Chapter 612

Perhaps it is some kind of magical connection; whenever he encounters this kind of incomprehensible language or incantation, Shiler is always able to decipher the three most important characters and use them to gain a great deal of energy, such as the "Nataru" he uses to scold Nall.

Shiler recalled that because Aisha hadn't really learned the lyrics, she would only repeat the first line over and over, and this summarized spell happened to come from the end of that first line, so after Aisha finished singing the first line, she could immediately summon the owls.

Since that was the case, the first step to increasing efficiency was complete; Shiler directly had the nun organize all the children, no longer singing the whole song through, but singing only the first line.

As soon as all the children finished singing the first line, the owls arrived; Shiler flashed up to clear the owls, then they continued to sing, and after singing, he continued to clear them.

However, the first line was still a bit long; although there weren't many lyrics and the melody wasn't difficult, it still wasn't as fast as three syllables. By the time all the children had mastered the lyrics of the first line, the nun began to teach them how to repeat the pronunciation of those three syllables.

But by this step, many children had already lost their patience. When singing the whole song, they could still skip a line here and there, slacking off in the crowd, or chatting secretly while others sang loudly.

But once it turned into three short syllables, there was no way to slack off. If they didn't sing seriously, any other tones they made would become very obvious.

These children didn't have much patience to begin with; learning the song had already exhausted much of it, and when this turned into a dull and repetitive task, many children began to complain.

But at this moment, the restaurant owner drove a truck over, delivering delicious food. The person who came was the owner of the most popular Italian restaurant in the neighborhood near the Living Hell, arranged by Cobblepot, whose signature dishes were Margherita pizza and creamed spinach.

Actually, it wasn't that they couldn't afford a higher-end restaurant, it was just that this group of children who grew up in the deepest slums of Cat Getan liked to eat food with high calories and lots of spices, while most high-end restaurants emphasized simple, healthy ingredients that preserved the original flavor of the food; not many children liked to eat food that tasted like that.

While the children were eating, the few of them sat together to study again; although the efficiency had already improved quite a bit, there was still room for improvement.

Through observations during this period, it was not hard to see that the owls that came were basically one-to-one, meaning that one child, using the special spell, could summon one owl. Assuming the spell's pronunciation was completely standard, then the 30-plus children present could summon 30-plus owls.

A simple math problem was: 30-plus children summon 30-plus owls, then 300-plus children could summon 300-plus owls, 3,000 children could...

Finally, when Bruce arrived at the church with the Arc Reactor, Shiler and the others were no longer in the church, but had followed Cobblepot to a base for newsboys.

This was an abandoned cellar located underground in the East End, which they had built into a base. The leaders of the newsboys from the vast majority of the neighborhoods would come here; where traffic was congested, where residents gave the most tips, whose house had some new gossip—this was the place they specifically used to exchange information.

There were still quite a few children in Cat Getan. Excluding the children in the wealthy districts who went to school in an orderly fashion, the vast majority of the children of gang members would come out to work on their own—selling newspapers, selling flowers, selling cigarettes, running errands; in any case, there would always be a position suitable for them.

And this place could connect to the vast majority of such children, and the method to get them to help with work was also very simple: just give them money.

Now, Cobblepot had taken over the position of the King of the Children, and almost all these peddlers in Cat Getan followed his orders. Cobblepot said he wanted to find some children to sing, and these leaders all desperately recommended their own subordinates. After all, just singing a little bit meant getting quite a bit of money, which was much better than being out in the wind and sun all day.

The children here were quite bold. After all, living in this kind of environment, if they were suspicious and hesitant every day, they probably would have scared themselves to death long ago. Last time, when the Green Lantern Corps invaded, people glowing green all over couldn't scare them; just singing was even less likely to stump them.

The place for mining oil... mining dark energy, was no longer the Cat Getan Cathedral, because the church's location wasn't good, and the building structure wasn't very suitable for intercepting energy, so they simply moved it directly into the vocational school within the Living Hell.

There was one advantage to this: the school was located in the very center of the Living Hell. The entire Living Hell was like a large steamed bun wrapper, and this room was equivalent to the bun filling; no matter which direction one wanted to fly in from, one had to pass through the wrapper first before one could touch the filling.

This gave Constantine room to operate. After studying this portion of energy, he created a magic array to absorb this kind of energy.

Although because the owl monsters flew relatively fast, one magic array couldn't completely intercept all the owls, but if one didn't work, he would make 100; if 100 didn't work, he would make 1,000. As long as a problem could be solved by piling on materials, it wasn't a problem.

The rooms around the vocational school located in the very center of the Living Hell were all cleared out, even including the underground rooms, and then Constantine spent about a week setting up that kind of magic array in all the rooms here.

With the school room as the center, extending about 10 units of distance in all directions—up, down, left, and right—all were arranged with magic arrays. Green Lantern Hal stood in the center of the school room, using sufficient Green Lantern energy to support a shield, ensuring that no fish that slipped through the net could attack the children.

And Shiler had to go to every magic array after a wave of summoning to collect the energy, and then pass the information to Hal; Hal would tell the nun, and the nun would then organize the children to start the next wave.

Before the next wave arrived, Shiler would put this energy into the Arc Reactor that Bruce was researching.

Speaking of this, it had to be mentioned that the Arc Reactor Bruce researched was completely different from Stark's; the Arc Reactor he researched was about as big as three rooms.

Regarding this point, Shiler, who only knew how to screw in lightbulbs, was not without questions. He asked Bruce: "The model I gave you was so small, why is the finished product you made so big?"

"I'd like to ask you..." Bruce looked at Shiler and said: "What exactly was the person who made this model thinking? Why didn't they make it a bit bigger?"

Shiler didn't know the answer to this question, but Bruce didn't expect him to be able to answer. Obviously, he also knew that Shiler only knew how to screw in lightbulbs in this regard, so he answered his own question:

"The principle of this thing is quite magical, utilizing a new element; it took a bit of time to crack it, but what makes me feel a bit puzzled is that, actually, he could have completely made the output power larger, and could have added more functions."

"For example, before, you said you wanted to use it to store energy, so I added an energy storage module to it. If there's a need, I can add a few more output modules; it can completely be used as an energy center."

"Currently, I have already used it to replace the lighting energy for the Batcave. After a series of tests, it can replace all the energy. Actually, as long as it's made big enough, it can also provide all the energy needed for an entire city."

"And if it's made into this miniature version, it's estimated it can only supply a few robots. Any more than that, although the energy is still enough, it will be limited by the output power. If there isn't a special need, there's absolutely no need to do it this way."

"The inventor of this thing installed it on his own battle suit."

"Battle suit? You mean an exoskeleton?"

"Pretty much, a bit more advanced than that; it can fly and possesses weapons."

"And then?"

"Then put it on." Shiler didn't understand what Bruce meant by his question.

"After putting it on, then what?" Bruce asked, continuing.

"Uh... go be a superhero."

"You mean, he possesses this kind of energy, only uses it to put it on a battle suit, and then... wears the battle suit out to fight?" Bruce asked.

"Monster Museum"

"Then aren't you the same?" Shiler asked in return: "Possessing this kind of technology, yet using them to make various Bat-gear, and then wearing the gear out to fight."

Shiler shook his head and said: "To a certain extent, you two are really quite similar."

"So, you admit there is such a person?"

"Don't focus on this. Just tell me, how much energy can this giant reactor of yours store?"

Bruce narrowed his eyes again, but he knew that he probably couldn't get an answer from Shiler right now. At this time, Bruce still had his focus on the city of Cat Getan and hadn't associated it with anything like the universe.

But as the saying goes, if a man has no far-reaching worries, he will have near-term troubles. Looking at Cat Getan's current situation, it wasn't unreasonable for Bruce to do this; starting by playing on Hell difficulty, then returning to the novice village later would be a slaughter.

Bruce thought for a moment, then said: "Put your hand here, input the kind of energy you stored before, and you'll be able to see the proportion of the energy you've stored now in the total storage capacity."

Shiler put his hand on it, then let the gray mist output the energy. All the energy obtained at the church, plus the energy obtained from later experiments, was all stored in; even the progress bar couldn't be seen, estimated to be less than one ten-thousandth.

Shiler estimated that if it were completely filled, it would be no less than that large wave of energy he obtained from Nall. In that case, all the elements for implementing the plan had been completed.

The current situation was that Shiler had created a preliminary machine for extracting and mining dark energy, using countless extraction arrays to wrap the children who could attract dark energy inside. No matter from which angle the owls possessing dark energy flew over, they would be intercepted by the arrays.

After the arrays intercepted them, Shiler would devour this energy, then come underground to pour the energy into that Arc Reactor underground, while Bruce had pulled a line to his Batcave to study and analyze this kind of energy.

After this machine was started, the efficiency improved by more than just a little bit.

A total of 4 batches of children, 200 people per batch, a total of 800 children, divided into a 4-shift system, each shift working 6 hours, with a total of two hours of rest, and 4 hours of singing.

At the very beginning when they weren't proficient at singing, it took about a minute to attract a wave over. Counting the pre-swing of the owls coming and the post-swing of Shiler absorbing the energy, it was about two minutes.

The children within one shift could attract 30 waves of owls per hour, and one wave of owls had 200. Within the 4 hours of working time, they could harvest about 【number missing in source】 owls.

That is to say, within 24 hours a day, after the 4-shift rotation was finished, they could harvest 【number missing in source】 owls.

It sounded like a lot, but Shiler was still dissatisfied with this number.