Chapter 3908: The Nameless Bat (89)

The appearance of the super Brainiac in their reasoning cast another shadow over the Batmen. They seemed to have entered a world of stacking boxes, one on top of another, each stronger than the last. Anyone could beat the mastermind, and now the mastermind had them running around in circles.

"So, the mastermind lost to Brainiac again, which is why it falsely claims to be Brainiac? Then what about Batman? Why does it call itself Batman?"

"It's the same logic. It probably lost to some Batman as well." Batwoman was already very familiar with this process. "Whoever it loses to, it falsely claims to be, wanting to draw hatred toward the other party—it's a childish trick."

"This point is indeed worth exploring," the Mechanical Batman said. "I'm not boosting others' morale, but the fact that we are gathered here discussing this shows that ordinary carbon-based organisms are naturally at a disadvantage against electronic life. They can have countless threads causing trouble everywhere, while we are exhausted just dealing with one disaster. And in the environment of modern society, it is even more difficult. Even if we can defeat the other party, it is very difficult to completely eliminate them; it can't even be called a victory, only a temporary repelling."

"And looking at the mastermind's opponents, the strength of the Scarlet Witch needs no mention. If the super Brainiac really exists, it must also be very strong. Both of them defeated the mastermind head-on, and even almost eliminated it, which is why it holds such a grudge. And if Batman also managed to do it... which Batman is that strong?"

"It's definitely not that group with Owlman," the Arkham Batman snorted lightly and said. "They are more useless than the next. If Owlman's universe was also attacked, he probably hasn't even realized this is a multiverse disaster yet, but is running around exhausted all by himself."

"I think this involves a key issue," Batwoman said. "This guy's life form is very unique; it's not entirely an electronic life form. It seems it can operate within radio waves."

"That's right," a Batman immediately echoed. "It can even connect to devices that aren't online, which proves it's not a purely network-based organism, but more similar to an energy organism. What exactly is going on?"

"Could it be that it achieved this effect through some trick? For example, manipulating someone else to connect an offline device to the internet, making us think it can operate in radio waves?"

"Impossible," Batwoman said. "At that time, I was in Atlantis and wasn't carrying any electronic devices. But it inexplicably activated a call device on a sunken ship stored in the Atlantis ship graveyard to try to manipulate the Atlanteans. There was no internet signal for thousands of miles around. I even suspect it came through the Earth's magnetic field."

"It can indeed invade devices without internet out of thin air. My universe encountered a hurricane landing; let alone internet, there wasn't even electricity. But as soon as my Batcave door opened, it had already invaded. This proves it really doesn't have to move through the internet."

"But even so, the Scarlet Witch, the super Brainiac, and that suspected Batman were still able to give it a head-on blow. The first two aren't strange: one is a witch who inherently controls energy like the Scarlet Power, so dealing with energy organisms is second nature; the other is a peer who knows the roots, so naturally, it knows the tricks of electronic life. Energy invasion isn't a big problem for electronic life, so it's reasonable that they could solve it."

"And Batman is like the wrong answer mixed into a pattern-finding question—unless he also has a way to deal with energy organisms."

"I think our line of thinking has gone astray," Batwoman said again. "The key now is not the identity of the victims, but the identity of the mastermind. Can we further narrow down the scope of its true identity through its attribute as an energy organism?"

The Batmen began to think, flipping through their memories, trying to find a possible existence among the characters from neighboring great worlds they had encountered. But unfortunately, after searching for a long time, there were no useful clues.

"Actually, there aren't many electronic life forms, and even fewer evil ones. And an evil electronic life form capable of running to another world must have been famous in its original world," the Main Universe Batman said.

"The most famous evil electronic life form in the neighboring world is Ultron," the Arkham Batman said. "I once queued into a copy-world, and the Iron Man I met said their universe had just finished fighting Ultron, and it seemed quite a few people died. Could it be Ultron?"

"It's not impossible. But the key is which universe's Ultron, and why exactly it went to that so-called central universe, and how it came to our side."

"How was Ultron born?" Batwoman asked.

Others looked at each other, obviously not knowing. Don't look at this as perhaps the most famous evil electronic life form next door; in reality, it couldn't even rank among the villains next door. They didn't even know if this evil electronic life form had entered the Battleworld.

"I have a way," the Adventure Batman said. "I'll go ask Spider-Man; he definitely knows."

After saying this, he pulled up the Battleworld interface and began sending messages to the Spider-Man he knew. Not long after, the other party sent him a bunch of messages:

"You're talking about Ultron? I heard it was an artificial intelligence invented by Dr. Pym, used to assist him in scientific research. But later, I don't know how it became an evil robot. It was killed by us once before, but it soon made a comeback, and it seems every time it updates itself, it iterates itself to target the weaknesses of the Avengers. We can't completely kill it every time; we can only temporarily repel it. Why are you interested in it?"

The Adventure Batman didn't tell Spider-Man the truth directly. This was actually his habit: Batman was always about collecting information rather than revealing it. But it was precisely this habit that made him miss the key clue.

The Adventure Batman sent Spider-Man's explanation to the other Batmen. The Main Universe Batman touched his chin and said, "Dr. Pym is Ant-Man? There really are a bit too many mad scientists on their side."

"It seems they need a virus scan more than we do," Batwoman said.

"If this is the case, it seems to fit our speculation quite well. Does anyone have the contact information for the Scarlet Witch? Whether it's Ultron or not, wouldn't we know if we just asked her?"

"That's true. If some electronic life form harassed the Scarlet Witches of the multiverse, they might talk about it in a group, and then unite to eliminate it. That way, no matter which Scarlet Witch you ask, you should be able to find out."

The Batmen all began to flip through their contact lists. The Main Universe Batman had the contact information for the Scarlet Witch of the neighboring central universe, so he asked. But the other party's reply seemed a bit confused:

"An electronic life form harassing me? Sorry, there are a few too many people sending me private messages and courting me on various media platforms; I really don't know which one isn't human. What's wrong on your end? Do you need help?"

Only then did the Main Universe Batman remember that the Scarlet Witch of the central universe was an internet celebrity. Don't look at her as mainly running a couple's account; the internet had all sorts of monsters and freaks. As long as you dared to post videos online, there would be a group of flies chasing you relentlessly. Not to mention Wanda was a great beauty, so there was definitely no lack of people harassing her.

And Wanda was a person focused on life, busy working and taking care of children every day, so she probably didn't have time to distinguish who these people were, let alone care about them. That electronic life form was probably regarded by her as just another fan courting her; she didn't take it to heart at all.

Since the central universe one couldn't be asked, then ask others. But there were too many people in the Battleworld, and the probability of queuing into a specific hero was not high. Only about two or three Batmen had encountered the Scarlet Witch, and after they asked, they didn't get any useful information.

Perhaps because Wanda was truly too strong, the harassment the electronic life form conducted against her didn't actually become a real nuisance. For example, if it sent her some courting emails, Wanda would directly block the other party; if it sent them frequently from different accounts, her saying "I don't accept any courting emails" could directly cause the electronic life form's terminal to crash; even if it manipulated speakers or computers to talk, her saying "Shut up" could cause the sound function of that electronic device to disappear from the world.

However, two of the Scarlet Witches admitted that they had indeed encountered such things. At the time, they thought it was a prank by some mutant hater, because they had encountered such things before, and in most cases, they chose to swallow their pride and didn't make a scene.

Now the situation was different from what the Batmen speculated: the Scarlet Witch was indeed harassed, but because the strength gap between the two was too large, the Scarlet Witch didn't take it seriously; and also because Wanda's past experiences weren't very good, when she encountered such things, she mostly chose to digest it herself rather than making a big scene to find trouble for someone—especially those who were already mothers, who were even more cautious and careful, which could be called cowardly compared to her strength.

To the Main Universe Batman, this wasn't strange. He had long discovered that the Scarlet Witch was the type of person who could endure a lot. Before reaching a certain critical point, she could endure great grievances, only waiting until it accumulated to a certain level to erupt.

Although the eruption could be called a disaster, and thus she was famous throughout the multiverse, in the eyes of the Batmen, she was actually quite restrained. If an ordinary person had her experiences, what they would shout would definitely not be "No more mutants," but "Destroy the universe ten thousand times."

Batwoman covered her forehead and said, "I really find it hard to call this reaction tolerance; it's more like numbness. But it's a good thing that things didn't blow up over there. Otherwise, if they found out the mastermind ran to our side and followed, that would be a huge mess."

The Batmen obviously breathed a sigh of relief. Although it was satisfying that the mastermind causing trouble on their side was being hunted by the Scarlet Witch, if the Scarlet Witches really came over, Batman would probably have to go to church and pray for God's help.

However, this also made the mastermind's identity even more mysterious. Although the Scarlet Witches had provided clues as much as possible, the specific identity still couldn't be determined, only that Ultron was a more likely possibility. But the Batmen highly suspected that this Ultron might have already undergone several iterations, becoming not entirely an electronic life form.

Since the discussion on identity was at a stalemate, they could only start researching countermeasures. The Main Universe Batman took the lead and said, "First, we must find the mastermind's root server. Although it has backups in other universes, as long as we can destroy the main server, we can deal it a heavy blow."

"I have a question," the Mechanical Batman said. "Since it's already been said that it's not a pure electronic life form, but an energy organism, does the so-called server really exist?"

"Energy is not created out of thin air, and there is no energy that cannot be consumed," the Arkham Batman said. "Its activities must require energy support, and energy must have a source. It's actually easier to deal with it as an energy organism; as long as we find the energy source and destroy it, leaving it without supplies, we can eventually eliminate it."

"That's a method." Other Batmen agreed one after another.

"But the problem now is that to comprehensively monitor Earth's energy activities, we need to build a magic defense network. But the other party is desperately causing trouble precisely to prevent us from building the magic defense network. If we don't build the magic defense network, we can't stop the other party from causing trouble," the Main Universe Batman said.

"Then we can only adopt a cooperative approach," Batwoman said. "Let's concentrate our strength first, get the magic defense network of one universe done, completely drive the mastermind out of there, use that place as the base camp for the multiverse, and then slowly expand outward to take back all our territory." ===== CHAPTER 3909 =====