Martial Era: Starting With The Strongest Talent-Chapter 104: Crowd Control

When Adam saw the amount of Existence he had accumulated, a wide smile spread across his face.

They may be foul creatures, but they make for good lackeys.

The Existence he had gathered didn’t come only from his own hands. It included the steady stream harvested from the thirty monsters he constantly sent into the tide, replacing them the moment one died. A seamless cycle of destruction and gain.

Now it was more than enough to do what he had been waiting for.

Manifest his own martial spirit.

The numbers continued to tick upward before his eyes.

[Existence: 745]

[Existence: 750]

[Existence: 805]

Even as he stood there, Existence kept flowing in.

Then...

[Existence: 839]

It stopped.

Adam felt it instantly, the mental threads he had on the monsters snapped one after another. The connection to his controlled monsters vanished, a clear sign that they had all been wiped out.

He lifted his gaze.

More than three dozen mutant unranked level-3 sirens surrounded him in a loose circle. They had clearly identified him as the greatest threat on the wall and chosen to isolate him.

Yet none of them attacked.

Their beady eyes stayed locked on him, bodies tense, as if hoping this fragile moment of stillness would last just a little longer.

Adam smiled and in the next instant, thirty of the sirens surrounding him went still.

Their movements stuttered, as their eyes went blank.

The remaining sirens recoiled in shock as their kin, who had shown no sign of weakness a heartbeat ago, suddenly turned on them.

Mind Control — E.

Before the unaffected sirens could react, the controlled ones pounced.

Teeth sank into flesh. Claws tore through scales and bone. Screams erupted as sirens were dragged down and ripped apart by their own kind, dying in a brutal, chaotic frenzy.

Adam watched satisfied.

When the last uncontrolled siren fell, he stepped forward and sat down cross-legged amid the carnage.

Thirty of the strongest monsters now stood around him, like silent, feral sentinels, acting as watchdogs.

Adam closed his eyes, preparing to manifest his spirit.

Back with Abigail and her group, the situation had turned dire. The moment the sirens stepped into the fight, the reality of it hit them all at once. This wasn’t a battle of endurance anymore, it was a slow collapse.

The group closed ranks around the petrified Dickson, forming a living shield, taking every blow meant for him on their own bodies.

Abigail bore the brunt of it.

Her essence flared nonstop as she clashed with sirens again and again, refusing to give ground. But the cost was written all over her. Her shoulder hung dislocated, her mouth split and bleeding, and a hideous claw mark raked across her face. Still, she didn’t retreat.

None of them did.

The others fought just as desperately. They would not let a comrade die, especially not one who couldn’t even defend himself.

Sirens pressed in from all sides, their Silent Lullaby — G whispering at the edges of consciousness, trying to drag them into sleep. But pain kept their minds sharp, and numbers kept them standing.

Even so, there was only so much a group could handle.

Then it happened.

In the chaos of a desperate exchange, a siren’s arm punched straight through the chest of one of their members.

Abigail’s eyes widened.

For a single, fatal heartbeat, her guard dropped, and that was all it took.

A mutated siren lunged for her head, claws stretching for her throat.

Philip reacted instantly, his bloodline already surging, but it was too late. The siren’s hand was mere nanoinches from Abigail’s neck.

She didn’t scream or flinch, as some part of her had already accepted it.

Then...nothing happened.

A heartbeat passed. Then another.

Abigail, who had instinctively turned her face away, slowly looked back.

The siren in front of her stood frozen.

Headless.

And it wasn’t alone.

Every siren they had been fighting lay the same way, cleanly decapitated. Not just those attacking her group, but others nearby as well, sirens that had been clashing with different heirs and Acolytes only moments ago.

All of them dead.

Their heads rolled across the stone, bodies collapsing in delayed silence.

All across the battlement, the same scene repeated. Sirens in mid-rampage suddenly lost their heads.

One moment they were tearing through human lines. The next, their bodies which were cleanly decapitated collapsed, before they even understood what had happened.

Vanessa stood frozen for half a breath.

Her burned, scarred face turned slowly as she took in the sirens that had been overwhelming her section moments ago. They lay scattered on the stone, headless and silent.

The Acolytes around her stared in shock.

Reports flooded in from along the wall. One after another. The same outcome,yet different locations.

Vanessa lifted her gaze toward where Adam was positioned.

And she saw it.

A massive cyclone.

Spinning violently.

Wind blades screaming outward in every direction.

Her eyes widened.

"Did he..." she muttered. "Did he manifest his spirit in the middle of the battle?"

The Acolytes who heard her sucked in sharp breaths, eyes going wide.

Vanessa, who was genuinely shocked by that fact, instantly snapped out of it.

"Don’t waste the opportunity Mr. Adam has given us!" she shouted.

"Let’s give these monsters hell!"

"Yes, ma’am!"

She charged.

The remaining monsters, those that hadn’t already been shredded by wind blades, fell fast. There weren’t many left. Adam’s attack acted like a massive crowd-control field, annihilating the bulk of the tide and leaving only scraps behind.

This time, humans dominated.

The monsters kept climbing, but each surge was thinner than the last.

Meanwhile, Abigail’s group finally had breathing room, as they pulled back just enough to regroup, steady their breaths and tend to their wounds.

One of their own lay dead.

That loss weighed heavily.

We should never have come to this sector. Abigail thought, jaw tightening as pain throbbed through her injuries.

Philip didn’t speak at first.

He just stared toward the distant cyclone, eyes reflecting the spinning storm and the countless wind blades carving through the battlefield.

"He must have manifested his martial spirit," he said quietly. "And in such a short time as well ..."