Chapter 318: Time (2)
In this setting, everyone was moving in super slow motion, including Herman himself, even though he was the one responsible for this.
However, he was slowed down to a far lesser degree compared with everyone else.
If everyone had been slowed down by 100 times, then he would've only been slowed down by 30 times, thereby creating a very clear disparity in speed.
Adam was no stranger to facing faster opponents than himself.
An example of this was when he faced Eyeless for the first time. Eyeless's blade was extremely fast, and his attack had reached Adam in the blink of an eye. The same applied to Hebi no Miko, who possessed superhuman speed.
In this situation, Herman was several times faster than he was. Essentially, he could only move several millimeters per second, while Herman could move an entire centimeter in the same span of time. This feeling was even more frustrating than facing a significantly faster opponent under normal circumstances as here, every single moment was magnified and elongated.
Adam could feel his assailant's blade slowly passing through his cervical spine, and he could also feel it as the tip of the blade passed through his cervical spine before slowly puncturing the back of his esophagus.
This experience of having one's death stretched out and elongated was an extremely torturous one.
The tip of the blade slowly crept forward before emerging out of the front of Adam's throat, and what followed was an overwhelming sensation of asphyxiation and feebleness.
Thankfully, death was also descending upon Adam far slower than it normally would've. After piercing through Adam's throat, the blade began to move horizontally to decapitate him, but it was also right at this moment that the blade came to an abrupt halt.
Adam knew that Distortion's ability had finally taken effect.
Following its previous evolution, Distortion now possessed a total of four abilities.
Its innate ability was its transparent body, which made it far stealthier than before, thereby significantly increasing its chances of successfully carrying out sneak attacks.
Shadow Strike was an ability that allowed it to directly appear in an opponent's shadow within a certain range.
Not much had to be said about Physical Shackles as that was Distortion's signature ability prior to its latest evolution. This ability allowed it to bind one's body, as well as twist and bend its target's joints. If its target possessed insufficient strength or a frail physical constitution, then Distortion would be able to twist them into a pretzel in an instant.
However, the ability that had saved Adam on this occasion was the fourth one, Spiritual Shackles.
This ability allowed Distortion to directly suppress one's consciousness. During his spare time in the past few days, Adam had tested out this ability on the psychic mutant trio, and he discovered that after being afflicted by this ability, the target would briefly lose consciousness, as if they had blacked out.
While his assailant was rooted to the spot from the effects of the Spiritual Shackles, Adam began to attempt to fuse as one with Sludge.
At this point, Sludge had already slowly taken shape, and upon sensing Adam's call, its body began to disintegrate into specks of light that flowed toward Adam.
In the past, the fusion process had always taken place in the blink of an eye amid a flash of light, so Adam had never had a chance to see exactly what the process was like.
However, as time slowed down to a crawl, he was finally able to catch a clear glimpse of the entire process.
All invoked entities were a part of their invocator's psychic body to begin with. Adam watched as the specks of slight slowly surged onto his body, and at the same time, Sludge began to disintegrate.
Meanwhile, his own body began to expand after he absorbed these specks of light. His skin was becoming rougher before turning into stone, and his height also slowly grew from around 180 centimeters to two meters, then to three.
Right as Adam's body had reached around 350 centimeters in height, Herman finally snapped out of Distortion's Spiritual Shackles, and he pulled out the blade that he had plunged into Adam's body before jumping up to attack him again.
However, Adam was no longer vulnerable to such attacks, and the metal blade was unable to do anything aside from raise trails of sparks as they sliced over his body.
Thus, Adam was able to complete his fusion with Sludge before slowly turning around to face his assailant.
In the psychic world, Herman was presented in the form of a strange assassin holding a peculiar dagger in his left hand and an hourglass in his right.
Herman's psychic body presented quite the contrast with his form in the real world. In the real world, he appeared to be quite an arrogant and conceited person, yet here in the psychic world, he was a hooded assassin who appeared to be extremely careful and cautious.
By the time Adam turned around, Herman had already sprung back in retreat, and it was clear that direct battle wasn't his forte.
"Don't... run..."
Adam immediately set off in pursuit, reflexively attempting to yell the words "don't run" as a form of provocation, but as soon as he tried to speak, he realized that he was unable to utter any coherent phrases with time slowed down to a crawl in this world.
However, that didn't stop him from chasing the assassin.
Even though he was moving very slowly, his opponent was still being restricted by Distortion, so he wasn't much faster.
After jumping back in retreat, Herman plunged his dagger into the ground in an attempt to free himself from Distortion's bindings.
However, Distortion was not going to be so easily disposed of. Following its latest evolution, it was even able to keep up with a level anomaly like Sludge in battle, so it was certainly no slouch.
While Herman was trying to think of a way to free himself from Distortion, Adam was drawing closer and closer.
At this point, Adam had already completed his fusion with sludge, and he reached an enormous hand toward Herman. Given Sludge's enormous strength, if Adam could close his hand around the assassin, then he was confident that he would be able to crush the assassin into mincemeat.
However, right as Adam's fingers began to close around Herman, the latter abruptly vanished.
Was that a teleportation ability? No, it's something else!
Upon Herma's re-emergence, Adam noticed that some of the sand in his hourglass was missing.
His opponent was an assassin whose forte laid in controlling time, so it was much more plausible that he had stopped time for an instant just now, rather than speculate that he also possessed some type of teleportation ability.
Upon freeing himself from Distortion, Herman immediately hurled his dagger at Adam.
Adam's enormous body, coupled with the slowing of time in this world, meant that he was completely unable to dodge the oncoming projectile. Fortunately for him, given his immense physical resistance, he had no intention of taking evasive measures anyway.
The peculiar dagger slowly approached Adam's chest, raising a flurry of sparks as it made contact with Adam's body. It seemed very strange that it was able to raise sparks against Adam's body even though it was traveling so slowly, but in reality, what was slowed down in this world was time itself, not the speed at which the dagger had been thrown.
However, the dagger was still unable to pierce through Adam's defenses, and even if it had managed to pierce into his body, it wouldn't have been an issue anyway.
A 3.5-meter-tall stone giant with a small dagger plunged into its chest would've been no different from the average person receiving a mosquito bite.
.
However, in the next instant, the jewel embedded into the dagger suddenly began to glow, and the radiance that it was giving off was connecting to the hourglass in Herman's hand.
Immediately thereafter, the dagger pierced through Adam's defenses and plunged itself into his chest.
Adam didn't feel much pain from the wound, and he was just about to continue advancing when Herman suddenly flipped his hourglass upside down. As the grains of sand began to trickle through the flipped hourglass, Adam suddenly found himself slowly retreating, going back in the exact same way as he had rushed forward.
In addition to that, specks of light were seeping out of his body, which was slowly shrinking.
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