Days as a Spiritual Mentor in American Comics

Chapter 5923: Chapter 4944: There Is No Batman Here (31)

"This is indeed a problem." The agent sat down. "If we can’t even get into the Psychology Department building, then there’s no way to deal with the final boss. As of now, it seems like you’re the most likely to pass."

The two of them sighed simultaneously.

"Then you really don’t understand the Psychoanalysis Method," Tim said. "I graduated not because I learned it, but because Shiller had no choice."

"Who isn’t?" Harley flipped through the pages like someone who’s lost all hope.

"Isn’t there really anyone who mastered it?" Damian looked around, then said, "He’s taught so many people, and the Robins are all his students. Is there seriously not even one who learned it?"

"Robins, huh," Dick shook his head and said, "Even Batman doesn’t know it."

"What about others?" Damian asked again, "Besides you guys, is there really no one else who learned?"

Tim hesitated slightly, then said: "Although you can’t say mastered, it seems like there is indeed someone who knows it. Shall we ask Jenna?"

"Where is she?" Harley asked curiously, "She should be graduating soon, right? Where did Brainiac send her?"

"It should be the Federation Shield," Tim said, "But the Federation Shield isn’t on Earth right now. I’ll log off to check."

Tim logged off and called Jenna, but no one answered. In the end, it was Brainiac who told him that the Federation Shield was recently on a mission in outer space. They contacted Jenna through Brainiac’s communication.

After connecting the video call, Tim immediately realized that Jenna should be on the spaceship. But since there were no portholes, it was temporarily impossible to determine which star system she was in.

"What’s up, Tim?" Jenna asked.

"Well, it’s like this..." Tim briefly explained his predicament and then said, "If you could help provide some ideas for the paper, that would be great..."

"I’m afraid that’s not possible," Jenna said, "Don’t forget, Professor Shearer himself is a master of Psychoanalysis Method. If you write using my ideas, he’ll immediately see that it’s not your own work, and that’ll be troublesome."

"I mean, could you write a paper from my perspective?" Tim asked hopefully, "Aren’t you an empathic ability user? You could empathize with me and help me write a paper?"

Jenna hadn’t really done such a thing before. She thought about it and said: "Although it’s just a game and doesn’t involve academic plagiarism, I’m not entirely confident..."

"Just give it a try," Tim clasped his hands over his head, "It’s better than being thrown out of the Psychology Department building together with Harley, right?"

Jenna reluctantly agreed. However, she needed some time. Tim returned to the estate with the good news. Everyone was finally smiling again. Charles decided to turn a blind eye, after all, if the two of them couldn’t pass, Shiller would have to teach them, and translate on their behalf. Having heard so much about the Psychoanalysis Method, even mind power users were starting to doubt their own abilities.

Then they began checking the equipment that was burst out. The golden freeze gun was the most important among them. A few people from the Prime Universe took turns examining it, and finally, Harley said: "It’s definitely not the latest version, but I feel it’s at least from three or four years ago, which is already good enough. Unfortunately, there’s only one."

"Do you think we could replicate it?" Damian had another quirky idea, "If we could manufacture a replica based on this one, wouldn’t that mean everyone could have a golden weapon?"

"Haha. I’m going to study the Psychoanalysis Method." Harley turned and left.

"I’m going to write my paper." Tim left too.

The other players from the Prime Universe also left. Damian stared at them with wide eyes. Red Robin shook his head and said: "Don’t count on it. If you can’t write humanities papers, at least you can cobble something together. You can’t even cobble words together in physics."

"Is this thing really high-tech?" Damian looked at the freeze gun, "Mr. Freeze is a relatively reclusive villain; he can’t even really be considered a villain. Regardless of what major event happens in Gotham, he’s always tinkering with his ice blocks on his own land. As long as it doesn’t interfere with him freezing his wife, he won’t act rashly. He’s not like Scarecrow and the Joker, who can’t stand a day without causing trouble."

Batman normally doesn’t go that way, and the Robins go even less. Although the memory seems to suggest they’ve fought before, it’s probably just getting frozen at the start and watching the whole battle from the sidelines. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have no impression.

Overall, the Robins from the Prime Universe are not very familiar with Victor Fries, and they only have a superficial understanding of his freezing technology. They know it’s impressive enough to freeze Batman, but don’t know its full extent.

In contrast, the Robins from this universe are much more acquainted with Victor. This is mainly because they all studied at Gotham University. Additionally, in this universe, Victor isn’t as reclusive and had frozen Gotham many years ago, later using Dense Ice Technology to save Earth from destruction. Even from a layman’s perspective, Victor has been nominated twice for the Nobel Prize.

The reason he was nominated but didn’t win isn’t due to a lack of technical expertise, but because he once used this technology on his own wife, violating basic experimental ethics. All things considered, that’s why he didn’t receive the award. It’s the same reasoning for Jonathan Crane. In fact, these two should have won the Nobel Prize long ago.

Replicating his freeze gun, even an outdated version, is a pipe dream. It’s akin to trying to replicate fear gas and learning the psychoanalysis method. The core skills of Jonathan, Victor, and Shiller are collectively known as Gotham’s Impossible Triangle. It’s not that you can’t learn them all at once; rather, you can’t learn even one.

The good news is that the Drowned can finally be dealt with. However, even though the method is known, execution is still a challenge. Red Robin looked at the notebook and then said, "I can roughly see that this bonfire is an array. But I’m more of a theoretical magician and lack practical experience, so I’m afraid I can’t set it up."

"So we still have to find Constantine?" Nightwing said with a headache. Although it seems that Black Hair Constantine is of a different species from other Constantines, just mentioning the name makes people instinctively want to stay away. He even considered suggesting that Black Hair Constantine change his name.

"Yes. He’s more skilled with arrays and rituals," Red Robin thought and said, "We’ve also helped him once, so he shouldn’t refuse. Time is of the essence, let’s go now."

The Robins from the Prime Universe went to Gotham Cathedral to invite Constantine to create an array. Agents and Deathstroke searched nearby to find the Drowned’s location. Others focused on manufacturing artillery shells.

It’s not that magic methods made artillery shells obsolete. There’s just no way to lure it with ordinary methods; otherwise, brains might explode. Artillery shells are used to force it in a specific direction to step into the trap, so they are still necessary.

Moreover, lethality is not crucial; the key is to produce a lot of noise and light, which makes it easier to repel the monster. And when it comes to this, "Diana’s Blessing" must be mentioned.

How Diana and the Fire God managed to make a revolver sound like a tank’s main cannon is indeed worth studying. The Fire God is naturally an expert among experts in this field, not something an outsider can understand with simple research. However, they can make modifications to the gun.

Diana’s Blessing provides infinite bullet replenishment. So Tim wondered if it would be possible to keep a few bullets as part of the artillery shells. This should produce a lot of noise.

After Constantine and Bishop arrived, this idea was tested. However, it was actually Lilith, contracted by Red Robin, who provided the insight. Long-life individuals always have the upper hand in this aspect. She had interacted with the Olympian Gods and knew roughly how they worked, and understood that achieving infinite bullets was really about using a clever method of time-space looping.

Simply put, it’s like setting up something similar to a Black Hole in the gun barrel. The time flow on either side is different. When a bullet goes through the barrel, it hasn’t fully entered one end before it’s already reappeared and fired. This way, there are always bullets.

Logically, this should cause a time-space paradox. But Divine Power can solve all problems. Anyway, it worked.

And extracting bullets from this method is straightforward. You just need to utilize the Observation Effect, observing that the same bullet is two separate bullets, breaking the loop. The protective strength of Divine Power against time-space paradox is limited, and triggering the Observation Effect might not sustain it.

So they got to work. They first researched the gun’s structure and found that trying to saw open the barrel or using other physics methods to see inside the barrel was unlikely to work. After all, the gun used Fire God’s excellent materials, and human tool machines couldn’t cut it.

But coincidentally, present was someone who could observe something dismissing any physical laws, which was Heavenly Sign Lilith.

The prophecy ability is even more unreasonable than Divine Power. No matter all physics and magic rules, it’s bound to see something. This can be used as the observer in the Observation Effect and is a universal observer that disregards space-time distance.

Under normal circumstances, the prophecy ability randomly activates, not showing Lilith whatever she wants to see. And even if she actively uses it, she only sees vague fragments. It’s prophecy, not precision machinery processing, so she can’t see every part.

But coincidentally, Lilith had just triggered a prophetic event that was not a prophecy. It was when Bishop manipulated the collective unconscious, causing Lilith to feel a kind of sensation, resulting in a "X-ray vision"-like effect similar to the prophecy outcome.

Obviously, Lilith isn’t a member of Shearer’s cohort, and her mind reading technique isn’t very strong, but she sharply pointed to the truth in that moment. This is precisely because her prophecy ability also stems from her subconscious, otherwise it wouldn’t have been activated passively.

So, the next steps were quite straightforward. Lilith tried to focus on the gun, Bishop manipulated the collective unconscious to trigger her prophecy ability, then someone, holding Diana’s Blessing, fired the gun, triggering the barrel’s internal activity. Lilith used the prophecy ability to observe the barrel’s internal condition, triggering the Observation Effect and resulting in a time-space paradox. The two bullets would be anchored and come out of the barrel.

It’s clear that this series of actions isn’t like ordering fried rice at a tavern. This is more like ordering a full Han banquet in a tavern and requesting the chef to list out the dishes.

If someone attempted such a thing in the real world, the agent would be the first to arrest them. But in this game, Brainiac only need to ensure the program doesn’t malfunction, while the players have a lot more to consider.