章節 35: Chapter 35: Bat-Meeting (Part 1)
[Clock - 09:33 | 09:33 AM]
[Calendar - 01/03/2003]
[Location - Croc Kingdom (Name Pending) - Old Gotham, Gotham City, New Jersey]
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Time Skip - 11 Days
Atlas stretched his fingers out and cracked them.
With a soft sigh, he grinned. 'Oh thank the gods that this universe doesn't have restrictions on the magic system like the Dungeons and Dragons Multiverse has.' Atlas had just finished making something that would change his strength: You know how his inner soul world looks like an endless cosmus where his floating silver light body stays, right? And that he now has 4 Circles that surround his body like it is a planet with several rings? Well, he decided to become the human version of a planet system. His main soul as a beautiful silver "sun" while his rings act as the axis the "stars" would spin on... And, well, he made stars! They were this ball of pure compressed magical energy, but every time he made one, the circle (or ring) got unstable because it suddenly had more magical energy than before! To stabilize it, Atlas spread out various "stars" all over his circles, and he found that about 10 stars per circle were enough to stabilize them for now.
So, in the endless darkness of his soul space, his soul floated with four rings (One horizontal, one vertical, and two diagonal in opposite to each other) and ten bright little stars rotating on the rings, ten on each ring. Imagine each star is like, a 1% increase to his total magical energy because it acted as a secondary storage, like a small battery, that stored the excess magical energy.
And with 4 "rings" and 40 stars, Atlas felt much better than ever before! Enough to try a 9th Level Spell... You see, in the Dungeons and Dragons Multiverse, Magic has a subconscious or unconscious mind (depending on where you are) that helps magic casters with their spellcasting. This, in turn, allows them to cast very complicated and deeply sensitive spells without fucking it up! In trade, they have limited times they can cast spells per day, it's a good trade off, right? Atlas, however, has no help. It took him a while to figure out how to cast 6th, 7th, and 8th level spells because of how his mind was enchanted by the circles he was making- With his magic, Mind, Soul, Body are all connected, and when one becomes stronger, the others become stronger too by osmosis. Mostly his mind was the one being strengthened, but what his mind couldn't absorb went to his body, which focused mostly on his health amd his stamina, which were the aspects he was most worried about. Health because they live in Gotham and disease is everywhere in this place, and stamina...?
Well, you know exactly why he was worried about his stamina.
"Let's see..." Atlas opened his system screen and looked for, exclusively, 9th level spells. He wanted to try casting at least one, nondestructive, because he's pretty sure he'd kill somebody if he tried to cast a destructive 9th Level Spell! "One step closer to making this fucking kingdom fly..." With a grin, Atlas opened the book called [Abjuration: Protection, Reflection, and Deflection. How to protect yourself from nasty bitches! by Dem-O-En 777] and began reading everything he could- thanks to his mind being echanted and the amount of books he has read (117 of them now) he can read really quickly too! "Huh, this one... interesting."
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[Spell Mastery]
[The epitome of Abjuration magic when it comes to Disruption. This spell allows one to take control over the spell of another Spellcaster and change it. With this spell, you can change the target of the Spellcaster's spell, you can make the magic being cast go Wild, or you can even make the incomplete spell explode and go haywire, causing backlash to the Spellcaster-]
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The book went on to detail the exact ways you could take control over someone's spell, the way it could explode, and the many ways the Wild magjc could affect either him or his opponent. "... this seems like an interesting spell to cast..." He changed his mental book to another one, this one being called [Divination: The Knows, the Don'ts, the Oh My Gods Why Do I Know This!? By A Sad Seer that Sees Desturbing Truths]. I know, interesting title, right? The moment he opened the book, he was assaulted by the knowledge of a new language being learned immediately- "Huh, didn't know Orcs could write so beautifully..." he had learned how to write, speak, and read Orcish.
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[Knowledge]
[A rather risky spell. This Divination spell connects your mind directly to the Blood of Mysta, the Weave of Magic itself, and seeks out the knowledge you see. It might be simple things like how to carve forgotten runes, or how to play a flute with great proficiency... Or it might be something harder and deeper, like the name of a forgotten deity, the location of a heroic item, or even the true name of a deity that has been worshipped for so many eons-]
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The book went on to explain the many, many ways this majestic and powerful spell could help and even curse you with knowledge that was meant to be forgotten, and how hubris has been the reason the great Orc Empire of Talamar fell or whatever, but Atlas was particularly interested in this spell because there is no Weave in this universe. There is no multiversal entity that embodies all magic and all magical things, so...
When he casts this spell, what will he connect to?
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Flashback
[Calendar - 17/02/2003]
[Clock - 06:02 | 06:02 AM]
[Location: Batcave - Wayne Manor, Bristol County, Gotham City]
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POV Change
Dick Grayson - Robin
It had been a rough night yesterday and a rough early morning today. Especially because he almost had all the bones in his body broken by roots controlled by Poison Ivy! Dick groaned as he rolled his shoulders, having already done so many times but not feeling any better- he could still feel the phantom sensation of being squished tightly with roots, feeling his bones groan and his muscles break at the pressure being applied on him. Admittedly, going after Poison Ivy and Killer Croc Waylon was stupid on his part, but he was kinda hoping he could talk to Waylon, and when he saw him and Poison Ivy leaving, he had to act! Seriously, what else was he supposed to do? Watch them from afar and not give away his position, then slowly follow after them while they're not aware of being followed? And that him jumping them was a bad idea and exposed himself? He already knows that!
"That was incredibly stupid." Bruce hummed from his place at the Batcomputer, not bothering to hide the 'I am Batman and you have disappointed me' tone in his voice like he always did whenever Dick did something that wasn't exactly what he would have done... Dick is sick of that tone of voice that he has heard so many times growing up in the Wayne Manor. Seriously, there was this one time he broke a vase accidentally and Bruce just looked at him and spoke with the same tone of voice he was speaking to him right now. "And..." Bruce paused, seemingly looking for the right words to say, before he sighed: "...don't do it again." With a huffing grunt, Dick just sat down on the couch besides Alfred, who sighed and looked down at him.
"Please, allow me to take a look at your injuries, Master Dick." Dick just nodded, allowing Alfred to take a look at how hurt he truly was- even though Dick was trained by Bruce and Alfred on some medicine, he was still not as good as the man who learned for years! So, with a few careful touches and tugs, Alfred looked over his entire body before frowning: "Ah, it seems you have severe muscle tissue damage, Master Dick, only thanks to your training that you've been able to walk all the way back to the Wayne Manor..." With a groan, Dick allowed his arms to relax as Alfred pulled out a pack of ice from somewhere and simply said to him: "You'll need a few weeks of rest to complete return to your utmost best, and you'll have to take ice cold baths every 5 hours too, unless you want. I will add a few more carbs to the meals and-" he gave him a water bottle: "-starting today, you will drink at least one water bottle every 6 hours or so."
"Urgh..." Groaning, in both pain and angish just at the fact that he had to do it or else he risked more pain in the future, Dick accepted his fate. "Well, at least there will be more tasty food..." Mentally, he also added a few other things on the list of good things that had happened but he paused and considered- Oh well, Bruce most likely already knows or will know soon enough: "Uhm... Bruce? When Poison Ivy had me, I, uhm, well... I kinda threw one of the very secretive darts you told me not to take with me? The ones that had those microchips you've been working on for the past month? The very ones you've told me time and time again not to touch? Those ones?"
There was a heavy silence...
"...And?" The only response he got was a question. This seems to fit the good ol' Batman!
"Well, I don't know... I think I hit Poison Ivy? It was certainly green what I hit, but it didn't look like Waylon- And before you say anything, I was in complete agony of being crushed alive, so I might have very much missed." Dick felt a little silly about that- he had stolen one of Bruce's prototypes, the ones he had been working on for so long and trying to find a way to get them to work. "And, well, that's it?"
"..." Without saying anything else, Dick watched as Bruce started to go ham on the computer- clicking and tapping away at keys at a speed Dick was starting to develop, but with a mastery he had only seen when Bruce was in a rush. From his seat, Dick could see Bruce activating the code for the microchip, or a code he used to reactive the trackers he had placed on highly dangerous criminals that were in Arkham Asylum. "...fuck."
...did he just curse?
"You did well, Dick-" Wait, Bruce is praising him? For something he did!? "-and although I may not really like your method of putting yourself in danger to accomplish this feat-" Ah, there it is! "-I still acknowledge that you've managed to place a tracker on Poison Ivy... However, due to problems in the microchip, it will take a while for it to receive the signal and activate itself."
Wait, so he did something good!?
"Rest." Was the last thing he said that night.
And now, on the middle of the night of 1st of March- about [11:00 PM] -they're going down Old Gotham. Batman was able to get the microchip to work again, and he finally received the signal of the location of the mircochip, and they're going to check it out together- well, at first Batman wanted to go alone, but Dick convinced ("Please please please please please plea-") Batman to let him go along. Old Gotham was, well, old! But mostly silent... thr majority of the oldest buildings in Gotham are in this region of the city. The integrity of this region was compromised because of the ground it was built on, the region of Gotham with the most amount of underground caverns, which is where they were going down on it seems.
Dick had studied Gotham's history, this regionnof Gotham was supposed to be the "salvation" of Gotham, but it was abandoned once they found out that building several very heavy buildings om top of a bunch of underground caverns was not a very good idea. It once was a very rich region of Gotham, and the starting point that brought a lot of commerce and people to Gotham too! But nowadays, only those who live in this region of Gotham are the true desperate ones, because the apartments here are cheaper than a dollar bill. "So, the signal?" Robin asked- he was, admittedly, quite curious... Why were Poison Ivy and Killer Croc doing, and how would it screw up Gotham?
"Still going down, but now to the west." Batman's response was short. It seems he's still mad with him, huh?
The best way down turned out to be an abandoned subway station, which was kinda obvious choice! Batman did explicitly follow the tracking microchip, and they went down this abandoned train track, seeing signs of... repair? The train tracks went further down and through a hole in a wall of rough stone, and for the first time in his life after leaving the circus and after the death of his parents, that Dick saw something that truly put wonder in his heart once more.
A city? Wait, where does the energy for the lights come from? Is that a river-
"Ah, welcome." A voice interrupted his thoughts, and next to a beautiful fountain of a woman with horns, was a table. Sitting by that table, were three people. He recognized two of them- Poison Ivy was calmly sipping into some tea (he could still see signs of nervousness in her actions), while Waylon was chewing on something. Sitting on his lap, however, was the single person he did not recognize...
A man, wearing a weird jester mask.
"Tea?" They offered: "Wouldn't want to be rude to our... uninvited guests."
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