Chapter 2304: Gotham Music Festival (52)

Bruce and Bat-B hadn't yet recovered from the swaying of that pile of color blocks and lines.

"What? Who died?" Bat-B said subconsciously. He was completely broken into a cold sweat by the sudden voice of Arrogance.

Only then did Bruce react that the color block radiating light just now was a person. He turned his head to look at Bat-B and found that they were both confused.

They knew they might see some things that were very difficult to understand, but this level of hallucination was still a bit too advanced for humans. If the world in the eyes of the pathological states was like this, then how were they any different from being blind?

Then Bat-B reacted and said: "These shapes, colors, and lines represent different things in your eyes. They each have special meanings, right?"

Arrogance nodded, glanced at Bruce, then withdrew his gaze and said: "When the normal state controls the body, such hallucinations don't appear often. Only when focusing attention can one see a little bit, which is about the same as the operating principle of ordinary people's empathy organs."

"If I have to say where I am stronger than ordinary people, it's probably turning people's more abstract feelings into a more concrete vision, which is more convenient for using professional knowledge to analyze. This is my method of psychoanalysis."

"But the pathological state is not like this, right?" Bruce asked.

"The pathological state is the pathology itself, so when they control the body, he will only have the blurry and chaotic vision common to mental patients or other patients, filled with various hallucinations, almost unable to see the specific shapes of any things or people."

"Your gaze is never focused because you can't see us," Bat-B said.

"To be precise, it's not that I'm not looking at you," Shiler shook his head and said: "What I am looking at are those hallucinations that can reflect you and the surrounding things. But because you can't possibly see my hallucinations, you feel like I'm not looking at anything."

"But the pathological state sometimes still sees us," Bruce said.

"When he is excited, more active neural activity can allow me to have two kinds of vision. Besides hallucinations, I can also see things happening in the real world."

Bat-B suddenly understood. The process of the hunt's eyes focusing was the process of him gradually becoming excited. As for why he became excited when seeing a person's back, it was very likely related to his past.

In the hallucinations Shiler showed him that Bat-B saw, his hunt clearly had purposefulness. Certain people at the banquet became his targets. This target was set long ago, not a sudden passionate murder.

Then what kind of people would be more likely to become targets?

But before that, Bat-B still had many things to confirm. He looked at Shiler and asked: "I know there aren't many good people on this ship, but isn't there your friend Oliver? And those few who came from other universes before? If you are just left to go crazy like this, wouldn't it hurt them?"

"This brings us to the traits of the pathological state." Arrogance sat down, placed his hands on the umbrella, and said: "The more painful the mental state, the more unstable it is. The higher the excitement value, the more powerful it is. And the vast majority of physiological pain comes from external attacks."

Bat-B still stared at him.

"My friends won't actively attack me," Arrogance shook his head and said: "If they are forced to do so, they will definitely hold back as much as possible and won't want to kill."

"So in the process of hunting them, although it might cause a certain degree of injury to them, it's also difficult for the ability value to rise to a level that can kill with one blow. It's even difficult to keep them."

"Because there is no sufficient stimulation, the process of becoming excited is too slow. About 5 seconds is enough for them to use various methods to escape. Didn't you already try that before?"

Bat-B suddenly realized. He thought it was indeed so. Now Shiler's friends on the ship, such as Oliver, such as Natasha, almost never actively cause fatal injuries to Shiler, and their defensive counterattacks also hit those less important parts as much as possible.

And if the speed of excitement determines the speed of focusing, and the degree of pain determines the degree of excitement, then if it cannot bring sufficient pain, the excitement won't be strong, and the process of entering the hunt will naturally be relatively slow.

And Bat-B used himself to compare. He was able to use the method of blocking the line of sight to delay for more than ten seconds before, and for these people, ten seconds was enough to run away, even if there were one or two mistakes in the middle, there was still enough space left for error correction.

This premise was that they were Shiler's friends, or at least they had a certain understanding of Shiler and knew that when facing Shiler, running away was a better choice than fighting back.

Actually, it wasn't that Bat-B couldn't fight when he turned back before. Although he didn't bring enough equipment and some unverified equipment couldn't handle the lack of signal here, just his own desperate struggle could at least result in both sides suffering, but he didn't choose to do so.

Because Shiler had indeed had a great influence on him before. After returning to his own world, he found that his mental state was much better, and he could be Bruce Wayne without any guilt or psychological burden, instead of having to struggle with when to be Bruce, when to be Batman, or even having to choose which one to abandon.

So when facing Shiler again, Bat-B wasn't willing to take too violent means, feeling that things didn't need to develop to this extent at all. Running away first and then thinking of a more gentle solution would be a better choice.

If all of Shiler's friends were influenced by him like this, then they would probably think the same as himself.

In short, accepting that one's friend is a madman who can lose control at any time, and after he loses control, being able to show great tolerance toward him because of the good influence he brings when he is normal, avoiding his sharpness as much as possible, and being willing to pay dozens of times the energy and price to find a way to solve the problem without hurting him.

To take a step back, anyone who has a slight understanding of Shiler would know that most of his loss of control isn't really a loss of control, but just a part of his plan.

For such a long time, most of Shiler's friends have already been trained. Seeing him stir up trouble, they either happily join in like the 'Evil to the Fourth Power' and see if they can fish for some benefits. If there is no time or no interest, then they hide far away. If they really can't hide, they just lie flat. Anyway, the final result won't have any bad consequences.

But enemies don't think so. Anyone who encounters a super serial killer who is extremely fast, has immense strength, and looks like the final villain of that kind of top-tier slasher film from the outside, will feel indescribable despair.

They don't have a good estimate of Shiler's strength and his intentions, only feeling that they definitely can't run away, and the other party definitely wants to kill them. Under extreme fear, people can do anything, and there are many who want to fight to the death.

Since they want to fight to the death, they definitely won't hold back when taking action, definitely hitting wherever it hurts and wherever it's fatal. This will cause Shiler's excitement value to rise rapidly. Bat-B even suspects that as long as Shiler receives sufficiently serious injury, even if the other party doesn't expose their back, the hunt will begin.

Arrogance's words corroborated this point.

"This woman is squatting in the wardrobe, clearly wanting to avoid exposing her back to anyone, but unfortunately, the hunt, now seriously injured, has ignored all rules."

Bruce touched his chin and said: "It seems those three gunshots became the final funeral knell. The ultimate hunt has begun."

Bang! Bang! Bang!!

"Stop him! Stop... ahhhhhhh!!!!"

Bang! Bang! Crash!

"Help! He's here!! Shoot! Shoot quickly!!!!"

Ah!!!! Ahhhhh!!!

"God... God... save me... save me..."

A group of men and women covered in blood ran quickly through the corridor. Leading them was a hot blonde beauty. The eyeball in one of her eyes had already disappeared, turning into a blood hole constantly flowing with blood.

Her face was full of panic, rushing through the corridor in a panic, not even caring about the companions behind her. And behind her, a Latino youth with a goatee was pulling his short-haired girlfriend and running forward constantly.

The black man behind shouted at them: "Call the Night Master, let them open a portal to save us. Master Andrew is dead, but there are other Archmages. Quickly let them come."

"Don't dream, David!" the short-haired woman turned back and screamed: "We rolled away everything in Master Andrew's Mage Tower before coming to America. Those people at the Oblivion Bar won't care about us!"

"It's all your fault for not taking his orb at the time," the blonde woman running in front shouted: "There might be residual energy in it. I told you to check it!! That way, maybe we could still use one last magic."

"You're the one dreaming, Christine," the Latino youth defended his girlfriend and said: "You learned magic just because you were having a spring-and-autumn dream that you were the chosen one. You wanted to be different from the little bitches in your school. You were just for vanity. You can't even memorize the magic spells!"

"Shut up! You..."

The blonde woman suddenly discovered that the expressions of her companions suddenly became terrified, as if they had seen something terrifying behind her.

A pair of hands interwoven with scarlet and pale stretched out from behind Christine's neck, slowly cupping her cheeks.

Christine revealed an expression of extreme fear and despair, her lips opening and closing, widening her only surviving eye, weeping and murmuring: "No... no..."

The hands followed her cheeks and jawbone downward until they slid to the side of her neck—four fingers exerted force downward violently, the fingertips inserting straight into the trachea. Arterial blood followed the channel made by the fingers, all rushing into the trachea and lungs.

Because of the large amount of choking blood and suffocation, the beautiful blonde lady constantly slapped the hands grabbing her, trembling and struggling helplessly, constantly twitching before suffocating to death, as if dancing a hot, close-contact dance in the murderer's arms.

Until the pupils dilated and the body went limp, only then was she thrown away like trash. The moment they saw the octopus mask, the remaining three burst into a scream in unison and turned to run.

The couple who had originally been running in front fell behind because they turned in the wrong direction. The short-haired woman unfortunately fell and was dragged by the ankle, disappearing into the darkness. A few seconds later, a miserable scream came.

The remaining two men had already run out of the corridor. They thought they could temporarily escape a disaster, but after a few seconds, footsteps resounded behind them again.

Facing the hunt that was like a maggot on a tarsal bone, both revealed expressions of despair. In order not to be caught up, they could only hide in the nearest room like headless flies.

The moment the door closed, with a loud bang, the door panel and the black man closest to the door flew out together.

"God! No... no... ahhhhhhhhhhh!!!" ===== CHAPTER 2305 =====