mtl008 Chapter 4295 Heroes Strike! (The End)
Chapter 4295 Heroes Strike! (The End)
Chapter 4295 Heroes Strike! (The End)
Next, three players advanced to the finals: Batman and both Schillers. This meant that someone would definitely receive a bye. The three players were drawn in the same manner.
As expected, Pride got a bye. It seems that among the three unlucky ones, Pride is the relatively lucky one, while the other two are pure unlucky bears, reaching the final stage without any luck.
Although I had expected it, greed still made me a little angry. How could I have been so unlucky?
The thought of fighting the Arkham Batman controlled by the real Batman gave him a headache.
Little did they know, Batman was also facing a headache. They had even anticipated the outcome. Arkham Batman said, "It seems our final journey has come to an end."
“That’s right. If we had drawn the Pride skill with unknown abilities, we might have a fighting chance, but the Gray Mist is too much of a counter to us, so the chances of winning are slim. If it weren’t for the need to experience the mental pollution brought by the Outer Gods again in order to find a way to deal with it, we could have just quit.”
The two arrived at the dueling arena. Gray Mist was in a panic, muttering repeatedly, "What to do, what to do, what to do..."
"Since things have come to this, let's put on some music," Greed said.
Although Gray Fog was flustered, she still chose a light and cheerful tune. Actually, Gray Fog always played music in Greed's mind, especially during psychotherapy sessions, as it helped Greed quickly enter a state of focus. Occasionally, it was meant to be disruptive, but it generally didn't work.
But this time, playing music seemed more like a way of cheering himself up. Gray Mist couldn't help but exclaim, "I've really made something of myself; I can even fight Batman now."
Meanwhile, Batman remarked, "If it weren't for this duel, I would never have imagined that I would one day be fighting the Outer Gods."
Indeed, in most cases, Outer Gods are synonymous with mystery and unattainability, and most Outer Gods are indeed like that. However, Gray Mist and Nyarlathotep are truly two oddities, which is why everyone had the opportunity to get up close.
When the match officially began, to everyone's surprise, including Gray Mist's, Batman was completely outmatched.
First of all, the grappling hook is unusable. Gray Mist is just a cloud of fog; the grappling hook can't grab anything. Throwing items at him won't work either, not even a super spicy corn cob. Gray Mist just ate several on the sidelines; if you throw them at him, he'll just take them all.
Secondly, the leap counterattack skill is unusable. Batman in Arkham has a famous counterattack move where he leaps over people's heads, and this action is essential for executing subsequent combos. If he fails to leap over, the rest of the combo cannot be executed.
So here's the question: where is the head of the gray fog?
You can't jump over a cloud of fog, even if you force a head-on jump, there's no foothold to flip over. He flipped over Superman's head before by using Superman's arm. The fog has no arms, so he has nowhere to grab hold and can't use a counter-attack to stun his opponent.
In the end, the Batmobile was useless. He couldn't use the car to crash into a cloud of fog; it just passed right through. And since the Batmobile wasn't an official item, it didn't have any forced attack detection, so he couldn't hit it at all.
Although the Gray Mist has a large hitbox, preventing combos from being interrupted, it also possesses the "Factor Infiltration" skill. Once it locks your basic attacks, you'll lose health with every hit. Arkham Batman, being a high-frequency attack type, doesn't have as much health as the Gray Mist, so after a while, he'd lose more health than his opponent.
So, Gray Mist repeated its strategy, starting to build up its ultimate attack. You can attack as you please; three ultimate attacks at most will take someone down, and if that doesn't work, you can always add some smaller skills.
Therefore, the outcome of this battle was almost without suspense. After three powerful attacks, Arkham Batman transformed into a streak of white light and left the arena.
Gray Mist was almost incredulous. He said, "I did this? I beat two Batmen?!"
“Yes, congratulations,” Greed said. “Fortunately, they focused on enhancing the Arkham Batman’s skills. If it were the main universe Batman, it wouldn’t have been so easy to win.”
"That's true. Forced judgment seems powerful, but it's useless without the triggering conditions. I guess I'm just using a shortcut."
“Alright, now for the important part.” Greed rolled up his sleeves and said, “I want to see what kind of skill Pride has come up with.”
"Next up is the most exciting event—the grand finale!!!" the Transcender shouted into the microphone. "The contestants who have persevered this far must be incredibly strong! And the audience members who are watching are truly exceptional! Now, let's enter the final battle and see who will be the ultimate champion of this 'Heroic Assault' dueling tournament!!!"
At this moment, Bruce helped Selena back. Selena was the type who vomited quite badly. Before, she had eaten super spicy corn sticks and ice cream without any problems, but after being hit by the gray mist's skill, she almost threw up her stomach.
Bruce was also cursing the organizers, but there was nothing he could do. He put his arm around Selena and patted her back repeatedly, completely forgetting about the competition.
He had intended to leave, but Selena refused to go; she insisted on seeing him to the very end. Bruce could only try to soothe her while calming her down.
When Greed and Pride met in the dueling arena, they were both speechless. Mainly because neither of them had expected to last this long. Those ridiculously strong opponents before them were truly unlucky; how come they hadn't eliminated each other?
This wasn't the first time the two of them had fought, but engaging in a self-struggle on such a solemn occasion was indeed a novel experience.
The Beyonders also re-edited the broadcast system. So, when Pride threw the umbrella into the air again, although the audience still saw a pervasive darkness, it was as if they were wearing night vision goggles, allowing them to clearly see what was happening inside that darkness.
Before seeing it, everyone had many guesses about what was inside. They all thought it must be a place of fire and water, or a terrifying illusion created by Nyarlathotep. Otherwise, how could Magneto's team have lost so quietly and even caused the two administrators to argue?
However, the scene before them was remarkably calm. It was an empty open space with a table and a chair in the center, and nothing else around it. Arrogance stood not far away, a certain distance from the table.
Greed was also bewildered when he appeared in this space. He had prepared for battle, thinking that Nyarlathotep must have created some kind of illusion, conjuring up those terrifying monsters with Cthulhu elements, and then unleashing a barrage of mental attacks on his opponent to defeat Magneto. And this was it?
Just as he was thinking this, a piece of paper appeared on the table. He looked down and saw that it read: "Please briefly describe Jung's contributions to the development of classical psychoanalysis and its principles."
A question mark appeared above Greed's head.
Wait, they're dueling, right? How come they're taking an exam?
Then he looked up and saw a countdown timer with about 10 minutes remaining. Next to the timer were two health bars, one for him and one for Arrogance. This meant that if he could answer the question correctly, Arrogance would lose health; if he couldn't, he would lose health.
It is quite obvious that this should be a percentage-based health reduction, meaning that no matter how thick your health bar is, it won't matter, as both sides will lose the same amount of health.
At that moment, the director's camera focused on the piece of paper on the Greedy table. Bruce immediately jolted awake. Selena, who had regained some of her composure, burst into laughter.
"I told you we had to persevere to the end! By the way, how's this question? Is it difficult? Can you answer it?"
“This question isn’t difficult,” Bruce said, pursing his lips. “But there will definitely be tough ones later. My God, thank goodness I didn’t win, or I would have been finished!”
“I’d love to see you go up there and answer the questions,” Selena said, seemingly eager to stir up trouble. “The harder questions will definitely take a long time, so I can watch you rack your brains for an hour and then hand in a blank paper.”
"Don't joke around, I can't possibly hand in a blank paper. Even if it's behavioral analysis, I have to fill it out, otherwise Professor Schiller won't let me off the hook. I'll lose points, and I'll definitely get scolded."
Natasha frowned and said, "Does this really make sense? They are the same person, sharing the same memories, so the Pride Society's greed must also be there."
Sure enough, the greedy one at the table began to scribble furiously. It didn't even take ten minutes, just two or three. Although the handwriting wasn't particularly neat, the content was perfectly fine, and even a layman could tell it contained substance.
But the next question was much harder, involving theoretical knowledge of child psychology and educational psychology. Greed didn't know much about these areas, as he wasn't a teacher and didn't have much contact with children. However, since it was purely theoretical, he was able to answer some of it, barely passing.
However, at this point, Greed began to get a little curious. Magneto might not understand these things, but Charles certainly did. Even the young Charles had a proper understanding of psychology, so how could he lose?
Arrogance merely smiled slightly, then moved on to another question. This one was much harder. Steve, in the audience, carefully counted; he recognized only two words from the question stem: "of" and "in." Stark, the highly educated scientist, was a bit better; he deduced from the affixes that one word resembled "comprehensive" and the other resembled "syndrome."
This is a comprehensive question combining pathology and psychoanalysis, requiring both psychoanalysis and pathological analysis to be performed simultaneously. However, the time allotted for this question was relatively long, half an hour.
Greed took quite a while to think before he started writing, and although he didn't write for long, he barely finished in half an hour. Pride glanced at it and then considered it passed.
Greed breathed a sigh of relief. Although they were both skilled in psychoanalysis, Greed leaned more towards application, while Pride leaned more towards theory. These purely theoretical questions were truly difficult to answer; just the sheer volume of technical jargon was enough to give anyone a headache.
The later questions were even more challenging, starting to resemble a combination of metaphysics and philosophy. Each question was given 40 minutes, and I greedily wrote as much as I could, almost not finishing.
This process is actually very tedious because by this point, most people can't even understand the question stem. Not only do they not recognize the vocabulary, but they also can't comprehend the grammar. There are tons of nested "in," "of," "from," and "at," clauses with interleaved clauses, and subjects, verbs, and objects that are basically indistinguishable. It's all just a series of modifiers and complements, and sometimes it's even hard to tell which is a noun and which is an adjective. There's also a lot of Latin mixed in, making it incredibly confusing.
“I told you it wasn’t my fault,” the Transcender said, picking up the microphone. “I said that Latin word means ‘stagnation,’ and Lucifer said that the Romans who invented the word originally meant ‘flowing water.’ Although it was ultimately judged according to the modern Latin word, he was very dissatisfied. What could I do?”
The audience suddenly realized that the problem stemmed from a disagreement during the judgment process. Both sides held their own opinions, and Lucifer was dissatisfied with the final result, which led to the two arguing.
The question-and-answer session was indeed very boring; many people in the audience fell asleep. Greed was also drowsy, his mind filled with all sorts of academic terms, and his hand went numb from writing.
If it's a test like this, then Charles would probably have a really hard time handling it. Don't let his psychic abilities fool you; psychoanalysis isn't something you can just master by having mind-reading skills. It's perfectly normal that he can't answer it.
Greed glanced at his health bar; Pride's health was almost gone. Just one more correct answer and he would win the finals. Greed stretched, already thinking about his acceptance speech.
And just then, the last question appeared on the paper. The question was very short, consisting of only one sentence:
"What exactly did you delete?"
Greed narrowed his eyes and let out a soft snort. So this was what was waiting for him. If it were his former self, for the sake of final victory, he would have racked his brains and, no matter what, revealed something. Unfortunately, the brakes weren't completely broken anymore.
He gave the arrogant man a smug smile:
"I surrender."
Perfect attendance record gone! My money's flown away 5555
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(End of this chapter)