Chapter 85: Pride and Leeway

Nie Yiyi refused to admit inferiority, and after inspecting Mummy for a while from her vantage point, she decided that speed was going to be the key to her victory.

This time, she didn't dare to hold back, and cyberglyphs flashed on her body as she leaped down from the rock, accelerating drastically as she did so. It seemed that she was swooping down for a direct attack, but she twisted around while in mid-air, and her body folded in half at a strange angle. In doing so, not only had she changed the angle of her attack, she was also able to accelerate a second time.

With those flashing cyberglyphs on her blades, this was Nie Yiyi's all-out attack in her normal form. Mummy instinctively detected a sense of peril from the attack, and it raised its carving knife to defend itself, but in the end, it didn't possess sufficient dexterity to put up a timely defense, and it was struck by another blow to the neck.

A loud clang rang out, and not only were there sparks flying this time, the light radiating from Nie Yiyi's cyberglyphs erupted across the entire battlefield. Upon receiving this blow, Mummy stumbled back quite a few steps, and a mark was finally left on the steel-like bandages around its neck.

Nie Yiyi was stunned by how little damage her attack had managed to inflict, but she refused to give up, and she began to circle around Mummy again. She was moving very quickly, and she was as agile as a squirrel as she rushed her away around Mummy, lashing out over and over again with her blades. Every single one of her attacks struck the exact same spot on Mummy's neck, and as a result, the tear in its bandages there was becoming larger and larger.

Finally, Nie Yiyi found a perfect opportunity to land a finishing blow, and she unleashed her signature technique. With a slash of her blades, she released an enormous blade of wind that sliced through the very air itself. Mummy's neck was struck once again, and it was sent flying for close to 20 meters by the blade of wind.

After that intense barrage of attacks, Nie Yiyi was panting heavily, and she stood on the spot to catch her breath as she murmured to herself, "Surely that was enough."

However, after falling into a sandpit in the distance, it only took Mummy a second before he got up from the ground again. There was a wound on its neck that was about three centimeters wide and two centimeters deep, but there was no blood flowing out of the wound. Instead, a metallic liquid that resembled mercury was seeping out of the gash, and through the liquid, one could see that Mummy's flesh and bones were also metallic in appearance.

The metal-like liquid quickly congealed, and it didn't seem like Mummy had been injured very severely at all.

After that, it began its attack.

Prior to this, it hadn't retaliated against Nie Yiyi at all, and that was by design from Adam. He wanted to see where the limits of Mummy's defenses laid. After that sequence, it had become clear to him that given Mummy's current level of physical resistance, it would be extremely difficult for Nie Yiyi to kill it unless she was afforded an extensive period of time to charge up her attack.

Thus, Mummy had passed the defensive test with flying colors, displaying defensive capabilities that rivaled those of anomalies a level above it.

With that established, it was time to test out its speed and offensive prowess.

As Mummy sprang up from the ground, it displayed extremely formidable speed, even outstripping Nie Yiyi in terms of absolute speed.

It raised its black carving knife before bringing it down in a vicious slash. Nie Yiyi sprang to the side to evade the attack, and the blade slammed into the sand underfoot, creating a small crater that was half a meter deep. This was not the result of an energy blast. Instead, it was a display of pure strength from the formidable Mummy.

"That was insane!" Nie Yiyi turned to stare at Mummy with a stunned expression, and at the same time, she called out to Adam, who was watching the battle off to the side. "Isn't this guy supposed to be lacking in offensive firepower?"

"That hasn't changed! Compared with its defenses, its offensive capabilities are still sorely lacking."

In its current form, Mummy's defenses could compare with those of a level four anomaly, but in terms of offensive prowess, it was only at around the normal standard for a level three anomaly, and that came as no surprise to Adam.

After all, Mummy had absorbed the entirety of the nun's anomalic power. The nun anomaly was a level three anomaly to begin with, and Mummy was already quite formidable prior to its evolution, so it only made sense that it was more powerful than the nun anomaly was in its current form.

Furthermore, not only did the nun anomaly possess formidable offensive power and versatility, it also had access to various useful abilities such as possession and darkness manifestation. In contrast, Mummy's offensive repertoire was very limited, and its intelligence was also very low, so it was only fair that it excelled in some other areas.

After going on the offense, every single one of Mummy's attacks was imbued with devastating power, and it lashed out violently at Nie Yiyi with its carving knife. It chased her all the way from the beach to the area where the training equipment was situated, then forced her all the way to the rocks.

A loud thump rang out as a massive rock on the beach was sliced into two by Mummy's carving knife, and Nie Yiyi leaped up from the rock right before it was destroyed, arriving directly behind Mummy.

She had discovered that Mummy's offensive and defensive prowess were both quite exceptional, as was its absolute speed, but it was very slow in its turning, and its agility was also rather lacking. These shortcomings in her opponent were why she had been able to last to this point.

However, given that Nie Yiyi had no time to charge up any attacks, it was only going to be a matter of time before she was defeated.

"How is that thing so strong?" Hook was on the verge of tears as he watched from afar. "My hard-earned money's going down the drain! Attack Adam! Nie Yiyi, attack his psychic body!"

Nie Yiyi turned to take a glance at Adam, and her competitive nature won out in the end as she abandoned her attack on Mummy, simultaneously revoking her promise to refrain from directly attacking Adam.

"Hey, that's cheating!"

Adam hurriedly invoked Mummy to his side at the sight of the rapidly approaching Nie Yiyi.

Mummy sped over to Adam's side as a streak of light, but a blade of wind arrived before it, slicing through the ground beside Adam before he could transform.

"You win." Nie Yiyi raised her blade and pointed it at Adam's neck as she spoke. "But let this fight be a lesson to you. As an invocator, you can't afford to let down your guard at any time!"

"I understand. You admit defeat, but you're still not willing to accept it."

At this point, Adam had already fused as one with Mummy, and in this form, Mummy was only going to be more powerful and agile.

Nie Yiyi didn't say anything further before vanishing on the spot.

With her departure, the boundaries of her psychic world also kicked into effect. Adam and the others made no effort to resist, and they were all evicted from her psychic world.

"You've really pissed her off now!"

After emerging from Nie Yiyi's psychic world, everyone was still in the minibus, and Kim Hee-cho gleefully turned to Hook to accept his cut of the payment for the recently concluded job.

Meanwhile, Shae scooted over to Adam's side, then nudged him with her elbow as she repeated, "You've really pissed her off now!"

"I guess so."

"You've never had a girlfriend, right?"

"It hasn't even been that long since I awakened," Adam replied.

"When you're dealing with competitive girls like her, you have to learn to let her win. Not only did you defeat her, you backed her into a corner as well. That had to have been very hurtful to her pride." Shae pursed her lips with disapproval as she spoke. "How are you gonna get with her like this?"

After delivering that lesson in love, she continued to look at Adam with an expression that said: "you see what you did wrong?"

"Who told you I want to enter a relationship with her? Do we not have enough stuff on our plate already?"

"Even so, you need to have some fun in life. Otherwise, if you're going to become a psychic mutant sooner or later. I thought I was already really boring, I didn't think you would be even more boring than I am. Are we genetically predisposed to be dull people?"

"Who knows?"

"By the way, how did you become so powerful?"

"That's a secret that I don't want to disclose to anyone for now, including you," Adam replied with a shake of his head. "To be honest, even if I wanted to tell you, I wouldn't know how to go about it. Even I don't have much of a clue how everything works myself."

"That's fine," Shae replied with a shrug. "It's not like I've been completely transparent with you, either. All I want to know is whether I'll be able to use that mummy as well."

"You can."

"Good."