The first Gold Ticket went straight into the System’s randomizer.
That familiar weight materialized inside my spatial pocket.
Name: Dragon Slayer
Type: Item
Rarity: Uncommon, Astral Tempering
Description:
It was too large to be called a sword.
Massive, thick, heavy, and crude.
Essentially, it was a pile of unfinished iron.
This enormous, blunt, unwieldy sword, larger than a man, possessed supernatural durability.
Washed in the blood of countless spirits and astral beings, it could inflict physical damage even on incorporeal entities.
An ageless classic.
One of my favorite “crowbars” across all the inhabited worlds I’d visited.
Considering my active Heavy Weapons Specialist Trait, this chunk of black iron in my hands became an argument I could take into a fight against even Superman.
There’s a little truth behind every joke, but right now I genuinely felt like I could cut straight through reality itself.
And now I have every moral right to loudly shout to the entire neighborhood that I just want to be happy!
A funny thought crossed my mind.
Apparently, the Gacha, or whatever entity was turning its gears, possessed at least the beginnings of a sense of humor and could read minds.
Otherwise, there was no way to explain the next item that came out of the same Ticket as anything other than an absurd coincidence.
Name: Happy Romantic
Type: Trait
Rarity: Uncommon
Description:
You will have significantly better luck in your love life.
The chance of meeting “the one” and developing a harmonious relationship is substantially increased.
“I just want to be happy, huh?”
I mentally snorted and activated the Trait without hesitation.
Why not?
Gotham, Metropolis, and this entire world were full of interesting women.
I’d long since grown out of the phase where I pretended to be some brooding lone wolf staring into the sunset from the top of the highest mountain.
If an opportunity presented itself, I’d take it.
Sure, for me, relationships tended to be brief affairs.
Considering the scale of my life, even two or three decades could easily qualify as a “passing fling.”
That didn’t make the experience any less enjoyable.
At least it’s not a Harem Trait.
I involuntarily shuddered, a cold chill running across my corpse-pale skin.
I fucking hated harems.
At one point, while I was the Demon King in one of the worlds I’d visited, I’d practically written an unofficial doctoral thesis on the subject:
“The Harem as the Highest Form of Dysfunctional Relationships.”
I’d needed to defeat another “Chosen One,” naturally accompanied by an entire entourage of lovestruck girls, without using brute force.
So I dismantled his group simply through psychological pressure, pointing out the logical contradictions in their relationships.
The only problem was that the same arguments hit me just as hard.
I’d become so convinced by my own reasoning that No Harems became one of the fundamental rules governing my adventures afterward.
Objectively speaking, there were more disadvantages to the concept than there were problems in my current situation.
First, there was the lack of emotional attention.
One person, even someone with a “super” attached to their name, physically couldn’t provide genuine warmth, support, and quality time to several partners simultaneously.
Someone in that queue for affection would inevitably feel like the backup option.
Constant competition.
Jealousy.
Backstabbing and subtle wars over who got to be closest to the “hero.”
That’s not a peaceful relationship.
That’s a fucking snake pit.
And the logistics?
That’s a nightmare.
You’d have to juggle everything like a circus performer.
Dating schedules, living arrangements, private conversations…
Once you’ve got more than three women, your life becomes the Heathrow Airport control tower instead of a romantic fantasy.
But the most disgusting thing about harems was the erasure of individuality.
The women simply became collectible cards, a collection of character archetypes:
“The tsundere.”
“The shy one.”
“The older-sister type.”
They stopped being people and existed only to satisfy the protagonist’s narcissistic fantasy.
And after thousands of years, I’d had more than enough of that.
These days, what mattered to me was genuine, honest, and, most importantly, exclusive emotion.
I shook my head and forced the intrusive thoughts away.
It was a sensitive subject for me.
I’d seen the light disappear from too many women’s eyes in those kinds of “relationships.”
Time to return to reality.
The third Gold Ticket.
Name: Shadow Mark
Type: Ability
Rarity: Rare
Description:
Allows you to interact with the shadows of sentient beings as though they were real physical objects.
You can step on someone’s shadow, immobilizing its owner, grab it, or pull it toward yourself.
Oh.
My first active ability.
And, for once, it wasn’t useless.
In a world packed with ridiculously fast people in masks, the ability to literally pin an opponent to the ground through their own shadow was a serious trump card.
Of course, it probably wouldn’t hold someone like Superman for very long, if it worked on him at all.
He’d probably just rip a chunk of concrete out of the ground along with his shadow.
But against most low and mid-tier heroes and villains?
It would be more than enough.
And finally…
The grand finale.
My Platinum jackpot.
I held my breath.
Technically, I didn’t need to breathe anymore, but old habits die hard.
Name: Kinetic Energy Absorption
Type: Ability, Passive/Active
Rarity: Epic
Description:
Allows your body to absorb and store the energy of any directed physical force.
Punches, shockwaves, collisions, all of them simply charge your internal battery.
The accumulated energy can be released to enhance your own attacks or perform powerful bursts of movement.
If the energy remains unused for an extended period, it will gradually dissipate.
An Epic-tier passive!
Now I genuinely felt like Happy wasn’t just a Trait in my profile.
With this ability, I was practically invulnerable in close combat.
I hadn’t regenerated my ears or fingers, unfortunately, but my threat rating had just skyrocketed by roughly three hundred percent.
An exit finally appeared ahead of us.
The massive Depot doors were riddled with bullet holes.
I could already sense people waiting outside.
I’d extended my Terror Aura forward in a thin trail, and it had already detected dozens of tense, beating hearts.
“Hands behind your head!
Drop your weapons!
You’re surrounded!”
The moment we stepped into the fresh air, Gotham’s reality came crashing down on us in all its glory.
A squad of operators wearing heavy tactical armor had formed a semicircle around the exit.
Dozens of assault rifles were aimed directly at us.
Red laser sights danced across my clown jumpsuit.
The ARGUS insignia on their uniforms left no doubt about whose party this was.
Amanda Waller didn’t like it when something was outside her control.
I raised my eyes.
On the roof of the neighboring hangar stood a dark figure, frozen in the dramatic pose of a gargoyle.
His cape fluttered in the cold wind.
The pointed ears of his helmet stood out sharply against the night sky.
Besides the infantry and Batman, two black helicopters hovered overhead, their searchlights blinding us.
Several armored personnel carriers rumbled behind the operators.
Waller hadn’t held back.
The elimination of an “uncontrollable threat” had been given the highest priority.
And all of this was, naturally, thanks to Batman.
The very same “protector of the city” who, in theory, shouldn’t have allowed ARGUS anywhere near Gotham.
A hypocrite to the core.
When he couldn’t handle something himself, he called in the government’s attack dogs.
Everything is going exactly as planned.
I bared my teeth, deliberately showing ARGUS my corpse-pale smile.
A thought was all it took.
My spatial pocket released its heaviest possession.
The massive, blue-black Dragon Slayer materialized in my hand.
The sword’s weight, enhanced by my Heavy Weapons Specialist Trait, felt like an extension of my own body.
I slammed its tip against the concrete.
The impact sent a cloud of stone fragments into the air.
Let the Ticket farming begin!
The silence beneath the vaulted ceiling of the Batcave was heavy, sterile, and cold.
The familiar hum of servers was interrupted only by the sharp, metallic sound of the elevator arriving.
A massive figure staggered out of the cabin.
Batman.
But beneath the heavy armor wasn’t Bruce.
Thomas Wayne, gasping through waves of pain, gripped the cold edge of a steel table.
Every step was agony.
His rib cage had been reduced to a mess of fractured bones and deep bruises.
Grunting with effort, he practically dragged himself into a medical pod.
The mechanical arms, thin and insect-like, immediately came to life.
With a quiet hiss, they began removing the damaged plates of his suit.
The Kevlar had been ripped apart like wrapping paper, exposing the dry, scar-covered body of a fifty-year-old man.
“And what exactly was the point of all that?”
The voice came from the darkness before its owner rolled into the cold circle of light.
Barbara Gordon.
Her red hair was tied into a messy ponytail, glasses perched on the bridge of her nose, their lenses reflecting endless streams of data from the monitors.
She rolled her wheelchair right up beside the medical pod, watching closely as the laser scanners examined Thomas’s fractures.
“You didn’t actually think ARGUS could take him, did you?”
She wasn’t asking.
She was stating a fact.
“Did you, Thomas?”
The man briefly closed his eyes as a surgical clamp repositioned one of his ribs.
His face, covered in a network of wrinkles and fresh abrasions, twisted into a grimace.
His strong chin remained stubbornly raised.
He had always been harder than his son.
Less flexible.
More willing to resort to extreme measures.
“Assessment,” he breathed through clenched teeth.
“I needed a field test of his abilities.
His actual combat potential.
A more comprehensive comparison with that harmless psychological profile of the “Kirkman office clerk” Alfred sent me.”
“Everything was obvious,” Barbara said irritably, adjusting her glasses.
“An obvious metahuman.
Obvious psychological instability.
You didn’t need to throw government personnel at him and break your ribs against that…
enormous piece of metal just to figure that out.”
“That wasn’t enough, Barbara.”
Thomas’s eyes snapped open.
There was steel in them.
“Now we know he’s a metahuman with escalating potential.
A growing threat.
People like that need to be isolated or eliminated early, before they realize the full extent of their power.”
“You created an enemy for yourself out of nowhere,” Barbara said, gripping the wheels of her chair until her knuckles turned white.
“Again.
Why send Waller’s assault teams after him?
Why not simply…
make contact?
Talk to him?”
“Talk?”
Thomas gave a bitter laugh before flinching as the anesthetic needle entered his body.
“He’s a killer, Barbara!
Thirty-seven bodies in that arena.
Yes, they were Joker’s men, but he killed them as casually as if he were mowing the lawn.
He’s already crossed the line, and I don’t negotiate with people who consider killing an acceptable solution.”
Barbara frowned.
A wall of misunderstanding seemed to rise between them, growing higher with every passing day.
“He saved eleven people, Thomas.”
Her voice was firm.
“The people you and your ‘blue boy scout’ left to die while you rescued the Joker’s precious hide.
He didn’t kill a single ARGUS operative.
He didn’t even kill you, despite having enough power to cut you in half with that sword.”
She paused.
“Despite all his… You are reading on g.com, the official source.
unpleasant comments toward you, all he did was teach you a lesson in physics by breaking a couple of your ribs.”
Barbara’s voice became quieter, but harder.
“By your logic, the other survivors are killers too.
They cut each other apart during the first stage.
Are you planning to ‘isolate’ them as well?”
“They had no choice.”
Thomas shook his head with difficulty.
His voice was dull with exhaustion.
“They were driven by fear.
That boy had power.
With his abilities, he could have stopped the Joker in the first minute and prevented the deaths.
But instead, he chose to play the Joker’s games.”
“You just said he’s getting stronger!” Barbara shot back.
“How do we know what he could do at the beginning?
Maybe those abilities awakened right there because of the stress!”
“Whose side are you on, Barbara?”
Batman looked at her with a heavy, exhausted stare.
There was no warmth in his eyes.
Only the endless fatigue of a man who had become accustomed to seeing nothing but shadows in the world.
“I’m on the side of common sense, Thomas.”
Barbara didn’t back down.
“And common sense is screaming at me that there is no logic behind what you’re doing.
It’s just paranoia.”
She hesitated.
“Maybe if Jason were here, he’d actually support your ‘radical approach’ toward the newcomer…”
“Jason is a traitor.”
Thomas cut her off.
The subject was closed.
“As for Kirkman…”
He fell silent for several seconds, staring into the dark ceiling of the cave where bats crawled through the shadows.
“Besides being a metahuman and an executioner, he’s…
completely unpredictable.”
“Chaos in its purest form.”
“Like the Joker,” Barbara replied, folding her arms.
“No.
Not like the Joker.”
Thomas shook his head almost imperceptibly.
“The Joker’s psychosis is understandable.
His personality rests on three pillars: death, madness, and his obsession with Batman.
He can be predicted.”
“But Kirkman?”
“I don’t understand what he wants.”
“There is no pattern to him.
There’s more primal chaos inside that man than in half the patients at Arkham.”
Thomas’s expression hardened.
“I allowed ARGUS to act so I could see how he reacted to external pressure.”
“And what I saw…
I didn’t like.”
Barbara simply sighed sadly.
Thomas was changing.
Bruce’s death had burned away whatever common sense and rationality he had once preached as a businessman.
Now he was being driven by emotions that he disguised as cold calculation.
And that couldn’t end well.
“If you don’t care about Jason, what about Bruce?”
Her voice trembled slightly.
“Do you think your son would have acted the same way?
Been just as brutal?
Just as reckless?”
The silence in the cave became almost tangible.
The medical pod’s mechanical arms stopped after finishing the sutures.
“Bruce…
died two years ago.”
Thomas exhaled.
For the first time, genuine, uncovered pain broke through his voice.
“How he would have acted, we can only guess.”
“But I’m certain of one thing.”
“He would have done everything necessary to keep Gotham safe.”
“Just as I am.”
That’s exactly why you sent Superman to pull the Joker out of the line of fire instead of saving the hostages, Barbara thought bitterly.
She was increasingly considering leaving.
Ever since Thomas and Victor had finished developing the Alfred AI, which had taken over the overwhelming majority of the analytical workload, Oracle had become more of a burden than an asset.
A companion for a man who was slowly but surely losing his grip on reality.
“Alfred.”
Thomas raised his voice, addressing the empty cave.
“At your service, sir.”
The calm, mechanical voice came from the speakers, carrying a slight British accent.
“Protocol Helios.”
“Objective: Complete surveillance of Charles Kirkman.”
“For now, observation only.”
“But thorough observation.”
“Understood, sir.
Initiating global search algorithms.”
Barbara felt a chill run down her spine.
“Helios?”
She whispered, unable to believe what she’d heard.
“Thomas, you didn’t activate that even to capture the Joker during his bloodiest rampages!”
She knew exactly what it was.
Every camera in the city intercepted.
Government satellites accessed in violation of every security protocol.
Total surveillance of traffic, phone calls, and communication frequencies.
It was a digital god.
An all-seeing eye that neither Thomas nor Bruce had ever dared to fully unleash because they feared that taking the easy route would permanently turn them into the very people they fought against.
“The situation has changed, Barbara.”
Thomas closed his eyes as the pod slowly began sealing itself, preparing to put him into a healing sleep.
“The world has become harsher.”
“And we need to change with it.”
“I can no longer rely on Clark, the sluggish ARGUS, or the rest of the League.”
“As long as Charles is in Gotham, he’s my problem.”
“And I’ll deal with him my way.”