"No, something's wrong." A female voice came from the laboratory, "The Power of Death is returning to the Spirit Domain. Shiller might be in danger!"
Everyone in the laboratory looked at him. Victor shot up and said, "What's going on? Why is it returning?!"
"There's some force pulling it," Super Body furrowed his brows deeply, "It seems... it seems to be the child's main consciousness..."
She placed her hand on the ice surface, feeling it carefully, then said, "Something is continuously calling for death. The Power of Death is being guided to flow back towards the brain..."
"What do we do now?!" Victor said anxiously, "Once Shiller comes into contact with the Power of Death, he might face the Behind-the-scenes Manipulator directly!"
"Don't panic," Super Body took a deep breath and said, "I can use the Life Force to hold it off a bit, but not for long."
"But doesn't your Life Force restrain the Power of Death?"
"Precisely because it restrains, I can't output too much. If I expelled the Power of Death completely, the child would lose his life. With a small output, I can only delay it."
Victor wanted to say more, but Brainiac said, "Trust Shiller, he'll figure something out."
A white light flashed in Super Body's hand, then enveloped the entire ice sculpture. He then said, "Alright, this will buy him some more time."
"Whoosh," the flames in the fireplace suddenly flared up, illuminating the entire hall again. Shiller immediately realized that someone outside must have helped him.
However, the flames dimmed faster than expected. Shiller estimated it, after three more cycles, the flame would be completely extinguished. And the Power of Death invading the Spirit Domain would completely engulf this place. He would be taken into the domain of the Black Death Emperor.
Shiller already knew how Hugo did it. Hugo knew Shiller would definitely come to this memory fragment to seek clues, so he set a trap: he both isolated Shiller and trapped him in a loop. This loop was special because with each cycle, Noel would experience the pain of death once.
And each of her deaths would summon the Power of Death, so the Power of Death originally expelled from the Spirit Domain would return here. By then, Shiller, who was trapped here, would be devoured by the Power of Death.
It must be admitted, Hugo did have some skill. Setting aside the technology to create a loop, he successfully exploited Shiller's weakness—his teacher's ethics.
Knowing that his student Bruce was always guilty over this issue, Shiller would definitely want to break Noel's hypnosis to comfort Bruce. To find the key to breaking the hypnosis, he'd have to look at her pre-death memory. Once inside, he'd be trapped and then swallowed by the returning Power of Death.
Shiller sighed softly, now was not the time to use his trump card. He had to think about how to break the loop first. To break the loop, he first had to break the isolation to affect the memory.
Shiller glanced around, his eyes suddenly fixed on a figure.
This loop began when Noel entered Wayne Manor and ended with Noel's death. The main characters during this period were Bruce and Noel, but they weren't the only ones involved. There was also an outsider, Dick.
At that time, their relationship was at its worst. Bruce was still too young and hadn't fully transitioned into a father figure. Dick was in his rebellious period, and having not experienced his parents' death, he hadn't matured and was still somewhat childish. It was normal for the two to argue over some things.
Hugo would overlook Dick—Shiller immediately realized this. Because at least from this memory fragment, Dick was just a rebellious teenager. The things he said to Bruce weren't substantial and didn't significantly contribute to the development of events.
Hugo was always a very arrogant person. He hated mediocre people, hated mundane and tedious daily conversations, only liked madmen with research value, and only focused on the abnormal.
In the whole matter, Dick behaved too normally. His psyche and personality were too healthy, even his rebellion didn't cause much commotion, at most just a little tantrum, a few backtalks. Hugo was bound to overlook him.
Dick must be the breakthrough. Shiller walked towards him, and Dick didn't react at all. Shiller stood there, staring intently and unblinkingly at him.
No, the flaw wasn't in Dick himself. Shiller realized. There was no issue with his appearance or inner personality. And then, the time for the first cycle arrived.
The memory shattered again. Shiller returned to the hall. He looked up towards where Dick came from. According to Shiller's knowledge, Dick's room was on the second floor, and it's still there today.
At the time, when Brainiac was dividing the rooms, he intended to allocate most of them, which would have meant moving the children's rooms. For this, Bruce and Brainiac had more than one bout in free combat, but in the end, he didn't let Brainiac succeed, and the children's rooms stayed the same.
Dick's room should be on the far right of the second floor. Although this room is near the edge, it has one more window than the other rooms, allowing better lighting, which is why he chose it.
Shiller stopped focusing on the people in the hall and instead headed to the right side of the second floor. He didn't notice anything unusual in the corridor, but when he arrived at Dick's door, he sensed something was off.
Dick never locks his door. This habit might be because his biological parents respected him, always knocking whether he locked the door or not. Bruce isn't someone who barges in, and the only one who likes to storm into rooms, Jason, can pick three locks in five seconds, so locking is pointless.
But now, Shiller couldn't open Dick's door. Turning the doorknob had no effect, and it wouldn't budge with a push. It wasn't as if it was locked; it was more like a "come back to explore the map later."
Shiller immediately understood the key point—Hugo had absolutely no interest in exploring Dick's inner world.
From Hugo's professional perspective, even if he couldn't grasp what Wayne Manor looked like in Noel's spirit world, he could roughly deduce it through guessing. This is a basic quality for a master of psychology.
As for the layout of the hall or Bruce's room, such things could be guessed with some degree of accuracy through personality analysis. But the problem is, Hugo doesn't like analyzing ordinary people.
Dick is way too normal. Hugo has no interest whatsoever in delving into his inner world, and naturally, he wouldn't speculate about what Dick's room looks like, nor would he include such an ordinary room in his meticulously designed trap. He would consider it a "flaw" that pollutes his creation.
However, the structure of the entire Wayne Manor is complete. Shiller had already seen from the backyard that Dick's room has a window, meaning the exterior modeling was done. It's just that the interior contents haven't been filled in—it might just be a texture, empty inside. This means it might be the only void in the entire memory fragment, and his only way to leave here.
"Bang!" Shiller slammed directly into the door. To his surprise, this texture was flimsier than expected. Sometimes he's not sure whether Hugo or himself is the more arrogant one.
Hugo clearly judged others by his own standards. He himself had no interest in the inner world of ordinary people, so he assumed Shiller felt the same. He thought Shiller couldn't see Dick at all and wouldn't research his room, so this texture was just a thin layer, easily clipping through it.
Just as Shiller was about to crash in, the second cycle time arrived. Returning to the hall, Shiller intended to head straight to the second floor, but as he turned, he stopped in his tracks.
Bruce and Noel, appearing at the door, had turned into the semblance of living corpses, with large corpse spots appearing on their skin, yet they seemed unaware, talking to themselves.
Shiller stepped back two paces, turned, and headed upstairs. But Dick, who appeared, looked like a corpse too, his veins decaying, skin peeling. As Shiller brushed past him, Dick suddenly performed an action not matching the memory—a turn of the head.
Shiller seemed to sense something, he too turned back, and at the moment his eyes met Dick's, Shiller understood: he had been discovered.
The hand gripping the doorknob slowly released, the posture poised to crash into the door reverted to a standing position. Shiller turned around, looking at Dick standing by the stairs, the last spark extinguished in his gray eyes.
The next second, the memory fragment collapsed. Infinite power of death engulfed everything, turning all into extreme darkness. No sound, no light, the world immersed in eternal night.
Standing in the void of darkness, Shiller murmured lowly, "I just don't want my friends to worry, which is why I let them always see me. You shouldn't let them not see me."
Suddenly, beneath Shiller, a pale continent surfaced, stretching out to the horizon. But once that enormous figure appeared in the dark, it was clear that the continent was just its forehead. A skull the size of a planet appeared before Shiller.
"Embrace death." Its voice resembled some kind of chant, "Life is short, eternal night endures, serving death is the only eternal answer."
"What is eternity? Not light, not darkness." Shiller's voice flowed seamlessly, as if continuing a song, "That which cannot define me, cannot compose me, is not eternity. All you have seen ultimately returns to death. But you never realized, my death is not death, but the start of another story."
The giant skull halted. It seemed to see something: a falling plane, roaring flames, the shattering of artillery fragments, and that morning in Gotham, which was neither warm nor bright.
"You escaped death." It suddenly seemed to grow furious, "You are a shameful cheater! You don't deserve to serve death!"
Shiller merely lifted his one hand gently, "I told you, you shouldn't let everyone not see me."
Suddenly, in the overwhelming silence of darkness, a low chanting came from afar. Rings on Shiller's hand diffused dense, gray fog, diluting the darkness. On the distant horizon, the silhouette of a giant dragon loomed.
The fog around Shiller gradually solidified, several rings with ancient patterns appeared beside him, then were engulfed by the dense gray fog, flying off to different directions, seeking out their masters.