Chapter 3200: The Haze of Faraines (8)

As everyone knows, Batman is a very pragmatic person who rarely wastes time on idle fantasies, but this does not mean he lacks keenness; any good detective possesses divergent thinking.

This kind of thinking can help them climb over the wall when their reasoning hits a dead end, allowing them to see a vast new world.

It is just that Batman's personality prevents him from relying on this kind of divergent thinking. Having inspiration is certainly best, but he prefers to make judgments through meticulous logical deduction because it is solid, reliable, and allows for advance preparation.

Generally speaking, Batman is the typical person who is more gifted than the vast majority of people and also works harder than the vast majority of people. There are very, very few times he needs to rely on talent; most things are solved by his advance preparation.

Bruce, like Batman, also possesses divergent thinking, but because his illness is cured, his personality has become completely different from Batman's; he is the type of person who will go looking for inspiration even if he doesn't have any.

This is not because he doesn't know how to prepare, but because he feels that preparing for this and that in a step-by-step manner is boring.

It is just like how ordinary people dislike tedious, boring, mindless work; certain daydreamers spend their days thinking about how to skip the long process of laying a solid foundation and building a structure, and instead start imagining the style of the interior decoration directly.

Bruce likes to rely on flashes of inspiration, so his thinking appears exceptionally erratic, but his whims are constructive rather than deductive.

The difference between these two lies in the fact that constructive whims are similar to "I suddenly want to go do something." Some people who are intermittently ambitious but persistently waiting to die are rich in this kind of thinking.

Wanting to be a painter today, wanting to write a novel tomorrow, and feeling that one can do extreme sports the day after, and being able to fantasize about how one might achieve success in these areas—this belongs to a kind of constructive inspiration.

In work, such people are suitable for starting projects; they usually have many ideas.

Take tabletop gaming as an example: these are the players who want to explore the library one moment, want to go loot a shop halfway there, and before they have even finished with the shop, they are distracted by the residence next door and prepare to go take a look.

Deductive inspiration, on the other hand, is about skipping certain necessary deductive processes through contact with something, thereby directly obtaining the answer to the deduction.

For example, after learning some basic principles of mathematics and understanding some basic formulas, one can suddenly write a mathematical formula that has never existed before but is correct.

Logically speaking, one should be able to derive this formula step by step, but they simply skip the necessary deductive process, allowing the formula to appear in the form of inspiration.

In work, such people are more suitable for execution; encountering problems and solving them during the execution process allows them to generate inspiration better.

Also taking tabletop gaming as an example, they are the players who, in the process of investigating the library, suddenly associate a cold case they saw with a certain link in the main storyline, thereby directly skipping two important clues to point to the truth; the game master cannot even make things up as fast as they can investigate.

It is very clear that Bruce leans toward the former, while Batman approximates the latter.

In the worldview of the Cthulhu Mythos, the latter is more dangerous; this ability to associate by directly skipping necessary processes may lead them to come into contact with forbidden knowledge they should not touch too quickly.

The former, because they have too many ideas—going to do this one moment and that the next—might achieve nothing on the road to advancing the main storyline, making them safer instead.

This is the main reason why Schiller is more worried about Batman and not very worried about Bruce.

Moreover, in this situation, investigating clues will definitely result in a loss of Sanity. Once Batman loses the sanity he is most proud of, there will not be many weapons left to deal with these grotesque situations.

Schiller looks out the window along the lighthouse window; the snow has stopped.

The misty fog is pushed onto the shore by wave after wave of the sea; the erected masts are like withered grass on a lonely grave, and also like the rain lines falling from the boundlessly vast sky in the eyes of insects that have fallen into a rut, nailing them heavily into the ground, with nowhere to escape.

When the faint light on the pier spreads along with the fog, it is like whiskey diffusing on fabric, rendering everything within sight dim and blurry, as if the sunsets of every day for ten million years have piled up in one place to perform.

Batman is hiding under an abandoned pier.

It is low tide at this moment, so there is a small piece of land here, while from the bridge above, it looks like nothing but seawater; it is a fairly good hiding place, but only Batman himself knows that his time is running out.

Batman escaped from that group of monsters. Originally, he intended to lie low and wait for changes, but unfortunately, the monsters did not seem to intend to take them to the ship, but wanted to kill them directly.

Batman could see that this group of half-human, half-fish monsters was selectively killing males, so Batman naturally could not be on the list of survivors; running away was his only way out.

In the previous confrontation, because he did not know the nature of the monsters, he looked several times, causing his spirit to suffer heavy damage and missing the opportunity for battle.

However, Batman has now grasped the general attributes of the monsters; in short, one must not listen, must not look, and must not make contact for too long.

Although the conditions are very harsh, they are not completely invincible; some of the males who were taken down would struggle, and one Deep One facing one adult human male cannot produce an overwhelming advantage.

After all, everyone is a vertebrate with two legs and two hands, and the difference in body size is not very large; even if they have an advantage in explosive power, if the opponent struggles to the death, it is difficult to completely restrain them with just four limbs.

Therefore, it basically takes two Deep Ones to subdue a crazed adult human male and take him away from the house.

In this situation, it is not difficult for Batman to escape. He took advantage of the next time they came to grab people to ambush one of the Deep Ones, knocking him directly to the ground, dodging the trident they threw over, and rushing out of the house at the fastest speed.

But he did not expect that the ability of the Deep Ones was even stronger than he had imagined. The Deep One that had not been knocked down let out a scream, and just this one sound almost made Batman's brain explode.

His vision instantly turned blood-red, his thinking was completely unable to concentrate, and when he was stumbling forward, he was directly knocked to the ground by a Deep One coming to support from the front.

But his strength and constitution points are both very high; he forcibly withstood the attacks of two Deep Ones, kicked one of them over, and ran out.

That was also a very thrilling battle, but even more thrilling than that was that the escaping Batman discovered that there was no skill in the skill list that could directly restore Sanity.

He certainly knows that a warm residence, delicious food, and proper rest can restore a small amount of Sanity.

But the problem is, without restoring Sanity, he cannot walk out of the pier, and naturally, it is impossible to find a place to rest; but to walk out of the pier, his brain cannot remain this chaotic, and he must find a way to restore his sanity.

This has become an unsolvable dead loop. Batman hid under the pier for half a day, and he did not see any signs of natural recovery of Sanity.

On the contrary, perhaps because he is in a cold and damp environment, his wounds are still bleeding, and his physical strength is almost exhausted, his vision is starting to become increasingly blurry, and the headache makes him almost unable to think.

What makes Batman feel even more desperate is that negative emotions are like violent sea waves, constantly impacting the high wall of willpower; he has never felt so much anger, resentment, and sadness so clearly in his life.

These emotions, which were obviously stirred up by special forces, have no origin at all, but they are terrifyingly straightforward, and Batman's current state can no longer completely ignore them; negative emotions are like a migrating herd of beasts, rampaging in his heart.

It is not that Batman has not thought about doing something to change his current situation, but he has already reached a dead end. Losing control is a taste he has rarely experienced; it arrived suddenly, and his preparation was clearly insufficient.

Now, he does not have many trump cards left. A body that is still strong and has no major damage counts as one, but without the tactical brain he is proud of, facing monsters that are stronger than him in both number and quality, there is no chance of winning with brute force alone.

He still has three skill points; this is the only trump card that is easiest to use for a desperate comeback, because he can use these skill points to level up a skill to the maximum, and maximum level can trigger a qualitative change.

The best choice is naturally a skill that restores Sanity, but unfortunately, there is none. Batman's body is not severely injured, and he does not need to exchange for first-aid skills.

There are some skills that are like water from afar that cannot quench thirst nearby, such as Shooting Mastery; if he had a sniper rifle now, level 3 mastery could make him hit the target every time, and fighting his way out would not be a problem, but unfortunately, he does not have a gun.

Stealth skill is also not bad; perhaps it could allow him to slip out, but stealth requires concentration and constantly modifying the route based on external conditions. His brain is almost a paste, and once he makes a wrong choice, it is a total loss, so naturally, it is not safe either.

Even with Batman's decisiveness, he is somewhat hesitant.

"Transcendent, are you still there?" Batman tries hard to calm his boiling brains and asks as calmly as possible.

"I am here. It looks like your situation is not very good, but I really cannot help much. Have you decided which skill to choose?"

"Do you have any recommendations?"

"Hmm..."

The Transcendent is silent for a while before saying: "I don't, but someone suggests you put points into Psychoanalysis."

"What?"

Batman's tone reveals genuine confusion, and the Transcendent repeats it again, "Your old friend suggests you put points into Psychoanalysis."

"May I ask why?"

"Oh, so you don't know yet." The Transcendent says as if he just remembered: "Max-level Psychoanalysis is actually giving you Schiller's talent."

"Originally, it wasn't really giving the talent, just using that form to tell you the answer, but Pride experimented with it on Bruce once and found that it could directly allow you to experience the real Psychoanalysis talent through a mental connection."

Batman is silent.

"However, I must remind you that Bruce couldn't use this talent at all after getting it; he kept wailing in his heart for me to turn it off for him, so I could only consider this skill as useless."

Batman recalls some things he has seen before: dreamlike, bizarre, chaotic, intertwined blood like blooming poppies, and living people growing fish tails.

This is obviously not a normal solution; it is more like fighting poison with poison.

But at this point, is there any other choice? ===== CHAPTER 3201 =====