Chapter 25: Elite Clash

While watching the spectacular battle that was taking place before him, Adam couldn't help but wonder how much money his buyer had to have offered for his capture. Not only were they able to get these two incredibly powerful adapters to hunt him down, the reward was clearly so alluring that the two adapters felt it to be worthy of fighting over.

However, he was in no mood to be analyzing the specific circumstances involved, nor was he so na?ve that he thought it to be a good idea to continue watching the battle. What he needed to do was run for his life.

Thus, right as the battle between the two adapters was reaching peak intensity, Adam invoked Mummy and Hellhound, then instructed them to attack the halo that was keeping him rooted to the spot.

Cowboy was clearly an extremely powerful adapter, but there was no way that he could hope to trap Adam in his current state with just a single bullet.

The two anomalies possessed outstanding destructive power, and after hacking away for some time with its carving knife, Mummy was quickly able to free Adam from his restraints.

As soon as Adam regained the ability to move, he immediately began attempting to leave the psychic world, but no matter how hard he tried, he was unable to return to his physical body. It was as if the connection had been severed. In the wake of his failed attempts to leave the psychic world, Adam could only flee in the direction opposite to where the battle was taking place. He wanted to find his own secret base. At the very least, there was a truly powerful anomaly situated there. Even if it didn't listen to his instructions, it would surely be able to muddy the waters and complicate this dire situation.

With that in mind, Adam rushed away as quickly as he could.

After leaving this area, Adam arrived in a patch of wilderness, the very same place where he had been captured the first time.

The psychic world was very different from the real world.

In the real world, after fleeing from Gundam Street, Adam would've found himself on another commercial street lined with different shops. However, Adam had never been there before in the real world, so he didn't know anything about it. The psychic world was an extension of one's memories, and as a result of that, it was often quite a bizarre place to be.

At the moment, Adam was in that area in the wilderness where the battle between Red Spider and Spider had taken place. After rushing through that patch of wilderness, Adam suddenly found himself on the street that belonged to the pawn shop.

After that, he arrived on the street where he had first awakened, and from there, he made his way into his secret base through the network of underground tunnels before rousing the anomaly of fear from its slumber.

……

Meanwhile, the battle between Oni no Hanzou and Cowboy was only becoming more and more intense. Due to the fact that one of them was a gunner while the other specialized in melee combat, a chase was constantly taking place, with Oni no Hanzou trying to close down the distance between the two, while Cowboy was striving to ensure the opposite. As a result, it didn't take long before the two emerged from Gundam Street and arrived in another area.

The first area that they arrived at was Layton Academy, but upon arriving at the second area, Cowboy's brows immediately furrowed tightly with concern.

"Hold on, there seems to be something off about this place." Due to the fact that the two adapters had gone in the opposite direction from the one that Adam had fled in, the two had arrived in a different place. "What is this place?"

Machinery was rumbling all around them, while a series of mechanical bees were carrying infants onto a conveyor belt. The conveyor belt then transported the infants into a dark hole, and it was in this hole that Cowboy witnessed something that had his eyes springing wide open in disbelief.

"What the hell is this place?" Cowboy exclaimed as he stared at the plasma spraying out from the dark hole. "They're breeding infants here, only to crush them? What on earth is happening? This place is in the target's memories, so as long as he isn't delusional, this place truly exists!"

Cowboy was eager to figure out the structure and purpose of this place, and he began to inspect his surroundings.

Oni no Hanzou was also watching the scene unfolding around him, and it was clear that he was also experiencing an emotional response to this place.

However, in contrast with Cowboy, he cared far more about money and the target of his mission than something like this, which had nothing to do with him. Thus, after faltering for a brief moment, he immediately raised his mace to prepare for battle again.

"Let's put this fight on hold, I want to see exactly what this place is all about," Cowboy said with a wave of his hand, indicating that he no longer wished to continue this battle. "If we demolish this place in our fight, there won't be any leads for me to follow."

"Do you vow to give up on the target of the mission?"

Oni no Hanzou had no vendetta against Cowboy. From the very beginning, his sole objective had always been to get his hands on the reward.

"I do."

"Good."

Oni no Hanzou was naturally very pleased to see that he would no longer have to deal with such a formidable foe, and he backed away in a slow and cautious manner until he was at a relatively safe distance, then reverted back to his normal human form.

After that, he made a hand seal to summon a Psychic Retreat Hornet, and after tracking down Adam's location using the hornet, he vanished into his own shadow.

"Good riddance, that was a tough fight."

Following Oni no Hanzou's departure, Cowboy spun his pistols around his index fingers before placing them back into the holsters strapped to his waist. After that, he began to examine this human farm.

After witnessing the entire process, from production, to selection, then to pulverization, he finally understood what the purpose of this massive factory was.

……

While Cowboy was examining the factory, Oni no Hanzou arrived on the street where Adam was hiding under the guidance of the Psychic Retreat Wasp.

However, as soon as he arrived, a massive fireball came barreling toward him from the side.

"Earth Wall!"

Oni no Hanzou pressed a hand against the ground, and the earth squirmed momentarily, following which an earthen wall instantly rose up by the side of the road to keep the fireball at bay. The fireball crashed into the wall and exploded violently, and a burly figure rushed out of the eruption of flames before bringing down a carving knife with violent force.

Clang!

Oni no Hanzou raised his twin blades to block the carving knife, following which projections emerged from his blades to form another pair of blades out of thin air.

"Blade Flash!"

The pair of blade projections flashed through the air in an instant, striking the assailant squarely on the neck, and was fully expecting his assailant to be decapitated by the attack.

However, the pair of blade projections merely screeched their way around the assailant's neck, doing nothing more than creating a trail of sparks and inflicting a rather insignificant wound.

Oni no Hanzou clearly wasn't expecting his opponent to be so resistant to damage, and after faltering momentarily, a clone quickly emerged from the shadow behind him. The shadow clone drew a kunai knife with explosive tags wrapped around the handle, then plunged it into the wound on the assailant's neck.

Boom!

Oni no Hanzou took advantage of the shockwave from the explosion to leap onto a neon sign, and only from that vantage point was he able to catch a clear glimpse of the entire area.

As it turned out, there were three beings present. His mission target was in a nearby sewer, and he had just been attacked by a pair of imposing anomalies.

"So you're invocator, eh?" Oni no Hanzou mused as he inspected the pair of anomalies. "You've got some firepower, but unfortunately for you, your powers don't match the reward on your head!"

He didn't consider the two anomalies to be a threat, but in order to end the battle as quickly as possible, he still decided to unleash a powerful jutsu. Following a rapid sequence of hand seals, two bursts of black light were released to set off explosions in the areas where the two anomalies were situated, and at the same time, he launched himself at Adam.

He didn't care whether his jutsu would be able to kill the pair of anomalies. When facing invocator-class adapters, all that had to be done was to attack the adapter themself. As an elite assassin who had fought countless adapters in the past, so he was naturally well aware of the best way to deal with invocaor-class adapters.

However, he had only just launched himself forward, and his body was still in mid-air when a hint of foreboding suddenly welled up in his heart. He cast his gaze toward the area in front of where the mission target was situated, which was also one of the sites where he had just set off an explosion, and a large burst of black light erupted from that area.

Immediately thereafter, an enormous figure burrowed its way out of the ground before positioning itself directly in his path.