"Isn't this Black Widow?"
A younger voice of Shiller rang in Batman and Natasha's ears. Natasha stared at Shiller in the mirror in surprise. "What are you doing here?" she asked.
"I have some good news. Perhaps you already know, but all the sick Shillers from the bottom of the Abyss have escaped!"
Natasha clapped her forehead. "You... you... are you all... Never mind, I knew it from the start. Shiller is the greatest danger!"
"Who did we just see?" Batman was always quick to grasp the key points and extract information.
"Did you see what they look like? What were they wearing?" The Shiller in the mirror asked.
"The first one was wearing a black shirt."
"That's the Hunter."
"Tell us who he is and what his characteristics are." Batman asked calmly.
"He is the Hunter, one of Shiller's sick personalities, also known as the Hunt. He's a killer persona, excellent at observation and tracking, and very patient, waiting for the best opportunity to strike."
The Shiller in the mirror stroked his chin and continued, "He has a sick obsession with hunting, pursuing a target relentlessly until they're dead, and he won't hesitate to kill anyone who interferes."
Natasha and Shiller exchanged a glance, immediately recalling the knife that had appeared several times behind the female ghost. So, Natasha asked, "How does he choose his targets?"
"There's no pattern." The Shiller in the mirror shook his head. "He fixes on one, kills them, then finds the next. That's it."
"And another one was wearing a regular T-shirt, but he had a strange gray scarf around his neck."
"Uh oh, you guys are in trouble," Shiller glanced at the wound on Natasha's arm. "That's Gluttony. He eats everything, but he prefers flesh."
"Don't bother." The Shiller in the mirror shrugged. "The smell of blood is the best bait, and he will chase you unless you can completely heal the wound."
Natasha gritted her teeth in anger, then asked, "So, who else has escaped?"
"Me."
"I mean, besides you."
"You're looking down on me? I managed to kill you back then."
"You know it wasn't just you who achieved that, I mean, it wasn't just your personality."
The Shiller in the mirror pouted. "The good news is, you're not the worst off. The most dangerous of us has set his sights on another young Batman."
"Who is the most dangerous one?" Batman narrowed his eyes and asked.
"Manipulation."
Just as Batman was about to say something, Shiller interrupted him, "Manipulation has no weaknesses. He always manages to turn the situation to his advantage and makes his chosen target fall into the situation he wants."
"What does he want to do?" Batman's voice deepened.
"Don't worry. He is one of us who values his toys the most and won't play any of them too hard." Shiller replied with a smile.
Batman and Natasha looked at him in suspicion.
"Worry about yourselves."
With that, the Shiller in the mirror disappeared.
"Bang!"
The door of the first compartment of the washroom suddenly flew out. Instinctively, Batman pulled Natasha into his arms and fell to the side, missing the direct hit from the door, but the falling corner scraped his back.
With a "slash" sound, a wound several inches long appeared on his back and blood gushed out instantly.
Natasha suddenly looked up and sure enough, the Shiller in the mirror had changed into the one wearing a gray scarf.
The female agent pulled Batman to his feet and ran out the door. As they ran, Natasha shouted, "How can we deal with them? We can't even touch them."
"There must be a way." Batman's voice was just as low as it had been. He said, "This way, come in."
They took cover again in the preparation room they had used earlier for bandages. Batman turned around and allowed Natasha to inspect his wound. When his shirt was lifted, the wound, initially several inches long and not deep, had visibly gotten deeper.
"This is problematic," Natasha frowned, "We don't even know how they're affecting us. This is too strange."
Natasha began to clean Batman's wound. As she grabbed a cotton ball, she said, "This is much more challenging than the previous rounds with the killer devil, and it's not just one of them. There are several."
"You seem to be familiar with the Shiller we saw earlier."
"Yes, we killed each other before."
Batman didn't know what to say, so he asked, "Who is he?"
"I suspect he's Lust, but I can't be sure." Natasha shook her head. "We were quite intimate before, bare our souls kind of intimate, but there was no reaction from him."
Instinctively, Batman believed that what Natasha described should correspond to a physical scenario, but there was no time for further contemplation as he began speaking rapidly.
"Shiller's relatively amicable reaction is worth investigating. He stated that the trait called 'manipulation' has no weaknesses, but he was actually implying that the other personalities do."
"Or rather, the other personalities act in a regular manner." Batman's mind raced as he said, "As the name suggests, the Hunter would continuously zero in on a specific target. Clearly, he has now set his sights on the female ghost."
"This is actually his weakness because if he is focused on the female ghost, we're safe. But if he eliminates the female ghost and we don't know the pattern of his shifting targets, we could be his next focus."
"Similarly, the personality focusing on us, Gluttony, also has a predictable pattern of action. If we can anticipate his tendency to follow the scent of blood, we can ensure our safety as much as possible. This might render him aimless."
"But it's too late now," Natasha said. "We are both injured, and splitting up is not a good option."
"We can't split our forces yet. We need to first understand their patterns, we..."
Suddenly, Shiller's shadow flickered on the glass again. Batman reacted swiftly, kicked down the door, and charged into the corridor. Their recent move had just barely started when a pair of medical scissors was thrust into the door panel.
"Don't be in a hurry to run," Batman said. "Since we can't outrun them, we might as well use this opportunity to observe their patterns."
Batman looked at the glass and said, "We're both injured and bleeding. Which one of us will he choose?"
This question had barely dropped when the medical scissor lodged in the door started to quiver and eventually dropped to the floor. It then flew up again and shot towards Natasha at a high speed.
Batman, with his quick reflexes, tackled Natasha. They once again rushed towards another room in the hallway, waking up the people in the room.
The people in this new room were not possessed by the ghost, but before they could scream, Batman and Natasha knocked them unconscious.
"He got my blood," Natasha said, "I guess that's why he's after me."
"It's probably not that simple. Do you remember, Shiller in the mirror mentioned that Gluttony devours everything? There's no reason why he would only want your blood and not mine."
Suddenly, Batman realized something and said, "The amount of blood...the quantity is key!"
Batman pulled Natasha's arm and looked at her wound, "When your wound started to worsen, we didn't realize what was happening, so he's been feeding on your blood the whole time."
"And just now, my wound also got worse which means he got my blood, but he still went after you. It might be because you gave him more blood. Gluttony can be...gluttonous. To him, quality is not important, quantity is."
Natasha looked up at Batman and asked, "So what are you thinking?"
"Give him my blood."
Natasha furrowed her brows, and before she could say anything, Batman said: "If I give him more blood, he will chase me and then you can use the cure potion on your arm."
"But I..."
"You said you're a genetically modified human, you recover faster than I do. Even if the potion and physical strength have been compromised, and your healing capacity has been weakened, you still heal quicker and in a shorter time than me."
"And then what? Even if I return uninjured, he will still chase and attack you constantly."
"Go find blood bags". Batman spoke assertively, "The psychiatric hospital surely has an emergency blood bank. When we hid in the electrical room earlier, I checked the circuits there. The blood bank should be on this floor."
"You need to go there, find the blood bags, and lure him away with more blood. I need enough time to recover."
Without any hesitation, Natasha turned around and left. Batman watched her leave with an approving gaze, then smashed the window on the door with his fist and took a piece of the shattered glass to slash his own arm.
A substantial amount of blood burst out. The next second, Batman turned around and, sure enough, saw Shiller's shadow on the glass.
"Bang!"
The door slammed against the wall, and Beihan stormed out of the door. He turned back to Shiller and said, "Stop following me, you're the root cause of all the troubles. I think we should go our separate ways."
Shiller held his forehead.
On the other side of the screen, Bruce was thoroughly delighted.
"Who exactly is the guy in the mirror?" Constantine frowned deeply, shrunk back into his chair and said, "I got a vibe that he's extremely dangerous, insanely dangerous. He isn't going to climb out of the screen, is he?"
"Of course not, rest assured, our dear audience, the projection room is absolutely safe." Owen announced loudly, "The duelists in the game definitely can't see us."
Constantine still shrank back and said, "That white-bearded Shiller gives me a vibe that any association with him is extremely troublesome."
"He's the type to twist you into any shape, then derive deep joy from watching your pain and despair over the changes and your state of being." Constantine was very sure when he said, "Any curiosity about him is lethal. Can I request to block his image one-sidedly?"
"I'm afraid that's not possible," Owen shook his head and said.
"Then I'll take a nap now. Wake me up when this part is over." Constantine chose to sleep without second thoughts.
"I detest these hypocritical people," Joker Arthur tilted his head and said. "He is the kind who usually mingles with the high society, deceiving everyone with a perfect human skin. But in truth, he's no more noble or clever than me. His human skin will fall apart someday."
"I didn't see anything wrong with him," Lord Superman still looked very serious, he said, "He just appeared in the mirror and spoke a few words to that Batman, right?"
"It's not as simple as a few words," Bruce laughed again and said, "Dim lighting, a flickering light with a particular frequency, a low and slow voice. What do all these elements constitute?"
The other three turned to him.
"That Batman has been hypnotized, to varying degrees," said Bruce as he touched his lips. "As far as I know, this is Manipulator's forte."