Chapter 378: Shadows and Flames

The shadows possessed tremendous power, and Adam tried tugging on them a few times, but they refused to budge, and even more shadows were beginning to wrap themselves around him.

"You're very strong," Adam remarked. "It's no wonder you're so confident, but this isn't going to be enough to beat me."

Adam was trying to use the echo from his own voice to search for his opponent in the darkness, but to no avail.

Thus, all he could do for now was struggle free from his bindings.

Sludge was quite heavy and cumbersome, but its power was no joke. Not only did its strength stand at the pinnacle of level six anomalies, even level seven anomalies weren't guaranteed to possess superior strength.

Even so, Adam had to exert around 70% to 80% of his full strength to tear through all of the shadows, indicating that his opponent was more powerful than he had anticipated.

"You have remarkable strength and body weight. I presume your defenses must be quite solid as well."

Guang Fei's voice finally rang out, but it seemed to be coming from all directions. Essentially, his voices seemed to be coming from all of the surrounding shadows in the cell, making it impossible for Adam to determine his location.

Despite this, Adam remained calm and collected, standing on the spot as he awaited the next round of attacks.

It didn't take long before the second round of attacks arrived, with a series of spears formed by shadows shooting at him out of the darkness.

The spears were flying extremely fast, but they made no sound as they hurtled through the air, silently piercing into Adam's body.

The spears possessed tremendous penetrative force, plunging over a meter deep into Adam's body. If it weren't for the fact that Sludge's body was extremely thick and bulky, the spears would've been able to pierce straight through Adam.

After plunging into Adam's body, the spears began to change shape, and Adam hurriedly pulled them out, following which the wounds inflicted onto him by the spears began to quickly heal at a rate that was discernible even to the naked eye.

"Your defenses and regenerative abilities are quite remarkable as well. However, you're clearly very heavy and cumbersome, so you must be susceptible to terrain-type attacks."

Guang Fei seemed to be an exceptional strategist, and he was able to make a fast and accurate assessment of Adam's strengths and weaknesses, even though this was the first time that they had faced each other in battle.

In the same instant that his voice trailed off, Adam felt a massive shadow vortex begin to take shape beneath his feet. He wanted to take evasive measures, but the surrounding shadows restricted him to prevent him from moving, while the vortex beneath his feet resembled a swamp that further impaired his mobility.

As a result, Adam's massive bodyweight had become his downfall, making it impossible for him to move.

In psychic battles, there were certain adapters who held innate advantages over other adapters.

For example, back in Shadow City, Adam had heard that Diamond had once been defeated by an A tier combatant.

That adapter was very proficient at terrain manipulation, and he transformed the entire battlefield into a swamp to render Diamond completely powerless. Despite his tremendous strength and offensive and defensive prowess, Diamond found himself trapped in the swamp, unable to do anything.

Hence, given the right matchup, it was possible for an adapter to defeat someone far more powerful than themselves.

In that instance, there had been a clear mismatch in power between the two combatants, but in this situation, it was clear that Guang Fei was not an inferior adapter to Adam, and Adam instantly found himself completely immobilized by the surrounding shadows and the vortex beneath his feet.

However, Adam had never been one to fight with just a single anomaly, and he had already thought of some countermeasures against Guang Fei's abilities.

His opponent was gathering information on him, and he was also doing the same.

Guang Fei possessed exceptional concealment abilities, and the fact that he was able to attack using all shadows indicated that he also possessed a domain. Most importantly, his offensive prowess and restrictive powers were both top-notch.

Against an opponent like this, the best strategy would've been to invoke Camera and Horse Face, with the former used to gather information, while the latter was used to unleash emotional attacks. After all, even if Guang Fei were concealed within the shadows, he would've still been susceptible to emotional attacks.

Not only did Horse Face's attacks cover a large area, as someone who had been on the receiving end of those attacks in the past, Adam knew that they were also extremely formidable. Even with so many anomalies on his side, he had almost fallen prey to Horse Face's insidious abilities.

However, after a moment of consideration, Adam decided against invoking those two anomalies, choosing to invoke Clown instead.

The reason for this was that both Horse Face and Camera were too frail.

While it was true that their abilities were extremely potent, if they couldn't take down the enemy in a single strike, then there was a very good chance that they would be killed in an instant by the surrounding shadows, and Adam couldn't afford to take that risk.

He had gone to great lengths to evolve those two anomalies to their current level, and if they were to die, then he would have to start again from square one, thereby wasting all of his prior efforts.

At this point, Clown was already a level five anomaly, and thanks to its clone ability, it wouldn't die so easily. Most importantly, Adam had identified a chink in his opponent's metaphorical armor.

If he relies so heavily on shadows, then won't he become a lot weaker if there are no shadows to work with?

After Clown was invoked, it immediately conjured up an army of clines, all of which were wielding flamethrowers and flash grenades, and the entire area was instantly illuminated by flames and bright flashes of light.

Sure enough, as the shadows receded, Adam could feel the restrictive power of the surrounding shadows lessen significantly.

It's working!

Adam struggled free from the restrictive shadows and the vortex beneath his feet, yet right as he was about to do something, he suddenly noticed that the shadows behind the flamethrower-wielding Clown clones were becoming darker.

The brighter the flames were, the darker the contrasting shadows.

"Look out!"

Through his psychic connection with Clown, Adam instantly alerted it to the impending threat, and all of the Clown clones immediately sprang up into the air in unison, but it was too late.

Countless black hands emerged from the shadows beneath their feet, grabbing onto their ankles before dragging them into the darkness.

The Clown clones struggled with their might, but they were nowhere near as strong as Sludge, and all of them were dragged into the darkness in the blink of an eye.

The process had unfolded so quickly that Adam wasn't even able to save Clown in time, and he could only look on with fury and anguish as Clown was devoured.

An enormous amount of anomalic power was required to nurture a level five anomaly, so the demise of Clown was a major setback for him.

It had taken him a long time to get Clown to its level, yet it had only taken an instant for it to be killed.

"I can sense your emotional fluctuations. You seem to be very angry right now. A mature adapter shouldn't reveal their emotions so easily."

Guang Fei's voice suddenly rang out from behind Adam, and in the next instant, Adam's massive head was decapitated amid a flash of black light.

His head came tumbling down onto the ground, then rolled around amid the rubble for a while before coming to a rest.

"Is it over?"

Guang Fei was standing on Adam's shoulder, and the only response to his question was a massive palm flying his way.

"What do you think?"

Adam slapped his own shoulder as if he were slapping a mosquito. The entire prison rumbled violently from the force of the impact, yet Guang Fei had vanished into thin air.