At the same time, outside the Milky Way Galaxy.
Adam raised a hand to his ear, taking a listening stance as if trying to hear a conversation taking place countless light-years away.
To be honest, making this gesture in the vacuum of space looked rather comical.
After all, there was no air or medium here, so naturally, no sound could possibly reach his ears.
However, for a reality bender, this was never an issue.
It was merely a ceremonial gesture.
An anchor point to help Adam concentrate his will and allow his power to flow more smoothly.
Even after advancing to Class 4, this old habit formed back in his Class 2 days remained surprisingly effective.
It had to be said that while simple and crude, this method was exceptionally useful.
For a reality bender, silently recited words and physical gestures could effectively enhance the precision and strength of their interference with reality.
Back when he was still a Class 2 reality bender, Adam often relied on various gestures and spoken words to assist in invoking his abilities.
Later, after undergoing a series of brutally harsh training (beatings) in his original Containment Site universe, he not only drastically simplified those cumbersome movements, but also compressed these requirements to the absolute bare minimum following several major battles.
Performing this gesture now actually brought a wave of nostalgia to Adam's heart.
Adam lowered his hand and stretched his limbs.
His neck vertebrae made a faint cracking sound; though his body didn't actually require this kind of relaxation, doing it made his mood a bit lighter.
He turned his head, looking toward the depths of the void, eager to act.
Now that his plan was set, it was time to give it his all!
Adam raised his head.
Before him, the sky-blotting Hive Fleet surged toward him once again like an overwhelming tide.
Every single bioship belonging to these extra-galactic predators exuded a ravenous, bloodthirsty, and cruel aura.
Their chitinous carapaces reflected a cold sheen in the faint light of the void, while countless tentacles swayed slowly along their hulls, akin to a predator licking its claws before a meal.
Efficient and ruthless.
This was a war machine forged by the Great Devourer using countless other civilizations it had consumed across extra-galactic space.
With a quick sweep of his gaze, Adam noticed a subtle shift among those familiar ship silhouettes.
A entirely new type of Hive Ship had appeared.
They were far larger than any previous bioship, featuring a brain-like synaptic structure located right at the center of their hulls.
The surface of that structure was covered in dense bundles of nerves, resembling exposed brain tissue, pulsing slowly to some internal rhythm. Boundless psychic energy surged fanatically within it, radiating a sense of insatiable hunger.
Adam instantly realized something was wrong.
Clearly, the Great Devourer had taken painstaking effort when designing these new warships.
Those brain-like structures were not merely decorative; their potent psychic energy was sufficient to help the fleet withstand reality-bending attacks much more easily than before.
They were adapting to his abilities.
Even though it was no easy task to fully comprehend reality bending—even for an entity as powerful as the Hive Mind of the Great Devourer—it had clearly recognized that continuing to pile on pure numbers was completely meaningless against the being before it.
Therefore, the Great Devourer began pursuing quality.
Adam tentatively released a thread of perception, sweeping across the fleet to gauge the density of reality within it.
Evidently, through whatever means the Great Devourer had employed, the reality-level weight of this fleet was far harder to shake than the previous swarms.
To some extent, this was an outcome Adam had anticipated.
A long time ago, when reality benders fought against Hive Fleet Gorgon, he had witnessed the Tyranids' terrifying capacity for evolution and adaptation.
Faced with the long-range ion cannons of the T'au, they could adapt effortlessly and counter them with incredible efficiency.
At this thought, Adam couldn't help but sigh.
It seemed he wouldn't be able to go on an easy rampage like before.
Still, it didn't matter.
A reality bender's capabilities had never been limited to just that.
"Sorry, I've got something to take care of, so I won't be playing with you guys anymore," Adam said casually.
He raised his hand slightly and made a gesture.
Overlapping his hands in front of his chest, his ten fingers bloomed open like a lotus flower, before he slammed them inward into a tight fist.
Adam's figure didn't waver in the slightest, but the surrounding void shuddered violently at that exact second.
It felt as though something impossibly heavy had been created by his palm and pressed directly into the cosmos.
A second later, Adam slowly opened his palms.
Between his hands, a patch of profound darkness emerged.
That was not the natural darkness of the void—in space, there was at least the faint glow emitted by distant stars.
Yet, in the darkness resting within Adam's palms, there was nothing at all.
It was pure nonexistence, an abyss from which even light could not escape.
It was a tear in the world, a glitch in the universe.
A massive gravitational surge radiated outward in all directions, centered on that patch of darkness. The vanguard of the Hive Fleet was the first to register it; the bioships charging at the very front decelerated abruptly, layers of psychic shields manifesting over their hulls as they attempted to resist the force dragging them into the abyss.
Indeed.
That was a black hole.
However, compared to the black hole Adam had created back when he was a Class 3 reality bender, this one was more than a hundred times larger.
That deep, absolute darkness detached from his palm, expanding rapidly into the void.
Its size grew exponentially, reaching a scale capable of swallowing planets in an extremely short span of time.
The immense gravitational waves caught the Hive Fleet's vanguard in a brief state of paralysis; smaller escort vessels maneuvered frantically, trying to tear themselves free from the black hole's gravity well.
However, this was far from over.
Adam calmly snapped his fingers.
Sound shouldn't have traveled through a vacuum, yet in some eerie fashion, it echoed across the entire expanse of space.
The surface of the black hole began to warp and shift like a cloud of light.
Its edges flickered once.
Then, a second black hole came into being.
One became two.
Adam was naturally not satisfied with just this, and he snapped his fingers once more.
Two became four.
A third snap echoed out.
Four became eight.
Then... eight became sixteen.
Adam continued snapping his fingers, time after time.
With every crisp snap echoing through the pitch-black, silent void, the number of black holes doubled.
Those deep pockets of absolute darkness were lined up in orderly fashion across the void, as if placed one by one by an invisible hand.
Their gravitational fields precisely balanced one another, forming a gravity network complex enough to drive any astrophysicist mad on the spot.
In the end, a dense Great Wall of Black Holes unfolded across the void.
This wall spanned units measured in light-years.
The gravity released by those black holes surged like a tempestuous tide, precisely overlapping and intersecting under the guidance of Adam's reality bending, bearing down on every single inch of space ahead of the wall.
If the Hive Fleet wished to break through this barrier, it would first have to endure gravitational tides strong enough to tear stars to shreds—a problem that even the Great Devourer's main fleet could not solve in a short amount of time.
What's more, behind that Great Wall of Black Holes, Adam had thoughtfully left several extra layers of black hole grids as a bonus.
"That should do it. You guys go ahead and play with this for a bit."
Adam clapped off the nonexistent dust on his hands and smiled faintly at the Hive Fleet, which was currently waving its tentacles in a fury.
Naturally, he knew.
Relying on these black holes alone couldn't block the Great Devourer forever—a terrifying entity capable of consuming entire galaxies, one that could munch on C'tan shards like light snacks.
However, it was definitely enough to buy him a considerable amount of time.
Enough for him to handle the next matter on his list.
"Catch you later!"
Laughing aloud, Adam's figure transformed into a streak of light, vanishing from the void.
Behind him, the towering Wall of Black Holes stood silently across the void.
Like a barrier of death, it firmly locked the Hive Fleet outside the Milky Way Galaxy.
Meanwhile, the newly arrived bioships hovered uselessly on this side of the wall, their psychic brains working frantically in an attempt to figure out a way to cross the barrier.
And deep within the Warp, an earth-shattering roar was spreading outward.
That roar carried boundless, fury-filled rage.
The Great Devourer, raging in sheer helplessness, realized its prey had slipped away just like that, leaving behind nothing but a cold, silent Great Wall of Black Holes.