The heavy downpour turned into a moderate rain. Zane sat alone in his chair. The desk lamp emitted a warm yellow glow, slightly dispelling a trace of the chill.
His transaction with Gene went fairly smoothly.
When Zane held up five fingers, Gene felt a bit of a sting, thinking the other party was going to demand an exorbitant price. To his surprise, the five fingers only represented five million dollars.
It was actually that little?
The wealthy tycoon revealed a smug smile and cleanly and efficiently completed the transfer right then and there.
After Gene left, Zane was the only one left in the entire office. Listening to the police sirens coming from outside the window and looking at the red and blue lights blurring on the window glass, he felt a joy akin to a bountiful harvest in his heart.
A whole five million dollars... From now on, when eating cold jelly noodles, he could buy two bowls at once—eat one and throw the other away.
Wait, are there even cold jelly noodle stands in Gotham?
Forget it, never mind that, there is still serious business to attend to.
Zane shook his head, temporarily suppressing his excitement. After standing up from the chair, he simply packed his things and immediately left the office.
...
The moderate rain turned into a light, pattering drizzle. The road was filled with puddles. The mirror-smooth water surface reflected colorful neon lights. As speeding vehicles drove by, these colorful reflections were crushed and then reassembled.
After grabbing a late-night snack on the way, Zane returned home.
Too many things had happened today. He didn't feel sleepy at all right now and had absolutely no mood to sleep. He walked straight to the bed and dragged a cardboard box out from underneath.
Inside was exactly that mysterious necromancy magic book.
A faint black mist swirled on the surface of the book cover. Zane took the magic book out and then pressed the activation button on the Omnitrix on his wrist.
The core instantly popped up, and the heads of the ten unlocked aliens lit up.
Zane slid his finger, selected an alien that looked like a humanoid frog, and then pressed down on the popped-up core.
A green light flashed instantly. His body continuously shrank, and after a few seconds, his height was only six inches, which was about fifteen centimeters.
With gray skin and large green eyes, Zane transformed into Grey Matter, looking just like a little humanoid frog standing up.
The brains of the Galvans were extremely highly developed. At this moment, Zane, transformed into Grey Matter, was like a laptop plugged into a top-tier external graphics card. His associative, cognitive, and comprehension abilities all reached an unimaginable level.
Hopping onto the bed, Zane looked at the magic book that was larger than himself. Without hesitation, he used both hands to flip open the cover and began reading the first page.
Galvans have two brains. One brain is used to maintain daily activities, and the other is exclusively used to process information.
It only took Zane a few seconds to understand the contents of the first page. Then, with extremely fast hand speed, he continued to flip through and read.
After the ten-minute time limit passed, Zane had already flipped through the entire necromancy magic book. He thoroughly mastered all the contents within, and his understanding of necromancy rose to a whole new level.
Transforming back into a human, his memory of necromancy from just a moment ago instantly blurred quite a bit. However, a considerable amount of knowledge still remained.
After the ten-minute cooldown passed, Zane repeated the exact same operation.
After changing back into a human, he immediately and carefully recalled all the knowledge from just now, doing his best to retain as much knowledge as possible for a long time.
Continuously repeating this almost cheating-like operation, several hours passed. Zane finally completely and thoroughly understood the contents of the entire book without needing to rely on Grey Matter.
Setting aside the familiar conventional skills of necromancers like summoning undead skeletons or giant monsters, what truly interested Zane in this book was something called Dark Elements.
With the magic effect of Dark Absorption, killing living creatures could yield Dark Elements?
Zane recalled the contents of the book, scratched his chin, and walked to the kitchen.
He turned on the light and picked up a broom. Two cockroaches hurriedly scrambled to escape.
These were local Gotham cockroaches, the kind that pest control companies could never completely eradicate no matter how many times they came. There would always be stubborn individuals surviving in the nooks and crannies, continuing to reproduce.
Zane whispered an incantation, first applying the Dark Absorption buff on himself, which could be cast without Dark Elements. Then, he stomped his foot down hard.
The two cockroaches died on the spot. At the same time, two masses of incredibly pitch-black energy, faintly emitting a trace of purple light from within, darted out of the cockroach corpses and flew into Zane's palm.
With these two clusters of Dark Elements, he immediately felt that some of the more basic necromancy spells could now be cast.
Could this thing be the exclusive mana pool of necromancers?
If killing living creatures could grant this, then wouldn't going to RT-Mart to kill fish be a very promising venture?
Aside from the highly prestigious-sounding Dark Elements, the end of the book also detailed some other rather noteworthy things.
The place of death of the author of this magic book!
A necromancer's place of death sounded both dangerous and interesting. Perhaps he could pay a visit to this senior predecessor in the future...
Returning to the bedroom, Zane packed up the magic book on the bed and put it back under the bed. Then, he lay down on the bed, planning to rest for a while. After all, he had to face the Talons head-on tomorrow, so recharging his batteries was very necessary.
...Alright, he couldn't sleep.
Rolling over and getting out of bed, he brewed a cup of coffee. After drinking it, he left the room directly, planning to stroll around late-night Gotham and familiarize himself with his necromancer skills.
...
Gotham, deep underground.
The pitch-black cave didn't have a single trace of light. Occasionally, faint air currents darted through this intricate underground labyrinth, carrying terrifying screams that made one's blood curdle.
Batman walked numbly. His body endured the severe pain of wounds pierced by the Talons' sharp blades, and his spirit endured the agonizing torture of starving for days and nights.
Even a man of iron would likely collapse in this situation. However, Batman still gritted his teeth and walked on, relying on an almost insane willpower to maintain his last shred of rational consciousness.
He had to do this. The moment he fell, the Talon lurking in the dark would rush up in an instant and tear him to pieces.
This bizarre monster wouldn't be affected at all even if it suffered attacks that would normally cause paralysis, and not even the fluidity of its attacks would stall in the slightest.
The number of Batarangs was almost depleted, and even the Batsuit's battery was nearly dead. It was only by relying on unexpected electrical discharge attacks that he had barely survived until now.
A familiar stone door appeared in front of him. Batman mechanically reached out and pushed the door open.
In the next instant, countless blazing, pure white intense lights suddenly enveloped Batman. His eyes, having adapted to the darkness, were suddenly pierced by the strong light, making him cry out uncontrollably. He then hurriedly dodged the light that pierced like silver needles.
At the same time, in the deepest part of this cave, inside a certain monitoring room, over a dozen people wearing owl masks were admiring Batman's suffering posture through the surveillance screens in front of them...