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65.37% Days as a Spiritual Mentor in American Comics / Chapter 2804: Chapter 1993 U: Beyond Major Events (82)_1

章節 2804: Chapter 1993 U: Beyond Major Events (82)_1

Nightwing, sitting at the center, covered his eyes. Red Robin next to him sighed, and Red Hood silently folded his arms.

They watched Dr. Shiller pensively, using paint found within the supermarket, unthinkingly, drawing two enormous magic arrays on the must-pass routes of the two Batmans.

"What's the point of doing this?" Nightwing asked incredulously. "He was the first one to get the piece of totem pillar, and has a tremendous advantage in this game. He could have intercepted the second and the third person who grabbed the pieces of the totem pillar. Even if he himself couldn't attack, he could have called Hunter. What is he doing?"

"I heard Batman mention Professor Rodriguez." Red Robin tried to steer the conversation towards a more formal direction, saying, "Batman said he is highly learned in arcane studies and even held a professorship at a magic academy in their universe. Could it be that this magic array he drew is actually useful?"

Red Hood sighed heavily and said, "If that were true, hell would have frozen over. He's just a mad man, completely insane. He once caused the Joker…"

Red Hood glanced sideways at Jack nearby, then at the fully armed Batman, and ultimately didn't say what he was about to.

"What did he do to the Joker?"

In that moment when his deep voice rang out, almost everyone shivered. Red Hood cringed a little. For some reason, he felt that this question was directed specifically at him, even though Batman had not turned around.

Red Hood curled his mouth to one side and said nothing.

"Don't deviate from the topic. We're discussing right now why Dr. Shiller would draw this magic array. His actions cannot bring about substantial enough advantages to him." Nightwing shook his head again. "Even if he deceived Batman, so what? When the third piece of the totem pillar appears, the battle will inevitably become fierce. No one will bother studying the array."

"Then you don't understand Batman." Jack's measured voice, tinged with amusement, traveled over. He picked something from between his teeth and said, "Batman seeks only victory and efficient ways to achieve it."

"The conditions for victory were never stated in the rules, so there's a high probability that it's a linguistic trap. The designer of the game likes this kind of trick, I've noticed before," Jack voiced after a cold snort. "He wants to see the confusion and despair on everyone's face after fighting to the death and finding victory unreachable, but Batman certainly won't fall for his trick."

"Since defeating others doesn't necessarily mean winning, then there won't be a situation where the fight becomes intense as you described. Batman's focus is always on exploration, so any clues containing information will attract his attention."

At that point, Jack suddenly stopped. He turned his head to look at Batman nearby, as if waiting for him to speak.

But before Batman could say anything, Peter voiced out first.

"Based on my understanding of Dr. Shiller, this is likely just an appetizer. If he intends to engineer a deception, it must be multi-angle, all-round, a net that leaves the prey no place to hide or escape."

"Play it back." Another voice, equally low but with a touch of vicissitude, resonated. The whole projection room quieted down in an instant.

Everyone's gaze landed on the old man in the corner. But weirdly, no matter how they tried, they couldn't completely make out his face, their attention would be diverted the moment it was focused on him; as if he didn't actually exist there.

But soon, the backward flowing images on the screen drew their attention. While everyone else turned their gaze back to the screen, Batman's gaze lingered on the old man a bit longer, not shifting until the playback paused.

The screen rewound back to about ten minutes prior, right after Dr. Shiller had finished drawing the second magic array.

A shadow appeared at the corner of the wall. Just as everyone thought it was Bruce, Loki was the one to step into view.

The moment Dr. Shiller turned around and saw Loki, he dropped his arms to his sides, a smile played on his lips, and he said, "Didn't expect you to show up as well. How have you been lately?"

"I am still in the midst of reforming Asgard's internal affairs." Loki shrugged and said, "I was wondering if I'd bump into you in this game. Looks like we're really in sync."

Then, he looked up at the enormous magic array just finished by Dr. Shiller, a knowing smile emerged on his face, and he asked, "So who're you planning to trick this time?"

"Never mind this for now, are you in?"

Loki laughed, shook his head and said, "I don't come cheap, you know that."

"Can you be greedier than Nick?"

"You overestimate me."

The two laughed together. Loki walked over to Dr. Shiller, looking up at the huge magic array with him. Dr. Shiller said, "There's a pretty interesting guy in this game, but there might be more. Work together with me on my plan, we'll have quite a show."

"Of course, of course." Loki lowered his head, then nodded and laughed, "There's always fun wherever you're at, and I'm currently in a state of boring. Let's hear your plan."

Red Robin slapped his forehead.

"I knew it, there's no such coincidence." Nightwing stated in exasperation, "We just discovered a magic array and a wizard who could explain everything just happened to appear. It's as if this is all orchestrated."

"But I don't think Batman would be easily convinced," Red Robin hypothesized while stroking his chin, "This wizard named Loki is highly suspicious. Even if the Batman he meets is relatively young, he'd certainly be on the alert."

"That's not his target," Batman suddenly spoke out.

Several Robins all turn to look at him. From the beginning, they had found this uniquely dressed Batman intriguing, but they had also known that it was unlikely he would respond to their queries under normal circumstances.

That's why they remained silent observers, now that Batman had taken the initiative to speak up, they were finally allowed to ask their questions.

"What do you mean?"

"He had the wizard distract irrelevant parties." Batman's voice emitted from his face guard: "His target is the bat-suited Batman."

Along with Batman's voice, the screen's perspective switched to Batman in the game. He had arrived at the location of the second symbol and discovered a massive Magic Array.

But this time his attention wasn't solely on the array, but instead, he had noticed Loki and Bruce's footprints in the surroundings.

The collapsed building had left behind the best exhibitor of traces, sand and dust. Even though Bruce had done his best to erase his footprints, Batman still found a semi-palm print on the edge of the building.

It was easy to deduce Bruce's height and weight, but it would be impossible to guess his identity by one footprint alone. But Loki's footprints were a bit strange. They seemed to have appeared out of nowhere.

Batman searched around carefully and soon found that Loki's footprints appeared once, disappeared and then reappeared, with no walking trail in between, making it very abrupt.

This suggested that this person came here first, then flew away, and then came flying back. Why did he go back and forth like this?

Batman found a small pit next to one set of footprints. This pit was imprinted on the relatively moist earth, indicating it seemed to be the mark of a long pole or wand stuck to the ground, and the tail of the rod was decorated with exquisite patterns.

Batman knelt to the ground, carefully examining the patterns between the sand, and discovered they were distortions of a wave pattern, purely decorative and didn't hold any attacking functions.

This meant it was not a weapon used for stabbing, but rather a decorative prop. Thus, it was likely not a hunter's weapon distributed by the host and must have been a decoration that someone had brought in themselves.

But under the circumstances of having a camp, who would bring decorations in? Unless they had some other function.

Batman stood at the spot looking at where the footprints were. Soon, a vague shadow appeared in his field of view - a Mage dressed in a gorgeous robe, holding a wand, came here using Magic and left, then came back again.

Suddenly, Batman turned his head towards the large array drawn on the wall.

This time he went closer, examining all the text and symbols carefully, and finally found a rune that was a slightly different color from the others around the bottom, almost one meter and three centimeters off the ground.

Batman went over, gently touched the rune and saw the dark red pigment left on his hand. He understood that the runes on the wall had been tampered with.

Batman reached out to touch the other runes and found it useless. The patterns here were completely dry. Whether smudging it with his hand or scratching it with his fingers, none of it would come off, only the modified rune was still wet and bright.

So, Batman deduced that a Mage had come here and seen the array, altered one of the symbols in the array using Magic, and then revealed himself to the others who came after, pretending to know what he was doing and explained it to them, to achieve the effect of misleading them.

The modified array was no longer reliable, but Batman still noted down all the content on the array and remembered the position of the modified symbol, guessing where the Mage might have headed.

It appeared that the Mage could either fly or teleport, apart from a few footprints left here, there were no traces of other actions. But the person who came here after him was clearly neither capable of flying nor teleporting. Even though he had intentionally erased his own footprints, Batman still found some subtle traces.

Following the traces, the footprints disappeared about five or six hundred meters later. Batman guessed that it was very likely that the Mage had used Magick to take them away.

But suddenly, Batman heard a trace of movement across the narrow alleyway behind him, it sounded like a man's intermittent speech:

"Oh my God, Venom, I'm telling you again, as soon as we get to the business district up ahead, we'll find a storefront with chocolate, and you can eat all you want then, stop nagging me, I need to concentrate on the rules!"

"Alright, alright, I know you're an intelligent alien life-form, but that's no reason to attack my intelligence…"

Batman turned the corner and came face-to-face with a man, and there was just one.

The man across from him was startled as well, he stood by the wall, looking Batman up and down, and after a while, said: "Hello, are you also a participant this time?"

A series of information flashed through Batman's mind, and then he nodded and said: "Yes, I'm Batman."

"Um, I'm Eddie Brock, um... I'm a hunter, what about you?"

Batman frowned slightly. He could see that this man was barely trained to fight, he didn't look like he had any superpowers, he wasn't a genius with extraordinary intelligence, nor was he a billionaire, he seemed like an ordinary media worker.

Batman didn't think his teammate would let him be a hunter because he was virtually unable to fight, but judging from his demeanor and the fluency of his language, he was not lying.

And now there was only him, so what was that alien life form he called 'Venom'?


next chapter

章節 2805: Chapter 1994: U: Surpassing Major Events (83)_1

In the span of just two sentences, Batman realized that the man opposite him was startled, and not by anything from the real world. It was as if he had suddenly thought of something and began to space out.

This was very abnormal. Batman furrowed his brows deeper. Even an ordinary person wouldn't so easily be lost in thought in a perilous environment, let alone allow his mind to wander after just meeting a stranger, disregarding the changes in real-world situations. It wouldn't be possible for him to have survived till now.

Unless there's something in his mind.

"You idiot, snap out of it, he's noticed." Venom's angry, anxious voice rang out in Eddie's mind: "He's discovered me, don't try to deny it. Just don't respond."

"Who are you talking to?" Batman asked.

"It's none of your business." Eddie retreated two steps backward, then said: "You have the shard, don't you? I also got my share, and there's no second one, so you're better off staying away from me."

After speaking, Eddie wanted to retreat to the corner and then turn to leave, but Batman stopped him, saying: "You've seen that Array."

Eddie's body stiffened noticeably. He shook his head and said, "I don't know what you're talking about."

"The Array etched on the wall over there, you've seen it. And you've seen something else."

Eddie stared hard at Batman and said: "I've already said I don't know what you're talking about. You'd better not bother me, my teammates will be here soon."

After saying this, he still wanted to leave, but Batman interrupted him: "You have no teammates. You're all alone."

Eddie was about to open his mouth, but Batman beat him to it: "There is another life form inside your body, you two are considered as two individuals, therefore you alone make up a team, you have no other help."

Eddie looked at him with wide eyes.

"The priest cannot attack anyone. Whether you or the mysterious creature is the priest, it means that neither of you have the ability to attack others. Do you realize what a disadvantage this puts you at?"

"What are you trying to do?" Eddie slightly lowered his center of gravity, assuming a defensive stance.

"Don't be nervous, I'm saying we can cooperate." Batman put forward his most weighty bargaining chip, he said: "The rules have never stated that killing everyone means victory. Anyone with a bit of brain would realize that this is designed to provoke us into killing each other. But the name of this game is unity."

Eddie's shoulders slightly relaxed, but he still stared closely at Batman, showing no signs of wavering.

"Despite that, not everyone is smart. There will certainly be participants who will interpret this as a massacre, and if you unfortunately encounter such a person, your chances of survival are low."

"But I'm different from them, I understand that the key to this game might be the secret behind the fog. If you can provide me with enough information, I can escort you for a while, or find you a safe place to hide. Once I find a way out, you can leave too."

Eddie seemed to be tempted. Just as he was lost in thought, three Batman darts, shimmering with cold light, brushed past his ear. Eddie gave a big jump, glaring ferociously at Batman.

Batman looked at him and said: "If you don't give me information, I won't let you leave. You should know that the best choice is to cooperate."

Eddie immediately showed a conflicted expression, wanting to move but not daring to, but soon he reluctantly said: "I don't have any information that can be useful to you. I'm not some kind of great detective."

"You must have seen something." Batman was very sure: "Tell me what you know about that Array."

Eddie stood there hesitating for a moment, then sighed and said: "I saw two people standing in front of the Array."

The spectators in the projection hall immediately tensed up. Wouldn't this man named Eddie have seen the conversation between Shearer and Loki?

"One of them was wearing a long robe, holding a magic wand inlaid with gemstones." Eddie recalled, rolling his eyes as he said: "He has black hair. I couldn't see what color his eyes were, but his hand was glowing."

"How did he appear?"

"I didn't see that. But soon after they left here, they disappeared."

"What about the other one?"

"A young man, in a white sweater. There was nothing special about him, just that he was very handsome. Black hair, blue eyes."

"Did you hear them say anything?"

"I was hiding on the roof at the time and the wind was a bit strong. They seemed to be talking something about magic runes or something. The two of them agreed to cooperate, saying they were going to look for clues about these patterns. I didn't hear anything else."

Batman took a step forward, and Eddie tensed up again. He stood his ground and shouted: "Don't come any closer, you look like some kind of antisocial madman."

Batman paid him no mind and continued: "You saw more than that, didn't you? Here's the deal, I said I would ensure your safety and I will. We can talk while we walk. Where do you want to go?"

"I don't know." Eddie lowered his head and spread his hands out: "I haven't even figured out the rules yet. I just want to find a safe place to stay."

"When I came here, I passed by a high-rise building on the road, it didn't collapse too badly. The underground parking lot should be a good place to hide."

Eddie paused, once more spacing out, seemingly listening to the creature in his mind. When he regained his senses, he didn't hesitate to approach Batman.

"Is he smarter than you?" Batman asked.

"Not really…"

"That's right, this goddamn fool. I'm probably a million times smarter than him."

Even Batman was startled by this sudden, raspy, and evil voice. He turned his head towards Eddie and immediately discovered a pitch-black ghostly face and a mouth full of sharp fangs.

Batman instantly became alert, his hand already reaching for his taser.

"No, wait." Eddie seemed able to handle this situation quite well. He immediately took two steps back, held out his hands, and said, "His name is Venom. He's just a bit ugly. Believe me, he's not a bad guy."

"My God, Venom, stop it or we're going to die.... Okay okay, you're not ugly. You're the most handsome symbiote in the whole world, okay?"

Batman then saw Eddie struggling like he was fighting with himself. He swayed left, then he surged right, as though he was battling with the air. After a while, he finally took a deep breath, placing his hands on his knees, gasping for air.

"Sorry, he's a little unruly, but please believe me that he is a rational, communicative, intelligent life form, not an evil villain. Plus, he's actually smarter than me. He believes that you are trustworthy, so we can proceed."

Batman hesitated a bit.

However, at this moment, Eddie sighed and said, "I did see something else, but it was a bit strange. I feared you wouldn't believe me, so I didn't mention it. He said he can tell you, maybe you can figure something out of it. If you're willing to listen, let's walk and talk."

Batman continued walking with Eddie. He turned his head to Eddie and said, "We're all here to play the game. What could possibly be unbelievable? Tell me what you saw."

"Have you seen other arrays?" Eddie asked.

Batman silently nodded, but didn't say anything else.

"Do you know how they appear?"

Batman shook his head. Then he looked at Eddie with a probing gaze. Eddie sighed and confessed, "I won't lie, my Totem Shard was found in the building where the array is."

Batman immediately perked up because if this was true, Eddie was definitely the first one to arrive at this building. He might have even been there before the array appeared.

"I saw a deep red light." Eddie said hesitantly. "It was similar to the arrow color on the map pointing to the Totem Pillar Fragments and the red light emitted from the location of the Totem Pillar."

"Then the array appeared?"

"I didn't see the specific process of its appearance." Eddie shook his head gently. "There was nothing there originally. After the red light disappeared, I went out and saw a huge array in its place."

"Where did the red light come from?" Batman asked a critical question.

Eddie remained silent for a longer period this time, but eventually he said, "From underground. It was from underground."

The viewers in the theater gasped.

"So isn't that pattern drawn by Professor Schiller? Where did the red light come from? Could it be that Schiller knows magic?" Nightwing asked in surprise.

"I guess it might be a blind eye technique. The red light has nothing to do with the array, but Professor Schiller took some measures to make this guy named Eddie think they are related." Red Robin speculated.

Peter however adjusted his glasses and said, "Let's watch the replay."

The camera focused on the profile faces of the two men. The scene swiftly started to rewind and in the next second, the two faces that appeared on the screen were Eddie and Schiller.

"Long time no see, how have you been? Eddie, have you been having regular mental check-ups?"

Eddie, who had just gone upstairs, took a deep breath and said, "Doctor, you don't always have to rush to prove your identity. Apart from you, who else would have us undergo a psychological assessment?"

"I'm doing it for your own good."

"You're doing it for Nick's financial statement." Eddie chuckled and walked over to pat Schiller on the arm, asking, "What are you doing here? Is your spawning point near here?"

"Not exactly, I just rushed over here. Listen, I have a plan that needs your cooperation..."

The viewing hall was silent.

"So, all of these are his acquaintances?!" Red Robin said in disbelief. "Even if they are acquaintances, they should still be cautious about criminals who can impersonate others, right?"

"But I'm afraid apart from Doctor Schiller, no one would remind them to undertake a psychological assessment every day." Peter shrugged and said, "This is a perfect anti-counterfeit measure."

"I'm finding it harder and harder to understand what he's doing." Red Hood murmurred, pursing his lips. "What's the gain in teaming up with others to deceive Batman?"

Jack suddenly started laughing breathlessly and after a while, he choked. After a great deal of coughing, he finally managed to say, "Although I feel that he might just find this interesting, nobody understands Batman better than him."

Beside Jack, another Batman turned to look at him. Jack quickly turned towards him and raised an eyebrow, "Bats are mysterious creatures, yet they're also not that mysterious. The person who understands Batman most is always the Joker."

"Usually, Joker's biggest dream is to play games with Batman, but if Joker is a bit greedier, he can actually do a lot more with Batman."

On the screen, Batman and Eddie had arrived at the underground parking lot of the building. Eddie looked around, sighing, "Actually, your guess is right. My partner and I ran into some trouble. The best option now is to hide until the game ends."

"However, I hope you won't disclose my hiding place to anyone. I'll stay here for a while. If you win, you can go. I'll wait for you here."

"No." Batman suddenly shook his head and said, "You said that the red light came from below the ground. I must go check it out; we will go together."

"He took the bait." Venom said in Eddie's head.


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