The phrase "The battle begins" echoed in his ears, but it noticeably startled Shiller and many clues became clear in his mind.
Thinking about it, when had he ever heard the system's battle start sound effect?
The first time was in the cabin when the corpse suddenly moved, and the Transcendent gave such a prompt. The subsequent times generally involved human corpses coming to life before the battle prompt sounded.
However, when they were fighting those five Hunting Dogs there was no prompt, not even entering a turn-based state, it was just a regular fight.
What did this mean?
Initially, Shiller thought it might be events related to anomalies that triggered the battle start sound.
Then why did it happen when he fought Greed?
Now there were two possibilities, one was indeed that the prompt only occurred during fights related to anomalies, which meant Greed had a connection to the anomalies.
The other more covert possibility was that it only occurred when fighting players like Greed, and those suddenly revived corpses were actually players causing mischief.
Shiller instinctively felt it was the latter.
His reasoning wasn't baseless. First, they had never seen the Wandering from beginning to end and didn't know whether this person was really as they had deduced—possessing living people, killing them, then controlling their bodies; it was just their guess.
Moreover, if the Wandering had such abilities, he wouldn't be so frail and easily defeated; those moving corpses hadn't caused them any trouble. So far, all the injuries were either caused by failed dice rolls that rebounded onto themselves or by the reed monster. The corpses' damage output was zero.
But every time they defeated a corpse, it was considered a battle victory, and once you win a battle, you can earn Points to upgrade skills. Isn't that another form of point farming?
Shiller reviewed the conditions of several people again in his mind. Greed's Wind Blade was too special; it was probably not a common skill that could be upgraded with Skill Points but his initial skill. His own initial skill was Soothing Soul, while Joker's likely had something to do with finance. That left Night Owl, Universe Batman, and the Pale Knight.
Shiller felt that the person most likely to have the skill to control corpses was Universe Batman.
Because him controlling corpses to stand up and attack players was essentially like players fighting each other. If, according to the system rules, only struggles between players counted as battles, then this would clearly trigger a battle.
And after triggering a battle, there would be skill points, and among all the players, Universe Batman was the one who needed skill points the most.
Because he plans to fake serious injuries to get out of everyone's sight.
Without enough skill points, he couldn't upgrade to healing skills. However, simply by using his Talent Skill to raise the corpses and trigger battles to farm skill points, he could fully upgrade something like the First Aid Skill.
Through Bruce's Psychoanalysis Method skill development, it was evident that a level 3 skill was a qualitative change. If Batman really upgraded his First Aid Skill to level 3, using the skill once could restore half of his health; that he could disappear on the spot when critically wounded made sense.
Shiller's mind raced; if all this was orchestrated by Universe Batman, then the situation certainly wasn't as simple as it appeared on the surface. Batman's target might not be the anomalies, but rather the Siltex Medical Insurance Company.
Based on Shiller's understanding of Batman, his target might not only be this insurance company. Behind this company could be a bigger conspiracy.
It's not that Shiller didn't want to let Batman save the world, but who could claim to be absolutely good in front of Batman?
Shiller hadn't forgotten; he was a man of the Church.
So what if the medical insurance company was no good. Does that make the Church saints?
Jeff had told them when they met that, concerning anomalous events, the Church adopted an extremely harsh isolation policy. While theoretically useful, one could imagine how many wrongful cases could be created during its execution.
Arrogant, when creating his background story, didn't touch on information related to the Church. This meant the true nature of the Church was controlled by others.
If others said the Church was a Charity House, then the Church would appear as a protagonist; if they said the Church was a hypocritical money-grubbing organization, then it would be irredeemably tainted no matter what.
If Batman was going after the insurance company, but what if the insurance company had ties with the Church? Wouldn't he be sent to the guillotine too?
Having thought this through, Shiller put down his now bulletless gun, looked at Greed's unpleasant expression, and said, "Now you have two choices, tell me what's going on here..."
"I pick the second one," Greed said crisply.
"Let's fight, and you tell me what's going on."
Greed's expression turned even more unsightly.
Bruce nudged him with his elbow and said, "He's threatening you."
"I know," Greed said through clenched teeth.
"Then just fight him!"
Greed also lowered his voice, "Violence is the strongest among us because his muscle limits are completely unlocked, able to unleash the most powerful force, but the agent has the best fighting skills, I can't beat him!"
"Want me to help you?" Bruce's tone revealed a hint of amusement.
"I advise you not to…"
Just as he mentioned this, Greed felt a huge force pushing him to the side, and his shoulder slammed directly into the nearby wall. When he regained his senses, he saw only the flash of a blade, and a streak of blood emerging from the side of his neck.
"Hisss..." Greed inhaled sharply and then glanced at Shiller, who had just withdrawn his knife, and said, "Don't go too far!"
"Indeed, even though we've entered combat, it's not just a battle between the two of you, are you trying to take on three?" Bruce clearly positioned himself with Greed, and Night Owl seemed to be siding with Bruce as well.
Shiller snorted coldly and said, "If you were really confident, you wouldn't be wasting your breath here."
Once he finished speaking, his knife-hand flipped, and he stabbed toward Greed's neck again. Greed immediately ducked, but at that moment, the black and gold-colored dice appeared again.
The number that landed was "1" – another great failure!
Pshhh!
The sharp edge of the blade sliced across the neck, severing the carotid artery and blood sprayed straight toward the wall. Greed, clutching his neck, groaned muffledly, but the sharp knife showed no mercy, aiming another stab toward his eye.
"Joker!!!" Greed roared, "Change that damn dice! Or I'm going to die here!!!"
Shiller skillfully hid the smirk on his face, but his stabbing motion didn't pause at all.
Greed tried to dodge again, and the next second, the dice he threw turned red. He didn't even get a chance to breathe a sigh of relief when his agility, 38＜40, failed the check!
Greed's motion stalled, his dodging delayed by a fraction of a second. He couldn't completely avoid it; the knife-point directly ran from the middle of his brow bone to the temple, blood instantly flooding his eyes.
At the moment Shiller withdrew the knife, he saw Bruce muttering something. He deliberately shifted his body to the side, exposing a vulnerability, and indeed, Bruce grabbed Greed, pulling him out from the blind spot.
Shiller saw that the moment Bruce touched Greed, the blood on Greed's neck and eye stopped, and the wounds slowly healed.
Knowing that there are now a total of four skill points, Bruce had managed to fully skill up the Psychoanalysis Method, leaving him with only one skill point, and a Level 1 First Aid Skill wouldn't have such good effects.
This meant the healing skill Bruce used on Greed must be his Talent Skill.
Very well, another confirmation.
Shiller withdrew and stepped back. Greed took a deep breath, just about to say something, when he saw Bruce adopting a combative stance. He quickly pulled Bruce back and glared at him, saying, "What are you doing?"
"Aren't we supposed to fight?"
Greed wiped the blood off his face and said, "I can finally understand Arrogant's feelings. Are you silly? Haven't you ever dealt with an agent?"
"The agent I'm most familiar with is called Amanda Waller," Bruce replied.
Greed fell silent, but he could only explain, "All the coercion techniques of an agent aren't really meant to fight you to death; they just want to extract information."
Bruce wasn't really foolish. The next second, he figured out what Shiller was up to. Suddenly attacking Greed wasn't to kill him but to clarify what their various Talent Skills were.
Greed cleaved through a bullet with Wind Blade, proving that his Talent Skill is likely Wind Blade.
The prompt of "Battle Start", heard during their engagement with Greed, allowed them to deduce that someone's skill probably involved manipulating corpses, most likely Prime Universe Batman's skill.
Directly targeting Greed for a dodging verdict, forcing him to shout for Joker to change the dice confirmed that Joker's Talent Skill had something to do with the dice.
Slashing Greed's carotid artery, forcing Bruce to reveal his healing skill to save Greed's life, deduced Bruce's Talent Skill to be healing.
Apart from Night Owl and the Pale Knight, whose skills are still unclear, everyone else was essentially an open book now.
Now, Bruce understood why some of his friends bristled at the mention of agents.
The key wasn't actually about how much information they can force out of you, but that if you interact with them, they can extract information from you.
And if you don't deal with them, they can take the opportunity while you're hiding to dig for your information from others, and by the time you come back, it's already too late.
Greed flicked the blood off his hand and said, "You know enough now, do you still want to continue fighting?"
Shiller looked at Bruce, hesitating whether to go after him or not. Although this was his first time encountering Arrogant's student, he knew from memory that, without any special abilities, his combat effectiveness wasn't that strong, far below the first-tier combat experts.
Right now, in this game where all his superpowers were unusable, and just considering physical strength, beating him up was not a problem.
The villainous Batman called Night Owl most likely wouldn't stand by and watch Bruce get beaten. If he intervened, he would definitely take action, perhaps also revealing his own skills.
Trading a bullet for four key Talent Skill insights would indeed be a huge profit.
As Shiller hesitated, Greed pointed out sharply, "When do you think Arrogant is coming back?"
"Right," Shiller suddenly said.
Thinking Shiller had given up, Greed was surprised when the next second, Shiller charged at Bruce and punched him.
"During your graduation, Arrogant played a broadcast in the High Tower for two days, which kept me from sleeping. I haven't settled the score with you yet."