Chapter 612: The Electricity Thieves (Part 2)

Perhaps it was some mysterious connection—whenever he encountered incomprehensible languages or incantations, Schiler always managed to decipher the three most crucial words, drawing immense energy from them, like the "Nataru" he used to curse Nal.

Schiler recalled: Aisha, having never learned the full lyrics, could only repeat the first line, and this incantation he had distilled happened to come from the very end of that first line, so as soon as Aisha finished singing it, owls would immediately appear.

If that was the case, the first step toward improving efficiency was complete—Schiler directly instructed the nuns to have all the children skip the entire song and sing only the first line.

As soon as the children finished singing the first line, owls arrived; Schiler teleported in to clear them, then the children sang again, and he cleared again.

But the first line was still too long—though the lyrics were few and the melody simple, it still couldn't match the speed of three syllables; once the children had mastered the first line, the nuns began teaching them to repeat the pronunciation of those three syllables.

Yet by this stage, many children had already lost patience—when singing the full song, they could skip lines, blend into the crowd, or whisper to each other while others sang loudly.

But with the shortened three-syllable phrase, there was no more slacking—if they didn't sing properly, any wrong tone became glaringly obvious.

These children had little patience to begin with; learning the song had already worn them down, and when the task became a dull, repetitive chore, many began complaining.

Just then, the restaurant owner arrived by truck, delivering delicious meals—the owner of the most popular Italian restaurant near Hell's Kitchen, arranged by Cobblepot, whose specialties were Margherita pizza and creamed spinach.

It wasn't that they couldn't afford fancier restaurants—these children, raised in Gotham's lowest strata, simply preferred high-calorie, heavily spiced food; most upscale restaurants emphasized simplicity, health, and preserving natural flavors, none of which appealed to the children.

While the children ate, the group gathered again to study—efficiency had improved significantly, but there was still room for growth.

After observing over this period, it was clear: owls arrived one-to-one—each child, using the special incantation, could summon one owl; assuming perfect pronunciation, the 30+ children present could summon 30+ owls.

A simple math problem: 30+ children summon 30+ owls, so 300+ children could summon 300+ owls, and 3,000 children could summon...

When Bruce arrived at the church with the Arc Reactor, Schiler and the others were no longer there—they had followed Cobblepot to a newsboy base.

It was an abandoned cellar beneath the East Side, transformed into a base; nearly all the neighborhood newsboy bosses came here to exchange intelligence—where traffic was heaviest, where tips were generous, who had new gossip—it was their dedicated hub.

Gotham had plenty of children; aside from those in wealthy districts who attended school regularly, most children of gang members worked on their own—selling newspapers, flowers, cigarettes, running errands—there was always a role suited to them.

This place could connect with nearly all such children, and the method to get them to work was simple: pay them.

Now that Cobblepot had taken over the King of Kids' position, nearly all these young vendors in Gotham obeyed his orders; when Cobblepot said he needed children to sing, the bosses all competed to recommend their own, for singing meant easy money—far better than sweating under the sun all day.

These children had big hearts; living in such an environment, if they were constantly paranoid and hesitant, they'd have scared themselves to death long ago—when the Green Lantern Corps invaded, glowing green figures couldn't frighten them; singing was nothing.

The place for extracting oil... and dark energy, was no longer Gotham Cathedral—the church's location was poor, and its structure unsuitable for energy harvesting; they simply moved it to the vocational school at the heart of Hell's Kitchen.

The advantage was this: the school sat at the exact center of Hell's Kitchen, which resembled a giant dumpling skin, and this room was the filling—no matter which direction one flew in, one had to pass through the skin before reaching the filling.

This gave Constantine room to maneuver; after studying this energy, he devised a ritual array to absorb it.

Although the owl monsters flew too fast for a single array to intercept all of them, if one wasn't enough, make a hundred; if a hundred weren't enough, make a thousand—any problem solvable by sheer quantity wasn't a problem.

All rooms around the vocational school at the heart of Hell's Kitchen were emptied—even underground ones—and Constantine spent about a week installing these arrays in every single room.

Arranged in a 10-grid radius around the school rooms in all directions—up, down, left, right—Constantine placed the arrays; Green Lantern Hal stood at the center, using abundant Green Lantern energy to maintain a shield, ensuring no owls slipped through to attack the children.

Schiler, meanwhile, had to collect the energy from each array after each summoning, then relay the information to Hal; Hal would inform the nuns, who would then organize the children for the next wave.

Before the next wave arrived, Schiler would feed the collected energy into Bruce's Arc Reactor.

Speaking of which, Bruce's Arc Reactor was vastly different from Stark's—it was roughly the size of three rooms.

Schiler, who could only twist lightbulbs, had his doubts—he asked Bruce: "My model was this small, why did you make the final product so huge?"

"I'd like to ask you," Bruce said, looking at Schiler, "what were the designers thinking? Why didn't they make it bigger?"

Schiler didn't know the answer, nor did Bruce expect him to—he clearly knew Schiler could only twist lightbulbs, so he answered himself:

"The principle is fascinating—it uses a new element, and cracking it took time; what puzzles me is that the original designer could've made the output power much higher and added more functions."

"For example, when you said you wanted to store energy, I added an energy storage module; if needed, I could add multiple output modules—it could easily serve as a full energy hub."

"So far, I've replaced the Batcave's lighting with it; after further testing, I can replace all power sources. If scaled up enough, it could supply all the energy a whole city needs."

"But if shrunk to this miniature version, it could barely power a few robots—beyond that, even if energy supply is sufficient, output power becomes the bottleneck; unless there's a special need, there's no reason to do this."

"The inventor mounted it on his suit."

"Suit? You mean an exoskeleton?"

"Something like that—more advanced. It can fly and has weapons."

"And then?"

"Then you wear it," Schiler didn't understand what Bruce meant.

"And then what?" Bruce pressed.

"Uh... become a superhero."

"You mean he had this kind of energy source, and used it only to mount it on a suit, then... went out fighting in it?" Bruce asked.

The Monster Museum

"Aren't you the same?" Schiler countered. "You have this technology, yet use it to build all kinds of Bat-gear and go out fighting in it."

Schiler shook his head. "In a way, you two are remarkably alike."

"So you admit such a person exists?"

"Forget that—just tell me, how much energy can your giant reactor store?"

Bruce narrowed his eyes, but he knew he wouldn't get an answer from Schiler now—Bruce still focused only on Gotham, not yet imagining anything cosmic.

But as the saying goes: lack of foresight invites immediate trouble; given Gotham's current state, Bruce's approach wasn't unreasonable—start with Hell difficulty, then return to the Xinshoucun and slaughter everything.

Bruce thought for a moment, then said: "Place your hand here, input the energy you stored before, and you'll see what percentage of the total capacity it represents."

Schiler placed his hand on it and let the gray mist output the energy—all the energy collected from the church, plus from later experiments—filled it, yet the progress bar didn't even budge; it was less than one ten-thousandth.

Schiler estimated: if fully filled, it would hold no less than the massive energy he'd taken from Nal—now all elements of the plan were complete.

Currently, Schiler had built a preliminary dark energy extraction and mining device: countless absorption arrays surrounded the children who could summon dark energy; no matter from which direction the owls carrying dark energy flew, they'd be intercepted by the arrays.

After interception, Schiler would devour the energy, descend underground, and pump it into the Arc Reactor below, while Bruce ran a line to his Batcave to study and analyze the energy.

Once activated, the device's efficiency had improved by more than a little.

Four batches of children, 200 per batch, totaling 800 children, operating on a four-shift system: each shift worked six hours, with two hours of rest, singing for four hours.

At first, when the children were still unskilled, summoning one wave took about a minute; including the owl's approach delay and Schiler's energy absorption lag, roughly two minutes.

Each shift's children could summon 30 waves per hour, each wave consisting of 200 owls; within the four-hour work period, they could harvest approximately 24,000 owls.

That meant, after four shifts over 24 hours, they could harvest approximately 96,000 owls.

It sounded like a lot, but Schiler remained unsatisfied with this number.