Chapter 1683: Bruce Wayne and the Hidden Chamber (Part 9)

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"Things are getting messier. I’m starting to lose track of what’s happening," Constantine muttered, rubbing his temple while staring at the screen. “The Sorcerer Supreme, Ancient One, somehow got her hands on a suspicious-looking book and deliberately left it in her study for Helen to find.”

“It wasn’t long after Helen got hold of it that students began to go berserk, attacking each other—one nearly injured Harley. Okay, not quite, but you get the idea.”

“Then, cryptic writing appeared on the walls of the school’s third-floor hallway, mentioning ‘Inheritors’ and their ‘enemies’…”

“What’s the connection between these clues? I wonder, could it be that we have the world’s greatest detective here to enlighten us?” Constantine quipped, though everyone was already turning their eyes toward Bruce. The rest had been lost in the whirlwind of constantly changing scenes, struggling to piece together the scattered clues.

“Inheritors and their enemies,” Bruce began, his voice calm, almost as if he wasn’t expending any effort to deduce the situation. “This implies that these incidents might be split between two opposing sides. Or, at least, that’s how the person who wrote that phrase sees it—one side being the Inheritors, the other their enemies. But why draw such a distinction?”

“What exactly are they inheriting?” Zatanna asked. She glanced at Strange, who was lounging on the sofa. “It can’t be the title of Sorcerer Supreme, can it?”

“Makes sense,” Pamela nodded thoughtfully. “If ‘Inheritors’ appear in a magic academy, what they’d inherit would naturally be the supreme magical throne.”

“I’m afraid I have no intention of stepping down just yet,” Strange replied smoothly. “And I believe all the students are aware of that.”

“Then it must be the throne of Asgard.”

“Thor is still very much in his prime.”

“Stop with the riddles, detective,” Constantine urged, locking eyes with Bruce. “Give us something we don’t know already. Give us one of those jaw-dropping revelations of yours.”

“Jennifer Mavi,” Bruce calmly uttered a name.

In the corner, Schiller, who had been lounging on the sofa with his eyes half-closed and seemingly a bit tipsy, opened his eyes slightly. No matter how many times it happened, Batman’s incredible detective instincts, even when he revealed just a sliver of them, always left people in awe.

“What about her?” Constantine pressed.

“Have you ever seen her in any of the footage featuring groups of students?”

Bruce’s words sent chills down Constantine and Zatanna’s spines. The imaginative magician shivered, saying, “You’re not about to tell me she’s some sort of ghost, are you?”

“She’s clearly not a normal student,” Bruce responded. “Now that you’ve realized something’s off about her, think back on every time you’ve seen her. Do you notice anything… extra?”

“Something extra…” Constantine suddenly froze. For the first time in years, a look of horror twisted his usually composed features. “She has tentacles behind her!”

Then, like a drowning man grasping for a lifeline, he turned to the others. “What did you see? Was she just an ordinary girl to you?”

Pamela furrowed her brow deeply, trying to objectively describe her feelings. “Before Bruce pointed out that something was off about the girl, I had no doubts about her appearance or her behavior. But once I began questioning it, I realized—ever since I first laid eyes on her, I saw those tentacles behind her. And yet, it never struck me as strange.”

“If I had noticed that, I would’ve said something immediately!” Zatanna raised her voice, as if trying to mask her fear. “How could I overlook such an obvious monster trait? Why did it seem normal to me, even though I saw it from the start?”

“That’s exactly the problem,” Bruce explained, his fingers thoughtfully tracing along his jawline. “Our perception of her was tampered with. Clearly, the children were affected too.”

“Based on what I know of my counterpart from another universe, if he had realized that Jennifer’s tentacles were unnatural, he would’ve taken action. But he didn’t, which means even he was deceived.”

“Reality alteration?”

“Perhaps it only applies to her.”

“Who could have done it? The Ancient One?” Zatanna wondered.

Bruce remained silent, while Schiller’s half-closed eyes seemed to swirl with mist, his gray irises resembling clouds—a storm brewing in the depths, much like the eternal tempests above the Himalayan Mountains.

The snowstorm outside intensified. Harley Quinn shifted her gaze away from the first page of the Book of the Dead, where a gray maelstrom spiraled. As the storm dissipated from her vision, what emerged was dark red ink—dried long ago—the very words that had appeared on the school’s walls.

Harley picked up a pen and wrote, “You’re right. That madness is spreading throughout the school. The tournament has only stoked the flames, yet you still haven’t told me where this madness originates.”

“Equivalent exchange,” came the reply, materializing from the mist.

“What do you want?” Harley paused for a moment before adding, “I’ve written as you instructed. They all think I’m just a pitiful victim of that attack and should quietly stay in the infirmary, so no one suspects a thing.”

“Helen has her doubts about me. She probably thinks I’ve read the book, but I deflected suspicion back onto her quickly enough. I moved fast, so she shouldn’t have noticed.”

“Impressive criminal instincts,” the mist wrote again, each letter forming slowly, as if crafted with careful deliberation. Another line appeared: “You must not allow a lesser form of madness to spread in your environment, like letting yourself soak in filthy water.”

"I feel exactly that way. It's utterly wretched," Harley took a deep breath and began furiously scribbling down lines.

"They cannot understand where human madness originates. Instead, they muddle our minds and call it insanity. It’s a vile, unimaginative imitation that reeks of putrefaction. They need to be taught a profound lesson.

Every resident of Gotham knows that madness has long eroded our hearts, but it’s not the work of some deity. Madness is the weapon we choose to wield, to create miracles in this darkest of places, where survival is the ultimate struggle. The genius it brings, the insights into humanity and tragedy it inspires—that is the most beautiful art that madness can give us.

It’s not about pumping energy into someone’s brain until they can no longer think, turning them into mindless zombies who only attack others. His understanding of madness is completely wrong. It suffocates me. I will correct this mistake at any cost, and you must help me."

"I’ll help you."

Everyone reading this conversation through their screens fell silent. It was Pamela, who had been quiet all along, who finally spoke up.

"I don’t mean to defend Gothamites, but I completely understand why Miss Quinn called it imitation—or, to be more blunt, plagiarism."

“You? What could you possibly understand?!” Constantine was nearly losing his mind, shouting in frustration, "Are you all insane? It’s bad enough that you’re crazy yourselves, but now you think it’s a crime that others aren’t ‘mad enough’?!”

“Not others, but certain mysterious entities,” Pamela immediately corrected, refusing to back down. With unwavering resolve, she said, "Only humans can decide how humans should go mad. Gothamites set the standard in this world. It’s not up to some random monster to barge in and dictate that their version of madness is the deepest.”

“What’s there to argue about?” Zatanna, also at her wit’s end, let out a deep sigh and buried her face in her hands on the sofa.

“Being sane would obviously be ideal.”

Pamela's tone grew sharper, adopting a style eerily reminiscent of Harley’s when enraged—a style commonly referred to as the ramblings of Gotham’s madmen.

“But if madness is a given, then it’s inevitable to distinguish its depths and nuances. Some mysterious entity that drives people insane—if it just muttered to itself in some dark hole, no one would care. But if it insists on challenging us, then it’s only natural for us, who embody humanity’s deepest madness, to respond. That’s perfectly understandable, isn’t it?”

“I have no idea how your minds work…” Strange shook his head, puzzled. “What does this even have to do with who’s more insane? Isn’t this just a straightforward case of demon gods controlling humans to attack others?”

“It’s far from that simple,” Bruce, now fully engaged in the game before him, moved a chess piece deliberately. “If it promised its followers something in return—like granting them immense power if they kill enough people—then we wouldn’t interfere.”

“But it drove her mad.”

Two dark chess pieces exchanged places. Pamela turned to Strange and said, “Madness without any character, and more importantly, without any connection to human nature. It’s as if any random species in the universe could be driven mad like this. How, then, can humanity showcase the art we’ve distilled from our own madness? That’s part of our civilization!”

“Someone, please save me!” Constantine dramatically raised both hands to the heavens, pleading, “Schiller! Schiller! Say something! Your two students are spouting nonsense again!”

Schiller, as if just awakened from a deep slumber, slowly opened his eyes.

His grey gaze, cold and barren, swept across the room, and the heated arguments fell eerily silent.

“I heard someone mention art,” he said.

Pathos’ voice was always slow and heavy, like incense ashes settling at the bottom of a censer.

Constantine swallowed hard, leaning back as far as he could to put distance between himself and the speaker. Bruce, however, moved closer to him and began recounting the recent argument and the scenes displayed on the screen.

After listening, Pathos nodded slowly, his voice rich with layered emotion.

“If I were to pass judgment, its crime would be ‘mediocrity.’”

“Heresy is worse than blasphemy.”

[Read at www.patreon.com/shanefreak, and thanks for the invaluable support!]

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Next Chapter =>Chapter 1684: Bruce Wayne and the Chamber (Part 10)