Chapter 280: Hit Its Heads
Chapter 280: Hit Its Heads
"Hit its heads! Hit its heads!" Mole yelled loudly after binding the anomaly.
Even without his strategic input, everyone had already realized that the best way forward was to target the anomaly's heads, and they were all preparing their own attacks.
Rabbit was gathering an enormous amount of soul power on her paws, while Armadillo had conjured up a spear of sand. Shae pounced directly at one of the heads as she spread her jaws open, while Adam also instructed three of his clones to whip out their electric drills.
In the next instant, everyone sprang into action at once. Armadillo's spear plunged through one of the anomaly's heads, while another head was detonated by an eruption of soul power. Shae had sunk her fangs into a third head, while Adam's three clones had drilled a trio of holes into the anomaly's fourth head.
The spider anomaly was unable to withstand such a fierce assault, and it was becoming extremely agitated.
Rabbit's attack had the most prominent effect, destroying one of its heads outright and causing its body to devolve and revert back to a weaker form.
The only saving grace for it was that thanks to its incredible regenerative abilities, the destroyed head was slowly growing back.
"Don't let it recover! Smash all of its heads!"
Adam invoked Sludge as he spoke, and sure enough, as soon as it appeared, it immediately caused half the building to collapse. It was just about to jump into the battle and put an end to the spider anomaly when a burst of bright radiance suddenly erupted from the sharp spikes on its back.
The burst of blinding light was like a precursor to a nuclear explosion, and immediately following the flash of light, a nuclear explosion really did arrive.
Boom!
A violent explosion of unprecedented destructive power erupted out of nowhere, blowing the entire apartment apart alongside three or four of the neighboring buildings.
Adam and his companions were almost entirely wiped out by the explosion.
There was no way that Adam and Shae would've been able to survive such a violent explosion from such close quarters, and Mole most likely had very little chance of surviving as well. Out of the entire team, only Rabbit and Armadillo would've had decent chances of surviving the ordeal.
However, fortunately for them, Adam had invoked Sludge with the intention of dealing the final blow on the anomaly, but even though it had failed to accomplish that goal, it had managed to save everyone's lives.
Right before the explosion, Sludge threw itself onto the anomaly to smother the explosion as much as possible, and that was why everyone had managed to survive.
Adam spat out a mouthful of dust as he clambered to his feet on the street outside. Several of his bones had been broken, but those injuries didn't affect his movement.
Everyone else also got up from not too far away from him.
The explosion had destroyed the entire apartment building, and even though most of the destructive power had been smothered by Sludge, everyone was still sent flying by the shockwaves.
"Is the anomaly dead?"
Shae had the least battle experience out of everyone in the group, and she was clearly quite shaken by what had just happened. It took her quite some time to return to her senses before making her way over to Adam's side.
"Probably not," A replied while inspecting Sludge's condition through their psychic connection.
Having just smothered the explosion, its body had been blown up into countless pieces, but all of those pieces had turned into sludge and were squirming over to Adam's side before slowly fusing back together.
Even though Sludge had transformed into a stone giant, it was still capable of reverting back to its sludge form, thereby granting it top-tier regenerative abilities in addition to its incredible offensive and defensive prowess.
"Sludge isn't dead, so that anomaly most likely isn't dead, either."
Adam couldn't say with full certainty whether the spider anomaly had perished. After all, he had no idea what had happened after the explosion.
"It's definitely not dead," Mole interjected. "The surrounding environment hasn't changed at all, so there's no way that the anomaly is dead. I can't believe you don't even know something as basic as this. You're not as smart as I first thought."
"Oh, you're right!" An enlightened look appeared on Adam's face. "I can't even begin to compare with your unmatched intelligence!"
Mole was clearly very pleased to have his intelligence praised, and he immediately burst into triumphant laughter.
"What do we do next?"
"Let's discuss the situation and devise a plan. Now that we've let the anomaly escape again, it's most likely going to be very difficult to defeat it."
Now that it had been established that the anomaly was still alive, it was most likely the case that it had managed to escape, and the logical next step for it to take would be to find its final two heads.
Everyone had already been struggling to deal with the anomaly with only five heads, and now that they were all carrying injuries, it was going to be very difficult to overcome the anomaly in its ultimate form.
Sure enough, while Adam was speaking with everyone else, the body of the spider anomaly, which had been completely blown apart during the explosion, was slowly reforming at the epicenter of the explosion. It fled the scene as it recovered, quickly leaping onto a tall building before scurrying away.
As long as it wasn't surrounded, it was more than capable of escaping. No one in Adam's team could match its speed with the exception of Mole, but Mole was no match for it in a one-on-one battle.
Hence, Adam had failed once again.
"I think it might be best to retreat for now."
Everyone else gathered around while Adam was speaking with Mole, and all of them were carrying injuries that weren't insignificant.
"Sima Kai may be a psycho, but it's not like he's a sworn enemy of ours, so there's no need to fight his anomaly to the death here."
In the past, Adam had been thrust into many battles where his back had been against the wall, and he had no choice but to fight for his life.
However, this was a completely different case. He was only doing this to acquire anomalic power for self-enhancement purposes. If Sima Kai proved to be too hard a case to crack, then he could just move onto someone else instead of taking excessive risk.
However, this proposal was met with vehement resistance from the three psychic mutants.
"We can't let him get away!"
"Didn't you see those animal samples he made? He has to die!"
"Don't try to talk us out of this, we're not going anywhere!"
"But everyone's injured," Adam countered. "How about we get out of the psychic world and recuperate for a while first?"
"Screw that! We all have superb regenerative abilities! Just give us half an hour and we'll be fine!"
The three psychic mutants were all extremely confident in their own innate regenerative powers.
"What do you say?"
Having essentially led Hook and Nie Yiyi to their deaths, Adam no longer wanted to make risky decisions for others.
"I also want to stay and fight," Shae said with a determined expression. "At this point, we're constantly racing against time. We'll be dead anyway if we can't get stronger. Surely you don't think I'll just be able to live happily ever after if Hebi no Miko manages to kill you. Even if she doesn't come after me, my family or Masao Yamamoto will make sure that I'm dead. If we're going to hunt down a target, then why not make it a big one?"
With all seven of its heads assembled, the spider anomaly was at least going to be a level seven anomaly by Adam's estimates. He couldn't even imagine how powerful he was going to become if he could devour the anomalic power of such a powerful entity.
"Alright, then let's do it! No matter how powerful it is, it's still a far cry from Hebi no Miko!"