Chapter 613: The Power Thieves (Part 2)

The efficiency of energy acquisition can be compared to oil production.

Global daily oil output is measured in millions of barrels; Saudi Arabia alone produces about ten million barrels per day, and as of March 2022, global daily output was around one hundred million barrels. Though it is currently 1989 and production has not yet reached that level, it is still substantial.

As previously mentioned, the Dark Owls are roughly the size of real owls. Ten thousand of them might sound like a lot, but if gathered together, they would amount to less than one minute's worth of global oil production—how could such efficiency suffice?

So Shiler began organizing everyone to further improve production efficiency; the main plans remained the same: reducing time costs and automating the entire process.

Regarding time cost reduction, these children simply cannot maintain focus for long periods, and if they refuse to sing or mumble the notes, no owls will come.

Moreover, it is impossible to guarantee all children attend on time—sometimes family matters arise, sometimes someone falls ill. Yet the very purpose of this endeavor is to protect the children, so we must not invert priorities and exploit them; thus, time cost is irreducible.

Human labor has this drawback, so everything once again falls back on mechanization—if machines could replace humans, they could work continuously as long as energy was sufficient, with no absenteeism or decline in condition.

In this regard, Constantine was nearly driven mad by Shiler, who said: "You want robots to use magic??? Does that even sound reasonable?!"

"They don't even have souls! Even if you could record and play back those syllables, they still couldn't attract the owls!"

"That's why you're needed," Shiler said, looking directly into Constantine's eyes. "Your job now is to invent something that never tires, then make it trick the owls."

Hal looked at Constantine with some sympathy—he had never seen Constantine so haggard and worn down.

Normally, Constantine might be a scoundrel, but he still took care of his appearance; otherwise, he couldn't have been so successful at flirting. He always carried himself with an English dandy's charm, and when serious, possessed a unique allure that drew people in unconsciously.

Even when he occasionally appeared manic and decrepit from drug abuse, it gave him a punk aesthetic that some still found appealing.

But now, Constantine was no longer punk—he was only a homemade spear away from being Robinson Crusoe.

The most exhausting part of Shiler's plan fell to Constantine, who had to arrange hundreds of magical arrays around every room in the school. He hadn't slept in over a week; his beard was wild, his face gaunt.

Had Shiler not promised him ten percent of the energy, he would never have taken this job—and now, even with that promise, he no longer wanted to do it.

Constantine cursed: "You damn capitalist, you vampire! You offer me a little reward and expect me to slave away for you…"

Shiler held up one finger, waving it before him. "Add another ten percent—you get twenty percent alone. Hal and I share only ten percent. Bruce doesn't get a single percent."

Constantine was truly on the verge of madness—he felt the demon of greed had returned to him. He could almost see black flames burning behind Shiler, more maddening than any devil.

He gritted his teeth: "You're forcing me. I'll have to talk to my old friend."

With that, Constantine left. Shiler didn't know exactly who his old friend was, but he knew some demon was about to suffer terribly.

Two days later, an even more exhausted Constantine returned, carrying a small voodoo doll. He said: "I contacted every friend I could reach. I finally found a way."

He placed the voodoo doll in his palm and set it before them. "This is an African dark art, similar to the one the Ghost Mother uses—both target children."

"In African tribes, they place the souls of deceased children into special voodoo dolls. A particular demon senses these souls, then transfers power into the doll in exchange for the soul. Tribal shamans use this energy to cast spells."

"But where do we get children's souls?" Hal asked. "Don't tell me you're thinking…"

"I never thought of that. I'm a good man," Constantine sighed.

Bruce glanced at him, slightly surprised—but Constantine spoke the truth. Whether judged by deeds or intent, Constantine truly was a good man; on matters of principle, he was as unyielding as Batman.

"I contacted the demon who responds to this ritual. He told me humans are incredibly cunning. Modern medicine has drastically reduced infant mortality, yet shamans still want to use their spells, so they devised another method."

"Killing innocent children is possible, but too inefficient. Instead, they deceive the demon—using a special ritual to fake a child's soul, lure the demon in, then trap it there, so they can use its power."

Constantine spoke of this without any sense of moral weight, but Hal turned to Shiler. Shiler glanced at him and said: "Why are you looking at me? This only proves humans are like this—I'm no different."

Constantine nodded in deep agreement. "If you ask me, humans excel at deception. We have endless tricks—even cunning demons get fooled sometimes."

"But their trick has been phased out. Once a demon gets fooled once, it won't fall for it again—worst case, it just loses a bit of power. So now they've developed many other versions, none of which we need."

"I contacted a shaman who still uses this version. He told me the other materials are simple, but one thing is difficult: mother's milk."

"That's easy," Shiler said, turning to Bruce. "Wayne Enterprises can publicly solicit mother's milk under the guise of medical research. Offer enough money, and they'll collect it quickly."

"One more problem…" Shiler turned back to Constantine. "Can the fake child's soul sing?"

"Of course not. It's just bait. So I'll use another spell to make the voodoo doll sing."

"Do you have to control them constantly? What if you get tired?" Shiler asked again. Constantine took a deep breath. "I don't need to control them nonstop, but you're being impossibly greedy—you won't even let me rest for a moment…"

Shiler turned his head away. "On an ultra-efficient production line, no one rests—not even me."

Everyone shook their heads, clearly overwhelmed—even Bruce, who valued efficiency, thought this was extreme.

But fortunately, Shiler wasn't exploiting them—the ones who would ultimately suffer were the owls.

After several more days of preparation, Constantine began manufacturing the materials in full force. To prevent Constantine from collapsing, Shiler had Hal use Green Lantern energy to heal him.

Whenever Constantine grew exhausted, Hal cast a healing spell—and instantly, he was refreshed again. Under this inhumane exploitation, Constantine produced over a thousand voodoo dolls in just a few days.

Then he cast the puppet-control spell on each doll—the same one he'd used to control ghosts. Once complete, the dolls could sing on their own.

He placed them at the center of the arrays, restarted the process, and efficiency surged several-fold—but Shiler remained unsatisfied.

His complaint: he had to manually clear the arrays and manually feed energy into the Ark Reactor. Though he never tired or grew bored, it still wasted time—and in ultra-efficient production, time was money, and waste was unacceptable.

So he pushed Constantine again: redesign the system to build automatic energy transmission lines between multiple arrays, then connect them directly to the Ark Reactor—enabling fully automated extraction of the owls' dark energy.

Constantine was truly suffering. He tried to flee multiple times, even abandoning sunk costs—but Shiler always dragged him back.

Finally, he gave up and buried himself in studying how to route energy between the arrays.

As everyone knows, optimizing circuitry is the hardest challenge in automation. Constantine got stuck on this for over a week—but ultimately, his full potential unleashed, he produced the most efficient version possible.

Finally, the fully automated device for extracting dark owl energy was complete. When the entire production line ran, efficiency peaked—so much so that one Ark Reactor storage module was insufficient. Bruce added several more on the spot.

From the Spirit Realm's perspective, the entire site had become a massive oil rig: hundreds of arrays linked into lines, forming a glowing red sphere. Countless Dark Owls flew toward it like moths to flame, vanishing in the arrays' light. The extracted energy pulsed along vein-like channels into the Ark Reactor, where it was stored.

Until one day, all the owls vanished. Standing in the monitoring room, Shiler turned to everyone and said: "... It seems this plan has reached its end."

"Not surprising," Bruce concluded. "Even if this system runs automatically, given its extraction rate, they'd realize quickly."

"I think they just ran out of power," Hal mused. "If they could detect it, they'd have noticed the moment we automated—suddenly siphoning that much energy would trigger an emergency shutdown if anyone were watching."

"From the first time I consumed energy, I knew this system was unmonitored," Shiler said, shaking his head. "And now it stopped—likely because we drained it dry."

Shiler dared extract this dark energy so brazenly without fearing Barbatos' attention because he realized this energy wasn't Barbatos' original power—it had been processed somehow.

In other words, they weren't directly stealing from Barbatos. The Dark Owl shamans had already harvested the wool, spun it into blankets, and they were now stealing the stored blankets.

Why did Shiler believe this system was unmonitored? Not only because when Elsa and others consumed energy earlier, the owls didn't react—but also because Gotham's historical records showed the Owl Lullaby had been obsolete for a long time.

In modern history, the song had fallen out of use; no children sang it anymore—meaning this system had been abandoned for decades.

Its revival and functionality now likely stemmed from residual power left in the discarded battery—and Shiler's goal was to drain that residual power as quickly as possible.

Some might think: if the battery is already discarded, when you steal its power doesn't matter. But this brings us back to Shiler's earlier setup in Metropolis.

He had long known Metropolis had Dark Owls, so he deliberately gave the badge to Pikachu, then used Clark to inform Lex of the agent's illegal intrusion, prompting Lex to contact the CIA.

Having experienced the incident at the Metropolis Mayor's residence, Shiler knew perfectly well that after Benjamin's death, the CIA's Metropolis station chief had been replaced by female agent Kira—who was a KGB operative and Alfred's student.