bacchusnovels Chapter 436 The enemy won't give us time, and the bat won't grieve.
Chapter 436 The enemy won't give us time, and the bat won't grieve.
Chapter 436 The enemy will not give us time, and bats will not weep.
"Your vital signs are stable, there's nothing wrong, Arthur."
Sea King with the fish head sat amidst a pile of instruments, listening to Lucius's words. A series of bubbles shot out of his fish mouth, unnaturally rising from his mouth and being blown into the sky before exploding into dust on the ceiling.
"Arthur asked him what had happened to him," Mera translated from the side.
The fish-headed sea king stared with his dead fish eyes and shook up and down in complete agreement.
"...You can understand what he's saying? Okay, anyway, look at the experimental data yourselves." Lucius typed away on the computer next to him for a while, and soon sets of data appeared on the big screen: "On the left are Aquaman's current physical data, and on the right are what he showed in the training ground when the Justice League was formed. In the past, even on land, Arthur could hold his own against Superman for a short time, and now his physical abilities have shown a significant upward trend overall."
At this moment, Chen Tao and Aquaman and his wife were in the Justice League's laboratory in Gotham, with Chen Tao and Lucius accompanying them.
"So, frankly, having a fish head might have made you uglier and made you a quintessential Atlantean in the public eye. But based on the experimental data, what's my conclusion? My conclusion is, Arthur, you've become stronger than before."
"So, can you find out the reason for this change?" Mera continued translating for Aquaman: "While his current appearance has increased his power, you know..."
"Arthur's status as the Crown Prince of Atlantis is more important than his fighting prowess," Chen Tao said from the side. "He is the bridge connecting humans and Atlanteans. Think of something, Lucius."
"So how did he get like this, Bruce? Mr. Arthur's powerful life force reminds me of a force, the Crimson of All Beings," Lucius said.
"According to Arthur, he was suddenly controlled by a powerful life force on the battlefield. In order to prevent this force from manipulating him to harm others, and also to prevent being controlled by the Eclipse, he relied on his last bit of sanity and rushed directly into the ocean trench."
"And he really did nearly lose control in the trench. He slaughtered a large number of Trench creatures—Batman knows what those are. These guys had previously come ashore and attacked ordinary people, but Arthur and I drove them back into the trench," Mera said. "Then Arthur found himself recovering from that power, so he came back to me."
"Arthur's life force is exceptionally strong, an extraordinary strength. You know, Bruce, his state reminds me of someone."
As Lucius spoke, he touched his head, then typed on the computer for a while and brought up a person's information.
"The plant expert, Jason Wood."
Mera and Aquaman looked at each other in bewilderment.
"Who is this guy?"
"An enemy I faced before," Chen Tao explained to them, "a low-level representative of the Green of All Things, whose authority is subordinate to the Swamp Monster and Poison Ivy. Poison Ivy and I defeated him, but because killing him would weaken the power of the Green of All Things, Ivy temporarily sealed him away."
"But you remember how he was able to eat the tubers from the swamp monster's body, right?" Lucius said.
He tapped the screen, and more lush green branches sprouted from the Plant Master's body. If he was originally just a monster made of vines and tree trunks, now he was like a walking tree, with green leaves even growing from his nose: "It can absorb the tubers that fall from the body of the Swamp Monster, the ruler of all things green, thereby greatly enhancing its own power. However, at the cost of this, the power of all things green will mutate its body, making it less human, much like the current situation of Aquaman."
"An unimaginable life force enhanced Aquaman's physique."
"Arthur also possesses a portion of the power of the Crimson of All Beings," Chen Tao added.
"Yes, this greatly enhanced its innate ability to talk to fish, to the point that it caused a mutation in its appearance," Lucius said. "Just like the changes in the appearance of the man-bat."
"So is this situation good or bad?" Mera asked. "Is he destined to continue like this?"
"If we disregard the impact of appearance on Arthur's life, I think it's a good thing," Lucius said. "Of course, that's just my opinion."
Aquaman Arthur stood up, opened his fish mouth, and blew out a series of bubbles: "Bubble bubble bubble bubble! Bubble bubble bubble bubble bubble bubble!"
“Arthur says he’s alright, but although the Atlanteans follow primogeniture,” Mera translated, “his current state could very well become evidence for others to attack Arthur as unfit to inherit the Atlantean throne.”
"His brother, Lord Orm, has returned from his travels," Mera said. "Lord Orm is a staunch conservative. Arthur has been pushing for normal diplomatic relations between the Atlanteans and humans, but Orm opposes it. His return gives all the Atlanteans who oppose this a leader and a backbone. Recently, there was another Atlantean attack, and we are facing inquiries from the Department of Defense. Despite the Martian Manhunter's guarantee and assistance, it has still given Arthur quite a headache."
"This has already given our Justice League enough trouble," Chen Tao corrected. "But I'll handle this."
"……Thanks."
"There's no need to say such things." Chen Tao waved his hand, then stroked his chin and slowly said, "Your current state is indeed a problem."
He sat there, his hand supporting his chin, lost in thought. Both Mera and Arthur held their breath, their faces filled with anticipation.
After a while, Chen Tao stood up, his body shimmering with silvery-white particles, revealing his appearance as the Bat Mage.
He stretched out his palm towards Aquaman Arthur: "Arthur, whose head will turn back into a human's!!!"
With a puff of white smoke, the fish head of the Sea King popped into a human head. However, this head was as colorless as an undyed dye palette, or like a haphazardly shaped piece of clay. It only lasted for a few seconds before disappearing without a trace with another pop.
"It's purely because I don't have enough magic power." Chen Tao stroked his chin.
Bruce Wayne of the Dark Multiverse, despite having mastered irony, recognizes that there are differences between different forms of irony. For a bat-magician, true strength lies in his versatility—a smattering of magic like Constantine's, allowing him to handle virtually any situation—rather than in his mastery of any single spell.
The Bat Mage's level of irony magic was more than enough to create two spellbooks that countered Chen Tao's own, but when it came to advanced transmutation spells on Aquaman's head, he struggled. Chen Tao's failure wasn't solely due to his irony magic level; more importantly, the powerful life force within Aquaman Arthur hindered the magic's execution. Arthur needed a more powerful mage to construct an advanced transmutation spell on that area of his head without physically damaging his brain.
So Chen Tao immediately used irony magic to create a magical invitation.
"This invitation will help you find Zatana Zatana," Chen Tao said. "She's a master of irony magic and will definitely be able to solve your problem. Martian Hunter will accompany you. Mera, you're also a mage, so you should be able to easily figure out who Zatana is."
"Wow, the style of the art has quickly shifted to magic," Lucius said.
"But be careful," Chen Tao said. "Even with Zatana's advanced shapeshifting technique, it's very likely that she won't be able to maintain your appearance when you, Arthur, choose to unleash your full power in a fierce battle. Your powerful life energy, when it erupts, will inevitably disrupt the magical circuits, causing your head to revert to its fish-like shape."
"We will continue to investigate the circumstances surrounding your current state, but you should be prepared... you may be forced to remain in this state for a very long time to come."
……
……
……
A few minutes later.
Lucius and Chen Tao watched as the profusely grateful Arthur and Mera disappeared behind the gate not far away.
"Supergirl has woken up." Lucius, still looking towards the door, said, "Are you going to see her later? And General Zod, the Green Lantern planet Mogo is still hovering outside Earth, and Superman's surgery."
"Yes," Chen Tao said, "crisis surrounds us."
"Even though Aquaman has turned into a fish head, he's alright now, and everything is moving in a positive direction," Lucius comforted him.
"If your experiment succeeds, Superman's fighting power will rejoin the Justice League. Aquaman should also be able to persuade Atlantis to establish diplomatic relations with humanity, and then bring all the Atlanteans over to act as a medium to help you share the burden through the Speed Force."
Lucius said, "I have successfully used a portion of Parallax's power to restrain the portion of the ionic power from the Ion Shark that you gave me before."
"You researched it so quickly?"
"It's less a method I developed and more an inherent characteristic of the two types of lamp beast powers," Lucius explained. "You gave me two puzzle pieces, and I simply put them together."
"With these Atlanteans helping you share the burden, your physical strength will be sufficient. Then, you'll be able to force the Ion Shark to possess you through the Dark Father's part of the Anti-Life Equation. This should allow you to unleash power several times greater than when you were originally possessed by the Ion Shark. Even if it still can't compare to the fully-formed Ion Man you described, it should far surpass the semi-possessed state you mentioned before. Based on this, you might also be able to control the Parallax Monster, but the specific methods still need further research."
Chen Tao didn't react, so Lucius continued, "There's one more thing. Luther and I invented an advanced transmission device, which I perfected while Luther was away. This device allows several people to share a huge amount of pressure with one person, and then that person can share your pressure, just like a pyramid."
"Actually, I was thinking..." Chen Tao said, "Couldn't you create a battery compartment that automatically shuts off power to ensure survival, turning everyone into batteries? I mean, ordinary people."
"No," Lucius said, "because our research has found that your sharing of stress is not simply a physiological sharing. It's more of a psychological sharing."
Lucius said, "We once conducted an experiment, trying to anesthetize the Turtle Man to make him avoid the immense pain of sharing the power, but we found that if we anesthetized him and made him unconscious, he could not share any power, just like a weightlifter who was crushed to death by a dumbbell. What helps you share the power is not just the physical body, but something deeper, not even the life force. And no matter how weak a person is, as long as they resist this sharing of power, even if they are stuffed into the battery compartment, they cannot help share the power. In other words, forcing others to help share the power is useless, mind control is useless, you have to make people help from the bottom of their hearts."
"Can't we do what we did with Grodd the gorilla and the turtle man?"
"One of them is the embodiment of stillness, and the other is a being of speed. They are born with these two forces. Can ordinary people be like them? Compared to ordinary people, their strength is too high. Even if you use mind control or force them, you can still extract enough of their 'shared quota.' But for ordinary people, their quota is small to begin with, so the quota extracted by force is basically the same as nothing."
"In other words, the gorilla Grud and the turtle man are far from being exploited to their limits."
"That's one way to understand it, but that's not the point."
"The key point is that there's a big problem with your current thinking, which is that there's no way to detect if there's any danger to life. Because for the person who helps share the stress, just checking vital signs won't tell you if they've reached their limit, because their vital signs are far from being life-threatening, but something else being consumed has reached its limit, leading to the collapse and death of the person who helped share the stress."
Furthermore, there are differences even among ordinary people. Take the magician from the Rogue Gang, for example; he was the only one in the gang without superpowers, yet he could endure for hundreds of times longer than an average person. Currently, we lack the means to detect the extent to which that abstract power has been depleted. If an ordinary person were to fight, they would die instantly, without even having time to call for a stop. But the people of Atlantis are like mini-superhumans; they have the ability to stop themselves.
Lucius said, "So forget about getting ordinary people to help; this isn't a war they can participate in."
Chen Tao was silent for a moment, then said, "I understand."
He seemed to quickly realize that this sounded a bit too rigid, so he hurriedly explained, "I don't mean to force them into the war, but you know what?"
He looked up and gazed out the window.
In the night sky outside the window, there seemed to be an unseen, enormous black shadow grinning maliciously.
"The anti-surveillance agents are coming... that giant monster is coming. The enemy won't give us time."
For a moment, Lucius almost thought he heard a sob, but when Batman turned around, he only saw a raging fire burning in the other man's eyes.
He must have misread it... Batman never feels sad, never feels fear.
He was never weak, never hesitant; he steadfastly marched toward his goal, like an iron man devoid of emotion.
Because... he is Batman. That was true in the past, and that is true now.
(End of this chapter)