Gotham Central Library was a massive three-story mausoleum built from darkened stone, its facade covered in Gothic reliefs and blind-faced gargoyles.
It greeted me with the kind of silence you’d expect from a graveyard.
The nearest street billboard, where Nygma could have continued delivering his dramatic speeches, was three hundred meters behind me.
That meant the main circus was moving indoors.
I stepped over the torn yellow police tape blocking the main entrance.
For Gotham’s residents, who were used to running for cover at the slightest disturbance, that little strip of plastic was apparently enough to keep everyone away today.
Perfect.
An ideal playground.
I pushed open the heavy oak doors and stepped inside.
The familiar smell of old paper, glue, and deeply embedded dust filled my nose.
The library had the classic three-level layout.
Long rows of massive bookshelves disappeared into the shadows, while balconies lined the upper floors, with the computer section tucked beneath the ceiling.
And screens.
Dozens of information displays on the walls, panels at the circulation desks, bulky monitors on the upper level.
They all flickered simultaneously.
Then the Riddler’s smug, expectant face appeared on every single one.
It was like a digital virus had swallowed the entire building.
“Who is everything and nothing?”
Nygma’s theatrical voice came through every speaker at once.
The echo bounced between the bookshelves.
I stopped in the middle of the reading room.
I looked over the green shrine to his own ego.
Dozens of possible answers immediately appeared in my mind, ranging from the obvious “God” to more meta answers like “a riddle” or “nothingness.”
But give this pompous peacock the satisfaction of an intellectual duel?
Not a fucking chance.
“Your mom, Eddie.”
I said it calmly, without a trace of emotion, staring directly into the nearest security camera.
Silence.
The Riddler’s grin on dozens of screens twitched.
Then froze.
Then slowly disappeared, replaced by a furious red flush spreading from beneath his green mask and down his neck.
His brain had been prepared for some high-level philosophical debate.
Instead, it had short-circuited because of the most basic schoolyard insult imaginable.
“Wrong!”
The Riddler’s voice cracked into an outright shriek.
“For that childish idiocy and blatant disrespect, I’m deducting one minute from your trial!”
“Don’t threaten a hedgehog with your bare ass.”
I snorted mockingly as I slowly walked along the first row of bookshelves.
“Even if I had only one minute, Eddie, I’d still solve it.”
“After all…”
I paused dramatically.
“I’m Batman!”
Oh yeah.
That sounds fucking awesome.
Damn, it feels good to say that.
The System helpfully fed my inner eighth-grader another serving of dead-endorphin happiness.
On the screens, Nygma took a deep, shaky breath, desperately trying to restore his image as a cold, calculating genius.
He smiled condescendingly and shook his head.
“Don’t get cocky, piece of meat wearing someone else’s armor.”
“This challenge is fundamentally different from the previous one.”
“At the very least, the scale and stakes are much higher.”
His smile widened further, becoming the grin of a maniac who had finally reached the big red button.
He raised his cane and began explaining the rules.
“Three books.”
“Three bookmarks.”
“Each bookmark contains part of a code.”
“You have ten…”
“Actually, nine,” Nygma corrected himself maliciously.
“Nine minutes to find the books somewhere in this library and give me the code!”
“Otherwise, you’ll blow up Gotham.”
“What a fresh and innovative idea.”
I finished for him, sounding bored as I examined the spine of some encyclopedia.
“Exactly!”
Nygma’s eyes gleamed fanatically beneath his mask.
“Ten bombs hidden throughout a densely populated residential district!”
“Thousands of lives at stake!”
“Thousands of innocent souls who will burn because of your stupidity!”
I stopped.
Slowly, I turned toward the nearest screen.
My undead emotions were muted, but the contempt I felt for this man still managed to push through the cold detachment of my dead mind.
“You’re fucking insane, Eddie.
You know that?”
I shook my head.
“Your little clown gang needs me personally.”
“You want to kill me, but you compensate for your inflated ego and lack of power by taking it out on ordinary civilians.”
“That isn’t even supervillain behavior.”
“It’s the behavior of some bitter, bullied schoolkid who brought a homemade firecracker to class.”
“Cheap.”
I genuinely believed every word.
Compared with the real heavy hitters of this world, the Riddler looked pathetic.
Take Lex Luthor, for example.
The bastard was an egotistical narcissist, but his obsession was, in his twisted and radical way, saving humanity from an alien god.
Or Sinestro, who imposed order through fear, methodically opposing an entire Green Lantern Corps.
They had scale.
They had a twisted sense of pride.
Most importantly, that pride usually prevented them from taking their frustrations out on random civilians.
But this guy?
Even if I eventually choose the full villain route, I wouldn’t mine residential neighborhoods just to get someone’s attention.
There are much more elegant and profitable ways to farm chaos.
“That is your punishment!”
Nygma spat angrily through the speakers, reacting to my lecture.
“If you have the arrogance to take on the mantle of the Dark Knight, then live up to it!”
“Take responsibility!”
“Oh, now that’s interesting.”
I tilted my head slightly.
“What if I hadn’t taken your cheap bait about being Batman?”
“What if I’d simply turned around at the Opera House?”
“Sent you to hell and gone off to eat tacos?”
“Would you actually press the button and kill thousands of people for no reason, without an audience?”
“You wouldn’t leave.”
Nygma answered confidently, with a hint of smugness.
“I constructed your psychological profile perfectly.”
“Even without this costume, you would have gotten involved.”
“You like being the center of attention.”
“You like ruining other people’s plans.”
“You like creating…”
“Chaos.”
“Got me.”
I gave him a respectful, if reluctant, nod.
“You outplayed me.”
“At least your deduction skills worked for once.”
Instead of answering, the Riddler simply pressed something off-screen.
Every monitor suddenly displayed a blood-red timer.
09:00
The countdown began.
Apparently, Nygma had decided to end the conversation on a pleasant note for his oversized ego before I could bring up his mother again.
The screens went dark, leaving only the dry red numbers ticking backward.
Well then.
A challenge is a challenge.
I scratched the back of my head through the Kevlar helmet, my fingers brushing against the rigid bat ear.
The million-dollar question is, how the hell am I supposed to find three damn books in this gigantic fucking library in nine minutes?
I tilted my head back, looking up through the endless levels.
Hundreds of enormous shelves.
Tens, if not hundreds of thousands of books.
Finding three specific bookmarks manually wasn’t a job for Batman.
It was a job for fucking Flash or Superman.
I frowned.
Or like the real Batman, who dealt with this kind of bullshit on a regular basis.
Wait.
I am the real Batman!
Enough feeling sorry for myself.
I forced myself back into cold pragmatism.
I had to pass this challenge.
And it wasn’t even about pity for the thousands of potential civilians about to become barbecue.
It was about the reward.
Saving an entire residential district as part of the story was a guaranteed Feat.
And, at minimum, it should give me a Gold Ticket.
For Gold, I was willing to exercise the few brain cells I had left.
Nygma was a perfectionist.
A deranged bastard, yes, but a perfectionist obsessed with the rules of his own riddles.
He physically couldn’t give me an impossible challenge.
The solution had to be elegant, logical, and…
My wandering gaze caught the black dome of a security camera beneath the ceiling on the second level.
The same cameras that had been broadcasting my beautiful face to Edward just moments ago.
But they’d been working before I arrived.
Someone had to come inside, place the bookmarks in the books, put the books back on the shelves, and configure the entire system.
There’s my answer.
A predatory smile spread across my face.
I turned on my heel and confidently walked toward the door marked:
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
A staircase down to the basement.
A short corridor.
One easy kick destroyed the flimsy lock on the server room.
I stepped inside the security office.
The room smelled of overheated plastic and cheap coffee.
Empty chairs.
Blinking server racks.
On the main surveillance terminal, overlaid across the grid of camera feeds, the same timer mockingly displayed:
07:30
I sat down in the security guard’s chair.
I killed the frozen program with a couple of key commands, then rebooted the terminal to access the local recording archive.
The black screen flickered.
A cursor appeared.
Then a system prompt:
ENTER USER PASSWORD.
Minimum 6 characters.
I quickly searched the desk with my eyes.
I lifted the keyboard.
Checked the edges of the monitor.
Nothing.
No conveniently placed sticky note from a lazy security guard.
No notebook hidden in a drawer.
Everything had been cleaned up.
Which meant the password had been chosen by him personally.
Who is everything and nothing?
I remembered his opening riddle.
“Definitely a meta answer.”
I muttered to myself.
“And one with a heavy dose of narcissism.”
My fingers settled over the keyboard.
I quickly typed:
Riddle
Then hit Enter.
The screen flickered.
The lock interface disappeared.
A grid of dozens of surveillance feeds from Gotham Central Library opened before me.
The Riddler wouldn’t be the Riddler if he didn’t use his own nickname as the master password.
Ego the size of Jupiter.
I grabbed the timeline slider and dragged it backward.
Playback speed:
200x.
For an ordinary person, the footage would have become an incomprehensible gray blur that would probably make their eyes bleed within seconds.
My perception as a Higher Undead operated on a completely different level.
My brain had no trouble picking out and analyzing individual frames from the rapidly moving footage.
“Stop.”
The recording timestamp showed:
4:12 AM.
Several blurry figures slipped through the back entrance and began moving hurriedly between the shelves.
I reduced playback to ten times speed.
Ordinary thugs.
Mercenaries in cheap jackets.
Over the next thirty seconds, I identified and memorized roughly ten bookshelves where they could potentially have hidden the key bookmarks.
The poor nighttime lighting prevented me from determining the exact locations.
But ten shelves were manageable.
It wasn’t hundreds.
And the footage clearly showed the idiots deliberately wandering around and making fake stops to confuse anyone who might investigate later.
Way too much effort to run through someone else’s maze.
I’m a mouse, but at least I’m a proud mouse.
I got out of the chair, left the cramped surveillance room, and returned to the main hall.
The timer on the giant screens was mercilessly counting down.
Less than five minutes remained.
Nygma had disappeared from the screens.
Apparently, he’d gone off to drink chamomile tea, convinced I was currently running around the floors in a panic, frantically flipping through the collected works of Dickens.
Instead, I dramatically snapped my fingers.
The air thickened.
The library suddenly smelled like a crypt.
Then the silence was shattered by the dry crack of bones.
Fifty skeletons appeared, obediently waiting for my command, filling the space between the reading tables.
“I’ve sent you the coordinates through the mental link.”
“Go tear those shelves apart.”
“Find me three pieces of cardboard.”
I issued the order mentally, but there was unmistakable anticipation in my voice.
The skeletal horde immediately scattered.
Books flew from the shelves in waterfalls.
The sound of tearing bindings filled the library.
Skeletons weren’t exactly known for their delicacy.
They simply threw books onto the floor, scanning the shelves with empty eye sockets for bookmarks.
If Edward Nygma could see this barbaric assault on his beloved temple of knowledge, he’d probably have a stroke.
Or maybe he was watching right now, and he was having one.
That would be wonderful.
Unfortunately, I didn’t receive a Platinum+ Ticket for the feat, so I had to settle for waiting.
A minute and a half later, three skeletons approached me.
Each held a pale cardboard bookmark.
I dismissed the army back into oblivion, casually stacked the three pieces together, and looked into the nearest wall camera.
“Done, Eddie.”
I waved the bookmarks directly in front of the lens.
“Now for the code…”
I lowered my gaze to the rebus.
The three pieces of cardboard fit together to form a single image.
This puzzle was slightly more complicated than the embarrassment he’d put on the bomb.
But the answer itself…
“Green Samurai?”
“Seriously, Eddie?”
I didn’t even bother hiding my disgust.
“You made me search through all this shit just so the answer would be ‘Green Samurai’?”
The timer, frozen at 3:15, blinked and disappeared.
Every screen suddenly displayed Nygma’s face, twisted with rage.
“Despite the fact that you blatantly cheated, you bastard…”
The Riddler grumbled, practically spitting into the camera.
“I’ll accept this challenge!”
“Cheated?”
I raised an eyebrow beneath my mask.
“Tell me you’re joking.”
A glowing System window appeared before my eyes.
Feat Completed: Complete the Riddler’s second challenge without allowing a residential district to be destroyed.
Reward: 1 Gold Ticket.
The System notification immediately erased my feigned irritation.
Gold.
Beautiful.
Saving residential neighborhoods is pretty damn profitable.
“Using fifty autonomous mystical constructs capable of independent action in a challenge designed strictly for a single individual is cheating!”
Nygma shrieked hysterically.
He took several heavy breaths before gripping his question-mark cane tightly and jerking his shoulder, forcing himself to regain his composure.
“However, your little skeletons won’t help you in the next challenge.”
He smiled crookedly.
Something else would.
“Something else will.”
I shrugged indifferently.
“And please, Eddie, let it be anything but bombs.”
“I’m already sick of that cheap cliché.”
“Show some imagination.”
“You’ve got Scarecrow sitting around with his fear gas, at the very least.”
“These.”
“Will.”
“Not.”
“Be.”
“Bombs.”
Nygma hissed each word through clenched teeth.
His left eye twitched.
“I’ll give you this cool dagger if that’s true.”
I lied with complete sincerity.
To reinforce the statement, I pulled Knight Slayer from my inventory.
The blade flashed menacingly beneath the library lights, radiating an aura of danger and quality.
Nygma visibly swallowed on the screen.
I immediately returned the dagger to my spatial inventory with a faint mocking chuckle.
“Ahem.”
The Riddler suppressed the greedy glimmer that had appeared in his eyes.
“In that case, your next challenge awaits you at Mercy West Hospital.”
“Until then.”
“But this time…”
“You won’t be talking to me.”
The screens went dark with a soft click.
“Fucking schemer.”
I summarized the situation while standing alone in the silence.
He hadn’t imposed another time limit.
Excellent.
I leisurely left the ravaged library, stepped into Gotham’s cool air, and reached the roof in a few jumps.
Far from unnecessary eyes and exterior security cameras.
Time to monetize my success.
I mentally opened the System interface.
I pulled out the Gold Ticket I’d honestly earned and activated it.
The Ticket dissolved into golden dust, forming a new System notification before my eyes.
Name: Hell Chains
Type: Ability
Rarity: Rare
Description: You can create barbed hell chains capable of binding your targets or being used as weapons in both ranged and close combat.
Oh.
Crowd control and range.
Extremely useful against fast but relatively weak bastards.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to celebrate my new ability.
The System immediately displayed a red warning over the card.
Warning!
Ability slot limit reached.
Maximum Ability Slots: 3
Available actions:
1.
Burn one existing ability and free the slot for the new ability.
2.
Burn the new ability and receive compensation in the form of a lower-rarity Ticket, Silver.
3.
Fuse the new ability with one of your existing abilities.
Available synergy: Shadow Mark.
Oh, you fucking monetization dumpster fire.
Only three Ability slots?!
The choice was obvious.
Synergy.
The only path for a proper min-maxer.
The notification flashed and disappeared.
The newly acquired ability immediately merged with Shadow Mark.
Then it transformed.
Name: Shadow Binding
Type: Ability
Rarity: Rare+
Description: You can create durable chains from the shadow of your target or your own shadow.
These chains possess a semi-magical nature and can completely bind an opponent, pull them toward you, or be used as whips.
Effectiveness depends on the density of shadows in the surrounding area.
Not bad.
I smiled beneath the mask.
The mention of their “semi-magical nature” especially pleased me.
That meant these chains might actually be capable of holding even Superman.
Maybe only for a couple of seconds.
But against a Kryptonian, even one second was an eternity.
I mentally checked another box.
That had been my twenty-fourth Ticket activation.
Which meant six more Tickets remained before I received another System curse.
I sprinted across the rooftops toward Mercy West Hospital.
I couldn’t help thinking about Nygma’s promise.
Someone other than him would be waiting for me there.
I hadn’t expected a personal meeting with the villains anyway.
They weren’t stupid enough to put themselves directly in front of the Dark Knight this early.
Still, at least there would be some variety.
A few minutes later, the gray building of Mercy Hospital came into view.
Unlike the library, this place was alive.
Ambulance lights flashed below.
Medical staff hurried through the entrances.
Anxious relatives smoked nervously outside.
But that wasn’t what caught my attention.
On the hospital roof, right at the edge of the parapet, stood a thin, hunched figure wearing filthy brown rags.
A gas mask covered his face, complete with the distinctive filter tubes.
The figure stood completely still, staring directly at me from across the gap between our buildings.
Scarecrow.
Jonathan Crane himself.
I narrowed my eyes and studied the silhouette.
No emotion.
And certainly no fear.
I simply waited.
One second.
Two.
Three.
Silence.
I see.
I smiled crookedly.
I still hadn’t received a System notification announcing an encounter with a Named Character.
A crude, cheap trap.
Probably some poor bastard drugged with a toxin and dressed up in Crane’s clothes.
The System isn’t reacting, so the boss isn’t actually here.
Still, even if the notification had appeared, I wouldn’t have charged straight at him.
Traps were delicate things.
And who knew what surprise would be waiting for me if I killed this poor bastard