"Take off your mask and stop being so tense, Master."
Beside the high throne of the grand palace, the woman practically threw her entire body into Batman's embrace, her fingers gently tracing the contour of his jawline.
"You did it. You've made the whole world exactly as you wanted it to be. You can finally rest easy."
"Enjoy all of this with peace of mind. It's what you deserve."
Batman watched in silence as the woman's stunningly beautiful face drew closer and closer to his own.
Finally, just a split second before her full red lips could touch his slightly pursed ones, Batman spoke:
"Where is this? Who are you?"
"Have you forgotten? This is the palace you built for yourself after completing everything," the woman's soft blonde hair brushed against Batman's face. "I am Amora, your most devout servant."
"I don't recall ever having a servant," Batman said. He wanted to look into Amora's eyes, but an instinctual thought warned him not to.
"My master, you need to rest," Amora said, her hands slowly wrapping around Batman's neck as she attempted to remove the cowl from his face.
She succeeded.
But a flash of astonishment crossed Amora's face. Beneath the cowl, there was shockingly another cowl.
Refusing to believe her eyes, she pulled it off again, but there was still another cowl underneath.
Amora blinked in confusion. This time, she stopped trying to remove the mask. Instead, she cupped Batman's face with both hands, trying to force him to look directly at her.
The moment before their eyes met, Batman felt an awkward, uneasy sensation. He forced his gaze away from the bridge of her pert nose and red lips, sliding down past her long, creamy neck to look further down.
It was like an abyss, practically capable of swallowing Batman whole.
Amora smiled faintly. Seizing the moment, she withdrew her hands from Batman's face and glided away from him, joining the ranks of dancers swaying gracefully on the dance floor.
Batman followed her figure with his eyes, noticing that every single female dancer on the floor possessed an exquisite face and figure.
The only thing ruining their aesthetic beauty was a spider clinging to each woman's collarbone.
Batman lapsed into silence once more, watching Amora dance for quite some time before she finally left the floor and returned to his side.
"Master, you have always guarded your secrets and refused to let your guard down. But I want to tell you that here, you don't have to worry about anything. No one can hurt you, and no one can hurt us..."
Amora stood behind the high throne, leaning her head close to Batman's ear:
"Spiders..."
Snap!
Almost the exact instant the word "spiders" left her lips, Batman's hand shot out, clamping down on Amora's neck in a death grip.
"Master..."
Amora whimpered in pain.
Batman remained expressionless, keeping his eyes locked onto Amora's chin instead of looking into her eyes:
"Your goal is the Spider-Totem?"
"What totem? I don't know... Master, let go of me, quick!" Amora whimpered with increasing agony.
Two streams of tears trickled down the curves of her near-flawless face, hitting the palace floor with a metallic clinking sound.
Batman looked down and saw that the teardrops had actually turned into glittering pieces of gold, diamonds, and pearls.
"Amora, you're no servant." Batman brought his gaze back up to her chin. "Who exactly are you?"
Batman squeezed with immense force, pinning Amora's neck tightly and leaving bright red finger marks on her snow-white, swan-like neck.
In the next second, Amora stopped breathing completely.
Batman frowned as he watched Amora turn into a pitch-black shadow, slipping from his palm and reforming five meters away by one of the palace pillars.
The pitch-black shadow gradually shifted back into Amora's appearance. She wore her familiar green tiara and green strapless dress, leaning against the pillar with an elegant and composed posture:
"You don't need to know who I am, but you're an interesting fellow. If we get the chance, we should have a nice chat somewhere else."
"Though, I suppose I should tell you who I am... Some call me the Temptress, but I prefer the title of the Enchantress."
With that, Amora blew Batman a kiss. Right after, the dancers on the floor collapsed one by one, turning into pitch-black shadows that dissolved into her body.
In the next second, Amora vanished. The palace collapsed, the high throne exploded into pieces, and Batman dissolved into a swarm of bats, disappearing entirely.
Whoosh! Whoosh!
As the night wind brushed against his face, Batman caught the lingering heat of an explosion, the metallic tang of earth, and the scent of gunpowder.
One second he was in a grand palace, and the next, he was right back inside the weapons factory outside the Wakandan Vibranium mine.
"Amora the Enchantress?" Batman's eyes flashed like torches as he stared into the distance toward the Wakandan royal city.
Throughout the illusion just now, Batman's consciousness had remained fully awake. However, he had secretly tried several times and failed to break free from the hallucination.
Fortunately, his Spider-Sense remained active even within the illusion, warning him not to look into Amora's eyes.
"Her goal is the Spider-Totem? Since she failed to gain any advantage over me, what will she do next?"
The answer wasn't hard to deduce. Batman's heart skipped a beat: The Panther Totem!
Just as Batman was about to use his encrypted comms to contact T'Challa and warn him about the Enchantress, a barrage of noise erupted behind him—so intense that it caused even this body of Peter Parker to feel severe nausea and dizziness.
Batman turned around. The first thing he saw was Wakandans stumbling out of the Vibranium mine in a panic.
Running from the mine, they didn't even have time to cry for help before collapsing one after another under the impact of the noise, foaming at the mouth.
The second thing he saw was a flickering, looming purple silhouette. It was massive, towering higher than the Vibranium mountains—at least a hundred meters tall—and the non-stop noise was emitting right from within its body.
The noise sometimes coalesced and sometimes rippled out in all directions, causing the purple silhouette to shift along with it, resembling a massive lump of translucent jelly.
Pulling his cape in front of him, Batman looked up at the colossal purple silhouette and spotted a highly familiar object right at the dead center of its core.
It was none other than Ulysses Klaue's sonic weapon.
The purple silhouette emitted intermittent bursts of noise, the chaotic sounds piecing together into words, finally forming a coherent sentence:
"I can hear the sound... I can feel the sound... I am sound—no, NOISE!"
Though the voice was chaotic, Batman could still discern the distinct tones of Ulysses Klaue within it.
This thing was what Ulysses Klaue had transformed into.
Batman frowned, then pressed two buttons simultaneously. One was for encrypted communications:
"T'Challa, the Panther God is in danger."
The second button sent out an activation signal.
Almost the exact instant Batman pressed the button, far across the Wakandan border, a massive, crab-like mecha quietly parked inside the Batwing lit up.
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