Hunter of Immortals

Chapter 71: Level Three Anomaly

"In any case, this is a good thing."

After developing those three possibilities, Adam did some stretches in a weary manner. An entire night without sleep had left him feeling quite exhausted, and even his psychic body had become a little feeble as a result.

"Don't tell anyone else about this, and try and hide this as much as possible when we're fighting together in the future."

"How are you so sure?"

"Because this is a very unique situation, and if other adapters were to find out, it could spell trouble for us."

"Then what if we can't hide it? That guy who works with you, Kim Hee-cho's his name, right? What if he finds out?"

"That's fine. Kim Hee-cho, Hook, and a girl by the name of Nie Yiyi are all allies of mine. On top of that, we share a relationship of common interest, so I'm sure they won't go around spreading our secret if I tell them not to," Adam explained.

"What do you plan to do next?"

"For now, we have to follow the organization's arrangements and help you secure the right to succession. This is very important as whoever controls the media controls public discourse. Golden Teeth Incorporated is a top-tier media conglomerate in our city, so it's vital that we seize control of it. On top of that, there are many ties between the people behind Golden Teeth Incorporated and the human farm. If you can secure the right to succession, you'll be able to find out many things.

"I also have to wait for the pawn shop to call on me to hunt for psychic mutants. Those psychic mutants have been released in order to further some people's political objectives. They've caused mass destruction to stir up widespread animosity, and that'll trigger a chain reaction. Soon, people are going to begin calling for laws to be passed for normal adapters to be regulated by legal bodies, but only adapters can supervise other adapters. If such a system is implemented, the official adapters will be granted additional power over the ones being regulated.

"Those who are in positions of power are the ones who perpetrated this outbreak of psychic mutants to begin with, and when those adapters are given power, everything will be in their control. They would be able to increase the scale of human farming to their heart's content or even pick out blank slates among ordinary adapters. We won't be able to contribute much, but this is something that directly impacts us, so we have to do what we can in order to stop them."

"The third thing that we have to do is continue to complete more jobs. We have to kill more emotional anomalies as quickly as possible in order to accumulate more power."

After some consideration, Adam decided to reveal his secret to Shae.

They shared the same objectives, so they were going to be doing many things together. Most importantly, she now possessed the ability to fuse with his anomalies, so he wouldn't have been able to keep his anomalies' potential for rapid growth a secret. As opposed to only explaining things to her when he had no choice but to do so, thereby potentially driving a wedge between them, it was better for him to explain things right away.

"My anomalies have a special ability that allows them to become stronger whenever I kill an emotional anomaly. If they become more powerful, then we become more powerful!"

"Really?"

Only after hearing this did Shae finally become excited. Prior to learning about this, she had no confidence that she would've ever been able to accomplish her goals. After all, she was only a student adapter, yet the enemies that she had to face consisted of powers that stood at the very pinnacle of this world.

She could grow and develop, yet the same applied to others, and she was sorely lacking in support.

"So your anomalies can get stronger by killing other anomalies? How many do we need to kill? Is there an upper limit?"

"At the moment, I don't think there's any upper limit."

"Then what are we waiting for? We gotta take on more missions! We need to be constantly taking on missions that'll pit us against the most powerful emotional anomalies! We need to find sociopaths and psychopaths that have committed serious crimes! I know an uncle who works in a prison, and there are tons of serious criminals who were abused as children and locked up in that prison. We can try to approach them, then..."

"No no no, that would be committing suicide!" Adam hurriedly said with a wave of his hands.

When it came to sociopathic and psychopathic felons who had been abused as children, one could only imagine just how powerful the emotional anomalies that they harbored were.

Those anomalies were most likely far more fearsome than the one in the psychic world of Deranged Pig's daughter, and there was no way that Adam could challenge anomalies of that caliber at his current level of ability.

"Don't try to bite off more than you can chew. There are different levels when it comes to emotional anomalies, the ones you're talking about could kill us in seconds!" Adam gave Shae a set of account details as he spoke. "Go into this mission account in the Metaverse and select some missions. Look at the mission descriptions to determine the condition of the client. Wang Shuai's condition is a pretty good benchmark to go off, and if you can find a client in a slightly worse condition than him, that would be even better. It would give us a bit of a challenge."

"Got it!"

Shae immediately nodded in response before preparing to put on the helmet.

"Aren't you going to sleep?"

"It's fine, I'll go take a look at the missions first."

Shae was extremely excited, enraptured by the prospect of getting stronger.

"Alright, suit yourself. I'm gonna take a rest."

Adam laid down onto the single bed and closed his eyes, leaving Shae to her own devices.

After sleeping for an indeterminate period of time, Adam was roused from his slumber, and as soon as he opened his eyes, he was greeted by the sight of Shae's excited face.

"I found a suitable job for you?"

"Really?"

Adam didn't have much trust in Shae's professional competence. After all, in his eyes, she didn't even know the first thing about the classification of anomalies.

However, to his surprise, she had found a mission that had a piece of footage attached.

"This footage was sent by the client. Take a look, I think this anomaly is perfect for our needs."

Adam massaged his own bleary eyes, and before he had a chance to react, Shae had already thrust a communicator directly into his face. The communicator was playing a piece of footage that depicted a church, and there were three adapters carefully searching through the church.

The three of them were proceeding with a great deal of caution, so much so that they were looking a little fearful.

"Who're these three?"

"They're psychotherapists from another clinic."

"Did they fail to complete the mission? What's going on here?"

"Just keep watching. The anomaly is about to appear soon. Take a look and see if it's at a suitable level of power for us."

Adam continued to watch the footage, and inside the image, the three adapters were displaying a decent level of chemistry as they proceeded cautiously through the church.

At this point, they had arrived in a corridor in the church, and there were paintings hanging up on either side of the corridor.

These were all very ordinary oil paintings, some of which were depicting scenery, while others were portraits of people, yet right as they were passing by a painting of a nun, the soft facial features of the nun suddenly twisted in a sinister fashion. At the same time, the bright color scheme of the oil painting became extremely dark and twisted.

A loud shriek rang out as a nun anomaly suddenly extended a huge black hand out of the oil painting. The hand grabbed onto the head of one of the adapters, and the adapter tried to resist, but his power was rapidly sapped away. After a struggle that lasted no more than two seconds, he was dragged into the oil painting, following which a massive burst of blood gushed out. It seemed that half of the adapter's body had been devoured.

His two companions were initially attacking the oil painting in an attempt to rescue him, but once they realized their efforts were futile, they hurriedly began yelling in a blind panic.

"Cut off the connection! Hurry! He's already done for! Otherwise, we're going to die as well!"

……

The footage abruptly cut off there, and it was clear that collaborator on the outside had severed the psychic connection.

"What do you think? Isn't that anomaly at the perfect power level for us?"

Adam played back the footage that he had just witnessed in his mind, assessing the speed of the anomaly's surprise attack, the power of the adapters' retaliation, and the effects of their retaliative attacks.

"It's pretty much spot on. Those two adapters are about halfway between a level one anomaly and a level two anomaly, and they were able to inflict some damage, but it was very limited. If I'm not mistaken, that anomaly should be at the very peak of level two anomalies or a rather weak level three anomaly."

"What are these levels that you're talking about?"

"Don't worry about it, it's a classification system I made up myself. Let's accept this mission!"

As soon as Adam agreed to accept the mission, his communicator immediately began to ring.