Days as a Spiritual Mentor in American Comics

Chapter 4156: Chapter 3265: The Gloom of Faralines (25)



Shiller looked around the corridor, the Transcendent had said the evil spirit from the book had disappeared, but the clues to unlock this door should still be there, it's just that without someone to lead the way, it would be very difficult to find.

But now his teammate was Batman, the greatest detective in the world, he didn't believe they couldn't find the clues without guidance.

It was clear that Batman had just finished communicating with the Transcendent as well, they exchanged glances, each discerning the other's intent.

The so-called Great Prophet of the Church was no easy adversary, Shiller had read about him in an encyclopedia before, he was the investigator who had gone to investigate the hotel incident.

Despite everyone in the hotel being dead, the place was still a den of dragons and tigers, he not only came out unscathed but also obtained something from it that he used to launch strange events globally, and propelled the Church to its current status, truly a legendary investigator of the prior generation.

To deal with him, the resources Shiller and Batman had on hand were still too scarce, but if they could obtain the treasure chest in advance, it would definitely contain something useful.

"Did you find any useful clues in that book?" Batman asked.

Shiller shook his head and said, "I didn't dare to look carefully, but I'm sure there's nothing mixed in, just some blasphemous spells and patterns, if the clues are hidden amongst those, we might as well resign ourselves to bad luck."

"I was referring to the Bible," Batman said. "Compared to the Book of Evil Gods, it's more likely that the Bible contains the clues."

Shiller took out the Bible and handed it to Batman, but still cautioned, "You can tell at a glance that there are letters missing, but it's best not to arrange the missing letters in your mind, that could cause your mental health value to drop."

Batman flipped through the Bible briefly, cautiously not reading it all, but he could roughly sketch out what the missing letters might make up, which seemed to be something like Latin.

"Could there be another way to arrange them?" Batman wondered. "It isn't a very complicated puzzle, it's a shame my thinking is constrained, otherwise I might be able to calculate it directly."

Shiller knew he meant the Exhaustion Method, arranging all possible sequences of the letters in his mind to try them out, a method probably only Batman could employ, but since he couldn't use it now, they had to guess the original evil spirit's thought process.

Just like Batman said, it wouldn't be a very difficult puzzle, because the evil spirit's purpose was to spread this sacrilegious knowledge around the world, making it too difficult would be pointless if a dull-witted follower encountered it.

It's more likely that there is another way to arrange the missing text in the Bible, which would require the evil spirit's hint to conceive of, but now that the evil spirit was gone, they had to consider what kind of answer would be neither too complex nor too obvious.

"Why don't we think about how the Great Prophet plans to open this door?" Shiller quickly shifted his thinking, "It's unlikely that he traveled all this distance to stand here staring at the door like we are, he must already know the answer."

Batman pondered as well.

Suddenly, both their eyes lifted at the same time, and Shiller pulled out the doorplate inscribed with 1913 from his bosom.

The last time he used it was to hit Bruce on the head with it as a weapon, which clearly was not the correct way to use this doorplate.

And now, they were faced with a door that couldn't be opened.

The door had a doorplate too, labeled "Captain's Room," very ornate with golden vine patterns around it. Shiller compared the 1913 doorplate and found that the original doorplate from the Captain's room was just one size larger than the 1913 plate.

Shiller had a hunch, he reached out his hand to Batman, and Batman immediately placed the kitchen knife in his hand.

Shiller smiled, he and Batman indeed had a good understanding.

With the tip of the knife, Shiller began to remove the doorplate of the Captain's Room; he quickly unscrewed the four cruciform screws.

Once the doorplate was removed, Shiller knew his hunch was correct.

Because inside the four screw holes of the large doorplate lay another set of screw holes. Shiller placed the 1913 doorplate on top, and it fit perfectly, down to the last millimeter.

With the removal of the Captain's room doorplate, the shape of the door gradually disappeared, and the area became a plain white wall, but the screw holes did not vanish.

Shiller did not affix the doorplate, he stepped back cautiously and looked left and right to find that the scenery inside the cabin had changed.

It seemed as though he was back in the hotel corridor, that intense darkness consuming everything.

However, Shiller was not flustered, he just thought, no wonder the Bishop stubbornly refused to come, otherwise, he would have to reunite with Nya here after such a long separation.

Shiller glanced behind him and saw that Batman was still there and he too had noticed the anomaly, proving that this was not a hallucination within his Psychic_Battlefield, but that the cabin had indeed undergone a change.

Shiller reached out to touch his priest robe, but suddenly discovered that there was something extra in the inner pocket. He reached in and to his surprise, pulled out a screw.

In his mind, he asked Nya, "Your doing?"

"You left something behind last time," Nya responded. "I'm returning it to you."

"How timely," Shiller said with a hint of sarcasm.

But now, with only one door plaque in hand, what was he supposed to do with all these screws?

Wait a minute, since the hotel might be the source of the anomaly, wouldn't everything from it be extraordinary?

The Bishop couldn't make use of these items because he was in the midst of it all, but now, from Shiller's perspective in a world decades after the hotel incident, where the strange had not spread worldwide, the power levels outside were lower. Naturally, anything from the hotel would be more effective.

Looking down at the screws, Shiller saw they were just as he had left them, with minor signs of wear, showing no apparent abnormalities.

Batman took a look at what Shiller was holding and, after a brief explanation, suggested, "If we had a lathe, I could modify your handgun to shoot them as bullets."

Counting the screws in his hand, Shiller didn't quite remember how many he had removed back then, but there appeared to be about seven or eight, which could make for a surprise attack on certain creatures.

Shiller sighed in appreciation, having Batman as a teammate truly was a blessing.

Stowing the screws away, Shiller scanned his surroundings. The hallway had no other hotel doors, only the wall in front of them had changed, which confirmed they were closer to the right answer.

Shiller had previously considered that certain rooms in the hotel might lead to other places experiencing strange events. His hunch now seemed very close to the mark.

So, should he fix the door plaque in place?

"Is there a monster behind this door?" Batman inquired. "Do you think the Great Prophet knows about it?"

"He's been to the hotel; he definitely knows what it's like inside," Shiller speculated. "Even if he doesn't know, he won't naively assume there's no danger behind the door."

"You seem to know more about the hotel than he does," Batman pointedly noted. "How did you handle room 1913 last time?"

Shiller thought for a moment and said, "When I encountered its door in the hotel corridor, it would open automatically every time I walked by. I suspected it was a trap, so I didn't act rashly."

"Later, I noticed the door plaque could be removed, so I went ahead, closed the door, and took the plaque off. During that process, the Monster was constantly banging on the door."

"Then I realized that there seemed to be two systems of monsters in the hotel. Facing a particularly tough Monster, I fixed that door plaque opposite of it, letting them collide with each other."

"What happened then?" Batman asked, intrigued.

Shiller shook his head and said, "I couldn't look directly at these things. After the collision ended, I saw the doors to both rooms were shut, and since then, I haven't seen that door plaque again."

"So, it's possible that the Monsters didn't annihilate each other but rather retreated to their territories."

"Exactly, and that's why I say there might be a Monster in this room," Shiller said with knitted brows. "I guess the Great Prophet must have gotten a door plaque too."

That had been a lingering suspicion in Shiller's mind.

It was known that the Church had triggered anomalies around the world, and if it were merely sleight of hand, like poisoning or holographic projections, it could not have been so convincing, nor would the Church have reached its current status.

The anomalies that appeared had to be real.

So, if it wasn't a blind-eye technique, there had to be a source. Combining the initial hotel incident with the pattern of monster appearances within, Shiller believed that the Church might be exploiting the hotel room doors' and plaques' properties.

All door plaques in the hotel were removable, and once removed, the room would disappear. Reattaching the plaque would cause the room to appear again.

This was essentially a portable Monster generator. If Qi Rui could use the Monster behind room 1913 to collide with other Monsters, others could also release Monsters with the plaques for their purposes.

Although Shiller had explored the hotel extensively, there were many floors he hadn't been to, and he had no idea what the Monsters there were like.

Perhaps the Great Prophet had entered one such floor, taken many door plaques, and used his informational advantage to fabricate a variety of peculiar events for the Church's and his profit.

That meant the Wanderer and other monsters from anomalies around the world were from the rooms of the hotel.

The Church, supposedly coming to the rescue each time, didn't actually have the means to combat these Monsters, but only they knew where the door plaques had been placed. By retrieving the plaques, they could naturally resolve the anomalies.

Realizing this, Shiller immediately sensed that the door plaque from room 1913 hadn't just fallen from the ceiling by chance; it might have been deliberately placed there by the Church, aiming to release the contained Monster and create an anomaly in the village.

So the Monster in room 1913 was the Wanderer?


Tip: You can use left, right, A and D keyboard keys to browse between chapters.