第8章 恐惧的主人

Gotham East District, an old chemical factory. It had been abandoned for years, but now it had become the personal playground of another supervillain—Jonathan Crane, the "Scarecrow"—a living hell.

Thick, nauseating yellow-green Fear Toxin blanketed the entire factory like a living fog. The air was filled with shrill screams that barely sounded human. The unfortunate innocents he had captured were being forced to confront the deepest, most primal fears in their hearts through the toxin. Some saw countless venomous snakes winding around their bodies; some saw the rotting corpses of their loved ones; others repeatedly experienced the moment of death in an endless fall...

In the central control room on the factory's top floor, Crane, dressed in a tattered scarecrow costume and wearing a rough burlap hood, spread his arms wide. Like a conductor admiring a grand symphony, he closed his eyes and listened with rapturous delight to this movement composed of fear.

"Wonderful... absolutely wonderful!" he murmured neurotically. "This is art! This is the purest form of human emotion! Soon... very soon! I'll send this concentrated essence of fear, distilled from thousands of people, through the city's main water supply and deliver it to every stupid citizen of Gotham City! They'll all join this magnificent carnival!"

Just as he was about to press the valve button connected to the city's water pipes—

"BOOM—!!!!!"

The factory's massive special-alloy doors, said to be capable of withstanding rocket attacks, were torn apart and hurled away by an unimaginable force from outside!

The Batmobile's enormous, oppressive frame crushed through the twisted metal wreckage and charged in with savage force.

"SCREEECH—!"

The doors lifted upward. Bruce, clad in the V8.03 Knight armor, a suit like the war gear of a god of darkness, stepped out of the cockpit and slowly entered the poisonous haze—dense enough to drive an entire battalion insane in an instant.

Lines of green data rapidly flashed across his visor's HUD:

[Warning: High-concentration neurotoxin detected. Composition: unknown compound...]

[Conducting real-time composition analysis... Analysis complete.]

[Activating A-7 composite biochemical filtration system... Filtration efficiency: 100%.]

These "masterpieces," which Crane believed were enough to conquer the world, did little more than make the surrounding air slightly murky to Bruce.

His arrival, and the leisurely ease with which he moved, were themselves the greatest and most merciless mockery of Scarecrow, the so-called Master of Fear.

"No! Impossible! My toxin! My most perfect creation! How could you..." Crane screamed in disbelief as he watched through the surveillance feeds.

Inside the factory, the thugs he had hired as guards had already inhaled trace amounts of the toxin without realizing it. Their minds had been twisted. In their eyes, the black figure walking in was not Batman at all.

It was an indescribable monster that had crawled up from the deepest pits of hell, pieced together from countless writhing spiders, slick venomous snakes, and rotting corpses oozing pus!

"AAAAAH! Monster! Kill him!"

Howling, they raised their machetes and firearms and charged at him like madmen.

There was not the slightest ripple in Bruce's dark-blue electronic lenses.

The next second, his body became a black bolt of lightning, impossibly fast as it shot straight into the crowd.

He did not use a single Batarang or explosive gel.

He used only his own body—and the art of killing known as Ultimate Combat Art, inherited from Peak Arkham Knight.

He was not fighting.

He was conducting an efficient, precise... dissection of the human body.

A thug swung a machete down at his head. Bruce did not even dodge. He merely shifted slightly, letting the blade scrape across his shoulder armor in a shower of sparks. At the same time, his right elbow drove upward like a battering ram, striking the man squarely in the jaw.

"Crack!"

A crisp snap of bone echoed out. The thug's jaw caved inward at a grotesque angle, and he flew backward, spraying a fountain of blood and shattered teeth through the air.

Another thug swept a steel pipe at his waist from the side. Without even looking, Bruce raised his left leg like a battle axe and drove a brutal knee into the man's ribs.

"Pff!"

The dull impact was accompanied by the sound of several ribs breaking at once. The thug let out a short, miserable cry, his body curling like a boiled shrimp as blood and fragments of organs poured from his mouth.

Backhand. Block. Grapple. Break the arm.

A short step, a turn, then a whipping kick that shattered a knee.

Every movement was steeped in a cold aesthetic of violence—calm, efficient, precise, without a single wasted motion. He was like Death checking names off a list. Every strike meant another "number" was crossed out.

Before long, the path to the control room was carpeted with twisted, groaning "parts."

Bruce stepped through the blood and wails, ascending the stairs toward the control room one step at a time.

As Scarecrow watched that monster approach him, completely unharmed and without even a speck of dust on his armor, the face beneath his burlap hood showed, for the first time, the emotion he had always inflicted upon others—fear.

But he was Jonathan Crane, after all. He still had his final—and strongest—weapon.

"Since ordinary fear cannot make you submit... then have a taste of this, Bat!" he roared hysterically, slamming down the final button.

"Hiss—!!!"

A transparent, nearly invisible stream of ultra-concentrated Pure Fear Toxin erupted from the ceiling nozzles and poured directly over Bruce!

The undiluted toxin's penetration was so powerful that it exceeded the protective limits of ordinary biochemical combat suits. Threads of toxin seeped through gaps in the armor and invaded his body.

For one brief instant, Bruce's vision truly wavered.

Yet the illusion he saw was not the dark alley from the original owner's memories, nor the broken string of pearls, nor the two piercing gunshots.

His Fear Aura was completely activated—detonated—by this powerful external fear energy!

The resilient, rational soul that belonged to Lu Xian, a white-collar worker from modern Earth; the battle will, steeped in iron and slaughter, inherited from Arkham Knight; and the profound hatred and fury within this body, belonging to Bruce Wayne, toward all the evil in Gotham...

These three entirely different spiritual powers, all pointing toward the same destination, collided, fused, and ascended in the depths of his mind in an unprecedented blaze!

In the end, they formed a brand-new, horrifying vision of Ultimate Fear—one that would make even gods tremble at the sight of it!

And through the toxin's still-unbroken neural connection, Bruce forcefully poured that vision back into Scarecrow—Jonathan Crane's—mind with overwhelming dominance!

Scarecrow's pupils dilated to their limits in that instant!

He saw it!

He saw a terrifying existence that no known language could possibly describe!

It was a dark god seated upon a bone throne piled high with the still-wailing skeletons of countless criminals!

Its body was the flowing, bottomless night itself, capable of swallowing all light! When the vast cape upon its body unfurled, it became a galaxy of billions of shrieking bats, blotting out the stars!

And those eyes... they were not eyes at all! They were two red stars, slowly dying as endless entropy and nothingness devoured them, radiating deathly stillness and despair!

There was no anger in that gaze, no hatred, no killing intent... only an absolute, pure fear that transcended life and death, time and space, cause and effect... Ultimate Fear!

The instant he saw those eyes, Scarecrow's brain—so proud of its lifetime of research into the psychology of fear—was completely, literally... burned out by the Ultimate Fear he could neither understand nor endure.

"Ah... ah... AAAAAAAAAAH—!!!!!"

Scarecrow let out an inhuman shriek so agonizing that it tore apart his vocal cords. Bright-red blood burst from all seven of his orifices at once. His entire body convulsed violently like a fish thrown ashore. Finally, his eyes rolled back, and he collapsed to the floor, becoming a mindless idiot who could only drool from the corner of his mouth and stare blankly ahead.

He became a prisoner forever trapped within the highest form of fear he himself had created.

Bruce coldly stepped over his still-twitching body, walked to the control console, and pressed the master switch for the automatic fire suppression system.

"Whoosh—"

Countless streams of chemical foam that neutralized the Fear Toxin poured from the ceiling like heavy snow, cleansing the filth and evil within the factory—as if washing away the one-sided ritual of "judgment" that had just come to an end.