Chapter 401: Succubus Beth

While Peter was working on consolidating his memories from that day, Adam invaded his psychic world.

.

Having already performed a psychic cleanse on Peter once before, he was very familiar with Peter's psychic modules.

It seemed that Peter lived quite a monotonous life, and no new psychic modules had appeared aside from ones related to sex, recreation, and work.

Adam quickly tracked down his recent memories, and everything was normal between his resignation from the stock exchange office to the commencement of his insurance company job.

Just a few days ago, he entered a very ordinary pub.

The pub was similar to the type of beer bars that could be frequently seen at the ends of streets in England, and it wasn't very large, with many of its patrons drinking alone.

For Peter, this was a normal day, and after arriving in the bar, he drank by himself while looking at the stocks and the news on his communicator.

With his alcohol intake, the environment in the bar began to turn blurry as a result of his inebriation.

Hence, Adam didn't notice the middle-aged man until he patted Peter on the shoulder and said, "Hey brother, how about I treat you to a drink?"

"I'm sorry, I'm not interested in men," Peter replied as he turned to glance at the man while waving a hand to shoo him away.

It was this glance that allowed him and Adam to catch a clear glimpse of the man.

It was a muscular man that was over 190 centimeters tall with a thick beard and arms in excess of 45 centimeters in circumference.

There were some prosthetic limbs on his shoulders, but his original limbs hadn't been amputated or modified.

This is a classic adapter retrofitting configuration.

After inspecting the man's body, Adam looked at his face, particularly observing his eyes.

Following his decision to defy Mr. One, Adam's telegnosis had become even sharper, and just a single glance was enough for him to be able to tell that something wasn't quite right about the man.

This is a woman. In other words, his psychic body is female.

This mismatch in the genders of the man's physical and psychic bodies, coupled with the fact that he was an adapter, indicated to Adam that there was an over 90% chance that he belonged to the Chaos Raisers organization.

Due to how precious blank slates are, there weren't that many people in this world who had changed bodies.

This wasn't just because there were very few adapters in the world, another factor was that psychic body eradication technology and safe installation technology were among the most well-kept secrets in this world.

Not only was this technology not open to the general public, it was impossible to find any information on it unless one had the right connections, and it was a piece of cutting-edge technology that had only matured in recent years.

Shae's "grandfather", who was supposed to have taken over her body, was an example of a failed installation.

20 years ago, the technology had still been very rough around the edges, but the old man's body was giving out on him, and that was why he had decided to take the risk to switch bodies.

However, the eradication wasn't complete, and the installation process had also gone wrong, thereby allowing Shae's persona to survive to this day.

Given the aforementioned reasons, there definitely weren't many people capable of completing this procedure. Aside from organizations related to the Guild of Immortality, the director was the only one that Adam knew to possess this technology.

As long as this man wasn't transgender, he was definitely harboring someone else's persona.

That just about confirms it.

Adam examined the rest of Peter's psychic world after that, and he couldn't find any other information about the man, so it was clear that they had only ever met once.

The psychic modules in Peter's mind since their meeting were all slightly warped.

The degree of warping was so minute that even the average adapter would've struggled to identify it, and only adapters of Adam's caliber or higher would've been able to detect it.

This can't be used as evidence to indicate that he was hypnotized at all!

Adam continued his inspection, and he discovered that Peter had indeed only ever come into contact with that man once.

However, what also became apparent to him was that Peter's actions had become rather abnormal since that encounter. Whenever he was sorting important files, his consciousness would begin to blur as if he were being controlled, and everything around him would also become blurry and indistinct, as if he were inebriated.

This can be used as partial evidence, but it'll most likely only be taken as an indication that he's suffering from a physical or mental ailment. There are simply far too few cases of adapter hypnotism...

Adapters capable of hypnotizing others for long periods of time were exceedingly rare, and Adam was only aware of two such adapters, the first of which was Madam Tree, while this man was the second one.

Long-term hypnotism could only be accomplished through the modification of one's psychic body or psychic modules, and it was completely different from short-term hypnotism. The difference between the two was like that between manufacturing bicycles and manufacturing cars.

After witnessing Peter destroy the paper documents, Adam didn't find anything else useful, so he departed from Peter's psychic world.

After returning to the real world, Adam sat in his chair and pondered the situation for a while.

There were a few other employees of the insurance company who were in a similar situation to Peter. The middle-aged man in Peter's memories had somehow altered their psychic worlds, thereby achieving his objective of creating chaos.

This was an even more impactful heist than the one that Raven had pulled off.

After all, virtual idols only existed in the virtual world, and their real-time data may have been impossible to recover, but the idols themselves could be easily recreated.

Aside from a tiny minority of fanatical fans, the rest of the fans only treated virtual idols as a form of entertainment, but the same didn't apply to superannuation.

It was no exaggeration to say that superannuation was the lifeblood of workers, particularly in the present world, where money equated to immortality. Only with sufficient superannuation funds could they hope to live relatively happy lives in the Metaverse.

Now that so many superannuation accounts had been compromised, widespread pandemonium was sure to follow.

On the flip side, if I can resolve this matter, it'll definitely earn me a huge number of votes, so I have to make an effort here.

Right as Adam was considering what to do next, he suddenly received an encrypted message on his communicator.

These encrypted messages were all sent using throwaway communicators with overseas IP addresses purchased on the black market. Adam was worried that the message could’ve been carrying a virus, so he wasn't going to open it, but the signature at the end of the message caught his attention.

Raven?

After seeing this name, Adam decided to open the message.

"Dear Adam, long time no see..."

As usual, Raven was as polite and gentlemanly as ever.

"Piss off!" Adam cursed under his breath, then continued to read the message.

"Congratulations on becoming a mayoral candidate. I've been keeping an eye on you this entire time, and you did an exceptional job in Darvaza Prison. Also, I should mention that I ran into Diana and your new colleagues last time, and Diana has become very powerful. Of course, she was very powerful to begin with, but she's even stronger now.

“Among your new colleagues, the skinny guy is already really strong. Given how emaciated he looks, I presume you brought him out of prison, right? Do you need me to check him out? He has a very heavy aura of darkness about him. As I'm sure you're aware, I'm an expert in this area, so I can see things others can't.

“I sent you this message primarily because I wanted to speak to you about Succubus Beth. I'm sure you've already received information about her. She's a difficult opponent to deal with, and I propose we join forces to take her out."