Chapter 69: Divorce Paper
Chapter 69: Divorce Paper
Chapter 69: Divorce Paper
If I recall correctly, the carving knife was glowing green last time...
Adam examined the attributes of Mummy to find that the hypertoxic blade from before had transformed into a vampiric blade. In addition to that, the viscous substance on its bandages had become even thicker. These changes had most likely been brought about by the anomalic power that it had just absorbed.
The vampire anomaly possessed a blood-sucking ability, and that was the cause for the change in Mummy's blade. The sludge aberrations that Adam had dealt with last time had possessed powerful defenses and regenerative abilities, and Mummy had also acquired some of those abilities during its evolution.
Overall, the current Mummy was no weaker than its previous iteration. In fact, it was even slightly more powerful than the previous Mummy at its peak. Thus, Adam now had one more level two anomaly at his disposal.
Adam was delighted by this turn of events. Out of all of the anomalies that he currently possessed, Mummy was his favorite. He was able to rely on it to save himself in life-threatening situations, and its offensive capabilities were far superior to Hellhound's.
However, at the same time, Adam had also noticed something that was a little concerning.
According to the classification system that he had coined, the vampire anomaly had clearly been a level two anomaly, which meant that its overall powers were roughly on par with those of Hellhound, Distortion, and Mummy. At the very least, there wasn't any clear disparity.
After absorbing the vampire's anomalic power, Adam wanted to try and prioritize the nurturing of a single anomaly, which was why he had allocated the anomalic power to Hellhound first. However, the enhancements that Hellhound had received from the injection of anomalic power weren't very pronounced.
He had a feeling that if he wanted to evolve a level two anomaly, then he would have to devour a massive quantity of anomalic power from anomalies of the same level. However, the anomalic power from the vampire was able to quickly trigger an evolution when funneled into a level one anomaly.
It seems like if I want to evolve a level two anomaly, the best way to do that would be to kill a level three anomaly, rather than always going after low-level anomalies.
Adam had no experience whatsoever when it came to evolving level two anomalies. Out of all of the anomalies that had arisen from his personality, the most powerful ones were currently level two anomalies.
It was very easy for infantile anomalies to evolve into level one anomalies, and the evolution from level one to level two didn't feel very difficult, either. After all, even killing those sludge aberrations had been enough to accumulate a great deal of evolutionary power.
However, the evolution from level two to level three seemed to be a significant hurdle.
.
There aren't enough experimental subjects for me to draw any concrete conclusions. I'll have to do more tests next time.
The surrounding smoke and dust cleared away while Adam was absorbed in his own thoughts, and Shae attempted to approach him from afar.
"Is it over, Adam? It looks like the vampire's gone now. Is it dead?"
"Yes, it's already dead. I... Stop!"
A thought suddenly occurred to Adam as he spoke, but before he had a chance to finish what he was saying, a dark figure had already pounced onto Shae.
It was Distortion.
It was unable to discern between friend and foe, and aside from Adam's psychic body, it could potentially consider anyone to be an enemy.
On top of that, Distortion was even more powerful than the average level two anomaly. As an ordinary student adapter, Shae couldn't even match up against a level one anomaly, so any attack from Distortion would've definitely had a severe effect on her. In fact, she could've easily been killed from having her torso snapped.
With that in mind, Adam scrambled desperately to withdraw Distortion back into his body.
Thus, Distortion only lingered on Shae for a few seconds before it was withdrawn, following which Adam hurriedly rushed over to Shae's side.
"Are you alright?"
"I'm fine. What's up?"
"How? This doesn't make sense!" Even though Distortion had only clung onto Shae's body for a few seconds, given its abilities, it should've at least snapped all of her limbs, if not killed her on the spot. "Are you sure you're alright? You didn't feel any sudden pain in your body or anything?"
"No. The mission's done now, right? What's that big thing over there?" Shae took a few steps back again as she caught sight of Mummy nearby. "Is that another emotional anomaly?"
"Don't worry about it, I'll explain it to you later." Even though Adam had many questions he wanted to ask, he had to refrain from doing so given that they were being watched. "I'll go take a look inside the house to see if there are any aberrations that haven't been dealt with yet."
After entering Wang Shuai's house in the psychic world, Adam saw a home that appeared to be warm and inviting on the surface, but was actually extremely eerie and unsettling. Not only was the atmosphere very oppressive, upon closer inspection, Adam discovered that many of the ornaments and furnishings were catered solely toward women. In addition to that, it was possible to tell from a single glance that some of the furniture and pieces of jewelry were extremely expensive.
There was a stack of divorce papers on the table, and Adam didn't know why something like that had appeared here, but it was clear that these divorce papers held great significance in Wang Shuai's psychic world.
Prior to entering Wang Shuai's psychic world, the contract that was established included a "legal breach of privacy" clause. This was because the process of searching for aberrations was a breach of privacy in itself. Thus, Adam didn't hesitate at all before picking up the divorce papers. There were many clauses laid out on the settlement papers, but the majority of them were extremely harsh on Wang Shuai, while greatly benefitting his wife.
No wonder she's a vampire in his psychic world.
After examining the interior of the house, Adam departed after failing to discover any other aberrations.
"How did it go?"
"That's it. There was only one anomaly in there. Let's go take a look elsewhere."
In the end, Adam didn't find any emotional aberrations anywhere else. Clearly, for a man like Wang Shuai, who spent his entire life either at home or at work, his house and his company were the two sole locations in his psychic world that gave rise to his emotional baggage.
"Alright, job's done. Let's get out of here."
They returned to the place where they had first appeared in Wang Shuai's psychic world, and Adam withdrew all of his anomalies before departing with Shae.
Wang Shuai slowly opened his eyes as he awakened from his slumber, and he was immediately greeted by the sound of Kim Hee-cho's agitated voice.
"We lost out big time for this job! The price we charged is way too low for eradicating an emotional anomaly! You shouldn't have additional work. There are no clauses in our contract that hold us responsible for eradicating anomalies. If you wanted to do that, then you should've come out first and waited until we revised the contract before going back in," Kim Hee-cho complained. "Every time I go on a mission with you, we always end up earning way less than we should! I won't blame you for that time with Peter because that was my fault, but you made us lose out on a lot of money for both this job and Karen's job!"
Adam didn't say anything in the face of Kim Hee-cho's condemnation. Indeed, as business partners, his actions really had made them lose out on quite a bit of money, but in comparison with earning money, he was much more eager to hunt down anomalies.
Anomalies were the ideal "supplement" for him, and if Wang Shuai were forced to cancel the agreement due to insufficient funds, then Adam would've had to give up on this anomaly as well, which would've been a massive loss.
He only had a very limited amount of time on his hands. Regardless of whether it was hunting for psychic mutants or supporting Shae in her bid to secure the right to succession, he needed more power, and time was of the essence.
However, even though Adam wasn't saying anything, Shae wasn't just going to stand by and watch.
Her temper immediately flared up as she countered, "How about you shut your mouth and learn to know your place? You're just a middleman, all you do is talk and leech off Adam's hard work! You're no different from that vampire from before! Who are you to be telling Adam what to do? He'll do whatever the hell he wants!"
"Who the hell are you? You're just a temporary helper, what are you getting so worked up for?"
"Alright, that's enough! I'll admit that I was in the wrong here. Once Wang Shuai wakes up, see if you can negotiate with him and get him to pay us extra for that anomaly. We're going now."
Adam departed while dragging Shae away as he spoke.
After leaving the lounge area, Adam heaved a resigned sigh.
"I thought your temper had improved a little, but it seems that was just my imagination."
"No, you're not wrong, my temper really has improved. In the past, I would've beaten his ass for talking to you like that! Even if he tried to sue me, he'd only be screwing himself over anyway," Shae said in a proud manner, then strode away with her high heel shoes clicking along the ground.