Chapter 3733

In Schiller's Tower of Consciousness, the atmosphere at the elevator entrance was not harmonious. Greed and Pride looked at each other. The elevator doors were both open, but neither of them took a step to go up.

"Look at the good thing you've done," Pride spoke up.

"It was clearly him who, like you, didn't cherish our body."

"I am referring to you creating him to be lazy at that time."

"Isn't this old account being dug up a bit too far?"

The two stared at each other, neither able to say anything. Pride sighed; he tried to solve the problem. He said: "You saw the situation just now; the nanobots took away at least 30% of the muscles in the upper body. And he went off work before the pain nerves could react. Now, no matter which one of us goes up, we might enter a state of loss of control in extreme pain. What do you plan to do?"

"His timing is quite accurate!" Greed said with some gnashing of teeth. "Neither of us can avoid this pain if we go up. But this is the smallest problem. Do you think the mastermind behind this dungeon, who caused such a big change, will sit by and watch the visitor from another world faint without any defense, and do nothing?"

"This is the key point," Pride said. "If either of us goes up and loses control, it is very likely to accidentally injure the mastermind. Even if we calm down later, I am afraid we will lose the opportunity to negotiate with him."

"He did it on purpose," Greed said, hugging his arms. "Knowing that we two don't like to do things, he still had to destroy all possibilities of negotiation. But speaking of which, who do you think did it?"

"The Broken Bat is not worth worrying about," Pride shook his head lightly and said. "If he were skilled enough, he wouldn't have been defeated by Azrael; if he were firm in will, he wouldn't have lived in disgrace. Choosing such a Batman as a teammate is not a good idea, unless they just want to use him to wipe out all those compassionate superheroes."

Greed understood what he meant. The plot of the original Broken Bat universe was not like this. Let alone the Batman of the Arkham universe, even Dick's Robin squad wouldn't have failed. So the mastermind couldn't be the Broken Bat of this universe, and shouldn't be anyone else in this universe either; it must be a visitor from another world like them.

If that's the case, the scope of suspicious targets is too wide. There are too many evil Batmen in the Dark Multiverse; besides the most famous ones, there are plenty of second-tier characters, making it really difficult to lock onto specific targets.

"Do you think there is something strange somewhere?" Greed spoke up. "The whole city has no thermal weapons; not only are there no weapons of mass destruction, but there are not even small pistols. It's not like this in the original plot, right?"

Pride thought silently. He remembered that there were quite a few war scenes in the original plot, where traces of thermal weapon explosions could be clearly seen. But the city they were in clearly had no thermal weapons, and all the corpses died in melee combat. In the fights between the agents and them, no one used guns or cannons either. This is indeed very strange.

"Fairness," Pride suddenly spat out a word. "The vast majority of Batmen and Robins do not use thermal weapons. They don't use thermal weapons for the sake of fairness."

"Isn't this ridiculous? Clearly plotting, playing tricks in the dark, using other people's sympathy to set traps, but insisting on pursuing some so-called fairness in the trap, pursuing the pleasure of mental victory. Does this superfluous behavior remind you of someone?"

"The Batman Who Laughs..."

The two looked at each other and remained silent. Obviously, realizing this fact made them even less willing to go up. Who would want to step on a pile of dog shit knowing it's on the road ahead?

"There is another strange place," Pride spoke up. "The light in the city is very strange. Even if the weather in Gotham is bad, it shouldn't be to the point of not being able to distinguish day from night. But the agent stayed in there for several hours, and the light intensity didn't change at all. This is not very unusual."

Greed frowned. He began to think at a very fast speed, and then said: "If it is the Batman Who Laughs laying out the plan, he might predict that some people who are not Batman will come here. The various traps he set in the city to distract Batman might not be able to deal with everyone. So he must have a backup plan; the strange darkness in the city might be the key to his comeback."

"He has always thought highly of himself, has no self-knowledge, and likes to strike at opponents mentally. So we can exclude things like the darkness being some kind of fatal curse; it is more likely to be the same line of thinking as his layout of the Broken Bat. He wants people to think they have won, but have everything destroyed before dawn arrives."

"Dick is unwilling to talk much about this matter; perhaps it is because it also caused him quite a blow," Pride sighed and said. "We should have contacted the Batman of the Arkham Knight universe before we came."

"It's too late to say these things now. We have to find a way to solve the current situation. I estimate that the situation we face after we wake up won't be too good; we can't negotiate, and with our two combat abilities, it's hard to reverse the situation. I don't think we should go up."

"Then what do you plan to do?"

"The agent must have planned to do this long ago, otherwise he wouldn't have brought healing potions and morphine. You know, if we let the morbid side go up, they don't need healing or pain relief; serious injury is exactly the time for them to perform. If we two go up, we can't help but enter a state of loss of control in severe pain, and we can't use these things either. Only he can use the medicine to reverse the situation at the moment before the pain arrives. This proves that he had thought long ago that he would have to go up himself in the end."

"Are you saying he wants to negotiate terms with us?" Pride leaned on the railing behind him and said. "What chips do you think we two have? Even if he quits now, there's nothing we can do about him."

"He won't quit. You know, he is just a heartless machine for completing missions; in the process of the mission, everything he does is for the sake of completing the mission goal, not for the sake of abandoning the mission. If he wanted to abandon it, he wouldn't have agreed to go in the first place."

"In other words, the conditions he wants to negotiate with us are helpful for completing this mission? But we both said we would provide him with help; why doesn't he just state his requirements?"

"Perhaps he thinks that even if he states them directly, we two won't agree," Greed thought for a while and said. "But I can't think of what requirements he would be certain we two wouldn't agree to."

"Why are you two still here?" The agent walked down from another elevator, obviously just returning from the surface of consciousness.

Greed opened his mouth, but for a moment didn't know how to ask. Pride spoke up: "We two can't go up. Just say what you want to do."

"I said, let you go to work." The agent smiled rarely.

"Let's skip 'you don't know what will happen if either of us goes up, and then we explain the process to you.' The current situation is obviously only something you can reverse. State your conditions, and then go back to solve the trouble."

"That's not necessarily true," the agent shook his head and said. "Have you considered going up together?"

Greed and Pride were both silent for a moment, seemingly shocked by his proposal. Greed looked at him and said: "Only one personality trait can control the body at the same time; the second one cannot enter the elevator. I thought you knew that."

"Then how did the morbid side do it?"

Pride and Greed were speechless for a moment. The connection on the morbid side is relatively close, and even many times they are not independent personality traits; the boundaries between many traits are blurred. When they go up to control the body, even the Superego cannot fully distinguish which ones went up, so they are collectively referred to as morbid.

The rule that "only one personality trait can control the body at the same time" only applies to the normal side. If the Superego says it won't work, it won't work, and they haven't studied why it won't work.

"Why don't we two try?" Greed looked left and right and said. "Although the Superego says it won't work, the one in charge of the elevator is the Ego; he shouldn't stop us, right?"

"Are you crazy? What if something really goes wrong? Do you want the tower to collapse again?"

"But the tower collapsed not because of this," Greed felt more and more reasonable the more he thought about it, and said, "And our skills are all universal, which means the isolation between personality traits has weakened. Maybe we can also mix together like the morbid side?"

Pride seemed a bit hesitant. He said: "How can it be that simple? I always feel like something will go wrong."

"We are not really suffering from dissociative identity disorder," Greed continued. "There won't be things like personality fighting for body control. Isn't the morbid side doing fine? They didn't have situations where they couldn't control the body either."

"But even if we two go up at the same time, what benefit is there for solving the current situation?"

"The improvement in mental strength will improve mental stability, so pain won't make you lose control," the agent said. "The reason why the morbid side can withstand more pain and stay awake is because their mental strength is strong enough."

"Makes sense," Pride said. "But even if we don't lose control, I'm afraid we can't break out with violent means. And under the current situation, it is obvious that no matter how strong the negotiation skills are, it's useless."

"So the three of us go up together," the agent said. "I need you two to improve my mental strength. After the pain reaches the threshold, I can be like the morbid side, using the stimulation brought by pain to inspire our talents, and then cooperate with my force, only then can I solve this crisis."

Greed and Pride looked at each other, seemingly understanding what the agent meant. In most cases, it is difficult for the normal side to open the hallucinatory vision that is like magic, or rather, the time they can open it is very short, because the mental strength of each independent personality trait is not high enough, and the tolerance threshold for pain is not high enough. If it is too painful, the brain will still force a shutdown for self-protection, just like an ordinary person.

The reason why the morbid side can always open that hallucinatory vision that is like a superpower is because they are not independent personality traits, their mental strength is naturally very high, their tolerance for pain is stronger, and they almost never go into shock due to severe pain. This is what gave them the ability to not only stay awake but also become stronger under extremely unfavorable conditions.

It is equivalent to saying that the mental strength of Pride and Greed is 3, which might be stronger than other normal personality traits, but the strength of the traits that the morbid side goes up with each time adds up to 10, so the strength is naturally much higher.

Although the agent is incompatible with most of Schiller's personality traits, he is also a member of the normal side after all, and his mental strength is not that high, which leads to the fact that if he does not use drug assistance, then the pain that is too intense may also make him unable to continue to act.

He is now pulling Pride and Greed along; if one person's strength is 3, then adding them up is 9. This allows him to act freely under the condition of activating his talent.

When Schiller is in a bad state, he doesn't just open a mental analysis vision like a hallucination; muscle restrictions will also be further lifted, and his reaction ability in all aspects will be improved. And these improvements are based on his spirit, not relying on any external objects, and will not be interfered with, which is a sharp weapon for a comeback.

"But aren't you the one who hates those hallucinations the most?" Greed thought he knew the agent relatively well, and said, "If it weren't for this, you wouldn't have gone to study behavioral analysis. Why do you want to use this talent now?"

"I can't see."

"What?"

"It's too dark in the city! I can't see!"