Chapter 34: You Attacked Me First

"Out of my way!"

The armored warrior immediately pushed the technomancer aside, then raised his giant shield to ward off the attack from the metal hook.

A resounding boom rang out as destructive black light and shockwaves exploded within the sewage system.

The armored warrior had displayed impenetrable defenses against Adam earlier, but just a single attack from the scarecrow was enough to force him to his knees, and a massive dent had also been smashed into his shield.

What the hell is that?

With just a single attack, it had managed to knock down the tank of the trio.

The destructive power on display here was not inferior to that of a top-tier hitman on the black market like Oni no Hanzou.

The Golden Iron Triangle turned their attention toward the giant creature to find that it was an enormous scarecrow with glowing green eyes, a metal hook for a hand, and black energy surging around its entire body.

"Isn't that an anomaly? Shouldn't anomalies serve a destructive role in one's psychic world? Why is his anomaly helping him?"

The three hitmen had so many questions about the scarecrow, but this clearly wasn't the time to be pondering them.

"Run!"

𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

This was far too powerful an opponent for them to handle, and the three of them immediately tried to leave, but Adam instantly sealed the boundaries of his psychic world to prevent their escape.

Following his training with Sadou, his psychic world was no longer a place where others could come and go as they pleased.

If they wanted to sever the connection, they would have to shatter his psychic boundaries, which perhaps wasn't a difficult task, but it was one that would require time.

The three hitmen were planning to escape, but the scarecrow didn't care about that, and it swung its hook down once again.

The armored warrior was unable to withstand his second blow, and not only was his shield sent flying through the air, half of his arm was also shattered.

Compared with Adam, the scarecrow's power was simply on another level.

The defenses that had seemed so impenetrable to Adam were impossibly fragile when pitted against the scarecrow.

In the face of this sudden turn of events, the other two hitmen reacted in completely different ways.

Clearly, the technomancer shared a closer personal bond with the warrior, and he immediately unleashed his ice technomancy to try and slow down the scarecrow so that the two could escape together.

In contrast, Black Archer hurriedly fired off an arrow from afar, then immediately fled for his life.

He was a coward and a glass cannon to begin with, and he didn't possess any other battle abilities.

After firing off that arrow, he discovered that the offensive firepower that he had always held in high esteem was next to useless against the scarecrow, and he immediately ran away.

"Don't blame me, you two insisted on coming. I knew something was off right away. It's not my fault, you did this to yourselves," Black Archer murmured as he slowly retreated to the entrance of the sewage system.

However, as soon as he caught sight of the light shining in from outside, a fiery figure appeared in his path.

"Aren't you forgetting something?"

Adam raised his claws and lashed out at Black Archer, who immediately performed a barrel roll before raising his bow to fire off an arrow, but he was too slow.

Not only was he slow, his attack frequency was also quite lackluster. Adam swayed to the side to evade the attack, then opened his mouth up wide to release a fireball, which exploded to send Black Archer flying through the air.

After tumbling to the ground, Black Archer found himself laying sprawled out at the entrance of the sewage system with the light from outside shining down on him. His entire body had been charred by the fiery explosion, and his bow was also nowhere to be seen, having been wrenched out of his hands.

They were referred to as the iron triangle not just because of how powerful they were as a team, but also because of how weak they were when separated.

They were so weak individually that they had no choice but to band together, and only with sufficient cohesion could they be referred to as the iron triangle.

"Your agility, defenses, and speed are all terrible, and your concealment abilities are also quite mediocre. If you had come after me by yourself, I would've taken care of you in seconds. In fact, when it comes to individual power, you're not even on the same level as that mecha from before." Adam made his way over to Black Archer's side before squatting down beside him. "However, you also excel enough in your forte that you are the first one I decided to target."

During the battle that had taken place in the carpark, Black Archer had been the one that Adam was most wary of.

His arrows possessed incredible penetrative power, and if he were to be struck in a vital region, there was a good chance that he would be killed by a single shot.

"Please spare me! I have money that I can exchange my life for... I've earned a lot of money, I can give it all to you!"

"Perhaps if your two companions had made me this offer, I would consider it as I'm in great need of money, but I can't bring myself to trust someone like you, who would abandon his own allies so readily. You should've prepared yourself for the possibility of suffering a fate like this the day you decided to become a hitman. If you don't have at least that much self-awareness, then you should've never become a hitman in the first place."

Flames arose from Adam's claws as he spoke, and with a single swat of those claws, Black Archer's frail body was instantly torn to shreds.

……

.

In the real world, a man in a black hoodie was standing in the corner of a carpark, and his eyes instantly glazed over as he fell to the ground in a completely limp and lifeless state.

……

After taking care of Black Archer, Adam casually retraced his steps back through the sewage system. His nonchalance stemmed from his trust in the scarecrow's powers. The Golden Iron Triangle was a formidable team, but even when their team was complete, they were still far less fearsome than Oni no Hanzou.

The true power of the anomaly of fear wasn't inferior to that of Oni no Hanzou, so the two were no match for it, and even their chances of getting away were slim to none.

Sure enough, by the time Adam arrived back at the scene, the two of them had already been vanquished.

The ice technomancer was laying unconscious on the ground with a shattered wall of ice all around him, while the armored warrior's armor was being eroded by the scarecrow's green laser beams. His defenses were the only reason that he had managed to last to this point.

However, he wasn't going to be able to last much longer. His defensive capabilities were roughly on par with Mummy's, and there was no way that he would be able to withstand consecutive attacks of this caliber. Despite this, he was an admirable fighter. Upon witnessing Adam's return, he forced his way against the scarecrow's laser beams and was still trying to take down Adam.

However, he was already a spent force, and he had only just risen to his feet before a large section of his body was charred black, following which he was completely flattened by the scarecrow's hook.

Not once throughout this process did he beg for his life, nor did he try to negotiate with Adam.

After killing the armored warrior, the scarecrow still hadn't had enough, and it shifted its gaze toward the technomancer, piercing directly through his body with its laser beams.

It's finally over. After this, surely there won't be as many hitmen trying to come after me.?

Adam was a little dazed as he looked at the "bodies" of the two hitmen. Ever since his awakening, he had already lost count of how many times he had seen dead bodies, but this was the first time that he had ever put an end to anyone's life himself.

From the homeless men in the real world to the human farm in the spiritual world, Adam didn't have many memories following his awakening, but there was no shortage of gruesome scenes in those memories.

After going through so much, Adam thought that he had already grown accustomed to bloodshed, but killing someone for the first time was still not a good feeling.

In order to console himself, he could only tell himself over and over again that this was justified self-defense.

"You were the ones who attacked me first. You wanted to kill me, but you were too weak and ended up getting killed yourselves. There's nothing wrong with that..."

Adam took a deep breath, and if it weren't for the fact that he had an ultimate goal that he was working toward, he could've easily found himself lost in and consumed by his crushing guilt.

However, he had no time to dwell on something like this. There were still far too many things that he had to do, such as destroying that human farm, uncovering his own past, and finding out all of the secrets related to himself and all blank slates.

"You were the ones who attacked me first! Fuck!"

After cursing loudly one final time, Adam left the psychic world.

Once his vision came into focus in the real world, he discovered that he was still in the underground carpark, and there was a body laying peacefully behind a car not far away from him.

There were seven other bodies laying in much the same manner littered throughout the carpark.

Even though they had died very discretely, Adam knew that it was unwise to stay in this place any longer. It wasn't going to take long before Mechguard officers arrived on the scene, so he had to get out of there right away.