บท 765: 524
Looking at the extremely irritable Shiller, Loki wasn't offended. He chuckled, sat down, and placed the briefcase on his lap, asking, "So, neither of the two plans I gave you have worked?"
"Not just the two plans you gave me. The Holy Sanctuary held two meetings yesterday and came up with more than a dozen proposals, but only two seemed to attract their interest, and in the end, none were successful," Shiller says, covering one eye with his hand and sighing, "This is the most difficult client I've ever had."
Loki sat down and patted Shiller's shoulder, saying, "Hold on a bit longer. This is the only deal we need to close. Afterward, I'll treat you to a hot spring trip at the base of the World Tree."
Shiller took a deep breath and said, "At least they gave me a default excuse, which allows me to stay here, sleep a lot every day. Otherwise, if I were to go to S.H.I.E.L.D. during the day and become a dream salesperson during the night, I'd be worked to death."
"But it seems they misunderstood something..." Loki looked up towards the door which Steve had left from. Shiller shook his head to shake off the sleepiness from just waking up. Then he said, "Who cares. Once I complete this deal with Death, they'll forget about it in a few days..."
Loki opened his mouth as though he wanted to say something but then thought better of it. He wanted to tell Shiller that Steve's serious expression when he left didn't look like something he would forget in a few days but he decided against saying it after seeing how frustrated Shiller was due to being frequently rejected.
"...Are you really okay?" After hesitating for a long time, Loki finally voiced his concern.
Because the expression on Shiller's face was far from calm or peaceful. If anything, it looked more like gritting teeth.
Shiller took a deep breath, then another, and then a few more. After calming himself with slow, deep breaths, he forced a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "I'm fine," he said, "I just sorta feel like killing someone."
"Seriously, I understand the concept of Death you told me about. It sounds quite interesting. But I don't think you have to be so invested in it. Considering the current stage, her contribution to human civilization isn't that big. There's no need for such an urgency..."
Holding his arm and gritting his teeth, Shiller said: "Do you think I care whether her contributions will benefit human civilization?"
Loki patted Shiller's shoulder again, saying, "No need to explain, I understand everything."
That's right, Shiller showed symptoms of narcolepsy because he was indeed sleeping excessively, or rather dreaming excessively.
Since Shiller obtained the Judgment Scale that allows him to call Death, he has been almost incessantly dialing Death's number to pitch his proposal.
In the beginning, Death responded with complete silence. But after being pestered by Shiller, she began to convey subtle information, expressing approval or disapproval to certain cooperation methods proposed by Shiller.
The reason why Shiller was so irritable was that 99% of the proposed approaches were rejected by Death.
Shiller isn't a simple scammer not thinking about his time cost. At this point, the profit doesn't matter to him anymore. It's a competition between Shiller and Death, in which both superiority and life or death are decided.
Moreover, Shiller wants to figure out why Death doesn't let him die?
If we say that the trade between Death, Odin, and Osiris is to bring more death, the premise is that Odin and Osiris are somewhat devout in attitude. It's less of a deal with death and more like working for her, and the same goes for Thanos.
Suppose Odin and Osiris harassed Death with phone calls around the clock, like Shiller. In that case, it's debatable whether Asgard and the Egyptian Pantheon could still exist.
The concept of time for immortality is completely different from that for short-lived species. The Hippo Goddess would think that her child calling her once a week is already too frequent, even though she's not completely immortal, just long-lived, and her child only calls once a week.
Death is an abstract concept. She's true immortality. As long as the universe exists, she will exist. But Shiller doesn't just call her once a week, he calls her more than a dozen times a day.
Even then, she hasn't been annoyed by him to the point of directly leading him to his death. There must be a reason unknown to Shiller. As a result, he intends to figure out the secret as to why the Land of Death wouldn't accept him.
To figure out that secret, he naturally has to call Death. Therefore, these past few days, apart from other tasks, Shiller spends any free time he has sleeping, dreaming, and using the scale to dial Death.
Of course, judging by his current behavior, neither of these tasks is going smoothly. Death answers his calls, all right. But most of the time, it's just Shiller doing all the talking, she occasionally responds, but the vast majority of the time, she remains silent.
Now, Shiller realizes why Death could make Thanos so confused. If she responded with nothing but silence, Shiller would've probably given up by now. But as it stands now, it's clear that Death not only possesses personality and intelligence but can also analyze costs and benefits.
What would it be like for an abstract concept to have a personality? How was her personality formed? Will it be influenced by external factors like humans? What's the difference between the psychological states of creatures created by gods and those born naturally? What changes will an abstract concept with omnipotence and the ability to analyze cost-benefit bring to the universe after developing likes and dislikes?
These questions piqued Shiller's curiosity. Fundamentally, Shiller, who represents traits of greed, is eager to take Death as a research object, from which he can gain power through analyzing her personality and emotional traits.
Therefore a research subject who's barely alive and seldom responds would irritate any researcher. That's why Shiller was feeling annoyed.
Loki keenly felt this. Therefore, he hurriedly abandoned his plan and ran back to Asgard without looking back. On his way, he wondered who the unlucky one bumping into Shiller's gun would be. He would definitely be watching the fun from the Rainbow Bridge.
The only other person who knew this truth was the Supreme Magician Strange, who was at this moment participating in a meeting held by Steve at the Avengers' base.
"...Based on the above, I think Shiller might have been triggered to have a mental disorder outbreak, and the situation now is not optimistic."
Steve sighed, his face unprecedentedly serious. He said, "Apart from considering the pain he may be undergoing, we also need to consider the potential destruction he might cause if he suddenly loses his sanity..."
So saying, he glanced at Stark. Stark put his fist to his lips, then coughed and said, "I admit, I shouldn't have provoked him yesterday, but I did not expect things to escalate so quickly."
"Can't we find a doctor?" Peter raised his hand to ask.
"That's the problem." Matt tapped on the table and said, "We can't find a doctor who can treat him now, and he may not cooperate with the treatment."
"Starting from yesterday, he has shown a high level of aggressiveness in our conversation. Today, he has developed symptoms of wanting to sleep all the time and has shown signs of being agitated and depressive…"
"If this continues, his mental condition may deteriorate step by step. No one knows what it will end up becoming."
Stark sighed and continued, "What's more important, mental problems are not like physical injuries. They can't be healed with magic power..."
"Indeed, we basically have no way to affect a person's mental state right now. Even if we did, it might not work on Shiller."
"Ahem..." Strange cleared his throat, touched his face, then asked, "Are you guys really sure it is a mental issue?"
Matt and Steve looked at him together. Then, Steve said, "Oh, I forgot. You weren't there when we were describing what we saw in Shiller's Thought Palace."
Steve then recounted to Strange what they had seen in Shiller's Thought Palace, his childhood and teenage experiences.
Hearing this, Strange looked suddenly enlightened.
Strange suddenly proposed, "Have you guys found the contradiction here?"
Stark and Steve looked at each other, both frowning, then turned to look at Strange.
"If according to what you guys said, Shiller may have suffered mental trauma during childhood, and this trauma made him antisocial during his teenage years…"
"But the Shiller we have met is a normal person. You guys aren't saying that all his normal behaviors at that time were just the disguise of a murderer, are you?"
"Impossible." Peter was the first to deny this. He said, "I lived with Doctor Shiller for a long time, and besides, I have Spider-sense. If he was pretending, I would have definitely noticed."
"I don't think so either." Matt agreed, saying, "If he was really a murderer, there was no need for him to save me at that time."
"The mental problem he faced at that time was much more serious than now. So how did he recover?" Strange asked.
Everyone looked at each other, then turned to Strange. Strange continued, "Or to put it another way, if someone was able to treat such a mentally troubled Shiller back then, wouldn't that person be able to treat him now too?"
Stark stroked his chin, pondered for a moment, and said, "That makes sense. It looks like he's having a bipolar disorder attack now, but his mental problem in the past might have been more serious. So who treated him?"
At this time, Strange suddenly said, "Do you guys still remember? When I first met Shiller, I told you guys he was wearing a ring."
All eyes returned to Strange, who cleared his throat and said, "And that cryogenic technology, which shouldn't belong to this era's level, and the huge salary that Shiller received, which Nick mentioned before..."
"But I remember, Doctor Shiller explained it." Peter scratched his head, recalled, and said, "I remember he and Doctor Connors said the story about freezing his wife was his friend's story. That friend was a cryogenic scientist, and this powerful cryogenic technology was developed for freezing his wife, who was suffering from a degenerative disease..."
At this point, Stark stood up, summoned his battlesuit, and said, "Jarvis, help me query the data of cryogenic scientists all over the world, and filter it according to what Peter just said."
"Querying... Query complete..."
"No such person found."
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