Chapter 144: The Contest Of Minds  

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Chapter 144: The Contest Of Minds  

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Yasuo raised his brows before letting out a small smile and answering, "Oh, excuse my rudeness, I'm Yasuo, Yasuo Zoldyck.

This is kind of late but it's an honor to meet you, Meruem."

Meruem didn't bother asking how he knows his name, instead, he asked the question that's actually puzzling him, the question that ignited his dying curiosity.

"Are you really human?" to which Yasuo nodded no minding answering the simple question, "Yeah but hopefully that'll change soon."

Meruem nodded in understanding, humans aren't scary but some of them are, and he's a special case, he is an anomaly even among those peculiar ones.

He is someone who isn't satisfied with being just human and doesn't have any connection towards humanity or at least that is what Meruem understood.

This marked the passing of the third minute leaving only 2 minutes, that last minute was enough for someone with a thinking process at the speed of light to come up with countless ideas on how to win and what he needs to do.

Two bright minds with that difference is enough to make one feel desperation.

Well, except Yasuo whose eyes are gleaming with intelligence and cautious thinking of the implications of such an ability.

'Thinking at the speed of light... I simply can't even begin to imagine how his thought process is like, such an ability is simply horrifying so how can one win over someone with such a power who's able to think at that speed?'

No one can, the longer the battle, the less the chances of winning becomes and this is something he predicted.

No matter what Yasuo does, there will be countermeasures such opponent can use to win, Yasuo was able to go for this long simply by stalling and using his arsenal of abilities as a surprise to negate whatever the opponent has in mind.

Desperation is what one in Yasuo's position should be feeling at the moment. He however felt no such thing.

Only he can make people feel what they don't want to feel, instead, he felt another feeling, an extremely familiar feeling. A feeling he feels whenever he gets a new idea, whenever his curiosity over something ignites as he looks forward to researching what picked his interest thoroughly then expanding on it creating something greater.

Then watching his fascinating creation with joy deep inside, enjoying the process of finding what to research and during the research then that sense of achievement seeing the results.

That is what he's feeling at the moment during this bizarre fight, curiosity on how many ways he can win he'll research later, how he can win now.

Testing the limits he couldn't test previously because no one stands at the stage he stands upon.

With his new ability, the king was able to reach that stage so what Yasuo considers this is an experiment he's conducting among his other goals here.

So how will the King break the unbreakable? And how will Yasuo fight the undefeatable mind? Well, for Yasuo the answer is quite simple, tricks while using his destructive abilities he hasn't used yet.

On the other hand, Meruem started using the countermeasures he thought of against the spherical portal.

One of the ideas is quite simple, he'll just win if he forced Yasuo to be on the defensive side since he noticed something when Yasuo used that ability.

He noticed that when the latter is completely surrounded by the spherical portals, the massive purple bubble enveloping the surroundings disappear.

The bubble that Meruem is pretty is responsible for the hands' strange movement as well as some peculiarities he noticed about Yasuo.

So he naturally assumed that when the spherical portal is being used, he can't use that particular ability meaning he can't attack him at all.

While the other method he found is quite interesting, to say the least. Meruem retracted every photon sphere back before starting the same scene as before. Numerous rage blasts within the photons spread between the countless empty photons as they started moving towards the empty destination photons.

Only, Yasuo happened to be in their way meaning the blasts will need to pass through him.

So of course, he created the spherical portal again protecting him against the oncoming missiles and they simply went through it appearing from the destination portals.

And this is when a strange thing happened, as the loaded photon exited the portal and was heading towards the nearest barrier seeking to explode, it suddenly changed its movement direction going back to the portal simply because the destination photon has changed from the one behind Yasuo to another one behind the destination portal.

The countless photons scattered throughout tens of miles around allowed him to achieve this which also allowed him to ignore a specific weakness of the ability if it could even be called that.

The fact that if the moving loaded photon changed direction either forcefully or willingly, it causes the destination photon to disappear.

Just like how going through the portals forcefully changes their directions which means at that point, Meruem needs to choose another one else they'll just go in that specific direction infinitely until they face some kind of barrier.

And the ability would've been much stronger if Meruem is able to move the destination photon but no he can't, once a destination photon is chosen, it will remain static in the same spot.

And so, an interesting scene happened, the scene of that loaded photon reaching that portal once again before it closed which was only possible because the photon's destination was changed almost instantly after it passed. Except, this time as it was halfway through the portal, it was faced by a barrier, by another loaded photon colliding with each other which set of a small explosion.

Just one explosion among the many because those weren't the only loaded photons that collided.

No, many many photons slammed into each other in various ways setting off a bunch of small explosions that seem to support one another to create a bigger and bigger explosion.

An explosion strong enough to evaporate everything within more than a mile of the surroundings.

Yasuo was right, he was in a state of near invulnerability until he wasn't anymore because the weakness of the skill he is using is the skill itself, it's possible to destroy the thing responsible for that invulnerability, after all, the portals are made with Nen.

If the photons just went through the portal, that would've caused no damage to them but no, what Meruem did is caused explosions within and in the surroundings of the portal, explosions large enough to affect what the portal is composed of, Nen.

A simple solution, just like he can destroy the vision construct, he also assumed he can affect the portals albeit at a hefty cost because a significant portion of the loaded photons gets consumed.

And that's not just a simple consumption of Nen, there is more, he made a sacrifice to create the ability and he's sacrificing something continuously the longer he uses it especially retracting the photons to create new ones.

That has a hefty cost but Meruem exploited a plot hole making that price negligible in the grand scheme of things, he is already dying after all.

Meruem remained static in the air not leaving the large photon at all, he just observed and manipulated the countless photons he can control like they're his limbs.

The grand orchestrator behind the scenes just watching as the orbital portal dissolved into nothingness yet... what appeared behind it is another round portal keeping him safe from any harm.

That didn't bother Meruem as knows he just needs to keep him on the defensive side to win.

And noticing that Yasuo's domain is still not there made him more sure that the purple hands teleporting are the result of whatever ability that is, the purple bubble has disappeared but he didn't let his guard down.

This is not just a fight for that specific deal, no, it became much more than that, this is a fight of egos proving who's superior.

Proving who is the strongest though while Yasuo is enjoying this, it's for a different reason, most things are a research journey for him and this happened to be a special one, as for proving who is the strongest, well, he already knows the answer.

As for the King, he is enjoying the bizarre fight thoroughly, a fight so strange he simply couldn't imagine it happening before especially with a human.

He is enjoying it more than he ever imagined himself enjoying fighting to the point a small smile surfaced on his face with curiosity apparent in his eyes wondering just what the human will do now since he is facing an inescapable situation.

To the point, he started forgetting about the fact he's dying quickly, something he doesn't like but didn't affect him much.

Now however, he truly ignored that fact just enjoying the moment with a part of his brain still focusing on the light within the tunnel wishing to meet her enjoying his last moments... satisfied.

Tricks, a crafty procedure or practice meant to deceive or defraud, that is what Yasuo used throughout the fight, according to the legends, devils lies and deceives quite a lot so how can one expect anything else from him?

His control domain is absolute, no barrier can get in its way, the domain can appear instantly so how can a mere portal get in its way?

This was but a mere hoax he orchestrated hiding what's actually happening within that spherical portal and what's about to come, something the King simply wasn't able to react to at all...