Bruce sat at his workbench, repairing a large pile of equipment and gadgets.
The fight with the League of Shadows was tough. Although he defeated them and thwarted their plot, he still did not kill anyone. This allowed Henri Ducard to ultimately escape. Because Bruce had destroyed the water vaporization device beforehand, Henri Ducard did not have a final showdown with Batman on the train and die when it crashed.
This time, after seeing that the situation was unsalvageable, Henri Ducard decisively chose to retreat, taking most of the League's elites with him.
This meant that the League could return at any time, and Gotham was still constantly facing the possibility of destruction.
Bruce thought quietly, his tools untouched for half an hour. He wondered if his consistent adherence to the no-kill principle, which left Gotham under the long shadow of destruction, was right or wrong.
When he faced off against Henri Ducard, if he had carried lethal weapons, perhaps most of the League would have escaped, but Henri Ducard, as the true leader, would definitely have died by his hand.
After much deliberation, he still had no answer. He suspected he might never get a clear answer in his lifetime.
Turning his head, he immediately saw the suit of armor Tony had given him.
The heavy, dark metal armor was placed there, unsupported by tools. It was so heavy that it could not be moved without equipment.
Because it was too heavy and Tony had told him it was a semi-finished product, he had put the armor aside, intending to study it slowly after dealing with the League.
Now that Ethan and Tony had been gone for a while, and the League's plot had been thwarted, he had time to study this thing.
"Finding something to distract myself is also an option."
He genuinely did not have much to do lately. The preparations for Wayne Enterprises' public listing were proceeding steadily. He was indirectly acquiring the company's shares through multiple institutions from the outside. These matters were all progressing as planned and did not require much of his personal attention.
With the League defeated and Falcone severely weakened, which deterred many criminals, Gotham was currently experiencing a rare period of tranquility. He had not needed to put on the Batsuit and roam the city fighting crime for the past two days.
When idle, he tended to overthink, so he decided to keep himself busy.
Given Tony's personality, he probably would not leave behind a problem that was easily solved.
Standing up, he circled the black armor. He still could not find anything special about it. Its appearance was similar to his Batsuit, but much heavier, and he did not see any energy source.
After several months of interaction, Bruce knew that although Tony understood magic and could use mystical energy, the energy source for his nanotech armor was actually the Arc Reactor, usually hidden under his clothes. When using the armor, the glowing spot on his chest was the energy source.
But this black armor had no such thing, nor did he see a suitable place to mount an energy source.
He did not believe Tony would intentionally forget to leave a space for installing an energy source. Since it was not visible on the outside, was it inside. Perhaps he should open it up and take a look.
Reaching out and touching the armor, he merely wanted to see where the detachable connection points were. Unexpectedly, the moment his hand touched the black armor, glowing patterns suddenly appeared on it, spreading from the point of his touch across the entire suit. After these glowing patterns covered the whole armor, it automatically unfolded.
He watched all of this quietly. He knew that Tony and Ethan possessed extraordinary abilities and had personally witnessed Ethan casting magic. The mage used magic even in his daily life. After seeing it for so long, Bruce and Alfred were no longer surprised by such things.
Looking at the unfolded armor, he noticed that in this state, it resembled a bat with its maw wide open, as if ready to swallow him whole.
Without a doubt, this was definitely Tony's doing.
"What an exasperatingly bad sense of humor."
He gave a helpless, wry smile, then fumbled his way to the center of the unfolded armor.
As soon as he was in position, without needing to do anything extra, the entire suit began to close on its own, and the parts that had spread out returned to their previous form.
He made no extra movements, quietly waiting for the armor to close.
The heavy faceplate came down, plunging his vision into darkness. The armor's eye slits were not transparent. It seemed that without activating the display, he was effectively blind.
The armor was quickly donned again, but the startup sequence he expected was slow to appear. He tried to move slightly and found himself completely immobilized within the heavy armor.
"Oh, this is just... great..."
He mumbled helplessly, trying hard to get out of the armor. He also tried using voice commands, but the armor did not react at all. Just like when he had been looking at it from the outside, it was just a very heavy piece of metal equipment, impossible to move with human strength.
"This joke isn't funny at all, Tony..."
After repeatedly trying every method he could think of, he gave up on trying to get out. Alfred would come down to find him when he realized something was wrong, and then he could help him out of this predicament.
Having given up on the idea of getting out, he began to ponder the deeper meaning behind Tony's actions.
He did not believe Tony was just playing a joke on him, creating this giant thing just to trap him inside.
Since he made it possible to open the armor with a touch, allowing him in easily, yet provided no prompts and prevented him from leaving, it proved that Tony wanted him to stay inside.
Perhaps the way out was very simple, he had just been using the wrong methods before. And using this method of trapping him might be to get him to focus on something else.
"What could it be?"
It was pitch black before his eyes, and he realized he could not hear any sounds from outside either. The Batcave was not a quiet place, yet no sound reached his ears. At the same time, he could not smell anything. The Batcave was not a clean place, and various equipment and facilities would more or less emit some smells.
He could not perceive any of these things. If his body had not been able to feel the hard armor, he would have even suspected that he had lost all his senses, with only his brain left to think.
"Think?"
He thought of a possibility, but he did not understand what simple thinking could do. That is, until he remembered what the mages called meditation.
This concept had been mentioned in countless novels and games.
At the same time, many religions and some martial arts practices also mentioned meditation. Bruce had learned many things, and of course, he understood meditation. But at that time it was a method of mental cultivation used to clear distracting thoughts and strengthen one's inner self. Could Tony want him to learn the mage's meditation here?
Since there was no other choice, he began to try and clear his mind, staying quietly inside this armor.
After an unknown amount of time, he, whose eyes had been in constant darkness, seemed to see many colors in a trance. He found that he seemed able to use his thoughts to move closer to the points of light emitting various colors.
What he did not know was that at this moment, glowing patterns appeared on the black armor again, but they suddenly changed from the initial purple to golden yellow, and finally transformed into pitch-black lines that seemed capable of swallowing everything...
"So, you gave Bruce a learning machine just to see if he would choose the path of the supernatural?"
"How about it, is it not interesting, and are you not curious about what the result will be?"
Tony, with a smug look, explained in detail to Ethan about his special armor specifically designed for cultivating energy affinity, control, and usage.
When he said it was a semi-finished product before, of course, he was just fooling Bruce. What he gave him was a complete finished product.
The appearance and such were meaningless, and the opening and closing were just to trap Bruce, not for any special deep meaning.
The armor's greatest function was to allow talented people to better come into contact with energy, to come into contact with and become familiar with those energies at a lower difficulty. To a certain extent, it could also determine if someone had the talent to learn and use energy.
Furthermore, the energy attributes that this set of armor could come into contact with were not infinite. Even Ethan could not do that, let alone Tony.
The energy the armor could access was mainly Arcane, Holy Light, Shadow, as well as elemental power and natural power that could be sensed in most worlds. Of course, if the world itself possessed a certain energy, it would also be detected by the armor and presented to the user, to see if they could or were willing to master it.
The principle of this thing was not complicated. Many of the principles were used in modern technological equipment, and Tony integrated these principles into magical applications, eventually creating this thing.
As for the combat power of this set of armor, initially, this thing was just a display. If Bruce was willing to come into contact with and learn to master a certain energy, this set of armor would gain power from it and then become a convenient tool for the user to cast spells. The effect was similar to a staff.
"The armor also contains some basic magical knowledge, but it will only be triggered if the user themselves has mastered the corresponding energy."
After speaking, Tony made a gesture of that is it, no big deal, but the smug look on his face was obvious to anyone with normal vision.
(To be continued.)