American comics: Starting in Arkham, a system-based Batman

Chapter 113 A Long and Absurd Dream

"Don't worry, Bruce won't die."

Just as Batman won't kill the Joker, the Joker won't kill Batman either.

He didn't care about Batman's true identity, nor did he care about his own life; what he wanted was always to corrupt Batman.

Jung Eun breathed a sigh of relief. "I'll catch up."

The prolonged battle with Claws had exhausted him greatly. His opponent was a living dead assassin whose every move was deadly; unless he was hit by Crazy Diamond's special ability, any damage he suffered would be insignificant.

He fought cautiously in the beginning to avoid getting injured. Although he later took the [5-U-93-R (Super Potion)], the pill had no healing effect. He also used a quick and decisive fighting style, trading blows for damage.

The relentless offensive left Jung Eun with no time to use her healing items, and after the battle, she rushed to the port without stopping, leaving her even less time.

When Dick hugged him and cried, the wound on his back was still throbbing, and it was hard to tell whether it was a bruise from being hit or a cut from a blade.

"I will bring Bruce back."

When Zheng En hugged Dick, fine beads of sweat appeared on his forehead and back, and a gust of wind made his whole body feel cool.

After a short rest, he felt perfectly clear-headed.

The only healing-related item in the backpack is the [Negative Status Vacuum Cleaner], but that's for removing abnormal substances from the body. It can suck away toxins, bacteria, and viruses—but it can't heal wounds or reduce lactic acid produced after muscle movement.

He needs to draw or buy more items, but he doesn't have many points left. Rather than taking a gamble, it's better to buy the right items directly from the store for a guarantee.

Crazy Diamonds don't work on the main body, so the priority is to exchange for healing items to heal the wounds first. Although I'm a bit tired, I can manage it, so I'll conserve my energy where I can.

Jung Eun blinked, trying to relieve the soreness in her eyelids.

He planted a locator on Batman, hoping to catch up before the Joker noticed. He closed his eyes, but opening them again was difficult; the scenery before him became blurry, and before it went completely dark, he only heard Dick's anxious shouts.

"Jung Eun! Jung Eun! Are you alright?!"

I'm fine.

Zheng En wanted to answer him, but she didn't even have the strength to open her lips.

Consciousness sank into darkness, as if the whole person was thrown into a pitch-black deep sea and kept sinking.

Falling, falling, as if sinking into an abyss.

When she regained consciousness, Jung Eun still had a headache.

It was still too much of a stretch.

Before this, he had never truly risked his life for anything. In Gotham, still in the beginner's village, the items provided by the system could solve over 80% of the problems.

But it's different now.

Zheng En rubbed his head. Ever since discovering the Joker's whereabouts, everything seemed to have been fast-forwarded. One thing after another happened: Batman disappeared, Claw attacked the circus, the mayor died, and now Bruce had been kidnapped.

Oh, right, Bruce, he has to go save him.

He agreed to Dick's request.

Jung Eun was about to take a step forward, but when her eyes fell upon the pitch-black surroundings, she couldn't help but feel lost.

"Where is this place?"

He slapped his forehead. "Am I still not awake?"

Jung Eun remembers that she fainted at the port, and she was holding Dick while she was unconscious, so it is unlikely that she was kidnapped by some supervillain.

Or is this some kind of mysterious power from the magical realm?

Zheng En didn't understand, but standing still wasn't an option. He could only move forward, and after walking for a while, he finally saw a faint glimmer of light.

He quickened his pace; the closer he got, the bigger and brighter the light became.

He ran forward, and in an instant, the light swallowed everything in his field of vision. The colors quickly returned like a tide, leaving Zheng En speechless.

Before my eyes stretched vast expanses of red, as if the entire world had been dyed red.

There were no clouds or sun in the sky; the crimson sky resembled the shimmering light that appeared after charcoal had been thoroughly burned.

This world is like firewood; the brighter the fire, the brighter the light.

The thought suddenly popped into his mind.

Jung Eun had no idea what was happening. He tried to look around for the reason, but all he saw was the Riddler hanging up.

The giant question mark sculpture became his cross.

Zheng En went closer and saw that what pinned him to the sculpture were several batarangs.

The riddle-maker had been dead for who knows how long; his exposed skin was dried by the wind and clung tightly to his bones.

"Did Batman do this?" Zheng En frowned. He wanted to pull out the batarang to take a closer look, but a scorching red light poured down from the dome, instantly engulfing his figure.

"call--"

Zheng En woke up suddenly from his bed and immediately ran to the balcony. The sky outside was blue with scattered white clouds drifting by.

Everything is normal.

He breathed a sigh of relief, but suddenly felt the floor beneath him tremble.

This building is going to collapse!

Zheng En flew out, his monocle appearing on his face. He wanted to see if there was anyone inside who needed help, but there was nothing there.

The other buildings had already collapsed, and two red rays of light swept across the sky.

Jung Eun narrowly dodged, but was suddenly grabbed by the neck.

"I didn't even know anyone would dare to show up here."

A sculpted, handsome face was right in front of me, with a small tuft of curly hair on his forehead and a lingering red glow beneath his eyebrows.

The S-shaped logo was printed on the other person's chest, and the pain coming from the neck felt so real.

"Superman? But why?!"

"It seems I haven't killed enough people, so some still have unrealistic fantasies about me."

Zheng En could hardly believe what he was hearing. He didn't even have a chance to resist before his neck was snapped.

As his head drooped, he seemed to see the figure of Batman, who was holding a spear with a sharpened, luminous green stone at the tip.

I#.

Zheng En realized that it was the Raider, or to be more precise, the Batman who was about to become the Raider.

So the world he initially saw was that of the Red Reaper?

He wasn't a hardcore DC fan and couldn't directly name the Earth numbers, but he remembered these Batmen from the Dark Multiverse.

The Red Reaper is a product of Batman's attempt to steal the Speed ​​Force. He lost Alfred, Robin, and everyone in the Bat-family, so he wanted to be faster and faster to arrive before the tragedy happened, and he would stop at nothing to achieve this.

The Devastating One was created by Batman injecting himself with the Doomsday Virus, solely to stop Superman's atrocities. It wasn't magic, it wasn't Kryptonite; eliminating all possibilities that could alter Superman's mind, whether it was destroying cities or killing his wife, it was all Superman's own choice.

Batman could not tolerate his actions, so the Destroyer was born.

Jung Eun remembers their story, and also remembers that she seems to be dreaming.

After his neck was broken, when he opened and closed his eyes, all he saw was a fairly normal sky.

I just don't know if the Batman and Superman here are normal or not.

After being shocked twice in a row, Zheng En was in no hurry to get up, always feeling that she was going to die again in a moment.

Perhaps realizing that I was dreaming, my vision, which had been shrouded in mist, became clear, like watching a video that had gone from 360p smooth to 1080p high definition. Things that I couldn't notice before appeared within my perception range.

Dreams are dull and illogical, just like when Jung Eun gazes at the sky in the ravaged universe, he doesn't notice the collapsed buildings around him at all.

He didn't notice anything unusual until the house beneath his feet collapsed.

Having died twice, Jung Eun doesn't want to do anything now.

He lay on his back on the ground, surrounded by nothing—no tall buildings, no cars or pedestrians, no birds to be seen or heard, but his head began to ache again.

At first, Jung Eun thought it was a lingering effect of her neck being broken, but soon her body also started to hurt.

He opened the panel to check his health status. A yellow background with a black clover pattern was printed next to the health bar. Upon closer inspection, a line of red text appeared.

[Attention! Attention! Players are currently within an area of ​​high nuclear radiation contamination. Please move away immediately!]

Jung Eun: "Huh?"

Are you trying to mess with me because I'm Japanese?

He tried to stand up, but caught a glimpse of a black dot out of the corner of his eye.

The black dot rushed towards him swiftly, and in the blink of an eye, it became a living person.

He had just seen that face; it was as handsome as a sculpture, as dazzling as the sun. And the hand was quick and powerful, snapping his neck in one go.

But now that hand is supporting his back and the back of his legs, carrying him straight up into the sky.

Are you alright?

Superman looked at him with concern, his expression genuine. Zheng En wondered what the other man had seen in that single glance, but he figured his internal organs weren't in good condition.

"It's alright, he's still alive."

Jung Eun forced a smile, but after only a couple of sentences, she felt something rising up in her throat.

He suddenly vomited blood all over Superman.

"Your organs are failing, your white blood cell count is plummeting, and your bone marrow is being destroyed—"

The other person's pitiful expression contrasted sharply with the other's brutality. "I will try to save you, but everyone in Metropolis should have died in that explosion."

"I've searched, and no one can survive a nuclear bomb."

Superman should have questioned this stranger, Jung Eun, but he had X-ray vision and could see that the person in front of him was dying from exposure to large amounts of nuclear radiation.

Therefore, he prefers to believe that it was just a coincidence.

"Metropolis? Nuclear explosion?"

Jung Eun couldn't help but repeat what he had said. Although he had a premonition, he still felt a sense of desolation when the words came out of Superman's mouth.

This is Injustice Superman.

"I just woke up."

This is the truth, although he believes he is still dreaming, and it is a dream within a dream.

Zheng En didn't know why his dream was sometimes about the Red Reaper, sometimes about the Destroyer, and sometimes about the Injustice League, but he felt he had to say something, "Don't—become a tyrant."

The catalyst for Injustice Superman's tragedy was Lois Lane and her unborn child, as well as the deaths of millions of Metropolis citizens. Compared to Superman who snapped his neck, Injustice Superman's descent into darkness is far more logical.

His willful descent into dictatorship is the result of a combination of factors, and cannot be changed overnight.

Zheng En didn't think his words carried much weight, after all, Superman's biological father had said similar things, and Clark's adoptive parents had said the same.

He just felt he was about to die and that he should do something, and that was exactly what he did.

With only one percent of his health remaining, Jung Eun breathed his last after saying those words, not even lasting until Superman could find a way to save him.

Zheng En lost consciousness again. This time, the death was much longer than before. He did not wake up from his dream. When he finally opened his eyes, all he saw was the ceiling of the room.

It was the room where he was staying at Wayne Manor.

"So I'm fully awake now?"

Jung Eun sat up, staring blankly at her hands. "Strange, why did I say 'again'?"

He seemed to have a very long dream, filled with various scenes, but when he tried to recall it carefully, he couldn't remember any of them clearly.

He vaguely remembered dreaming about other universes, all of which were plots from comics he had seen before his transmigration.

Perhaps it's because so much has happened lately that I'm thinking about it during the day and dreaming about it at night.

Zheng En didn't delve any further; his immediate priority was finding Batman, who had been taken away by the Joker. He genuinely believed the Joker wouldn't kill Batman, but there were things far worse than death.

The Joker always believed that Batman was like him, and that anyone who had experienced the worst day would go crazy like him.

He frantically tried to drag Batman off, treating their fight as a game.

Zheng En couldn't imagine what this madman would do. He hurriedly got off the bed, but tripped over his own feet and almost fell to the ground.

The noise he made attracted Alfred's attention. The old butler knocked on the door and only opened it after receiving permission.

"Your injuries haven't fully healed yet; you need to rest more."

He helped Zheng En back to bed. "I'll prepare lunch for you right away. Please wait a moment."

"Thanks, Alfred."

This stumble made Zheng En realize his recklessness. He had been too hasty, failing to calm himself and adjust his physical condition. Going forward like this would only make him a sitting duck. Forget bringing Batman back; he would only become a burden to him.

While Alfred was out, he opened the panel to check his physical condition.

The three-headed chibi figure generated in his image stands in the middle of the panel, with the green bar at the bottom taking up about 80% of the area, while the red bar is only half full and is noticeably shorter than the green bar.

Jung Eun bought a healing spray directly from the system shop; it's a purple item that can directly restore health.

His wounds had all been treated skillfully, probably something Alfred had learned from Bruce. He unwrapped all the bandages, sprayed the wounds vigorously in front of the mirror, and soon the red bar was full.

There's no need to buy items to replenish the green bar. The normal level is around 80%, and even if daily activities cause some loss, as long as it's not in a prolonged slump, it will return to normal after a good night's sleep.