After Bruce brought all the books from Beelzebub's Demon Palace library back to the Forgotten Bookstore, Constantine was already buried beneath the stack of books.
But Bruce still made the effort to dig him out and, patting him on the shoulder, said, "Let's get to it, John. We need to sort all of these books out and categorize them. This is the valuable knowledge of our school."
"Spare me!" Constantine wailed. "Nothing good ever happens when I get involved with you and your apprentice! There are tens of thousands of books here, and more than half of them aren't even written in human languages!"
"That's fine, I can first decipher these languages. Lady Shangdu said she would assist me. She's lived for so many years, she's bound not to be unfamiliar with the texts of the mystic world, right?"
"You've met with Nemea?" Constantine, lying amidst the pile of books, said, "I advise you to keep your distance from that woman. She was the one who offed Merlin back in the day, and she's been entangled with the Shadow Stranger for years..."
"I only need her knowledge reservoir," said Bruce while pulling out a notebook and beginning to doodle on it. "Let's start with that stack over there. While I was in Hell, I learned the common language there, as well as a dozen other racial languages. The linguistic systems there have similarities. I think it won't be long before the books written in the Demon Language are sorted."
Constantine chuckled nervously, "You start deciphering, and I'm going to..."
"You're not going anywhere. And you, Tim, come here. I'll teach you the common language of Hell first, then you can sort those books. Jason, don't just stand there, start with the pile on Tim's right."
Red Robin, who was standing by the door, had his eyes bugging out. He looked at Bruce and said, "Don't tell me we have to sort all these books in one night??"
"Of course not."
Bruce's reply allowed Red Robin to breathe a sigh of relief, only to hear him say, "Not just one night; we can take about a week to sort them all out, and then we start our systematic research."
Red Hood screamed, his eyes pleading towards Shiller, who was sitting by the bookshelf with a glass of red wine. But Shiller only smiled at the scene and said: "You guys start sorting. I'm going to clarify our research agenda for the initial phase. See you in a week."
For the following week, shrieks of torment echoed throughout the Forgotten Bookstore.
Soon, Batman's reach extended to the distant Magic World Maya. Lady Shangdu sat in her cabin in the forest for a whole week because Bruce was bombarding her with hundreds of phone calls every day.
When she initially promised to help Bruce, it wasn't merely out of politeness. In her view, Bruce had the powerful ability to directly summon Beelzebub, and offering her knowledge to help him was the most effortless method to maintain their relationship.
After all, how much patience would a magic apprentice, who had not yet graduated from his master, have for studying these obscure ancient books?
Perhaps, once he formed a contract with a Demon King, he would begin to enjoy the life of a magician, who frivolously squanders his powers. Lady Shangdu had seen many young mages like this.
At first, they all claimed to revere knowledge, but in the end, what they revered was the mighty power that knowledge brought them. If they could bypass the knowledge to gain power, who wouldn't do it?
The answer is Batman.
Batman spent his whole life pursuing the truth behind power. His principle was, if he doesn't know the truth, then he would certainly not use the power. It's as if he suffers from a severe case of paranoid personality disorder.
In this cosmos, Batman's paranoia has lessened, but not his curiosity. He only studied the knowledge of the magical world for the sake of knowledge itself, without caring whether the ancient and obscure knowledge could bring him greater power.
As a result, Lady Shangdu was subjected to immense pressure. She had already made her promise. As a respectable figure in the magic realm, if she was to break her promise to a mage apprentice, how could she hold her head up?
So, she had no choice but to remain in her house, working hard to draw out information that Bruce might need from her many years of accumulated knowledge, helping him decipher ancient languages too challenging even for demons and angels.
At the beginning, Lady Shangdu's knowledge was sufficient to respond to the questions. But as Bruce's research deepened, even the knowledge reserves of the Forest Fairy, amassed over her long life, were insufficient.
Lady Shangdu was not a fairy who loved learning, most of her knowledge came from her travels around the world, she could answer some questions about the human world and Maya, but she was confused when it came to more secretive knowledge.
So, she could only ask for the help of her sister, the Lake Fairy, Vivian. Vivian was indeed the fairy that humans imagined - kind, knowledgeable, and in possession of many ancient secrets which humans could not comprehend.
When she heard that a human had reached such a level of research, Vivian also expressed considerable interest. As a result, she too, spent an entire week in her lake.
Bruce's questions were not without source or logic. Simply put, if you couldn't answer, it would make you feel stupid instead of feeling that he was trying to embarrass you.
Although Vivian possessed many ancient secrets, she was only well-informed and did not excel in logical deduction or creativity. After about a week, she too was left speechless by Bruce's questions.
Thus, Vivian's opinion of Bruce began to spread throughout Maya, describing him as "the most difficult human being after King Arthur."
Lady Shangdu was also provoked. She couldn't believe that a mere human could puzzle the fairy clan that had been passed down in Maya for generations.
After she came into conflict with Bruce, she began to look for people in Maya who could answer Bruce's questions continuously.
There are many ancient races living in Maya's magical world, and quite a few of the rulers of these races come from ancient times, having had a passing acquaintance with the authors of the classics that Bruce studied.
But these naturally formed elves from the magic world couldn't understand even more why humans had to create so many quirky theoretical ideas. They had almost no learning in their lives because their power was inherent.
Thus, they could only tell Bruce about the historical secrets they knew, but they could not provide any help for his research.
However, Bruce was stubborn and insisted on thoroughly understanding the information from each race. For a while, Batman's fame in Maya could soothe a baby's crying at night.
Not all the elders of the races were willing to solve his problems, but since they witnessed those who did not cooperate being hauled off for talks, they feel that receiving hundreds of calls a day is not a problem.
Returning to the interior of the Forgotten Bookstore, if the situation in these few days was to be summarized in one sentence, it would probably be "Constantine is in big trouble."
Needless to say about Bruce, apart from meeting the most basic physiological needs, he devoted himself to books. Within a short half a month, he not only read half of the books but also memorized all of them.
Shiller didn't even have to meet physiological requirements. He didn't eat, drink, or sleep. He went through the content of thousands of books, and then kept filtering the topics.
Tim's talent is closest to Batman. Whether it's runes, codes, or symbols, he can crack them quickly. Within two weeks, he conquered at least more than twenty languages.
Even Red Hood Jason can sit there and read books non-stop for a whole day. He found it interesting. He almost grasped all the sources of power and folklore stories introduced in the pile of books. He was also familiar with the life and background of each Grand Mage.
Then, there was one person left who was out of place in the room's rich learning atmosphere.
Constantine bafflingly asked Red Hood one question: "How do you read all these?"
Red Hood also asked him, "Can't you read? How can't you understand if you can read?"
Constantine was speechless.
Since being forced ashore by Shiller and after being supervised by his brother to quit smoking and drinking, Constantine was further subjected to a round of knowledge indoctrination by Batman.
Originally, he was regarded as a top student in the magic world, but that was only saying that. Much of the mystical knowledge he mastered came from practice.
But now, even theoretically, Constantine can be called a master. After all, he and the Batman Family have been studying comprehensively for two weeks. Even a monkey should be able to write Shakespeare by now.
In the end, Magic World Maya could no longer solve Bruce's preposterously difficult questions. Constantine had to mobilize his own connections to find various magicians with unusual knowledge to satisfy Bruce's insatiable curiosity.
However, it turns out there were only a few people in the world who could answer Batman's questions. Most people couldn't keep up with his thinking during the discussion. A small number of people could keep up with his thinking, but they weren't creative enough to offer constructive suggestions.
There was a tiny group that indeed provided Bruce some help in their specialized fields, but soon Bruce would drift away from this field to study other relevant or completely unrelated fields. No one is an omnipotent master, naturally, without their expertise, they can't provide further help.
In the end, even Constantine's peculiar connections spread all over the mystical world were exhausted. Still, Bruce remained unsatisfied with his research progress.
Finally, one day, Beelzebub was awakened by a strange sound while sleeping in his palace. He listened carefully, and it seemed like a prayer from the human world.
"O great God of plague spreading, infinite mighty King of Ghosts Christ Beelzebub Your Majesty, I beseech you to answer the doubts of your faithful believer——"
"If I want to add a proposition for 'futurus' into the rune named 'fortuna,' to make the prophecies result act directly on 'nov-fortuna-futurus,' and exclude the possible 'con-actus' influence of the named object on the 'Certus' category of prophecy result, then how to avoid the 'Tempus ruina' error caused by point shift when the prophecy happens?"
"...What?"