"So, did you discover the source of the darkness of Gotham City?" Constantine asked, casually swinging his glass of wine.
Shiller disregarded his process of finding the scales and simply mentioned that he had felt a power in the scales identical to the darkness of Gotham. No one in the room continued to press him for the specifics of his findings, after all, it wasn't necessary to have a crystal-clear understanding of magic.
"What is it?" Bruce leaned in and asked.
"The Dark Dragon Barbados, living in the abyss beneath the Earth's surface, is a God of destruction and darkness, lurking in the shadows of the cosmos, peering into this world."
"We've seen those eyes." Bruce muttered, before once again looking over at Shiller and asked, "What's his story?"
Shiller gently shook his head, even though he knew the backstory of Barbados, he clearly had no substantial sources to provide. Surely he couldn't just say it was a hunch of his own?
And in the grand scheme of things, the backstory of Barbados didn't matter much. It was simply a story of a pet dog who ate its owner; in the beginning of the DC Universe, there were two brothers, and a third party- The World Forger, who lived in the World Furnace, now the Dark Multiverse.
He hammered out universes there and presented the good ones on a platter, discarding the bad ones by feeding them to the dog. Barbados was that dog, but after eating enough of these discarded universes, he decided he'd grown powerful enough to eat the Forger himself, and thus turned the discarded dark universes into the Dark Multiverse.
Disclosing this information now didn't serve much purpose, given that by the timeline, the unfortunate World Forger had probably already been consumed, otherwise the space Little Bruce went to couldn't be entirely dark, which suggests that Barbados had gained control of the Dark Multiverse long ago.
"What did the young Bruce mean by the gate and the key?" Strange asked, with a frown on his face. From a bystander's point of view, he continued, "This young Bruce dripped his own blood onto the metal, and it responded in a peculiar way. Then his soul was whisked away to the space where Barbados resides. This indicates that there is an issue with both his blood and the metal of Gotham."
He looked up at Shiller and said, "Since you've had a hand in this, why don't you explain your whole plan?"
"The story begins with you," Shiller surprisingly pointed towards Strange. He didn't understand how he was in any way related to all of this.
He looked around and saw all eyes in the room on him, prompting him to exclaim, "Why is everyone staring at me? I'm the only outsider here."
"Haven't you ever thought about why you are here?"
"Obviously because of your petty-mindedness!" Strange glared at Shiller, "Just because I chopped off my own arm, you punched a hole between two universes and kicked me through. And you have the audacity to ask me why I'm here?!"
Shiller shook his head, took a sip of his wine, and chuckled, "I regret the harshness of my measures against you, but it's not entirely because of that."
"The Ancient One," Shiller said the name, but refrained from incriminating his accomplice and instead continued his story with no regard to anyone else.
"When I researched the scale and speculated on its true origin, The Ancient One came to me and delivered news of a multiverse serial murder case."
"At first I was surprised, who could travel the multiverse to commit murders? But when The Ancient One told me of her experiences during this time, I finally understood the situation."
With Shiller's narration, the people in the room began to glimpse the tip of the iceberg of yet another massive plan.
After The Ancient One retired, she began to roam the cosmos. But eventually, just roaming one universe wasn't enough, so she began traveling between different universes, of course by borrowing Eternity's powers.
However, the Eternity of this universe was rather unfortunate for it ended up with Shiller, making him prefer working overtime in the larger world than returning here. As long as there was time, he would leave on business trips, preferring to leave the mess of managing the universe to his co-workers than sticking around.
As a result, The Ancient One would often join Eternity on his trips. Whenever a meeting was held at the Court of Life, Adam would gather all the Eternities from the various multiverses for it, and quite a few of them brought along their retired Ancient Ones from their respective universes.
Thus, there was contact between the various Ancient Ones, or you can say that the Ancient One from Shiller's universe had finally been added to the group chat.
Initially, they would only exchange insights into magic and spiritual cultivation, share adventurous tales or news from their universes. especially experiences of defeating Demon Gods.
But the good times didn't last long. Before long, many Ancient Ones started complaining in the group chat that their chosen successors, the Stranges, were mysteriously dying soon after taking up the mantle of Supreme Magician, and it seemed they were dying in their sleep.
The Ancient Ones only realized after a group discussion that this was not an isolated incident, nor was it an accident. Instead, it was a mysterious serial killer relentlessly hunting for Strange.
When this strange incident came to light, the Ancient One of the Schiller Universe immediately became alert because she noticed that the victims, the Stranges, were all relatively young. Most of them were murdered shortly after becoming Supreme Magicians.
After comparing, the Ancient One noticed that the Strange of her universe was also relatively young and wielded immense power, making him a likely target for the killer.
The Ancient One initially wanted to caution Strange to be on guard, but she thought, one can't keep stealing without being caught one day; the Ancient One was not the defensive type, she preferred to take the initiative. So, she sought Schiller.
At the time, a plan was already whirling in Schiller's mind, though it was not entirely clear. However, when the Ancient One approached him, he immediately had a new idea.
As we know, after the Gray Mist devoured Nal, gaining his memories and understanding its true identity, the Cthulhu Mythos became an insurmountable hurdle.
Cthulhu is more of a style than a specific theme, meaning that its shadow occasionally appears in many works of literary and cinematic art from Europe and America. Until now, Schiller was uncertain whether the Marvel Universe only contained Eye Demon and the mentioned characters of Cthulhu style, or whether the complete Outer God system had been hiding behind the stars.
However, after the Nameless Fog appeared, there was a definitive answer to this question: at least the world he lived in had Outer Gods, and more specifically, the Fane God system revolving around Azathoth.
With that being said, other well-known Outer Gods should also exist, but even Greed acknowledges that their value is not high. They are neither cosmic rule deities nor energy beings. Instead, they are more like natural phenomena with a contaminating nature, thus not worthy of exploitation.
Actually, Schiller should have been content with having the Nameless Fog. But who made Schiller's name be Greed? Again, he specialized in squeezing all the value out of everything. Even the stones should be squeezed until a few drops of oil come out. Let alone the Outer Gods?
Directly dealing with the Outer Gods is unrealistic, because the original style of the Cthulhu Mythos is madness and chaos. But because of this, they have a brilliant use, that is to act as an oversized alarm clock.
As we all know, Schiller is very good at making alarm clocks. His motto is that business can fail, but you can't ignore my calls. If the call cannot be reached, it must be due to not enough ringing.
After speculating the identity of the real owner of that piece of scale, Schiller naturally wanted to make a call to enquire. He wanted to see if Barbados was as untouched as his original Schiller persona mentioned.
However, to call this Devourer dog has some difficulties. If a door to the Dark Multiverse were opened recklessly, what if something other than Barbados, something more nauseating, were to come in? Wouldn't that be like digging one's own grave?
Therefore, Schiller decided to somehow throw a microphone toward Barbados. The quality of the call doesn't matter. What's important is to keep everything clean and not let anything rubbish stick to him.
But this was a technical issue. Firstly, Schiller needed to shape an Outer God follower, for which he needed an Outer God. Originally, the Nameless Fog could also handle it, but Schiller thought it over: considering the saying 'The mop soaked in shit, Lv Bu is still alive', the Nameless Fog seemed not aggressive enough. After pondering, Schiller finally chose Nyarla.
On one hand, there is a resonance between a fun person and a fun god. On the other hand, Nyarla is always walking dogs and fighting cocks in the Human World. Since he's free anyway, it's better to keep him busy so that he'll harm fewer people.
After determining the alarm sound, next was to determine the material for the microphone. Naturally, Batman was the only choice. Barbados took a lot of effort just to get Batman to open the door, so Schiller naturally gave him Batman.
Schiller's original plan was to find an Evil Batman from an evil universe, guide Nyarla to imprint his old symbol on this Batman, meaning to smear the mop with shit, and then throw it in front of Barbados to test if his wool had grown longer.
But then Bruce had a whim and brought in a Little Bruce to prove that he is not the worst in all universes when it comes to psychology. Although this is not the best candidate, he will do.
Therefore, Arrogant plays the role of a magic professor here, presenting a whole self-directed and self-acted play of Bruce Wayne and the Magic Stone. He originally planned to meddle with the Magic Stone, letting Little Bruce go to Marvel through the pathway Strange came from, but Bruce moved one step ahead. By spreading rumors about Lucifer in Heaven, Lucifer built a dedicated pathway and sent Little Bruce over.
In Schiller and the Ancient One's plan, the Ancient One would report the multiverse Strange death cases to Eternity and then investigate the case with other Ancient Ones. This would undoubtedly put pressure on the killer who, in fear of being found, would wish to gain power or find an escape route quickly. This would accelerate the discovery of the Schiller universe and speed up the process of him taking the bait.
While the Ancient One was away from Earth, Greed instructed the Gray Mist to control the Necronomicon remotely into Ancient One's study. Greed initially wanted Little Bruce to find the book, which would teach him how to summon Nyarlathotep, but unexpectedly, Helen was one step ahead and the Necronomicon ended up in Harley's hands.
The process of luring Nyarlathotep was simple. As an Outer God capable of understanding humans, his methods of luring humans were different from that of other Outer Gods, who forcefully imbued knowledge. He was more refined, in simple terms, Nyarla is a fraudster.
Any fraudster understood that if their true colors were revealed and widely known, it would be difficult to deceive others in the future.
Hence, when Nyarlathotep found out about the existence of the Necronomicon, a book containing all information about the Outer Gods, he was eager to destroy it.