The Cost of Trying to Steal a Chicken but Losing the Rice (First Update, Please Subscribe!)

"...What do you want?"

"Simple. The victor becomes king, and the loser is the bandit!"

Lake's lips curled upward as he listened to the Reality Universe's seemingly conciliatory words. He was smiling, but there was barely any warmth in his tone. "I won. You lost. So this world should be mine now."

The Reality Universe let out another deafening roar.

Space and time churned violently.

But...

Lake was not afraid of the Reality Universe. This was a very simple matter. It had tried to scheme against him, but he had not fallen for it. Naturally, it had to apologize and compensate him.

What?

It did not intend to apologize and compensate him?

Heh.

Put it this way: there was a reason they were called the Fundamental Laws. Simply put, the Fundamental Law of Cost was the cornerstone of everything—the foundation itself.

If it did not want to pay the price, that was equivalent to saying it no longer needed this foundation. Leaving everything else aside, if it played things this way, how was anyone else supposed to keep playing?

Behind him, Vivian's eyes lit up.

This was what Lake had always wanted to do. Umbrella, Gotham—they had all been smokescreens. What he truly wanted was to confuse the Reality Universe, lure it into a trap of its own making, and then seize this world without shedding a drop of blood?

That was both right and wrong.

If Lake knew what Vivian was thinking at that moment, he probably would have put it this way.

Before Bruce was born, Lake's plans had always proceeded in the direction of destroying the world.

But after Bruce's birth, Lake slightly changed his course of action.

The reason was simple.

Before Bruce was born, Lake had never believed that his and Vivian's child could actually