Days as a Spiritual Mentor in American Comics Chapter 5958 - 4978: No Batman Here (65)

"I will," Brainiac replied, "Actually, this plan wasn’t fully devised by me."

"Greed, right?" Bruce chuckled to himself. The whole poisoning scheme just screamed Shiller’s style. Don’t ask, just answer ’chemistry’ on all the exams.

Although the target of this poisoning is a quantum life form, it sounds absurd, the poison itself is anything but ordinary. Batman’s dark side, mixed with Joker Virus, Outer God contamination, and fear gas. If Doctor Manhattan gets hit, there might be no other choice.

"When do you plan to take action?" Bruce asked.

"You’ll know when I take action," Brainiac said. He’s already learned to dodge questions. Luckily, Bruce didn’t intend to press further.

The sound outside gradually faded. It sounded like the Joker was defeated, his laughter no longer as grating. However, Batman clearly wasn’t feeling well either, as the darkness began to fade away.

Charles peeked out again and snapped a few photos. This time, instead of having Brainiac describe the scene, he glanced at it himself and said, "The Joker doesn’t seem fully developed and isn’t a match for Batman. But Batman is also trapped by the Joker, now is our best chance. I’ll give you guys spiritual protection and we can go out and deal with them directly."

The Robins cheered. Opportunities to beat up Batman amidst chaos don’t come often. Charles’ eyes flashed, and everyone immediately felt mentally refreshed. Only when they rushed out did they realize the scene was far more chaotic than Charles had described.

The entrance to the Wayne building was covered in blood. It’s unclear if it’s from the Joker or Batman, or perhaps a mixture of both. A few tentacles lay on the ground, seemingly severed. But Batman also lost an arm, which looked like it was corroded, leaving only a few fingers on the ground.

Meanwhile, half of the Joker’s body had vanished, seemingly melted into snowwater, but the remaining tentacles still firmly bound Batman. Batman lost one arm and was entwined with the other, unable to break free.

It was indeed the best opportunity. The Robins charged forward immediately. But they were still cautious, not attacking the Joker first, since for now, the Joker seemed an easier target; they needed to sort out Batman first.

Pamela summoned vines first, binding the two tightly. Polaris didn’t act immediately; she feared if she struck with electricity first, she might eliminate the Joker without balancing the damage, so it was best not to act yet.

Tim picked up a sniper rifle and shot at Batman’s head first, but it was ineffective. Batman clearly wasn’t just any regular person now. So he turned his head and said, "Use explosives!"

They had brought explosives, and Red Robin knew how to conduct a targeted detonation. Since neither of the two could move now, they went up and set up the bombs. To ensure enough damage would be inflicted, they used up all the leftover explosives from Uncle Jack, hoping to blow the two sky-high in one go.

After setting up, everyone retreated back behind the truck, ensuring that if the explosion didn’t kill them, they wouldn’t be immediately retaliated against.

Before Red Robin hit the button, everyone covered their ears. Then they heard a loud "boom," followed by the ground trembling. A small mushroom cloud rose up from the back. The darkness vanished almost instantly.

However, Brainiac only reported the elimination of the South District leader. Everyone immediately realized the Joker wasn’t dead. Polaris rushed out of the truck first. Without checking the Joker’s location and condition, she transformed into an electromagnetic storm and unleashed a maximum output plasma burst, melting everything within hundreds of meters around.

After a two-second pause, news of the death of the East District leader arrived as expected. Everyone jumped up immediately.

"Double kill!" Damian cheered, "We actually took down Batman and Joker simultaneously!"

Nightwing also breathed a sigh of relief; he hadn’t expected these two final bosses to be resolved so simply. Now, there was no need to launch raids on the East and South Districts, leaving only one final boss in the West District.

The thought of this occurred to everyone simultaneously. Thinking about who the West District boss was made the game’s end seem far off.

Still, solving two bosses at once was worth celebrating. Everyone drove to Viscount Manor to meet up and held a simple celebration party, which basically involved eating snacks, joyfully complimenting each other, and then resting for a night.

The next morning, they planned to head to the West District. Since the main questline for the other three districts was already completed, the next goal was to tackle the West District leader together.

However, there was another problem: to challenge the West District leader, they first had to take an exam. Without passing the Psychology Department entrance exam, they wouldn’t even qualify to confront the leader.

Among those present, few had a talent for the Psychoanalysis Method. Tim’s idea of having Jenna write for him hadn’t been confirmed whether it would work. Even if it did work, it probably wouldn’t help so many people at once. So only those likely to enter based on merit had any reason to go to the West District.

Nightwing, Red Hood, and Damian gave up directly. They didn’t even care what the subject was; they simply didn’t want to take the exam. Red Robin also didn’t want to go, but Tim dragged him along, not wanting to be the only one beaten.

Pamela gave up as well; there’s no way she’d pass. Ted also knew his own limitations and had already been tortured at Mercury Base; there’s no need to humiliate himself further. However, Cassandra and Lilith accompanied Tim.

The two of them didn’t think they’d pass either; it was more for companionship. These few heading to the West District appeared more akin to heading to the execution ground rather than gaming.

Just arrived at the lakeside villa in the West District, Tim logged off to find Jenna. The good news is, writing is possible, but with such limited time, she only wrote one essay, and it was about Harley. Tim still needs to figure it out himself.

So, after arriving at the lakeside villa, they completely abandoned playing games. The entire villa turned into a large tutoring class, where everyone was practicing essay writing under the guidance of Arrogant and Charles.

This really does require practice. Even though they don’t write many small essays of day-to-day assignment quality. This is because, although Shiller has high standards for assignments, he doesn’t assign many.

It’s not that Shiller doesn’t want to assign more; it’s mainly that he just can’t handle grading them all. Even once a month is a huge spiritual drain. If it were every day, teaching this course would really become impossible.

Moreover, even when writing an essay a month, Shiller grades them daily, but he doesn’t always discuss the assignments. Many times, he just gives a score without elaborating on their work in long comments. So often, Tim and the others don’t even know precisely where there are issues in their writing.

Of course, if they asked Shiller, he would definitely answer. But who in their right mind would ask? Asking means everything’s wrong.

Sure enough, during tutoring, it was basically an error every sentence. Even after putting aside grammatical, punctuation, and formatting errors, even after putting aside logical fallacies, the main content and themes were still lacking.

The one Jenna wrote for Harley was the only somewhat acceptable one. It mainly discussed how Harley is "easily influenced," and extended into collective unconscious impact and then personality theory. The content was relatively good.

What Tim proposed was too close to behavioral analysis. He argued for the necessity of the human society system through behavioral differences between different personalities. While it made a lot of sense, it was a bit off-topic. Arrogant coached him for a long time but found it hard to shift his thinking, so they just left it as that.

It was a pleasant surprise with Lilith and Cassandra. They were mainly there for practice but unexpectedly did well. Their theories were actually decent, only the essay format was poorly written. Perhaps because they didn’t attend university. However, this was easily fixed with a few words from Arrogant, and they adjusted.

Last was Red Robin. Like Tim, he started with behavioral analysis, but he had Lilith backing him with a twist towards religious studies. It was also a bit off-topic but better than pure behavioral analysis.

Having studied almost the entire day, they had taught all they could, and set off towards the psychology department of Gotham University. Arrogant didn’t go; after all, he was previously caught cheating and was completely barred entry. Everyone else went.

The good news was, except for Tim, everyone else passed. The bad news was that those who passed weren’t much when it came to combat.

They significantly lacked some combat methods. Charles wouldn’t attempt a psychic attack on Shiller. If Brainiac’s simulation whipped up a modified High Tower, it would be like walking into a trap. Lilith was in the same boat.

Cassandra was the only martial arts expert, but she didn’t have superpowers. Battling a modified boss like Shiller was too difficult. Red Robin had a gun, but how effective it would be was questionable. Harley was in a similar position. They knew their limitations clearly, so they didn’t attack rashly but returned to the lakeside villa.

This time, taking advantage of Arrogant resting upstairs, Tim said in a low voice, "I’m afraid we can’t use general methods to fight."

"You mean..."

"Professor Shearer has obvious weaknesses, don’t you remember?"

"Broccoli?" Harley said in surprise, "Did Brainiac replicate even that?"

"He knows things from that long ago; there’s no way he wouldn’t know this," said Tim. "Moreover, these bosses all have very obvious weaknesses; there’s no reason Professor Shearer would be that much stronger."

"Then should we go find Pamela?" Harley said, "But according to her, she couldn’t get anything to grow in the backyard. Maybe there’s a problem with the soil quality."

"This is troublesome," Tim said. "Honestly, if we had Batman here, his arsenal would definitely have items targeting everyone’s weaknesses. We might very well find broccoli there. But Bruce most certainly doesn’t have that stuff."

"What are you guys talking about?" Red Robin asked.

"We’re thinking of finding some broccoli."

"Find broccoli for what?" Red Robin asked, puzzled, "And what does broccoli have to do with Batman? Shouldn’t we look for it in a restaurant?"

Tim and Harley froze for a moment, having completely forgotten. They’d been thinking of broccoli as an effective tool against Arrogant, forgetting that it’s just a common food item.

In Western cuisine, broccoli is often used as a decorative plate element; ordinary restaurants should have it. Especially those high-end Western restaurants, surely they have it in stock.

"Let’s head to the city center," Tim said. "Those restaurants there are bound to have broccoli."