomalic power, and the second question was that if it did, would it be wise for him to absorb the anomalic power in front of so many people?

This was something that he had been quite conflicted about.

If he absorbed the anomalic power, then he would be revealing his own secret to the entire world, but with so many powerful anomalies in one place, this was an extremely rare opportunity for growth, one that would be a terrible waste to pass up on.

After inspecting the area for a while, Adam discovered that no anomalic power had been left behind by the vanquished anomaly.

Well, looks like the decision's been made for me.

Adam looked down at the ground with a resigned expression, unsure of whether he should've been disappointed or glad.

However, just because there was no anomalic power didn't mean that they had killed the anomaly for nothing. Following its demise, Adam discovered a black card in its stomach.

The card contained the director's psychic stamp. The front side of the card was an upper body portrait of the director, while a line of text was inscribed onto the backside: "Elementary debilitation card: able to strip a single target of a small amount of mobility for a short time."

"This is quite a useful card." Adam displayed the card to his teammates, then tossed it at Hook. "Use it when you're in danger."

Hook knew that this was a life-saving resource that Adam was giving him, and he hurriedly stowed it away in a grateful manner.

While he was putting the card away, King Arthur's dragon steed suddenly turned its head and blasted a pillar of fire at the adapter who was using the technomantic carpet.

The adapter was caught completely off guard, and his entire body instantly erupted into scorching flames.

The flames released by the dragon were of an extremely high temperature, and he was incinerated into ashes in mere seconds before the technomantic carpet had a chance to return to him.

Meanwhile, King Arthur turned on the other surviving member of the other team, slashing his giant sword through the air to release a streak of golden light that instantly split the completely unprepared adapter into two.

"What a pair of stupid outsiders," King Arthur scoffed as he sheathed his sword, then turned around to find all of his teammates looking at him with bemused expressions. "What? You think what I did was wrong? This is a battle royale, not a children's game. There's always a chance that they could turn on us, and with their control abilities, they could pose quite a bit of trouble to us. All those who could potentially cause us trouble must be eliminated!"

"He's right." Nie Yiyi decided to side with King Arthur. "We're in this game to win it, and there can only be one winner, so have to be ruthless at times. According to the rules of the game, teams that travel together will be punished. They can't join our team, so it's better to just have them killed."

As a member of the Green Gang, it was no surprise that Nie Yiyi had a rather ambiguous moral compass.

Adam nodded in response, choosing not to verbally agree or disagree.

"Alright, now that everything's out of the way, let's search for resources in this area, then leave this place as quickly as possible so we don't waste any more time."

"Sounds good."

Thus, the members of the team temporarily split up to search through the cluster of dilapidated apartments. In the process, they found some more points cards and a shield card, following which they set off for the next target that Hook picked out for them.

……

While Adam and his team was on the move, similar scenes were taking place throughout the entire psychic battleground.

Oni no Miko tossed aside the head in her hands, then turned to a man who appeared to be a technomancer as she asked, "Can you find him?"

"I can only ascertain the rough area that he's in. The closer he is to us, the more I'll be able to narrow down the area." The technomancer was the Technomancy Tiger of the 36 Tigers, and he removed his technomancer hat as he spoke, then rummaged around inside it for a while before pulling out a pigeon, which he tossed up into the air. The pigeon quickly flew away in a certain direction, and the technomancer continued, "The direction appears to be right, but the target is also constantly moving, so we can't accurately gauge his location."

"If you ask me, there's no need to challenge a powerful enemy at such an early stage."

This time, it was someone else in the team who was speaking. This was a strange human with a turtle's shell growing on his back, and he was also one of the 36 Tigers.

𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

"After all, he's not our sole target. Collecting resources is the key to winning this game.

"We're collecting resources, and so is everyone else. If we last till the end, we'll have to face off against Eyeless and the other S tier combatants, so I think it's best that we take care of our target from the get-go."

The one raising this contrasting opinion was Diamond. In the psychic world, he appeared to be no different from a normal person, but in battle, his entire body could crystallize to become as hard as diamond.

His target wasn't just to win the battle royale. In addition to that, he was also targeting Adam for what he did to Iron Man.

"We'll search for resources while going after him. In any case, we don't know where to go anyway, so we might as well go after him and try our luck. It'll definitely be beneficial to us if we can eliminate him before the final showdown."

After making her decision, Oni no Miko immediately flew away behind the pigeon.