"Wait, this thing—"
Adam's face contorted into a grimace.
It wasn't that the power of this aircraft terrified him; Adam had seen countless weapons far more destructive than this. It was because it triggered some of the worst memories from his previous life.
Internal energy shields, anti-gravity suspension, devastating cannons, a nearly identical silhouette, and self-repair capabilities—the more Adam drew parallels, the stronger that damn sense of déjà vu became.
As a Reality Warper, Adam usually kept his abilities under tight control, appearing no different from an ordinary human to the point where others couldn't detect anything unusual. But right now, the surge of disgust in his heart was so potent that it physically manifested for a moment. It was strong enough that his teammates felt his shifting emotions and could even catch faint, flickering mental images.
—A series of unmanned aerial vehicles shaped like birds of prey.
What were those?
"What's wrong, Lord Adam?"
Sybilla, unable to leave the protection of the Void Shield due to the enemy's overwhelming firepower, turned her head toward him with a worried gaze.
"—It's nothing."
Adam forcibly suppressed the nausea rising in his throat. "I just remembered some unpleasant memories, that's all."
This specific scenario—being bombarded from high altitude by an aircraft—reminded him inexplicably of his past life, where he was hunted across the globe by the Global Occult Coalition's God-Slaying Drones.
Back then, there was truly no place to hide. If he hadn't possessed the habit of collecting and arming himself with various anomalous items, he—then merely a Rank 2 Reality Warper—would surely have perished under the pursuit of those mechanical nightmares.
But, fortunately. It was all in the past.
Even facing the peak technology of this universe—a teserract powered by a dying star—the threat felt far less significant in Adam's eyes than a Godslayer drone. After all, this teserract wasn't equipped with Scranton Reality Anchors to block essential hume-fluctuations, nor did it carry Reality Annihilation Warheads or thaumaturgical defense lattices.
"Forget it. Since it's come to this," Adam thought slowly, "I'll indulge myself just this once."
He abandoned his habit of emotional restraint. Instead, he did the opposite, channeling the extreme emotions that had just flared up into raw power to fuel his reality-warping abilities.
Adam slowly extended his hand. In the center of his palm, an infinitesimal black dot appeared.
The miniature black hole hovered silently. Defying all logic, it showed no physical influence on the surrounding space, yet it was so visually arresting that anyone who saw it couldn't look away.
"Incredible... this is the majestic power of the Omnissiah..." Belisarius Cawl muttered to himself, involuntarily beginning to chant Binary prayers in an attempt to calm his excitement.
Adam didn't stop. He raised his hand, drew it back in a standard throwing motion, and aimed at the teserract looming in the sky.
"Wait, what is that?"
The Cryptek staring at the projections was lost in confusion at the sudden, illogical spike in anomalous energy readings. This shouldn't be possible.
Adam's reaction was faster. He planted his foot firmly, twisted his torso, and snapped his elbow forward—a perfect throw. The micro-black hole was hurled like a shot put, tracing an elegant arc through the air as it lunged toward the high-altitude Ark.
!!!
"Not good!"
In a panic, Sutton immediately activated the emergency evasion protocols. The teserract blurred into a jagged afterimage, executing an impossible sharp-angle maneuver.
However, even a speed capable of dodging almost any conventional attack could not evade this black hole. As if it possessed eyes of its own, it nimbly adjusted its trajectory in mid-air and slammed directly into the vessel.
A direct hit!
The entire battlefield seemed to freeze for a moment. Those Necron high-tier units that still retained self-awareness stared upward blankly, their logic cores flooded with disbelief.
Events, however, did not bend to their will.
The black hole acted like a tear in the canvas of reality. Its violent suction acted like a massive pump, greedily drawing in everything nearby like a gluttonous beast devouring all matter it touched.
Even the teserract, protected by the dual layers of hyper-shields and quantum shields, was not spared. Its hull, forged through the peak of Necron physics, began to let out a groan of unbearable strain.
The sound of shattering space and tearing matter intertwined. Before the eyes of everyone present, the teserract began to disintegrate.
The Cryptek inside could only watch helplessly. At this moment, he could do nothing but focus all remaining energy into the defensive arrays to stave off the end for a few more seconds.
As time passed, the black hole finally vanished.
But the teserract was utterly crippled, having consumed excessive energy to survive. More than half of its structural integrity was gone, its central singularity core was nearly exhausted, and even its basic anti-gravity engines failed. The Necron Ark, torn in half by the black hole, spun wildly in the air before finally embracing gravity and plummeting straight toward the earth.
"BOOM—!"
Man!
"Necrons, OUT!"
Adam gave the scene a mischievous internal voice-over and took a slight breath. Using such a high level of reality warping had slightly exceeded his current comfort threshold; his head even felt a bit heavy.
Is this a side effect? Adam thought with a bit of dark humor.
Even he couldn't distinguish whether this was a genuine physical side effect or a product of his own imagination. However, having gone through a phase early in his awakening where he couldn't tell if his senses were reality or fantasy, he was quite experienced.
Just accept it, no need to worry.
Just as he was about to order continued fire suppression, Adam suddenly froze. At that exact moment, a sudden mutation occurred.
A dimensional portal slowly opened beside him.
A Necron ambush? The timing was certainly impeccable.
But he didn't panic. It wasn't as if he lacked teammates. As a reality warper with a fragile physical body, weren't teammates specifically meant to protect his safety in moments like this?
However, to Adam's surprise, what emerged from the portal was not a Necron Deathmark sniper, but a silver, spherical object.
"Oh no!"
Seeing the object, Adam's heart skipped a beat. He had seen this weapon used by Trazyn the Infinite before through the eyes of the Custodian, Leonardo.
It was a Primal Fear Inducer!
Sure enough, a ghostly green light flashed atop the silver sphere. An endless, swirling illusion instantly swallowed everything around Adam.
The world turned upside down.