The Anti-Monitor's brain stopped for half a second.
At first, he had not even realized what he was facing. Everything had been progressing in the direction he had guided it...
For the Anti-Monitor, the outcome of the battle was not the most important thing. The crucial point was releasing more of his power from upstream in the Over-Time Stream.
The more power he had, the more he could influence the battlefield and affect the future of the Over-Time Stream, steering it toward the direction he wanted. It was a snowballing process, and Batman Dragon changing the events of Earth-15 was the first small snowball he could roll.
The Anti-Monitor was not stupid... It was not that he had failed to vaguely realize that Batman Dragon seemed to have seen through the fact that his purpose differed from that of a superhero. But putting himself in Batman Dragon's position, the Anti-Monitor had long understood that even he himself would have no chance of turning things around under suppression of this magnitude and a hidden stab from an unseen backer.
For Batman Dragon, the path the Anti-Monitor had pointed him toward was the most advantageous of all possible paths. He only needed to abandon his homeland to change the mess he himself had created.
Especially now that he had acted to kill someone and could no longer so easily take on the manifest mandate of the DC Multiverse as before. Batman Dragon should have made the choice most beneficial to himself—but even more beneficial to the Anti-Monitor.
Immediately afterward, he would be able to create the Anti-Monitor Bat, then turn the future of the Over-Time Stream that he had previously failed to create into reality.
But now, he had failed.
Everything had failed. Just as Batman Dragon was about to complete his