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Chapter 137: Two Brain Cells
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Adam had cut that mind in half. He had made Sinister dumber.
But dumb for Sinister was still genius for anyone else. And now, all three were coming for him.
Time to dance.
Adam's eyes flickered, then he licked his lips. Oh, this was going to be a good day. Slow. Stupefy. Brittle. Misfortune. Recoil.
The curses lashed out, invisible, incomprehensible. They settled on each of the three like weights chained to their souls.
Instantly, they felt it, as clear as day. He was curse stacking, so much so that they instantly felt the obvious effects.
The numbness, the slowness, the muddled state of their body and mind. It was oppressive beyond belief.
Sinister felt it the clearest, more curses stacking on top of Stupefy.
It was like a leech attached to his consciousness, and for the first time in centuries, Nathaniel Essex felt genuine unease... And delight.
His eyes lit up, and he changed his plans. Adam's ability, he wants it more than ever before. Indeed, he was never here for something as simple as killing.
It's never that simple for him.
Then Fade and Muffle wrapped around Adam like a shroud, though he wasn't sure how useful that would be against them.
Sinister is also a telepath. Victor has his beastly senses. Shaw can track kinetic energy. They are the antithesis of such abilities.
But oh well, Adam felt as if he needed all the help he could get, no matter how little it was.
[Curse stacking. Imagine he could stack multiple of the same curses on the same target? Like, double Stupefy.]
[Sounds too broken, and probably breaks some cosmic balance bullshit because that would delete their intelligence entirely, yeah, too much.]
[Sinister's expression... It's even worse! He wants him as a lab rat!]
[Guys, RIP. I know it was coming eventually, arc of suffering, Adam back in the cell...]
[Sinister is portrayed as someone obsessed with mutants, so he must've started plotting for Adam long ago.]
[Adam made it easy, to be fair, being such a public whore. Everyone knows of him.]
[Just gonna say again, Plot Armor!!]
Sabertooth struck first.
He is someone who works by instinct, and the thing Adam's curses did the most was make him rely more on instinct.
His senses were also too primal to be completely fooled by Fade; even if it was working decently well against him, making it so Adam seemed more like a show by the side.
But he still caught a whisper of scent, and didn't even need to look, just launching himself at the space where Adam should be.
His claws raked through air, through leaves, through the trunk of a tree that exploded into splinters.
Adam was already gone, flowing to the side in a movement too fast for human eyes.
Calm as ever, he solidified a blade of blood so condensed it was stronger than any normal blade, catching its hilt mid-air and slashing toward Creed's exposed flank; and connected, drawing a line of crimson across the mutant's ribs.
Creed roared, more in fury than pain, and spun. His claws caught Adam across the chest, tearing through fabric and flesh in three parallel lines.
Yet as if he cared less for the pain and damage, Adam moved forward to Victor instead of backward, his blade penetrating the beast's chest.
It was a symphony of fluid movement that, at the cost of his chest being shredded by the claws, he injured Victor heavily and avoided the falling projectile, Shaw, who, like a comet, fell where he once was.
Blood gushed like a fountain, from both Adam and Victor, but the former didn't let even a drop slip.
In fact, he never lets a drop of blood slip away, especially his blood. It's a valuable currency.
As Adam leaped aside, the gushing blood stopped mid-air, reversed direction, and flowed back into the wounds, which sealed with an audible sizzle.
The blood that had escaped reformed into a dozen razor-sharp projectiles that lanced toward Creed's face.
He dodged most. Two embedded in his shoulder. He ripped them out, glaring, already healing.
Recoil did its magic.
Victor felt a sharp pain in his chest; the echo of the wound he'd just given Adam, much of it rebounding upon him.
Victor, however, was one of the individuals that Recoil won't be very effective against, as his regeneration was already doing its magic, the wound becoming nothing but a fleeting breeze.
"Interesting," Sinister murmured, watching from a distance. "Very interesting."
He was watching, and he liked the show. Adam's abilities were wonderful and varied... He is definitely an Omega-level mutant, as he deduced.
Then he attacked.
The concussive blast that erupted from his hands was smaller than before; he was holding back, wanting to observe; but still powerful enough to send Adam tumbling across the clearing.
Adam rolled, came up in a crouch, and found Shaw directly in front of him.
Shaw's fist connected with Adam's jaw, and Adam merely grinned, allowing it all to happen without much resistance.
The impact was like being hit by a train. Adam flew backward, bounced off a boulder, and crashed through a thicket.
Shaw felt the Recoil; a sharp pain in his own jaw; then a crack, as if his jaw broke. He frowned, enduring the extreme pain.
The sensation was so wrong. Pain was something he hadn't felt in a long while.
His power can absorb all kinetic energy, so rarely can anything bypass his defense, but something had leaked through.
And he didn't understand how it happened because Adam hadn't hit him. Rather, it seems that him hitting Adam resulted in that... Just like the wound that strangely appeared on Victor's chest.
Adam is capable of bypassing his defense, that Victor could still realize despite his muddled mind.
Adam rose from the wreckage, laughing.
"Goddamn," He coughed, spitting blood. "That's a hell of a right hook, Shaw. It felt nice... It hit just the right spot. Like, wow. Now, if you'll excuse my greed, I want to feel it again."
He didn't wait for a response. His body shifted, collapsing inward, and suddenly, he was bat form; a tiny, fast-moving target that shot toward the tree line.
Sabertooth lunged, claws swiping through empty air where the bat had been a moment before.
Sinister fired a concussive energy blast; a trickle of his power that obliterated a section of forest but missed the darting creature entirely.
His eyes tracked the bat's trajectory. His telepathy reached out, searching for a mind to grasp...
And found nothing much. Adam's mind, wrapped in Hollow, was a void. There was nothing much there to catch.
He sensed something, but it wasn't much, because Adam's self-hollow curse isn't yet so strong as to completely hide his mind.
Moreover, from what little he sensed, he concluded that Adam's mind is very strong, too strong. Telepathy won't be too useful against him.
"Ohh, so much more interesting, yummers," Sinister whispered as he licked his lips.
The bat transformed mid-flight, becoming Adam again just in time to land on a massive oak branch.
He kicked off immediately, launching himself at Sabertooth with a blood-blade extended.
Creed met him head-on. Their clash was a blur of claws and blades, of snarls and laughter.
Creed was certainly not as strong and fast as him, but he was more experienced; his centuries of combat showed in every move.
He drove Adam back, his claws finding flesh again and again, each wound healing almost instantly as Adam's blood manipulation recycled every drop.
Adam could read him like a book and should be winning without trouble, but the issue was Sinister.
He was the one whose powerful telekenesis moved Adam's blade enough to avoid reaching Victor's heart.
And now, he was constantly intervening. His telekenesis cannot control Adam, but he could mess with him and make minor adjustments.
But it's his concussive blasts and force fields that were very much annoying.
But at least every wound Adam took, Creed felt. The Recoil curse was relentless; a constant, irritating feedback that made the feral mutant's attacks slightly less effective.
It was like fighting while being poked with hot needles from the inside.
Adam's blood blade shifted, becoming a whip that wrapped around Creed's leg.
He yanked, pulling the massive mutant off-balance, then used the momentum to spin and deliver a kick to Shaw's chest as the Black King tried to flank him.
Only for a concussive blast to reach him, sending Adam tumbling directly at Shaw, the latter having just stabilized, taking the opportunity to pack all his force into a punch that Adam gladly took.
He did so to avoid the claws of the beast that leaped behind him, having regained his balance, and he would never refuse the opportunity to Recoil Shaw.
And indeed, again, Shaw felt that leakage, that punishment that bypassed his defenses. His expression darkened, eyeing Adam, who stopped his tumble with a web of blood that then formed into blood wings.
"You're doing something," It was Sabertooth who growled. "Something that hurts me when I hurt you!!"
"Observant!" Adam called with a laugh, dodging another blast from Sinister. "Gold star for you! You smart! You, more than two brain cells, bravo!!"