Chapter 428: King's Game

"What's going on here? This doesn't seem like a normal psychic world."

Shae immediately fused as one with Hellhound, and upon seeing the two cards that had appeared in her hands, she immediately realized that they were about to play the King's Game, an extremely popular game, but one that was played with very dirty rules in many circles. In particular, with the rise of the Metaverse, even more twisted and bizarre rulesets had been invented.

"This is most likely Congressman Johnson's automatic psychic defensive mechanism," Adam concluded. "People like him have far too many secrets that they have to hide, so they have to keep their psychic worlds guarded at all times."

Shae pursed her lips in disgust upon hearing this. At this point, she was also very familiar with how filthy high society could be.

"So do we have to win this game before we actually get to access his psychic world?"

Even though she detested the game, she knew the rules very well, and she was quite good at it too.

More and more people appeared in the psychic world, and those who were closest to the castle were the doctors, nurses, and security guards, who were the most powerless ones in the psychic world.

"There's no need to follow their rules. We're here to instigate a battle, so we should dictate the pace ourselves."

He took a glance up at the sky, then communicated to Diana in the distance, "Don't hold back. Go all out and clear out this place as quickly as possible."

If they were to take too much time here, that would only benefit Succubus Beth, who may have already infiltrated the psychic world.

"Understood."

Diana immediately transformed into her giant black dragon form, and her body swelled to over 100 meters in size. As she spread her wings, they obscured virtually the entire sky above her, and she let loose a thunderous roar as she unleashed her draconic technomancy, conjuring up countless balls of black light in the sky before sending them plummeting rapidly down from above.

The portly elderly man seated on the throne immediately raised his head and held the staff in his right hand aloft as he yelled, "No one can stand above the king! No one can defile the king's castle! No one can destroy the king's game!"

The jewel embedded onto the tip of his staff began to glow as he spoke, forcibly taking energy from every single person present before combining it into a beam of rainbow light that shot up into the heavens. In the next instant, the beam of light formed a massive transparent barrier above the castle that encompassed the majority of the small island.

At the same time, the balls of black light conjured up by Diana struck the light barrier to unleash widespread destruction. Large sections of the light barrier were destroyed, only to be mended by more beams of rainbow light. The portly elderly man was using everyone's power to ward off Diana's attacks, and it was quite a powerful defensive resource.

Perhaps this type of ability would've been able to stump someone else, but it posed no problem for Adam.

𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

"Shae, attack the others so that old fart can't keep absorbing power from them."

Both Adam and Shae were also encompassed under the light barrier, and that was the king's biggest mistake. This was only an automatic defense mechanism that wasn't being controlled by anyone, so it could only function in a rigid and mechanical fashion.

Unfortunately for the portly king, Adam wasn't planning to follow the rules at all, and Shae eagerly sprang into action, springing forward before launching a string of Explosive Fireballs toward the surrounding psychic bodies, then followed up by releasing a stream of toxins with another one of her three heads.

The majority of the people here were ordinary people who had been dragged into the psychic world, and they weren't even able to survive for a single second in the face of the violent explosions.

In the blink of an eye, only several people were left standing, and one of them had caught Adam's attention. It was a man who was able to maintain a normal humanoid form, and his clothes remained pristine and completely untarnished by the explosions. Furthermore, he was wielding a ridiculously large scalpel.

That's Doctor Edwards!

Adam wasn't all that surprised to see this. Doctor Edwards was a world-leading surgeon, and the fact that he was able to reach such lofty heights in his profession indicated that he had to have possessed immense mental fortitude and unshakeable confidence in his own professional abilities. With these qualities converted into psychic power, it was no surprise that his psychic body was so formidable.

At a rough visual estimate, Adam determined that Doctor Edwards's powers had to have been at least on par with those of a level seven anomaly. With that in mind, he immediately braced himself for retaliation from Doctor Edwards, but the doctor's psychic body only gave him a cold glance before vanishing from the spot.

"What happened? How did he just leave like that?" Shae exclaimed as he hurriedly inspected her surroundings in case of a sneak attack.

"He must've already done something to Congressman Johnson in advance to grant himself free passage in and out of his psychic world."

Adam didn't find this to be strange at all. If he were in Doctor Edwards's shoes, he would've done the same thing, and in any case, this was good news for him. With Doctor Edwards's departure, they had one fewer formidable foe to deal with, thereby saving them a lot of time and effort, but they had to pick up the pace.

With that in mind, Adam immediately invoked Sludge, and its 20-meter-tall body came tumbling down onto the ground, sending violent tremors running through the earth. It charged directly forward at Adam's behest, stomping a series of huge craters into the ground in its wake before crashing directly into the gates of the castle.

The gates and the surrounding section of the wall instantly collapsed, in response to which the portly king sitting on the throne fired a beam of light from its staff straight into Sludge's chest, making it unable to advance any further.

However, this wasn't a very effective strategy. All of a sudden, Sludge shrank down to only two meters in height, then sprang up in a forceful fashion before crashing straight into the throne like a cannonball.

However, the golden throne seemed to have been one with the small island, and it wasn't shattered by the collision. Instead, violent tremors rang through the entire castle, causing the pendant lamps up above to sway and clatter against one another.

Adam's brows furrowed slightly as he looked on at the portly elderly man, who was flailing around in a panicked manner, but refused to stand up from his throne no matter what. All of a sudden, Adam arrived at a realization.

He can't leave his throne! That's the center of everything, and if the throne is destroyed, then this illusion will be automatically broken.

With that in mind, Sludge returned to its original size at Adam's behest, and its head plunged straight through the roof. It swung its arms through the air to topple all of the pillars and walls with unmatched power, reducing the castle to a state where it was teetering on the brink of collapse.

The portly elderly man swung his staff through the air again, rapidly shrinking the rainbow light barrier down to less than three meters in size, encompassing only himself and his throne.

As a result, the balls of black light conjured up by Diana encountered no further resistance as they came plummeting down and instantly laid waste to the castle. Adam immediately invoked Mummy to clear away the dust and debris using its runed bandages, and once clarity was restored to his field of view, he began to direct his attacks toward the remaining attackers.

Having withstood two formidable waves of attacks, all of the remaining attackers were quite powerful in their own right, and they unleashed their respective abilities to keep Mummy's bandages at bay. Meanwhile, Hellhound pounced onto them with its sharp fangs and claws, quickly inflicting some severe injuries upon its opponents.

Adam paid no heed to the ongoing battle as he made his way over to the wreckage of the castle, where Sludge was pressing down onto the light barrier with both hands with all its might, but it was being kept firmly at bay.

This was not an enemy that could be defeated through brute force, and some strategy was required. Adam looked down at the shadow cast by the throne under the light barrier, and all of a sudden, Sludge vanished, while Distortion appeared directly in the shadow.

It wrapped itself around the portly elderly man's arms and legs, forcing him to stand up from his throne. A dazed look immediately appeared on the elderly man's face, and the rainbow light surging out of his staff was snuffed out, thereby resulting in the eradication of the light barrier.

The sky above the island instantly fell away like a simulation, and the entire surrounding world quickly followed. As the illusion vanished, Adam was greeted by the sight of an extraordinarily seductive figure.