A Battle of Wits

The [Champion]'s unusual writhing startled Shu, prompting three rapid-fire attacks aimed at its three eye sockets.

Eyes are vulnerable. He gambled that the [Champion] was no exception.

He was right. The targeted eyes vaporized instantly. But then, the remaining eyes popped out of their sockets, dangling from thick, fleshy cords, and began to flail wildly.

Nearly a hundred massive eyes now floated throughout the eleventh level, their grotesque pupils all fixed on Shu.

Fake 360-degree vision: I'll grow eyes all over my body.

Real 360-degree vision: I'll scatter my eyes around my enemy!

Shu finally understood why the tentacles sprouted from between the eyes. They were underdeveloped optic nerves!

He stared at the writhing, glistening eyes, at the thick nerves flailing about.

Grotesque. Slimy. The disturbing pupils stared at him, reflecting his own image in their foul surfaces.

Disgusting didn't even begin to describe it.

Unable to endure the sight of the distorted eyes hovering around him like drones, he aimed an attack at a nearby one.

It vanished instantly, completely.

But there were a hundred more… And if he counted the remaining and newly regenerated tentacles, it was closer to a thousand…

Good thing my body is unresponsive. Otherwise, I'd be covered in goosebumps.

Disgusting or not, Shu realized the [Champion]'s strategy.

It couldn't adapt to things it couldn't react to. But from those two identical attacks, it had learned the range and scope of the damage.

So it had dispersed its vulnerable points, making them harder to hit, harder to eliminate in one fell swoop.

What should have been a simple task now required him to destroy each eye individually. A smart move by the [Champion].

And… troublesome. Fortunately, the sockets hadn't moved, the connection points still concentrated in one area.

But when he looked down, he saw something alarming.

The [Champion] seemed to have finally realized a crucial fact.

In previous battles, its opponents had engaged in brutal, close-quarters combat, grappling and tearing.

Some of those opponents had possessed resilience and strength comparable to the [Champion] itself. In those cases, the deciding factor had shifted from "tearing apart" to "crushing."

Bigger was better.

So, the [Champion] had grown massive, rivaling the Wotan, towering over a hundred meters tall.

But now, it understood that the rules had changed. Its size was a liability. It couldn't grow faster than Shu could destroy it.

So… it was shrinking.

It was [learning] from Shu – his small size, his agility, his high attack power.

In just the few seconds it had taken Shu to destroy a single eye and observe, the [Champion] had shrunk to less than fifty meters.

Flesh could be shed quickly, but not bone. Shu watched as countless bone-white structures pierced the rapidly shrinking flesh, twisting and growing into new forms.

His first instinct was that this made it easier to eliminate in one go. He launched several attacks.

But then, the unexpected happened.

The [Champion]'s writhing body suddenly contracted violently, shrinking to forty meters as it… launched itself.

It propelled itself like a rubber ball, slamming into the wall of the eleventh level, shaking the entire structure.

Shu's attacks missed, striking the floor instead.

He was stunned. Impossible.

The [Champion] couldn't have dodged that!

No… it hadn't dodged the attacks themselves. It had dodged his preparatory movement, his raised hand!

It was observing him! Calculating his attack targets!

Like a gazelle evading a cheetah's pounce, a seagull calculating a fish's leap!

He looked up at the surrounding eyes, his jaw clenched.

They provided a complete, all-encompassing view, recording his every twitch. And he needed his body to launch these attacks…

He looked back at the [Champion], still shrinking against the wall, his tongue clicking.

"What else can you do…?"

Adaptation. Learning. Targeted evolution…

If this was a Honkai Beast, it would be classified as Judgment-class.

Then, Shu recalled why he hadn't used directed blasts in the first place.

He could do it, but it required calculating the target's position.

The next instant, the [Champion], now only twenty meters tall, screamed again. Half its head was gone.

A cluster of optic nerves had been destroyed, causing a third of the floating eyes to fall.

Shu impassively prepared a second calculation. But as the attack formed, the [Champion] dodged again.

His eye twitched. He looked at the remaining eyes.

Was it reading his facial expressions now? Even with his face so tightly controlled?

So, targeted blasts were useless…

Shu sighed. The [Champion] had now shrunk to less than ten meters. From over a hundred meters to less than ten in mere seconds.

Then to under five...