Hunter of Immortals

Chapter 321: Tree Man Herman

"Crap!"

Adam sighed as he slowly turned around.

Up to this point, Herman was the biggest gold mine of information on the adapter child trafficking case that Adam had encountered. Just this airport alone contained extremely important leads, and Adam was certain that there were countless more useful leads to be discovered in Herman's memories.

However, his investigation was being obstructed due to how powerful Herman was, and that was naturally very frustrating to him.

Upon turning around, Adam discovered that Herman had already transformed into a half-human, half-tree hybrid creature.

His skin resembled the bark of an old tree, and countless vines were growing all over his body. His face had been relatively handsome prior to this, but it had been warped to resemble the face of a psychic mutant.

However, it was clear that he had also become significantly more powerful in this form.

Right as Herman arrived, Distortion also appeared on the scene, using its Shadow Strike ability to appear directly behind Herman before attempting to ensnare his body once again.

Even though Herman's time-based abilities were extremely formidable, his psychic body was so fragile that it may as well have been constructed from cardboard.

However, things were different now. After absorbing the seed, Herman's physical defenses had been significantly enhanced, to the point that even in the face of Distortion's Physical Shackles ability, his body was able to maintain its structural integrity and remain largely unaffected.

Thus, in addition to his formidable time-based abilities, he had also attained a tank-like body, and Adam immediately arrived at a realization.

There's no way I can win this battle anymore.

Prior to this, there was a chance for Adam to catch Herman off guard and kill him with a single strike, but now...

Even if I can't win, I should be able to stall until time's up.

All Mechguard units had a three-minute-verdict system in their programming.

Even though time had been slowed down by 100 times earlier, the battle that had just taken place had to have wasted some time. Most importantly, it had to have taken Herman at least two minutes to shake off Adam's anomalies and arrive at the airport.

That should mean that there's very little time remaining, Adam thought to himself. If there are still 30 seconds left, then that equates to 3,000 seconds if time is slowed down by a hundredfold, so that would be 50 minutes.

This was a very long time, but if there were only 10 seconds left, then that would equate to less than 20 minutes, and he was confident that he would be able to last that duration of time.

With that in mind, Adam turned to face Herman, who was already charging directly at him.

Herman raised his dagger, slowly advancing while plunging his dagger directly toward Adam's heart.

Adam wanted to dodge, but he was far slower than Herman in this, so he was only able to avoid having the dagger pierce through his heart, but it was still able to plunge into his chest.

As a result of how slowly time was flowing, the sensation of pain was also elongated, but Adam paid no heed to this as he immediately began to retaliate, chomping down at Herman's head with the head that possessed the greatest bite force of his three heads.

However, such a slow attack naturally posed no threat to Herman. In Herman's domain, the slowing of time affected Adam three times as much as it did Herman, so not only was Herman able to dodge Adam's attack, he even had the time to slash his dagger through the air in a second attack, slicing straight through Adam's abdomen.

Having absorbed the power of the seed, Herman's strength had been enhanced just as much as his physical defenses.

However, Adam wasn't completely unable to retaliate. While Herman was in his follow-through motion after slashing his dagger across Adam's abdomen, Distortion reared its ugly head once again.

While in his follow-through motion, Herman was in a rather vulnerable and awkward position. Taking advantage of this opportunity, Adam retaliated with perfect timing, instructing Distortion to make its move.

At this point, Distortion had already climbed its way onto Herman's body, and even though it was unable to fold Herman like a pretzel as it had been able to prior to this, it was still able to restrict Herman's mobility with its tremendous strength, temporarily slowing Herman down so that his speed was only roughly on par with Adam's.

Thus, Adam was able to sink his fangs into Herman's throat.

The largest of Adam's canine heads possessed the strongest bite force of the three, capable of biting through iron and steel.

However, in the face of Herman's neck, which was currently riddled with vines, Adam's fangs weren't able to sink in very deep at all.

Fresh tree sap mixed with green blood began to flow down his jaws through the gaps between his fangs, and he was vigorously shaking his head from side to side, trying to tear off the chunk of flesh that was caught between his fangs.

However, everything suddenly took an abrupt turn.

The golden hourglass was shaken once again, and time was stopped for an instant, while a reduction in the amount of sand in the hourglass was observed.

By the time Adam returned to his senses, one of his heads had already been decapitated, and Herman was in the process of slashing his dagger at another one of his two remaining heads.

He used that time stop ability again!

Adam was feeling very frustrated as he took evasive measures, following which he noticed a row of bullets flying through the air from afar at a speed comparable to a school of swimming tadpoles.

In the real world, the speed at which a tadpole was capable of swimming was naturally not very impressive, but in this time domain, it was extremely fast.

While Adam was dodging Herman's attack, the row of "tadpoles" struck Herman in quick succession, knocking him slightly off balance so that he was unable to string together a sequence of attacks.

Finally, Adam's reinforcements had arrived.

The first one to arrive was Clown, followed closely by Sludge.

Both of them were high-level anomalies, and they weren't as fast as Herman, but the speed disparity between them certainly wasn't that significant, either.

Following Clown's arrival, it immediately began firing all types of weapons at Herman.

Trailing along behind the row of bullets was a cluster of rockets that were "motoring" along at a turtle's pace.

Meanwhile, Sludge was rushing directly at Adam at his behest to serve as his meat shield.

As long as Adam could hold out until Sludge arrived, the battle would be as good as over.

Once Sludge enveloped Adam's body with its own, Adam would be virtually unkillable.

WIth Sludge acting as a suit of armor for him, he would be able to survive even a string of attacks from Hebi no Miko, let alone Herman.

Adam was aware of this, as was Herman. He had already witnessed Sludge's immense defensive capabilities, so he naturally wasn't going to allow Adam to do as he pleased.

Before Sludge managed to arrive on the scene, Herman unleashed his time stop ability once again. This time, he used up all of the sand in the hourglass at once to stop time for as long a duration as possible.

During the span of time in which the time stop ability was in effect, Herman chopped off all of Adam's heads, then plunged his dagger into Adam's heart to seal the deal. Right as he was about to continue hacking at Adam's body to chop him up into pieces, the final grain of sand vanished from within his hourglass.

The flow of time resumed, and Adam was on the brink of death.

Sludge finally arrived on the scene, but it seemed like it was already too late.

In order to prevent Adam from fusing with Sludge, Herman intercepted Sludge after the flow of time was resumed, and at the same time, he was scrutinizing Adam intently.

Is he dead?

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