OBS Chapter 4649 Desperate Escape (21)
Chapter 4649 Desperate Escape (21)
Chapter 4649 A Desperate Escape (Part Twenty-One)
Bruce got up from the ground and took a deep breath. He saw Schiller reach for the last disposable needle, pause for a second, and then lunge at Schiller.
Schiller withdrew his hand from the drawer and shoved Bruce aside, but the force was so great that he almost threw him off balance. This time, however, Bruce was prepared and didn't fall to the ground. He adjusted his position and circled around to the other side.
"Are you sure you want to fight me here?" Schiller squinted at him.
“We don’t seem to have exchanged blows, do we?” Bruce said coldly. “I mean, fight like this.”
Do you think I'm not good at this?
"If we're talking about fighting techniques, yes. But I also know very well that strength is everything in fighting."
“Then you should give up,” Schiller said.
“I just wanted to give it a try,” Bruce grinned, a defiant smile on his face. “After all, not everyone gets the chance to fight their college professor. I’m sure a lot of people would like to.”
“My students are especially like that.” Schiller didn’t waste any words with him and grabbed the chain of the collarbone ring. Bruce lunged from the right, and Schiller dodged to the left, swinging the iron bar to force him back. But Bruce nimbly dodged, and then circled around to Schiller’s left, trying to trip him.
Schiller wasn't fooled and took a half-step back to give way. He knew very well that his fighting skills couldn't compare to Bruce's, even though Bruce was no longer Batman and hadn't fought in a long time. After all, Bruce was once a fighting master, while Pride almost never fought.
It would be very difficult to compete with Bruce in terms of skill. There are many jiu-jitsu and choke techniques specifically designed to deal with people who are stronger than you, and if you are choked, you could potentially lose.
Therefore, Schiller chose to avoid direct confrontation. Bruce could test him countless times, but once Schiller caught him, he would have no chance of resistance. After all, mortal flesh simply could not fight against a train.
Bruce suddenly threw a punch, and Schiller sneered as he dodged to the side, reaching out to grab Bruce's arm. Bruce, however, suddenly changed his move, bending down to avoid Schiller's hand, and then abruptly circled behind Schiller, attempting to strangle him.
Schiller had anticipated this and immediately turned to the side, not giving him a chance to extend his arm. Just as he reached out to grab Bruce's shoulder, Bruce dodged to the side and tried to trip him again. Schiller didn't give him another chance, and directly swung the iron chain, the iron spike aimed at his chest.
In the blink of an eye, Bruce, as if he had eyes in the back of his head, suddenly bent down and rolled away to avoid the iron rod. Schiller swung the iron rod with tremendous force, and with a bang, the rod smashed directly into the barbed wire surrounding the mechanism.
With a crackling sound and a burst of lightning, Schiller was sent flying.
Electricity is unlike anything else. Other injuries would make Schiller's power erupt more violently, but electricity causes muscles to contract involuntarily, resulting in a stiff body that cannot unleash its full power for a short time.
The electricity connected to the mechanism appears to have been specially treated, specifically modified for the human body, to prevent anyone with extraordinary intelligence from violently destroying it. Anyone who gets an electric shock will be stunned for quite a while.
Schiller lay frozen on the ground for over ten seconds. He couldn't move, but he could see what Bruce was doing. Bruce picked up a disposable needle from the drawer, attached a tube, and plunged it into his arm.
Blood quickly flowed through the tube into the scales. Bruce turned to look at him, gritting his teeth, and said, "I never wanted to be Batman, you forced me into it."
Schiller lay on the ground panting. Once the muscle stiffness wore off, he slowly stood up, looked up at the machine, and said, "This mechanism was probably designed by another version of myself."
“How did you know?” Bruce asked.
"No one knows my own weaknesses better than I do."
"So you have a weakness after all?"
“Of course.” Schiller took a deep breath. “Otherwise, how do you think they locked me up back then?”
Bruce froze abruptly. He was once again drawn into Schiller's memories, and then he saw how the young Schiller had been locked up in the laboratory.
Clearly, Schiller's talent was also useful in his childhood, and it wasn't much weaker than it is now. When it erupted, it was difficult to deal with, and it was very difficult to control him.
However, Schiller is still a carbon-based life form. As long as a carbon-based life form uses muscles to exert force, it cannot be immune to the negative effects of electrical currents. And this becomes the only way to control Schiller.
Bruce snapped the needle out, took a deep breath, turned to Schiller, and said, "Enough! How long are we going to keep this up?"
Schiller simply gave him a cold smile: "You started it first."
"Are you kidding me?!" Bruce said incredulously. "You were the one who said you wanted to stay first. You're not trying to use that same excuse to shift the blame onto me again, are you? I won't fall for it again!"
"Didn't you say you wanted to play high-difficulty dungeons?" Schiller looked at him, seemingly puzzled.
Bruce opened his mouth, stepped forward, and spread his hands, saying, "Is this how you play high-difficulty dungeons?"
“So what are you expecting?” Schiller continued to stare at him. “Gotham’s darkest hour was also when we both bled the most. Do you really expect us to cooperate seamlessly and overcome the difficulties in a challenging game?”
Bruce rubbed his forehead, took a deep breath, and tried to explain, "I just think it's too easy, not fun at all. Even when I play alone, it's a high-difficulty game, but with the two of us..."
“But you agreed!” Bruce, remembering his previous lesson, decided to attack again. “Since you anticipated this situation, you should have stopped it!”
“Why should I stop you?” Schiller asked, looking at him. “I thought you wanted to relive your past.”
Bruce rubbed his face hard, his voice filled with a deep sense of helplessness: "Why do I feel like you're not better at all?"
“Oh, Bruce.” Schiller reached out and touched the wooden exit, speaking in a nonchalant tone, “You don’t think that just because you’re healed, I should be healed too, do you?”
“I thought you should at least be…” Bruce was at a loss for words. After thinking for a while, he said, “At least be a little more normal.”
“No.” Schiller shook his head gently. “Never, Bruce. I’ve never been changed, at least not you have.”
"What do you mean?!" Bruce gritted his teeth and stepped forward, looking him straight in the eye. "So, everything we've been through means nothing to you?"
Suddenly he paused, then slammed his fist on the wooden exit and said, "Schiller, you're doing this again! I told you, I won't fall for it this time!"
Schiller finally laughed, almost breathlessly: "Very good, it seems you've really improved, Bruce."
Bruce angrily slammed his fist on the ground a few times: "When are you going to stop mentally attacking me?!"
"Didn't you just launch a mental attack on me too?" Schiller looked at him with a smile, then his gaze fell on the needle marks on his arm.
Bruce clenched his fist, forced to admit that although he finally realized what had happened, he had still been partially fooled. In other words, he had gone back to his old ways, trying to teach Schiller a lesson by hurting himself.
He did lose a considerable amount of blood, but not to the point of excessive blood loss; it was only slightly more than the safe amount for blood donation. Therefore, apart from feeling a bit cold in his fingertips, he doesn't feel any discomfort.
What truly bothered him was that, after all the twists and turns, he still couldn't completely resist Schiller's Joker combo—posing questions to make Batman make choices, pretending to be a good guy to distract him, provoking him to lose control, emotionally charged self-harm and blood donation, guilt-ridden mind manipulation, incisive psychological attacks, and taking advantage of the chaos to shift blame in one fell swoop.
It's true that new tricks don't matter as long as they work. They've been using the same approach since their very first meeting. And yet, they're wrong!
“We really can’t go on like this,” Bruce said. “I’m not Batman anymore, and you’re not the Joker anymore.”
“You weren’t listening to me.” Schiller grabbed his arm and pressed his hand against the still-bleeding injection site. “Back in the first round, I told you you might have to be Batman for a while. Didn’t you hear me?”
Bruce froze, then looked utterly devastated: "How was I supposed to know that? It was just a joke!"
Then he roared, "You make me listen to you, and then you don't let me listen to you. If I don't listen to you, I won't know what you're trying to tell me; if I listen to you, I'll fall for your tricks. What am I supposed to do?!"
He slammed his fist into the wooden exit again, and whether it was because he used too much force or because the thing was of poor quality, the lid on top was knocked askew.
He also realized he had lost control again and tried to calm himself down: "When I get back, I'll tell the Justice League that I'm no longer Batman, but the Joker is still chasing me!"
But he soon noticed that Schiller's act of breaking his own bone was so violent that his collarbone wound was bleeding profusely. The blood had soaked through his clothes and spilled onto the floor, further aggravated by their fight.
“Alright,” Schiller said, “the blood donation is done, it’s time to get down to business.”
He took a deep breath, picked up the iron crowbar, went to the bricks at the edge of the mechanism, inserted the crowbar into the gap between the bricks, and swung the crowbar.
clang!!!!!
Bruce was so shocked that he took a step back, then grimaced and gasped.
Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!
The iron rod was hammered in, completely embedded, with only a small section sticking out. Schiller then used a crowbar to hook the rod and pry it off, managing to pry the tightly fitted stone brick out of the ground in just three strokes.
Then he pried the whole row of bricks off, piece by piece, clearing away the debris from where the bricks met, and casually tossed the bricks onto the ground. He did all this without even breaking a sweat.
Schiller turned and walked towards the exit, Bruce obediently following. At the door, Schiller turned to him and asked, "Not angry anymore?"
Bruce shook his head, swallowed hard, and said, "Professor, believe it or not, I believe it now."
"what?"
“You really just wanted to teach me, not hurt me. If you had punched me back in the Morsen neighborhood, Batman wouldn’t exist.”
"Do you think it's because I didn't want to?" Schiller shoved the crowbar at him, wiped the blood from beside his collarbone with his finger, and looked down at his fingertips: "Too pathetic."