Martial Era: Starting With The Strongest Talent-Chapter 101: Breakdown Of Mindcontrol E

The battle was catastrophic.

It stretched across the wall for nearly 100 kilometers, a continuous strip of chaos where death never paused. Different sections of the battlement became their own war zones, Acolytes and clan heirs locked in brutal clashes against waves of monsters. Steel rang, essence detonated, bodies fell.

Unlike the others, Adam wasn’t grouped with anyone.

He couldn’t be.

He was the wild card.

A sabre wolf lunged at him, it’s jaws wide, but before it reached him, Adam’s scythe flashed. The blade took its head clean off. Without slowing, he impaled the falling corpse and swung it sideways, smashing it into a wood tiger trying to sneak up behind him.

The tiger’s head followed a heartbeat later.

Adam shifted his footing...

Then it hit.

"KRRRREEEEEE—!!"

A sonic scream slammed into him.

Adam clutched his ears as pain rippled through his skull. And it wasn’t just one direction.

"KRRRREEEEEE—!!"

"KRRRREEEEEE—!!"

"KRRRREEEEEE—!!"

The screams came from all around him, dozens of overlapping shockwaves. The sound alone was enough to rupture internal organs, liquefy tissue, and turn most martial artists into broken heaps.

Adam gritted his teeth, enduring it.

It hurt.

But it didn’t break him.

He forced his eyes open and locked onto the source.

Thirty giant rats.

Elite ones.

Thirty... Adam thought grimly, hands still pressed to his ears.

Squeak F.

That was their special talent, a sonic emission capable of rupturing internal organs. And this wasn’t even the weak version.

Squeak G.

Thirty unranked level-2 elite giant rats using Squeak F simultaneously should have turned him into mush.

Instead, Adam adjusted.

The pain dulled. The noise became tolerable.

And then he activated his new special talent Mind Control — E.

In the next instant, the rats froze.

Their gazes went blank and unfocused, as they turned away from Adam and toward each other. Without hesitation, they unleashed their sonic attacks again...

At point-blank range.

"KRRRREEEEEE—!!"

The result was instantaneous.

All thirty giant rats detonated, their bodies unable to withstand their own overlapping sonic blasts. Flesh burst apart. Blood and fragments rained down the wall.

A notification appeared before Adam’s eyes.

[+60 Existence]

Adam blinked.

So this works as well.

He had already been receiving Existence from every monster he personally killed. That was why he’d avoided using Mind Control, he’d assumed he needed to land the killing blow himself.

Looks like I was just overthinking it.

Before the thought even finished, multiple monsters lunged toward him from different angles.

Adam didn’t hesitate, as he activated Mind Control — E, and in the next moment, the monsters turned on each other, claws and fangs tearing into former allies as Adam stepped forward.

The more Adam used Mind Control — E, the more he started to like it.

No, like was an understatement.

This special talent was absolutely great.

It had clear limitations, sure, but the benefits were undeniable. Each time he activated it, Adam could feel his mind extend outward, as thin, invisible mental tentacles slipped into the savage, feral minds of the monsters. There was no resistance, only raw instinct and hunger.

Adam had expected revulsion.

Instead, he felt exhilaration.

Slipping into those vermin minds while they were completely unaware, seizing their control, stripping away their will, their senses or whatever passed for thought, was thrilling. The ease of it. The dominance. The absolute authority.

I’m definitely going to get attached to this.

Adam thought with unsettling certainty.

Of course, there were limits.

Aside from the obvious one, Mind Control wouldn’t work on targets with equal or higher star power, the technique was extremely draining under normal circumstances. And there was also the hard cap.

Thirty minds.

That was all he could control at once.

But that was where his talent [Equip] came in. Any talent slotted into an equipped slot no longer drained anything from him.

That talent could be used indefinitely, without fear of collapse.

The number limit couldn’t be solved.

But Adam didn’t need to solve it.

If thirty died, thirty more would take their place. And since using Mind Control took nothing from him now, the cycle was endless.

As he continued using this method, the area around him began to change.

Monsters died in droves the moment they approached. Before new ones could close the distance, those too would turn on each other, clearing space faster than the tide could fill it.

A widening zone of death formed around Adam.

A hollow in the tide.

I don’t have to stay in one place for long, Adam realized.

His eyes lifted, sweeping across the wall. Other battles raged on, Acolytes and heirs locked in brutal combat, pressure mounting in certain sections.

Adam moved.

Without hesitation, he headed straight for the next cluster of monsters, ready to erase them just as efficiently.

He also made sure to keep the mind-controlled monsters away from himself.

He let them loose deeper into the tide, where they could wreak havoc among their own kind. Over the course of the fight, he had already figured out the constraints of the talent.

To initiate Mind Control — E, the target had to be within a hundred meters. But once control was established, the range expanded drastically.

Up to one kilometer.

Beyond that, the link would snap.

Because of that, Adam kept the monsters in a sweet spot, far enough that they wouldn’t circle back toward him, close enough that the control wouldn’t break. They tore into their allies, sowing chaos, thinning the tide from the inside while Adam remained an unseen pivot point.

That wasn’t the only reason he did it.

He didn’t want to be seen battling alongside monsters.

Even if he was killing far more than anyone else, the sight alone would raise questions later on. And if others discovered that he could control monsters...

Adam didn’t even want to imagine the repercussions.

Not best to think about that now.

At that moment, he reached the nearest skirmish.

An Acolyte stood alone, weapon slashing wildly through empty air, essence flaring with every strike. His movements were frantic, unfocused and he was fighting something that wasn’t there.

There were no monsters around him.

Adam understood immediately.

Evil pixies.