Days as a Spiritual Mentor in American Comics-Chapter 4264 - 3363: Bloodbath New City (75)

Schiller didn't want to bother thinking. He nodded perfunctorily. Jason, however, enthusiastically said, "Although it sounds like one of those classic rumors, it may not be without reason."

"I believe more that Arkham General was cursed by Gotham. Edmund Wayne killed him and inherited this curse."

"And then?"

"At first, he might not have known about the curse, so he chose to kill General Arkham and take over Gotham Village. But one day, he discovered the curse and decided to leave here to build a new city to escape the curse."

"But that conflicts with your earlier conclusion."

"Not at all," Jason said. "To be precise, it actually corroborates my previous view. The Order Sect was entirely using Edmund Wayne, using him to take down Gotham Village and to bear the curse."

Jason drew a circle on the table with his finger, then said, "Although I don't understand much about the British nobility system, the Order Sect must be quite adept since they could boldly hijack carts and successfully bring Edmund Wayne to the New World."

"Why rely on a suspected impostor rather than any of the numerous nobles in England?"

"Indeed, in that era, only nobles could become lords. Why couldn't they find a noble with a more confirmed identity and a better reputation?"

"Of course, because more influential nobles had families. While everyone else in the Wayne Family died in the plague, leaving him alone."

"The Order Sect intended to use him and then discard him. If they had used one of those nobles who still had families, they would need to explain after the fact if something happened to him. But with Wayne, no explanations were necessary. This is the most important reason they chose Wayne."

"I even suspect that the other members of the Wayne Family might not have died of the plague, but were killed by the Order Sect. Just like they successively conspired against Alfred, Lucius Fox, and Dr. Tompkins, in order to leave Wayne isolated and easy to manipulate."

"After Wayne successfully took over Gotham Village and inherited the ruler's curse, the Order Sect figured his task was completed. They then began to wreak havoc in Gotham Village without any inhibition."

"But unexpectedly, Edmund Wayne wasn't so simple. He sensed the conspiracy of the Order Sect, turned around to collaborate with the East India Company, established a new city next to Gotham Village, and built a dam to flood Gotham Village, thwarting the aims of the Order Sect."

Schiller almost wanted to applaud him. He felt Jason might have guessed a large part of it, but some mysteries remained unsolved.

After thinking for a while, he said, "The key is, what exactly does the Order Sect want to do. What made them come all the way to Gotham and go through such a large detour?"

Jason shook his head and said, "I guess it might be something religious. I'm not very knowledgeable about this, but it's definitely related to their doctrine."

"Are you talking about the flame?" Schiller frowned slightly. He had some research on religion, being a professional Pope, and had a grasp on various religious stories.

"The culture of worshipping the flame can be traced back to primitive times. But to mention the establishment of a more specific religion, we cannot ignore the worship of Mitra in the primitive Aryan religion. Basically, it's natural element worship, venerating natural elements like metal, wood, water, fire, and earth."

"And speaking of the flame, we must mention one of the most famous religions, Zoroastrianism from Persia, also called Zoroastrianism. It's one of the earliest foreign religions introduced into China, traceable back to the Northern Wei period."

It seemed like a far stretch, but the incident with Ying Long last time made Schiller realize that the Cartoon World really did have gods. And religions revolved around these appearances of gods.

"Perhaps a god shows a face in the East, and a face in the West, forming different but very similar religious beliefs. This is not a coincidence, but rather evidence of the existence of gods."

"The Order Sect located in England and the Zoroastrianism in Persia both venerate the flame. Although they might have originated from primitive religions, they could also have witnessed the same divine sign about flames, thus forming the same belief."

"In terms of religious divergence, the Order Sect is still part of Christianity, only they venerate the apocalyptic fire, which is their biggest difference from other Christian denominations."

Guessing that every religion wants to prove they are right, Schiller suspects that the Order Sect might indeed want to use fire for the apocalypse to prove their doctrine is the most correct.

So, whatever they were doing in Arkham Village could well be related to the apocalyptic fire. But what exactly that relationship is, depends on what Batman can bring up from underwater.

Batman indeed did not disappoint them. The photos he brought back this time were not just ordinary rubble.

This time he went deep into Akam Fortress and likely reached the underground prison, capturing some astonishing abnormalities.

Schiller snuck into the Batcave and viewed the photos without interacting with Batman, and didn't know his reasoning. But fortunately, there was Jason. After Schiller printed out the photos with Gray Mist, Jason quickly found a clue.

At the bottom of Arkham Fortress, which has been completely disfigured by river corrosion, peculiar symbols remain on the deepest walls and floor of the dark prison. From their shapes, it seems that someone had arranged an Array here.

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Additionally, there is a line of text on the wall—"When the stars hang on the treetops, the Flame Vampire burns away all darkness in the Forest."

No one is able to comprehend the runes left on the ground. Neither Jason nor Doctor Schiller have seen them before, they seem to be some self-created symbols, but this line of text is a very important clue.

Firstly, an important factor mentioned here is the Forest. There is a forest next to the Gotham Reservoir.

Moreover, for Doctor Schiller, the word "vampire" is certainly not unfamiliar. Hasn't Bruce become a vampire?

But that's not the point. The point is the "stars". Doctor Schiller now suffers from an obsession to directly catch Nyarlathotep and beat him up whenever he sees words related to stars.

Though this line does not mention anything about the stars descending or returning, Doctor Schiller feels that this matter might again be inseparable from the Cthulhu Mythos.

Greed is actually not very interested in the Cthulhu Mythos, because he dislikes things that are highly random, except when it allows others to spend money on gacha.

However, since such a clue has been obtained, he naturally has to go back and thoroughly research it. So he went to the High Tower and dug out the Book of the Dead, preparing to study which blindly foolish bigwig left a mess in this cosmos without cleaning up after themselves.

And guess what? He indeed found an acquaintance, and it wasn't from DC, but from Marvel.

As everyone knows, Dweller-in-Darkness is a famous work within the Cthulhu Mythos. Despite some concepts proposed by its author being unaccepted by fans, this work is widely circulated and quite classic.

The content doesn't need much elaboration, but there's a very key plot point—humanity, driven nearly insane by the Dweller-in-Darkness, found a way to summon Cthugya—the Old Day Dominator, represented as a huge fireball. In the author's writings, this represents the fire elements.

Then this giant fireball exploded in a forest, successfully driving away the Dweller-in-Darkness—the avatar of Nyarlathotep in the novel.

Of course, Nyarlathotep is the acquaintance, and a bit too familiar at that. But the key is not him, but the so-called "Dweller-in-Darkness", is a character in Marvel Comics, one of the seven Lords of Fear, a cousin of Incubus.

This character was later affirmed by Marvel officials as "a reliable inheritor of Cthulhu". This description probably means that this entity could be the avatar of some character within the Cthulhu Mythos. Connecting to the original novel, there's a high probability that it is Nyarlathotep's avatar.

But this actually isn't the main point, the key is that Doctor Schiller, while researching this character's information, found that this character's most notable scene involved destroying the M'kraan Crystal and ultimately leading to the end of the Sixth Universe.

And it is known that Anatoli used the M'kraan Crystal to travel through various cosmos dimensions to collect Constant Star Power, and was very likely to suffer from the crystal's curse, gathering myriad misfortunes upon himself before absconding and leaving this mess to Doctor Schiller.

Doctor Schiller doesn't believe this to be a coincidence. He slightly reviewed the timeline. Since the Constant Star Power collected by Anatoli persists to this day, then he definitely collected it in the Seventh Universe.

Thus, the sequence should be: Nyarlathotep's avatar destroyed the crystal and ended the Sixth Universe, then Anatoli used the crystal in the Seventh Universe to collect Constant Star Power.

Now the question is, did Nyarlathotep first make a deal with Anatoli, or did it end the Sixth Universe first?

Doctor Schiller always feels it was the former. It's very likely that Nyarlathotep made a deal with Anatoli first, then ended the Sixth Universe by destroying the crystal, initiating the Seventh Universe.

But to restart a universe, something so significant, couldn't have happened without the agreement of those top bigwigs. Nyarlathotep, an outsider, was probably just a scapegoat.

Doctor Schiller seriously suspects that it's because Anatoli persuaded Nyarlathotep to help Marvel initiate the Seventh Universe, and later he used the crystal to harness power everywhere, amassing several planets' worth of Constant Star Potion, that he avoided being struck hard by those Abstract Entity bigwigs.

Otherwise, such behavior of moving from place to place and undermining foundations wouldn't have escaped unscathed. Not to mention he also forged a big gun, which might someday jab these Abstract Entities in the behind. This group of beings has no reason to let him mess around like this.

But if there's credit for a universe's restart to his name, then things are different. No wonder it was OAA who first informed that Doctor Schiller wasn't dead yet. You two had an understanding beforehand, right?

And Nyarlathotep, lending him power is one thing, but also carrying the blame for him. Giving him the house, the money, the cat. After all that, perhaps you'll cook him a couple of dishes before you leave, won't you?

That, however, is getting off-topic. The key is that Doctor Schiller looked up the information on the Dweller-in-Darkness, naturally understanding the meaning of that sentence on the wall under Arkham Fortress.

It completely points to the process of summoning Cthugya in the book Dweller-in-Darkness: When the star Fomalhaut reaches the treetop positions, recite the spell, known as the Flame Vampire, the Flame Essence descends and burns the Engai Forest inhabited by the Dweller-in-Darkness.

So, did the Order Sect summon Cthugya in Akam Village back then?