What bad thoughts can Batman have?

Chapter 975 The Greatest Scheme the Laughing Bat Has Ever Suffered
I am the Bat of Laughter, and as you can see, I have pushed my plan to its final stage.

You see, I'm never worried that Batman: Dragon will fail. That's the most interesting thing. Superheroes always win; that's a truth.

When you peruse history books and discover that all the suffering you endured was nothing more than a well-deserved joke, you'll feel the same way I do—just want to laugh out loud from the bottom of your heart.

You see, most things are meaningless. For ordinary people, they just use those things to fill their lives and forget their fear of death. But it's different for us. We are superheroes. Although Bruce Wayne is still a mortal, I have been dragged into a more cruel grand narrative and become a small cog in it.

As we all know, superheroes are immortal.

No matter how many times the universe restarts, whether they want to or not, they will eventually return.

So what's the point of all this?
Compared to ordinary people, superheroes are more like slaves to fate.

Every mortal in the multiverse has the right to choose.

Take those two ordinary people for example. You think I can't see death? You think my gaze can't penetrate the boundaries of the mundane?
Those ordinary mortals from the Dark Multiverse named Sean and Boris, living in the multiverse during the DC Multiverse Rebirth, can be police officers, criminals, or even a clown laughing wildly on stage. But I, Bruce Wayne, must always be Batman.

Yes, every Wayne ends up as Batman. Even if I become something else, Batman will catch up with me and make me suffer a terrible death.

The day I inhaled the clown's gas, I saw the truth of the multiverse.

That wasn't just confined to the Dark Multiverse; I saw every Wayne enslaved by that giant bat shadow, unable to escape or break free.

If I become mayor, Bruce Wayne will be killed by the mob. You know I once claimed to others that I killed Mayor Wayne—yes, of course I said that. It was my last bit of self-respect… How should I put it, pity, or a timely joke?

At least this joke would make him sound like he didn't die a natural death because of the harm I caused, rather than because of the malice that fills the multiverse.

In fact, we are both aware of this malice.

Only Bruce Wayne in a flawed universe like the Dark Multiverse has the chance to avoid becoming Batman, but this experience will eventually return to the inevitable theme of the multiverse, ultimately leading to the tragic death of every Bruce.

Oh, not to mention Bruce Wayne from the normal multiverse, they will all embark on that path. No matter what profession they choose, even becoming a maid will turn them into Batman's maid. It's a curse, an absurd curse.

And I was born to break this curse.

I am the ultimate answer, the cure for all problems.

I want to liberate all Bruce from the name Batman.

I will save you, I will save all of you.

I first saved my bat family, so they no longer have to painfully fulfill all the duties and suffering imposed on them by the multiverse.

I try my best to save every Bruce, to warm them with my smile. When faced with an inescapable fate, what other remedy is there but a smile?

People from the multiverse think I'm crazy, but I'm not. I just found a way to save all of Bruce from a bigger perspective, and to save myself as well.

I will stop all Bruce Wayne from bearing the painful fate of being called Batman once and for all. I know no Batman will understand me, but that doesn't matter. I've already made peace with myself through laughter.

From the moment I awoke, I vowed that I would never go back to those mundane, terrible, hopeless years.

And at this very moment, my plan has finally entered the prelude to its final stage, and my ultimate solution to save everything is beckoning to me from afar.

As Batman: Dragon battles Perpetua, and as he fulfills his tragic fate, my plan finally makes decisive progress.

A piece of Papetua's finger.

I only need a little bit, I only need an opportunity, an opportunity to glimpse the true nature of the power of the transcendent.

Perpetua originally had the opportunity to become a transcendent being, or rather, she herself was an origin deity transcending a cosmic level. They could create multiverses at will. According to my calculations, Perpetua at her peak, before she created the DC multiverse, was even more powerful than Doctor Manhattan!

Why would Perpetua, a powerful being from the Origin Hands, sacrifice most of his power to build the DC multiverse? Given that Perpetua was destined to have no way to resist, he should have sacrificed himself, completely merging into the multiverse to become its nourishment, thus freeing the DC multiverse from its current state of disarray.

How exactly does their power originate? And how do Outer Gods like the Void Hand survive by devouring the multiverse?
All these questions will be answered if I obtain a piece of Papetua's finger. I can't wait any longer. My research on Dr. Manhattan is making no progress, and my attempts to replicate the Manhattan bat have repeatedly failed. There must be some reason for this that I don't know, and Papetua's finger can give me the answer.

I know how tough Batman Dragon is, but this might be my only chance, so I have to take the risk.

This is the best opportunity yet. Perpetua is so weak and Batman Dragon is there to assist him. If I miss this chance, the next one I'll probably face is Perpetua at his peak, having mastered the combined power.

At that time, having transformed the entire DC multiverse into weapons of war, it became absolutely impossible for her to seize a part of his body.

Just this once. This very moment. The Batman Who Laughs can get infinitely closer to his goal. He can rapidly advance his plan. He had prepared for this moment many years ago. Once he gets what he wants, he will no longer need to concern himself with the conflict between Batman Dragon and Perpetual. He will take his spoils and flee immediately, find a corner where no one will notice him, and quietly hide away to digest his gains.

He was quite certain he would be able to absorb all the secrets hidden in Papetua's finger, and at best, by the time they met again, he would probably be laughing maniacally in Manhattan. Strictly speaking, the Maniac knew he was taking a risk, but this time...

"I will succeed. Because it's all part of my plan."

When Batman has a plan, Batman is invincible!
Boom...

An invisible roar reverberated within the DC multiverse. The Bat of Laughter lowered his head and listened intently; it was a roar he had created.

When the Void Hand acquired the essence of N52 Superman, he became a strong candidate for the core of the DC multiverse, which is ultimately an inanimate object, not a truly sentient being.

The Manifestation of Heaven is manifested in the Hand of the Void—what an absurd scene! It's like a wolf entering a sheepfold and facing off against the sheepfold's owner amidst the cheers and support of the lambs. Regardless of whether the wolf or the shepherd wins, the lambs will ultimately end up as a pot of mutton.

Would one choose to let wolves in to escape the fate of being turned into mutton soup by the shepherd? Drinking poison to quench thirst—interesting, but also undeniably effective.

The Batman Who Laughs saw the look of horror on Perpetua's face. The Void Hand's entry had caught her completely off guard. Indeed, the Mother of the Multiverse would never have imagined that Batman Dragon would cooperate with him, the Batman Who Laughs, and would go to such lengths to kill her, even at the cost of releasing the Void Hand.

Hearing the laughter of the Void Hand, and with the N52 Superman Essence as a protective charm, the Bat of Laughter knew that the miracle machines of the DC multiverse were utterly ineffective against the Void Hand. For the Void Hand, the most difficult part was now over; the turtle's shell had been peeled off. The next step was to consider how to cook it to prevent poisoning, and then how to enjoy this sumptuous feast.

"what!!!"

Papetua's cry mingled with the low chuckles of the laughing bats.

The Batman Who Laughs sees Batman Dragon synchronizing his actions to attack Perpetua in order to restrain the Mother of the Multiverse, allowing the Void Hand to begin truly entering the DC Multiverse.

The Void Hand is advancing! Perpetua is summoning the Hypertime Stream. The vicious Mother of the Multiverse uses the Hypertime Stream to bully people. The DC Multiverse's specialty is really too useful. It can directly erase all the enemy's victory. As an Outer God, the Void Hand is really not used to this kind of attack, but it doesn't matter.

Batman: Dragon and The Batman Who Laughs almost simultaneously corrected Perpetual's hastily altered timeline of history. The already fragile history of "The Void Hand not entering the DC multiverse" was shattered in an instant by both of them. A wolf coming in from outside the sheepfold isn't scary; the scariest thing is that there's a traitor inside! The shepherd had just locked the sheepfold door when two sheep opened it from either side—what a joke!
“Great Void Hand, we must annihilate Papetua.”

He laughed as he said this. He knew he shouldn't get too carried away, but allow himself a laugh; the Bat of Laughter had it too hard.

So many years, so much effort and experimentation, and now it's finally going to pay off. He has been preparing for this moment for many, many years.

Yes, he also possesses a trump card that even Batman Dragon doesn't know about.

After realizing just how important N Superman was, the Batman Who Laughs, who had just gained the power of Mandrakal, secretly traveled through the Hypertime Stream.

He once stole 52 seconds from the Hyper-Time Stream. Although this was an altered result, from the moment this reality was established, it has been reflecting every point in time upstream and downstream of the Hyper-Time Stream.

Many things that the Batman Who Laughs had tried but failed to achieve were activated by the chain reaction brought about by the reality of "the Batman Who Laughs obtaining 52 seconds in the DC multiverse" from the moment it became a reality.

Those mistakes that should have led to failure, those errors that the Batman Who Laughs should have made, those countless days spent wandering the Dark Multiverse in vain, were illuminated by these 52 seconds.

The Bat of Laughter is like a string of unlit firecrackers left in the long river of time, and now these 52 seconds are the flames.

The moment the flames were lit, all the previous failures were reversed into successes, and everything exploded like flames, so intensely hot that it would melt the heart of the Laughing Bat!

The Batman Who Laughs opened his palm, and two illusory figures took shape in his hand—the corpses of N52 Superman and N52 Louis.

Their bodies were supposed to drift away with the wind, their souls return to the embrace of death, and their remaining essence would merge with P52 Superman and P52 Louise to form R52 Superman and R52 Louise. However, their bodies were intercepted by the Batman Who Laughs before their destruction, becoming his weapons for his scheming and plotting.

The moment the Void Hand and Papetua clashed in the infinitely formed space, a powerful force suddenly enveloped the Void Hand. If the Manifest Mandate bestowed upon the Void Hand by the multiverse before was merely a babbling brook, at this moment, that babbling brook suddenly transformed into a raging river.

The bodies of N52 Superman and N52 Louise were teleported to the Void Hand's side, and the Void Hand immediately realized its purpose. He used some strange power to fuse the two corpses onto his shoulders, making it appear as if two people were remotely controlling the Void Hand. On a multiverse level, this was equivalent to providing the Void Hand with the most perfect disguise.

At this moment, on the level of the multiverse, the narrative logic is no longer that an Outer God has seized the identity of Superman from the main universe to seize control of the multiverse, but rather that the core of the multiverse has controlled an Outer God to save its own multiverse. For the DC multiverse, these are two completely different concepts.

The essence of the main universe's Superman's body, except for the lack of a soul, is essentially the same as the main universe's Superman, who is still alive!

Superman from the main universe has come to save the multiverse!

"Do it, Lord Void Hand! Sever Perpetua's body! The entire multiverse will be ours!"

As the Laughing Bat uttered this cry, the Void Hand simultaneously opened its massive maw.

He was supposed to bite Papetua's neck, but at that moment he suddenly lost control and bit off Papetua's little finger.

At the same time, the laughing bat appeared beside the little finger, and with a single reach, snatched it away.

He got what he wanted, but also made... his biggest mistake.

(End of this chapter)