Ch. 299 - Regression

When the doll slipped from Adam's grip, the surging magic vanished too.

Adam exhaled deeply, relieved. Just moments ago, he felt himself shifting into some unknown form. It wasn't good at all. If that change had fully taken hold, he knew he'd never be the same again.

Adam turned his gaze to the roaring Original Flames, surprised to see Garfield had reached level eight. Hesitant, he asked, "How is he...?"

"This is temporary," Ayesha replied coolly. "Part of the power keeping him at this level is my magic, and the rest comes from that devil's Origin. Most of it will fade after your next experiment. If he can maintain even level four, that'd be impressive." She could unleash level eight magic instantly, but sustaining it was another story. Right now, Garfield was like a disposable battery---once drained, he was done.

Adam got the point: If power were that easy to come by, what would be the point of all the research and hard work?

"What do you think? How close is your pet now to that Titan lord's Flames?"

Garfield was so thrilled, he was making all sorts of noises. Adam calmed him down and merged with him, sorting through all the new information.

After a while, he said, "Pretty close, but the core is still different. But, he can definitely be a test subject."

Ayesha clapped her hands. Magic flowed from her fingertips, creating a barrier in the strange space. Then she opened a skylight leading to the outside world.

Next, she grabbed the strongest transcendent, Dilus.

Once the Dilus was unsealed, it dashed madly towards the skylight. It was smart enough to realize it couldn't take on the creature before it, so escaping was its only shot.

BANG.

The Dilus hit the skylight, bleeding, half its body in shreds.

Ayesha didn't even look at it. She told Adam, "This barrier is to protect you. Inside here, none of its attacks can hurt you."

Holding the Flames, Adam stepped into the barrier. The Dilus kept retreating, knowing the Flames it once craved was now a death sentence.

The closer Adam got, the more frantic the Dilus became. Finally, it shot out a gray tendril to attack Adam.

Just like Ayesha said, the gray tendril passed through Adam without causing harm. In this barrier, it was as if Adam wasn't even there.

But the Dilus resisted the Flames, and Adam couldn't force it to accept them.

Seeing this, Ayesha acted.

Four skeletal arms stretched out from the cracks in the space around her. Two arms pinned the Dilus down, while the other two pried its mouth open.

Adam then threw the Flame inside.

The skeletal arms immediately plunged into its body.

At that moment, the Dilus's body turned transparent. Adam could see its soul being pierced, forcing it to consume the Original Flames.

The evolution began.

The Flames started to become corrupted, and gray energy spread rapidly. Adam knew how rare test subjects were and couldn't afford to waste them like before. He signaled Ayesha to pause every few seconds so he could record the changes.

Ayesha showed remarkable professionalism, following Adam's orders without any sign of impatience.

After two days, the evolution reached its halfway point. This was critical---crossing this threshold would transform the Dilus's soul into a flame state.

At this moment, a gray energy column rose from its soul, passed through the skylight, and reached the outside world.

The Devourer, sealed in the sky, barely stirred. A piece of information from the Devourer shot out from a flaw the mages had deliberately left and instantly descended onto the Dilus.

The Dilus trembled violently, causing the four skeletal hands to shatter. Its eyes became kaleidoscopic.

Adam stepped back---he recognized this look; it belonged to the Devourer.

Pure gray energy shot from the Dilus's eyes toward Adam. Somehow, Adam knew that if he was hit, he would surely die.

At the same time, nearly fifty mages suddenly appeared in the space. They silently used their methods to annihilate the gray energy. They reinforced the barrier and closed the skylight, severing the connection between the information and the Devourer, trapping it here.

"You're courting death! The Great Archmage is not here, and you dare to release my soul?" the Devourer roared.

The transdimensional mages ignored him. They connected the runes in the barrier into chains and reactivated the freezing spell. Before the Devourer could finish speaking, he was silenced again.

Ayesha said, "Hurry, we can't hold this for long!"

Adam finally understood what the mages were trying to do. This wasn't a reverse push; it was a re-enactment. They were recreating the scene of the Devourer's advancement.

It was a crazy experiment, but Adam felt excited. This might be his only chance to observe a level nine creature up close.

"Unseal for one second!" Adam commanded without hesitation.

The transdimensional mages immediately complied. In that one second, the gray energy spread by one-tenth.

Adam entered overclocking mode, and the data collected in that moment exceeded the total from before!

"Seal!"

"Unseal!"

"Seal!"

Adam ignored the overload warnings, immersed in the vast power displayed in the data. Each pause resulted in the explosion of countless avatars.

"Model comparison derivation, failure, failure, failure...completed!"

"Transcendent data input. Failure...completed!"

"State simulation starts."

Adam once again experienced the process of steam rising from his head to blue smoke igniting. These cycles repeated, each second feeling like an eternity...

"Ten percent."

"Forty percent."

"Ninety percent."

"Reached the limit. Remaining data unobservable and unsimulable. Incomplete model established!"

Adam raised the model and shouted without looking back, "I need magic!"

As soon as Adam finished speaking, his body surged with power once more. Without a second thought, he channeled all the magic into the model.

The model immediately began to glow and operate.

Then, Adam flew up, meeting the Devourer's cold, bloodthirsty gaze, and pressed the model firmly into his eye.

The Devourer disintegrated. His body and soul, under the influence of the model, became disjointed and incomplete, riddled with logical conflicts.

This caused his evolution, which had reached 80%, to fail completely at that moment. His soul began to involuntarily spew energy.

The Flames' information stream that had not yet been transformed returned along the original path. As for what had been consumed, some of it disintegrated directly, while some transformed into secondary energy and dissipated.

The Dilus regressed!

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