Chapter 6130 - 5143: A Journey of Surprise (End)

Right at that moment, what appeared behind the players was a giant "laugh-cry" face. The emoji one—grinning while squeezing out two teardrops.

All those human organs, all those weird colors, were actually just the parts making up that emoji: yellow face, white teeth, blue tears, together forming a gigantic laugh-cry expression, as if silently laughing at something.

Actually, you couldn’t even call it "silent" anymore—the dev’s malice was deafening. Tell me, who can keep a straight face after eating that huge pile of shit to get a collectible, only to see a laugh-cry emoji pop up? Even Batman would be pissed into laughter.

Greed really couldn’t hold it in anymore. He had held back the entire way from using his Dojo Administrator privileges to force-open the panel and check dungeon info, but after seeing this emoji he genuinely snapped. He directly pulled up the panel and opened the dungeon introduction page.

Turned out he hadn’t misread it—the one who made this dungeon really was a Batman. It’s just that the name after the bat avatar was "YOUKNOWWHO (Nameless Bat)."

Greed once again peacefully closed his eyes. When he gets into Arrogant’s office later, he’s punching first and talking never—just look at this "excellent student" you trained!

Though it was kind of on him. He hadn’t really wanted to play games in the first place; he only came because Little Superman was too enthusiastic. So when Little Superman was picking the dungeon, he didn’t look closely. Now, he taps into the comment section, and the top upvoted comment’s avatar is a very familiar Bat tag, probably from "Batman: Arkham Knight."

"Don’t play." Just two brutally concise words, but right after that avatar were 250 hours of playtime plus a full achievements badge.

What does 250 hours mean? Arkham Batman cleaning up all of Gotham and grabbing every last Riddler Trophy only takes about 12 hours or so, but he spent 250 hours in this dungeon to finally get the full achievements badge. Greed couldn’t help giving him a thumbs up—you’re the true king of eating shit.

How much bitterness and suffering is packed into those two short words... Just on the strength of that full achievements badge, Arkham Batman could go vie for "hardest Batman in the whole Multiverse." Anyone unconvinced can try for 100% in this dungeon themselves.

Only now did Greed realize: this wasn’t a trap made by a villain for Batman. It was Batman’s internal power struggle.

Greed didn’t often go over there, but he had vaguely heard that the Primary Universe Batman didn’t really impose any hard obligations on his Batman Alliance. Come if you want, do whatever you feel like, and if you don’t want to, no one forces you. The core idea is providing help rather than restricting freedom, so overall the vibe is pretty relaxed.

This probably has to do with the Primary Universe Batman’s personality. The New 52 Primary Universe Batman isn’t quite the same as the stereotypical angst-ridden Batman. When he first appeared he was relatively young, and even now he hasn’t reached old-bat status. He’s not that grim; he even cracks some dry jokes sometimes.

If he were the type to suspect the entire world, he wouldn’t dare gather this many Batmen together and even bring them into the Prime Universe. All in all, he’s relatively up to date, open-minded and optimistic. You know, birds of a feather and all that—most of the Batmen around him share that basic temperament. So the Bat League’s atmosphere isn’t as dark as many people imagine. Most of the time everyone’s busy with their own stuff, only occasionally hanging out, and when they do, it’s not all "serious business"—sometimes it’s just chatting or swapping intel.

There is, however, one rule that is the Primary Universe Batman’s absolute bottom line, and he’s emphasized it specially: anyone who crosses that line will be expelled from the Alliance and completely blacklisted by the Prime Universe, banned forever from coming back. That line is: no internal fighting.

None of the Bat League Batmen are allowed to attack other members. Not even verbal attacks, investigations, or testing the waters are allowed. If you really have a grudge with someone or just don’t like them, then you leave on your own—under no circumstances do you make a move.

Originally, Bruce the Nameless Bat wasn’t bound by this rule, because he wasn’t an Alliance member at all—nobody had ever recruited him. But at this stage he couldn’t attack Batman either, because once you hit one, a whole swarm comes out. A very literal demonstration that bats are social animals. He can beat one or two, but faced with this many Batmen, even he gets nervous.

So he disguised himself as an ordinary Batman and joined the Bat League. The Primary Universe Batman and a few others know this, but as long as he doesn’t break the rules, they just turn a blind eye. After all, Bruce is an Angel, someone who can bring messages from Heaven, has some dealings with Barbados, and is very familiar with the Dark Dimension side of things—connections on both light and dark sides make things much easier.

But that leads to another problem: because of the rules, Bruce also can’t lay a hand on other Batmen. To be honest, he doesn’t really want to attack Batmen anyway; he has no beef with the vast majority of them. Plus, he sits in the middle, bridging both sides, can speak for either, and has helped quite a few Batmen. He has a good number of friends in the Alliance.

The only Batman who has any real friction with Bruce is Arkham Batman.

Their relationship doesn’t quite count as a blood feud; they just can’t stand each other’s style of doing things, yet they keep running into each other in games. After poaching points off each other too many times, they drifted into an endless competition loop.

When Creation Mode came out, both of them made their own games and both claimed they were high-difficulty dungeons—only to be speedrun by the other. And that was when their choices started to diverge.

Arkham Batman kept polishing and optimizing the dungeon, cranking up the difficulty, adding more collectibles, and fleshing out the game flow. Bruce, on the other hand, went full crooked-path mode: since you’re definitely going to challenge my game, I have to make sure you suffer while you’re at it—no way you’re getting ashore without a good long swim through a sea of crap.

So this ultimate shitshow of a dungeon was basically built just to disgust Arkham Batman. And honestly, that tracks—every little detail in this dungeon looks tailor-made to drive a compulsive maniac like Batman insane.

First off, Bruce put plenty of little touches into the cover art and the content blurb. The cover is Blizzard Estate, and the description not only emphasizes the hardcore difficulty, but also the mystery and detective aspects. It’s obviously a Batman trap.

The opening story really is just the kind Batman would be into: a huge closed-off estate, a meticulously arranged banquet, a corpse dropping from the sky, plus over two hundred suspects with tangled relationships. You could straight-up call it Batman’s Funhouse. When he’s tired of beating up criminals in Gotham, he can come here to unwind, relax his brain, and soothe his body and soul.

Don’t be fooled by how good Arkham Batman is at brawling—his deduction game isn’t weak either. Just look at those 200+ Riddler Trophies; they’re not easy to find. Each one is a mission of its own, and he still hunted trophies while running the main story. That alone proves he likes doing this kind of thing, so of course he wouldn’t turn down a long, cathartic Blizzard Estate deduction session.

The second story might as well have been tailor-made for Arkham Batman. A Dead Rising–style plot is perfect for big action set pieces, and Arkham Batman himself loves the rush of combat. Faced with a spectacle like this, his expectations would be sky-high... only to be greeted by endless hitbox judgments, trash dialogue, and endlessly replayed cutscenes at the end. Pure, concentrated Batman torture.

We can leave the plot of the third story aside for now; just the fact that the Protagonist is weak as hell and the number of branching points in the story is off the charts already makes it a custom-built Hell for Arkham Batman.

Being too weak means you barely have any room to maneuver, and even if you’ve calculated everything perfectly, you can still fail because you’re just too weak, forcing a restart from scratch. Tons of branch points means you have to try everything, but even if you try, you might not succeed, and might not be able to change the story at all. The frustration is just absurdly off the charts.

Strictly speaking, a game with no positive feedback is unplayable. But what Bruce built here is wall–to–wall negative feedback, with zero positive incentives. It’s the classic "do it right, get nothing; do it wrong, get punished." Anyone else would’ve quit ages ago.

But for Arkham Batman, full completion is its own best reward. Or put it this way: once you’ve come this far, not going for 100% would waste all the time you’ve already sunk—so you might as well finish it.

Most of the time Batman can think rationally and understands the idea that sunk costs aren’t real costs. But even sunk costs depend on where you’ve sunk them. If it’s in a river or the ocean, fine. But when you’ve been happily paddling around in a septic tank for this long, and then someone says, "Nah, don’t go to the bottom, just drop everything and swim back the way you came"—who the hell can walk away?

Sure enough, Arkham Batman still gritted his teeth and forced himself through a full completion. Those 250 hours basically qualify as some of the darkest times in his life. Bruce and Arkham Batman might not be physically attacking each other, but it honestly would’ve been kinder to just duke it out.

Greed finally couldn’t hold it in anymore; he really wanted to ask Arkham Batman what those remaining 100+ endings were like. After all, Batman had suffered his way to them, and chances are nobody else in the entire Omni Universe is ever going to grind out those endings again. Greed was just too damn curious.

When Greed showed up to see Arkham Batman, Arkham Batman was a bit surprised. He couldn’t help asking, "What made you even think of playing this game?"

"That’s a long story." Greed let out a long sigh. Little Superman is exactly that kind of dog that has to take a bite out of anything sitting by the roadside; managing to end up eating shit is already a relatively good outcome. He’s already been blown up by fireworks once, and he’s still young and still not learning his lesson.

Arkham Batman wasn’t stingy; he shared his full-achievement save file with Greed. As expected, Greed was greeted with 100+ emojis. Cry-laugh, bawling, smiling faces, and the little red angry face—everything was in there. Greed even suspected that once all the emoji reactions were lined up, even someone as taciturn as Arkham Batman might crack a smile.

That’s Bruce for you—pulling off stuff the Joker couldn’t.

But Greed didn’t have time to be sentimental; he really had to go fish Iron Man out. Yet just as he was about to head out, Little Superman clung to him again like a Ghost.

"I seriously don’t know much about the Cthulhu Mythos, and I’ve never experienced it before. Just take me along, okay? I won’t cause trouble," Little Superman said.

"I’m warning you, places like that are insanely dangerous." Greed didn’t outright refuse; he just said, "It’s absolutely unlike any danger you’ve ever experienced before. It’s a whole new kind of horror. Are you sure you’re ready for that?"

"Of course," Little Superman said. "I would never drag you down. I promise!"