Chapter 4912: There Is No Batman Here (Seventeen)

Red Robin turned and handed the lantern to Damian. He half-knelt, pinching a bit of the grave's surface soil between his fingers, brought it to his nose and sniffed, then said, "There's a scent of corpse rot. That's not quite normal — seems like a corpse crawled out of here."

Damian took a light breath. He stomped the soil beneath his foot, then said, "A corpse crawled out — where'd it crawl to?"

"The mission's having us investigate that," Red Robin said. "Be careful. This mission's combat probability is sixty percent — meaning even if we don't investigate, we might still run into monsters..."

The words had barely fallen when the group saw a swaying figure behind three rows of headstones. Damian moved to draw his gun, but Red Robin stopped him: "If all those horror movies I watched weren't for nothing, the moment you fire, you'll startle even more corpses into crawling out."

Damian sighed: "What are the odds of Batman making me an Nth metal greatsword too?"

"About the same as you stealing Deathstroke's." Red Robin pulled out his short staff. Not that he excelled with it — it was just all he had. Damian only had a shovel. They hadn't brought much in the way of melee weapons. Nightwing had gone on a combat mission; all the good gear was with him. Their investigation mission had a relatively high combat trigger chance, but still nowhere near the intensity of pure monster-slaying, so they hadn't taken any good equipment.

Sure enough, a corpse rotted to the point of bloating shambled toward them. Red Robin closed the distance, bringing his staff down on the corpse's head. *Crack* — the skull shattered, brain matter spraying out, nearly splattering Damian.

"Oh, damn it, watch it," Damian said. "What if this thing's infectious?"

"Sorry," Red Robin said. "Didn't expect him to be this brittle already."

The corpse wasn't passive either — it lunged straight at the shorter Damian. Damian sidestepped, stuck out a leg to trip it, and brought the shovel down on its back.

He was about to swing again when he noticed the corpse seemed to be swelling. He shouted urgently: "He's gonna blow — run!"

The two scrambled away, and then *boom* — the corpse exploded. One explosion wasn't the problem; the sound seemed to have indeed alarmed the surrounding corpses. Hands began reaching out of graves one after another.

Who knew where so many freshly buried corpses came from — anyway, the ones crawling out all looked like they hadn't been dead long. The two had no good gear and feared gunfire would draw even more corpses; before long they were forced onto the roof of the cemetery keeper's hut.

When Shiler arrived, he saw this siege of the living dead. He wasn't sure if someone was running a mission here, or if this place was just like this by default — if he'd overleveled and wandered into the zone boss's lair early.

But either way, he was here to dig grave soil; no corpses was even better. Because when the corpses burrowed out they'd already dug holes in the graves — he only needed a few shovelfuls to dig out the soil beneath the coffins.

"Tim and Damian are trapped," Charles's voice sounded in his ear. "Want to try saving them?"

"I'd really like to," Shiler said, "but do I look like I can pull off a rescue? I didn't even bring a gun."

Shiler said that, but he still glanced toward where the corpse horde was converging. After packing up the excavated soil, he walked over from that direction.

The cemetery wasn't large; it didn't take long before he saw the two standing on the roof firing downward. In this situation, not shooting wasn't an option. But precisely because of the gunfire, the corpse horde surrounded them tight, not the slightest intention of dispersing.

"This is a bit troublesome," Shiler sighed.

At this moment, the two on the roof also spotted Shiler. Red Robin's face lit up with surprised delight, but he quickly said, "Wait — which one is this? That's not the Professor, is it? And not that Agent either?"

"Don't recognize him," Damian said. "But either way he's Shiler — he should be able to save us, right?"

No sooner had he spoken than they saw Shiler walking over. Red Robin sucked in a sharp breath: "Don't come over! It's all corpses down there!"

Then he watched as the corpse horde completely ignored Shiler, simply letting him enter the keeper's hut and climb the ladder to the roof. When Red Robin looked back at him, it was like seeing a ghost.

"Wait, you're Shiler?!" Can't blame the two for doubting — earlier they'd speculated monsters might disguise themselves as players. If he really was a player, why weren't the corpses attacking him?

"Charles," Shiler called out, "mind explaining to them?"

Charles sent the two a compressed file. Red Robin fared a bit better; Damian decompressed it and instantly felt like he was drowning in an ocean of knowledge.

"Collective unconscious," "death archetype," "Jung" — a flood of specialized psychology terms hit him, making Damian's eyes swim. Just when he thought Charles had sent the wrong file, Red Robin looked thoughtful.

How exactly corpses move — logically one shouldn't overthink it, since this is a game; fabricated monsters can move however unscientifically. But Brainiac is an AI after all; what he creates isn't entirely nonsense — there's more internal logic to it.

The collective unconscious is called unconscious precisely because it's something lurking where individual consciousness can't reach. And unlike personal unconscious, the collective unconscious may not vanish with a person's death. Residual brainwaves can still trigger bodily instinctive responses, and thus connect to instinctual archetypes.

Or rather, the most scientific explanation for why corpses can move at all is to start from the collective unconscious: point out that after death, consciousness merely sinks into deeper unconscious — or the collective unconscious — and a portion of the collective unconscious rises up, takes over the body, achieving the effect of animating the corpse.

If Shiler can interfere with the collective unconscious, then he might indeed be able to control corpses. Realizing this, Red Robin immediately turned to Shiler: "Can you make them leave?"

"No," Shiler answered bluntly. "But I can make them unable to see you. You leave now, they won't pursue."

"How's that possible?" Damian said. "So you're a necromancer? Isn't the gap between you and your other counterparts a bit too big?"

"First, I'm not a mage. Second, I can't manipulate undead either. And if anyone could control corpses, it should be closer to the other mes." Shiler said. "You two hurry up. Or do you still have some mission to complete?"

Of course they had a mission to complete, but Red Robin didn't elaborate. After all, hard to say whether being besieged by corpses or staying with Shiler was more dangerous. Right now, escaping was the priority.

The two climbed down from the roof into the hut, not forgetting to grab the mission clues. They carefully pushed the door open — the corpses outside really acted like they couldn't see them. The two seized the chance and bolted.

Shiler also rummaged through the hut, but there were no supplies — only some materials. By the time he exited, the corpses had already dispersed.

Shiler didn't care where the corpses went either. So much so that when Harley and Pamela just finished their mission and came out of the Eerie Villa, they ran into a vast corpse army.

"What's going on?" Harley's eyes went wide. "How is there still a chain battle???"

Pamela shook her hand. The two of them had just gnawed on a hard bone. Didn't expect the original investigation mission to actually trigger a zone boss. The villa's resident was a pseudo-angel — hovered the whole time, never touched ground, and fired light swords. Even Pamela had a tough fight.

If Harley hadn't swapped positions at the end, and Pamela bound him with vines, stabbing him through the heart from behind, who knows how much longer that fight would've dragged. They'd just been discussing bringing more manpower and being more cautious for future missions when they walked out and collided with these corpses pouring from the cemetery.

"Brainiac, what the hell!" Harley said. "We just finished a boss, and you send this many mobs to intercept us..."

"It really wasn't me," Brainiac replied. "Running missions in the same zone makes chain reactions like this very easy."

"You mean another group caused this?" Pamela's head ached. "They pulled the mobs out — least they could do is finish them off."

"You holding up?" Harley looked at her with concern. "Otherwise let's run. These corpses aren't fast — we should be able to outrun them."

Pamela held out a hand: "Can't let them wander this zone — otherwise others can't do missions. I'll still..."

Words not even finished when a sudden roar rang out. Then the entire zone blazed with light — blinding magnetic storm beams swept across, and everything carbon-based in their path was electrocuted to cinder.

Two figures emerged from the mist: a tall, powerfully built man in metal armor, and a green-haired woman.

Pamela called out tentatively, "Arkham Knight?"

"Polaris?!" Harley exclaimed with surprised delight. "How'd you end up here too?"

"Naturally to participate in the game." Polaris crossed her arms, grinning easily. "JARVIS needs a more detailed evaluation of this game system, but he and Wanda have to watch the kid — no time to come play — so they called me over."

"And this is..." Harley waggled her eyebrows at her.

"Jason. Jason Todd." Arkham Knight opened his faceplate; his brow was colder than the other Red Hoods', the scars on his face adding a few degrees of weathered gravitas.

"Long admired," Harley said. "How do you two know each other?"

"Last multiverse war," Polaris shrugged. "Count as him saving me, or me saving him. Figured since we're playing in Gotham, might as well get a local — so I called him over."

"You're in the South District too?" The group walked forward as Pamela asked. "That makes three player groups in South District — lively, huh."

"We're at the southeast border," Polaris said. "Call it East District, call it South District — both work. But South District has more combat missions; East District's all investigation — so we came this way."

Pamela nodded. These two really were more suited for combat. Polaris's ability was practically born for clearing mobs, and Arkham Knight was no slouch either. This was a villain who'd gone toe-to-toe with Arkham Batman, after all.

"Can we visit your base?" Polaris asked. "Our base is in a two-story shop. I'm regretting it a bit — picked a place too small, nowhere to build half our stuff."

"No problem," Pamela said. "Our base is right over there. Can you open a portal?"

"Can't," Polaris sighed. "Brainiac said he didn't do the wormhole adaptation, so the portal won't work. Let's walk over."