Chapter 2350: Gotham Music Festival (52)_1

Bruce and Beihan had not yet recovered from the jumble of colors and lines that had swirled before them.

"What? Who's dead?" Beihan said instinctively, as he was completely startled by Arrogant's sudden utterance, causing him to break out in a cold sweat.

It was only then that Bruce realized that the glowing patch of color was actually a person, and as he turned to meet Beihan's gaze, he saw they were both utterly befuddled.

They knew they might see some difficult-to-understand things, but hallucinations of this degree were still a bit too much for the human race, and if this was what the world looked like through the eyes of the Morbid, what was the difference between them and being blind.

Then Beihan got it; he said, "These shapes, colors, and lines represent different things in your eyes, they all have their own unique meanings, right?"

Arrogant nodded, glanced at Bruce, then looked away and said, "When the usual self is controlling the body, such hallucinations do not occur often, only a bit can be seen when concentrating, similar to how the empathy organ of normal people operates."

"If there's anything that's stronger than a normal person, it's probably the way more abstract feelings are turned into a more concrete form of vision, which makes it easier to use professional knowledge for analysis, and that's my method of psychoanalysis."

"But it's not like that for the Morbid, right?" Bruce asked.

"The Morbid are Morbid themselves, so when they control the body, they only have the blurred and chaotic vision typical of mental illness patients or other sick people, filled with various illusions, hardly able to clearly see any concrete shapes of things and people."

"Your gaze is always unfocused because you don't see us," Beihan stated.

"To be precise, I'm not looking at you," Shiller shook his head and said, "What I am viewing are the illusions that reflect both you and the surrounding objects, but since you can't see my hallucinations, you think I am not looking at anything."

"But the Morbid sometimes still see us," Bruce said.

"When he is excited, more active neural activity allows me to have dual vision, beyond hallucinations, also able to see what's happening in the real world," Arrogant replied.

Beihan suddenly understood; the focusing look in Hunting's eyes was the process of him gradually getting excited, and the reason why seeing someone's back would excite him was likely related to his past.

In the illusions that Shiller presented to Beihan, his hunting was clearly intentional, some people at the banquet had become his targets, goals that had been set long ago, not impulsive crimes of passion.

Then, what kind of people would more easily become targets?

But before that, Beihan had many things to confirm; he looked at Shiller and asked, "I know there aren't many good people on this ship, but there's your friend Oliver, right? And those others from different cosmos, if they just let you go crazy, won't they get hurt?"

"This comes down to the traits of the Morbid," Arrogant sat down, resting his hands on his umbrella and said, "The more painful the mental state, the more unstable it is, the higher the excitement value, the more powerful it becomes, and most of the physical pain comes from external attacks."

Beihan kept his gaze fixed on him.

"My friends wouldn't attack me," Arrogant shook his head and said, "If they were forced to do so, they would hold back as much as possible, not wanting to kill."

"So, in the process of chasing them, although I might cause them some harm, it's difficult for my ability to rise to a level where I could kill with one blow, and it's even hard to capture them."

"Because there isn't enough stimulation, the process of getting excited is too slow. About five seconds is enough for them to use various methods to escape. Haven't you already tried that before?"

Realization dawned on Beihan; indeed, that was the case: now on the ship, Shiller's friends, like Oliver, like Natasha, would almost never cause fatal harm to Shiller deliberately, and even their defensive counterattacks would target less critical areas as much as possible.

If the speed of excitement determined the speed of focusing, and the degree of pain determined the level of excitement, then not being able to cause enough pain, with weak excitement, naturally meant entering the hunting process would be slower.

Comparing himself, Beihan thought, he had managed to delay for a dozen seconds by obscuring his own vision before, and for them, a dozen seconds was enough to run away, even if there were one or two mistakes, leaving plenty of room for error.

The premise was that they were Shiller's friends, or at least they had some understanding of Shiller, knowing that fleeing rather than retaliating was the better choice when facing him.

In fact, when Beihan looked back before, it wasn't that he couldn't fight; although he didn't carry much equipment, and some untested gear wasn't ready to handle the loss of signal here, if he were to fight to the death, he could at least inflict mutual damage, but he didn't choose to do so.

Because Shiller had indeed had a great impact on him before, after returning to his own world, he found his mental state to be much improved, and he could be Bruce Wayne without any guilt or psychological burden, rather than having to agonize over when to be Bruce, when to be Batman, or even having to choose which one to discard.

So, facing Shiller again, Beihan was unwilling to take overly violent measures, thinking there was no need for things to escalate to that extent and that it would be better to run away first and find a more moderate solution later.

If all of Shiller's friends were influenced in this way, then they would probably think the same as him.

All in all, accepting that your friend is a madman who could lose control at any moment, and after such loss of control, to still show him extreme leniency due to the positive impact he had when sane, to dodge his sharp edges as much as possible, and be willing to spend ten times the effort and cost to find a solution that neither hurts him nor addresses the problem.

Retreating a step further, anyone with even a slight understanding of Shiller would know that most of his loss of control wasn't actually out of control, but merely part of his plan.

For such a long time, most of Shiller's friends had already become adept, seeing him cause trouble, they would either join in with delight like the Unscrupulous Quartet and see if they could gain any benefits. If they had no time or interest, they would stay far away, and if they really couldn't avoid him, they'd just lie down and let it be, since in the end, there wouldn't be any harm done.

But his enemies certainly didn't think this way. Anyone who comes across a serial killer superhuman with incredible speed and immense strength, one who, by appearance, resembles the ultimate villain in a top-tier horror film, would feel an indescribable sense of despair.

They had no accurate estimation of Shiller's power nor his intentions; all they felt was that they surely couldn't escape and that he would definitely kill them. Under extreme terror, people could do anything, and there were quite a few who wanted to fight to the death.

If they wanted to fight a do-or-die battle, they certainly wouldn't hold back, aiming for the places where it hurt the most, where it was lethal. This would lead to a rapid increase in Shiller's excitement value, to the extent that Beihan even suspected that as long as Shiller received serious injuries without showing his back, the hunting could begin.

Arrogant words confirmed this.

"This woman squatting in the closet clearly wants to avoid showing her back to anyone, but unfortunately, the now severely wounded Deathstroke has discarded all rules."

Bruce scratched his chin and said, "It seems those three gunshots have become the final death knell, the ultimate hunt has begun."

Bang! Bang! Bang!!

"Stop him! Stop him... Ahhhhhhh!!!"

Bang! Bang! Crash!

"Help! He's coming!! Shoot! Shoot him!!!"

Ahhhhh!! Ahhh!!

"God... God... save me... save me..."

A group of blood-covered men and women ran swiftly through the corridor, led by a striking blonde with blue eyes; one of her eyeballs had disappeared, leaving a hole from which blood continuously flowed.

Her face was full of panic as she dashed through the corridor mindlessly, not even caring about her comrades behind her. A Latin youth with a goatee followed closely, desperately pulling his short-haired girlfriend along.

The African American behind them yelled, "Call the Master of the Dark Night! Have them open a portal to save us. Master Andrew is dead, but there are other Grand Mages, urge them to come."

"Dream on, David!" the short-haired woman screamed back, "We took everything from Andrew's Mage Tower and came to America; the folks at the Forgotten Bar won't care about us!"

"It's your fault for not taking his orb at the time," the blonde woman leading the way shouted. "There might have been some residual energy in it. I told you to check! Maybe then we could have cast one final spell."

"You're the one dreaming, Christine," the Latin youth defended his girlfriend, saying, "You studied magic just because you were living in your dream of being the chosen one, to set yourself apart from the mean girls at your school. You did it all for vanity. You can't even recite a full spell!"

"Shut up! You this..."

The blonde suddenly realized that her companions' expressions had turned to terror, as if they had seen something horrific behind her.

A pair of hands, intertwined with scarlet and pale colors, reached from behind Christine's neck and slowly cradled her cheeks.

Christine's expression turned to extreme fear and despair, her lips parting and closing, her only remaining eye bulging as she cried and muttered, "No... no..."

The hand slid down her cheek to the jawline and reached her neck– four fingers suddenly exerted force downward, plunging directly into her throat, the arterial blood following the path created by the fingers, all gushing into the windpipe and lungs.

Due to a great amount of blood choking and asphyxiation, the beautiful blonde struggled helplessly against the hand gripping her, trembling and struggling until her convulsions ceased as she succumbed to suffocation, performing one last sensual dance in the killer's embrace.

Only when her pupils dilated, and her body went limp, was she discarded like trash. Upon seeing the Octopus Mask, the remaining three people let out a simultaneous scream and turned to run.

The couple that were originally at the forefront, due to their change in direction, ended up at the back. The short-haired woman stumbled and fell, dragged away by her ankle into the darkness, and seconds later, a blood-curdling scream echoed through the air.

The two remaining men had escaped the corridor, hoping for a temporary reprieve, but seconds later, footsteps echoed from behind them again.

Faced with a relentless hunt akin to a lingering sickness, both men showed expressions of despair. In order not to be caught, they fled into the nearest room like headless flies.

No sooner had the door shut than a loud bang resonated, and the door pane, along with the African American closest to it, was sent flying.

"Heavens! No... not... Ahhhhh!!!"