Chapter 44: Illusory Clones

"What are you standing there for? Here, take another knife!" the clown was cackling with glee, clearly very excited to have drawn blood from Adam, and it rushed toward Adam to repeat the same sequence.

On this occasion, Adam gathered his flames on his claws, destroying the illusory clown in front of him with a long-range attack, then swiveled around to search for the anomaly's true body.

As soon as he turned around, the clown appeared behind him once again, and he released a burst of flames out of his mouth, but this clown exploded as well.

Both of them had been illusions!

While Adam was still reeling from this turn of events, a burst of sharp pain shot through his groin region, and he looked down to see a wound as long as an arm taking shape there.

……

"Oh!"

"Ouch!"

Both Hook in the psychic world and Kim Hee-cho in the guest hall in the real world felt a cold sensation from their lower bodies upon seeing this. Even though they weren't the ones who had fallen prey to that attack, their male instincts had them both physically recoiling in discomfort.

"Do you see how brutal this job is turning out to be? You really struck fold finding an adapter willing to take on this job for 120,000."

Kim Hee-cho didn't even dare to look at the wound, and at the same time, he had arrived beside Adam's physical body, prepared to awaken him at any moment.

He had already determined that the emotional anomaly wasn't particularly powerful, but it was extremely difficult to deal with. Not only was it exceedingly cruel and barbaric, what was most damning of all was that it also seemed to be more cunning than the average emotional anomaly.

In the psychic world, Adam was fighting through the pain as he continued to try and find a way to counteract the clown's abilities.

According to Sadou, telegnosis is one's most important asset when it comes to dealing with illusion conjurers.

Even though Adam had come off second-best on consecutive occasions, he was still keeping a level head.

He was a man with a massive goal, and the bigger one's goal was, the more arduous and riddled with stumbling blocks the path to getting to that goal was going to be.

Everything is a test. If I fall here, then I have no right to face my true enemies.

Adam recalled back to Sadou's training, using his training methods to focus his attention and spread his telegnosis all around himself.

This time, he finally noticed something amiss.

With his telegnosis and his five senses working together, he "heard" something that he had previously been unable to, namely the sound of faint footsteps.

Even though there was a clown directly in front of him, the footsteps that he was hearing were coming from the side.

Adam pretended to be completely oblivious to this as he conjured up flames in his hands to attack the fake clown before him, but in the instant that the illusion was destroyed, he suddenly turned his two heads toward a certain direction before unleashing a pair of Explosive Fireballs.

The two fireballs collided in mid-air and exploded instantly. Adam had intentionally done this as the explosion would impact a large area.

Using the faint sounds made by the clown, he could only ascertain its general direction, but was unable to determine its exact location, so unleashing an attack that impacted a large area would give him the best chance of hitting the clown.

The two fireballs exploded violently, transforming the entire area into a sea of fire.

The dark alley was instantly illuminated, and the explosion was so powerful that a massive hole had been blasted into each of the walls on either side.

The clown's agonized howl rang out from within the fire and dense smoke, but its voice abruptly cut off shortly thereafter.

Adam was bracing himself for the clown's subsequent attacks, but it seemed that things hadn't progressed in the direction that he had anticipated.

"It ran away." Hook had remained on the sidelines this entire time, protecting Chloe while observing the battle. He raised his telescope as he peered into the dense smoke, then concluded, "It escaped along the alley's collapsed walls and fled into the building."

"Alright, I'm on it."

Adam activated his Hyperspeed ability and immediately gave set off in pursuit.

Earlier, he had already determined that the clown anomaly wasn't all that fast, and now that he had activated his Hyperspeed ability, the disparity in speed between the two widened even further.

The clown was only able to rush through a few rooms before it was cornered in the building by Adam.

In the wake of the explosion, parts of the clown's body had been scorched, and its face had also sustained a festering wound, but overall, it hadn't been significantly harmed. It was clear that aside from its illusion abilities, its defensive capabilities were also quite stellar.

"I didn't think that you'd be able to catch me, my cute little hunter, but it's too bad for you, because this is a trap!"

The clown began to cackle maniacally as it manifested countless clones all around itself.

Using his telegnosis, Adam was able to determine that the clown anomaly's clones were purely just illusions, unlike Oni no Hanzou's shadow clones, which were clearly of a higher level and possessed offensive capabilities.

However, this illusion was more advanced than the one that it conjured up earlier. Every single one of these illusory clones was also cackling maniacally, and the sound of their cackling was coming from all directions, creating a deafening cacophony that was making Adam's head spin.

Looks like it's already figured out how I was able to spot it last time. What a cunning anomaly this is.

It was clear that the clown anomaly had already identified the fact that Adam had been able to track it down through auditory cues, and this was its solution to that problem.

The clown was concealed among its illusory clones, and it pulled a vintage revolver out of its clown suit before firing off a succession of shots at Adam.

Bam bam bam...

Adam remained on the spot as he dodged the bullets while also searching for his target, but the horde of cackling clowns around him made it impossible for him to track down the real one.

Furthermore, it was impossible to consistently dodge these bullets, and soon, his chest and abdomen began to sustain bullet wounds. The clown anomaly's firepower was nothing exceptional, but it couldn't simply be brushed off, either, and Adam's skin and flesh were being torn open with every shot. The closest call was a gunshot that had struck him in the face, splitting his entire cheek open.

It was in situations like this that he really missed his other anomaly.

If Mummy were still around, he would've fused with it without any hesitation, and its immense defensive capabilities would've allowed it to shrug off attacks of this caliber with ease. Not only would it render the enemy's attacks completely ineffective, its Hypertoxic Halo would've been able to wear down the opponent for a slow but steady victory. Unfortunately, Mummy was dead, and it would take some time to nurture it again.

Bam!

Adam sustained another shot while inspecting his surroundings.

In this situation, he had no choice but to unleash indiscriminate attacks, unleashing countless Explosive Fireballs out of his mouths to sweep up everything around him in a sea of explosions and fire.

However, this was an extremely taxing mode of attack, and his body was beginning to tire as his energy slowly ran out.

This is not going to work!

Dense smoke was swirling through the air all around him, and the clones that had just been destroyed by the explosions were slowly reforming. The clown had used its clone illusion ability once again.

At this rate, I'm only delaying the inevitable. I can't keep going like this...

Adam was expending an enormous amount of psychic energy, but his opponent was only conjuring up illusions to harass him. There was a vast disparity in the power being expended by the two sides, and Adam was at a clear disadvantage here.

He tried to muster up his telegnosis again, but all sounds were drowned out by the cackling of the clowns, all scents were masked by the smoke and the miscellaneous objects around him, his eyes were being deceived by the horde of clones, and his sense of taste was not applicable here. It seemed that the only remaining sense that he could utilize was his sense of touch.

.

But how was he supposed to use his sense of touch here?

After some contemplation, Adam hatched a rough plan, and during that time, he was struck by three more gunshots.

At this point, his body was already riddled with wounds, and there were barely any patches of skin that were left unscathed. There were still hundreds of cackling clowns around him, and after some further contemplation, Adam decided to flee.

He fled through the collapsed wall before rushing toward another building.

Given the terrible state that Adam was in, the clown anomaly had victory within reach, so it naturally wasn't going to allow Adam to get away, and it set off in pursuit with its true body intermingled among the hundreds of illusory clones.

𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

Adam rushed past a pair of warehouses, then crashed through a window and arrived in an apartment.

In contrast with the warehouses from before, this was a far more confined space, and there was no way that several hundred illusory clones could fit inside.