Greed felt incompatible with Batman.
Previously, it had been said that Arrogance was a detective type, while Greed was a behind-the-scenes manipulator type, so it was understandable that the two did not get along and often tripped each other up.
However, the Primary Universe Batman was the quintessential detective Batman, and his motivation was much greater than Arrogance's.
In most cases, Arrogance exhibited a kind of inertia – simply put, a push would get him moving; he would idle when nothing happened, and take a gamble when something occurred.
But Batman was not like that; he was a detective full of proactive planning, and his preferred method of preparation was the Exhaustion Method.
Blocking all possible paths for a person or a situation, leaving only a "doghole" for them to crawl through, and then waiting on the other side once they had struggled through, was Batman's most commonly used detective method.
Greed, on the other hand, was the type who liked to burrow everywhere, never sticking to one path to its end but preferring to branch out from a main storyline, frequently doing many meaningless things to obscure his true purpose.
If Greed's talent was to entangle everyone in a huge ball of wool, Batman's talent was to build a giant loom and weave all the wool into his preparations.
It could be said that their behavioral logic was exactly opposite: combating the Exhaustion Method with the Exhaustion Method, using negative infinity against positive infinity. It was a wonder Greed could have any good impression of Batman.
It was fortunate that Arrogance, not Greed, had stayed in DC; otherwise, it would have cost many brain cells.
Even if the Bruce in Shiller's universe was comparatively younger, judging by Greed's rate of progression, he could likely meet the Primary Universe Batman within five years, leading to a real matryoshka battle, a different kind of "I predicted your prediction's prediction."
In fact, compared to Arrogance, Greed's core resembled Batman's archenemy Joker, with the same obsession, insanity, and intense drive.
However, Greed had no interest in tormenting any individual specifically; as long as he wanted to tangle Batman in his ball of wool, and Batman didn't want to be entangled, they were bound to be in opposition.
This game also counted as the first head-on clash between Greed and the Primary Universe Batman, with obvious results.
Greed's plan was largely successful; he lured most players to his lab base with a bizarre starting plot, and with these players in hand, Batman had to be cautious.
But Batman was not unprepared; he also took advantage of the very short time after the commencement of the game to glimpse a part of Greed's conspiracy, executing a "slip out of the cicada's shell" maneuver, completely escaping Greed's control and becoming the biggest destabilizing factor in the game.
And because of the tacit understanding between Batman and Joker, Joker also broke away from Greed's plan, meaning the game's two most dangerous individuals hadn't been tangled in the wool, undoubtedly creating the greatest hidden danger.
But this was far from the main event, merely a shallow probe, which, to be fair, barely ended in a draw.
Had Batman alone broken free, he would have been at a slight disadvantage, as his moral bottom line was significantly higher than Greed's. Greed, controlling the players to command others, would have tied Batman's hands.
Joker had escaped too, leaving both arch-enemies out of Greed's watchful eye, effectively restoring a balance to the situation.
Though Greed could threaten Batman using the players he held, he could not do the same with Joker, whose unpredictability under such circumstances significantly reduced the effectiveness of any threats, even if Batman had his reservations.
Admittedly, the situation had come to a stalemate, but Greed knew that he had initially had the upper hand because the Transcendent had informed him he was the first to enter the game, spending more time within than anyone else, which allowed him to achieve more.
Batman, being more than a step slower, still managed through his investigation and laid traps to restore the situation to almost balanced—this round, he had lost by a slim margin.
Greed ignored the smile on the agent's face, his gaze sweeping across the others; he couldn't believe that they were completely unprepared for the current situation, but he wondered how much they had guessed and what their countermeasures were.
However, his gaze stopped on Bruce's face midway because he noticed Bruce was zoning out again.
Ever since he had picked the Psychoanalysis Method as his skill, he had often become distracted.
No, to be precise, it was after Greed confirmed that Shiller's body, which he controlled, was not Arrogant that Bruce started to get distracted.
Greed felt that Arrogant must have gone to trouble the Transcendent, but he also knew that Arrogant's main reason for anger wasn't that the Transcendent used his Talent Skill without paying him royalties.
One could say that unless Shiller had given the Transcendent access to the Tower of Thought, enabling him to quickly build the Doujie System, the Transcendent wouldn't have had a chance to plagiarize; being plagiarized was inevitable.
And even if plagiarized, the essence couldn't be copied—merely replicated in form. For Shiller, this form was a talent, but for others, it was a disaster. Anyone's perspective becoming too similar to that of an Outer God would feel maddening and irrational.
You call this the Psychoanalysis Method? Then all the world's masters of psychology should come from psychiatric hospitals.
Yet, the Transcendent had given this Talent to Bruce.
It was well-known that Arrogant had spent so much effort to prevent Bruce from following his path; the cost of madness was too high a price for acquiring the Psychoanalysis Method Talent for Batman.
Given Batman's own wisdom and Behavioral Analysis Method skills, he was more than equipped to handle anything in this world—why would he need to become a madman?
Arrogant spent ten years steering Bruce away from this path, yet in one night, the Transcendent had kicked him right back; Arrogant wouldn't seek trouble from anyone else but him.
While this issue stemmed from the Transcendent, fundamentally it benefited from Bruce's special significance to Arrogant, leading Greed to suspect that after dealing with the Transcendent, Arrogant had gone to find Bruce.
In the Battleworld game, the portals to Dreamland were not usable, but the Transcendent was an administrator. He wasn't restricted from whose Psychic Space he wanted to visit.
Greed also had his understanding of this character; aloof as to seem arrogant, and yet quicker to submit than anyone when it mattered, and particularly fond of chaos and amusement—a true lover of mischief amidst turmoil.
If Arrogant decided to drag him to find Bruce, he might not adamantly refuse, perhaps for the fun of watching their interaction, he might just open the gates of convenience for Arrogant.
That's why Greed previously mentioned that Bruce's analysis better not be parrot-like, because he always felt it sounded a bit like Arrogant.
Greed took a deep look at Bruce, peering into his clear blue eyes, and seemed to vaguely see several figures enjoying a conversation, one of whom was the long-lost Arrogant.
But Arrogant wasn't the only one in Bruce's psychic space.
In a space similar to the hall of Wayne Manor, several figures sat around the fireplace.
On the large sofa, a Transcendent in a white uniform leaned on the right armrest, while on the left sat an old man holding a storybook, his Bullhorn Helmet placed on a nearby table, none other than the God of Stories, Loki.
On another single sofa, a man wearing a vintage suit and sporting a Little Mustache, with Mickey Mouse ears on his head, was none other than Walt Disney, smilingly sipping coffee.
Still dressed in a black suit, Arrogant sat opposite him, leisurely clipping a cigar, while beside him sat a tall black man with a ring of golden patterns around his eyes, the Avatar of the Black Pharaoh, Nyarlathotep.
And Archangel Lucifer, still in a Holy Robe, squatted by the fireplace adding wood; the flames burning in the fireplace, within which flickered images, were precisely from Bruce's first-person perspective.
At that moment, Arrogant spoke crazily to the fireplace.
"Make your gaze a bit clearer, Greed could almost see my hair strands through your eyeballs, Bruce; can you focus your gaze?!"
"I can't!" Bruce's voice echoed from the fireplace, as he said, "I'm already trying to analyze the representative color of the emotions you mentioned."
"You're Batman, can't you multitask?"
"This game has limited my wisdom! My thought process has slowed down to death, I can't even think straight!"
"But even when you weren't limited in wisdom, you weren't much better," Arrogant tossed the clipped fragment into the fire and said, "At first, I kind of blamed the Transcendent, but now I must thank him. He let me see that there's still room for your mental analysis talent to decline."
Before Bruce could respond, Arrogant shouted, "Look ahead! See that blue line! That's Greed's unease!! Grab it... I didn't mean actually grab it with your hand! Touch it with your thoughts! Then analyze it with your reason..."
The blue line approached slowly, and the scene became even more chaotic, switching between blue sky and white clouds and a churning deep sea as if all the blue colors in the world fused together, giving rise to waves of cold and melancholy.
"What do you feel?"
"I feel cold."
"Besides that?"
"Uh, it's very chaotic, I can't make it clear, too many thoughts mixed together." Bruce's voice came intermittently, as he seemed to be analyzing those thoughts while speaking, but due to the difficulty of multitasking, his facial expressions and internal dialogues suffered disconnections.
"Do you feel the hidden unease behind these images?"
"To be honest, I can't see where the unease is, does he have both fear of heights and fear of swimming?"
"So seeing the sky means acrophobia, seeing the deep sea means fear of swimming? Bruce, why can't you be a bit more intuitive?"
"Aren't you asking me to analyze it with reason?!"
"You need to first experience it with emotion, didn't you say you felt really cold? What emotions does this cold evoke in you?"
"It makes me want to find some clothes to wear."
"What if you can't find any?"
"Then, just forget it."
"Forget what! Imagine the despair when you are in an isolated and cold environment! What do you feel?"
"I feel... despair?"
"I mean what does this despair make you feel!"
"Despair is despair, once you're desperate, what other emotions can there be?"
Arrogant put down the eighth clipped cigar and then said, "That means something is beyond your control, this kind of despair brought by the cold of a freezing land, signifies a sense of helplessness that is overwhelming, exposed, lonely, abandoned."
"Oh." Bruce replied, then asked, "So, was he abandoned by the Prime Universe Batman? Will he go to find him?"
"You make me feel like I'm pushing a wheelchair up the stairs," Arrogant said.
"Is it hard because I'm too heavy to push?"
"It's hard because you're not even in the wheelchair!"
The other figures continued their activities with expressionless faces, unfazed by this scenario, as this kind of discussion had repeated for the eighth time.