Days as a Spiritual Mentor in American Comics

The pale knight watched as Bruce rolled several Appearance dice, almost all of them successfully, and he must have used the Points from the previous fight to select Skills related to charm. Anyway, as he flirted back and forth with a woman, he quickly talked her into confusion.

After the woman left, another two or three groups of reporters arrived, obviously sniffing a major scoop. Bruce chatted with them pleasantly and, in just a few words, he managed to reveal Old Sirteck's secrets.

His earlier instigation also had a good effect. After midnight, a few shadowy figures were seen poking around the street corner, certainly not escaping the eyes of the reporters. Bruce saw several familiar figures get into the reporters' cars.

Seeing that it was about time, they returned to their own car. Bruce started packing up his equipment and said, "If the Church plans to kill Old Sirteck, tomorrow's interview is the perfect opportunity. They will definitely do a reconnaissance tonight."

Watching Bruce's actions, the pale knight asked, "Are you planning to go in?"

"I won't be at ease if they act without me," Bruce said. "It's not that I look down on the Church, but if they want to create some strange event like usual to cover up the assassination, then Old Sirteck, who is already on guard, won't let them succeed."

The pale knight nodded, thinking Bruce made sense, then asked, "How can you be sure that the Church will release a strange event rather than just shoot him outright?"

"For decades, the Church has often done so, which gives them a kind of inertia. I mean, they only train people to deal with strange events and not real assassins, because compared to releasing strange events, direct murder is both risky and inefficient."

"Are you planning to intercept?"

"Exactly. If the other side is going to act, they must have something on hand, I mean the kind that can trigger strange events." Bruce got out of the car, and the pale knight followed him.

"What do you think it will be?"

"I don't know, but I think it should be safe before that thing is truly activated. If we can get that thing, then the initiative will be in our hands."

The pale knight, holding a gun, said, "What do you need me to do?"

As Bruce walked forward, he looked back and asked, "Do you kill people?"

"Can you take a look at who I am before asking that?"

"Don't mind me; it's just that you look even more like Batman than Batman does, so I had to ask."

"I can only say I have killed people before, but now I won't kill unless it's necessary."

"Necessary means..."

"I usually only kill in self-defense. If the other party doesn't threaten my life, at most I'll knock them out."

"Understood, a passive defense type. Give me the gun then."

"Do you kill?" the pale knight asked, looking up at him.

"Whether I kill or not mainly depends on God's mood."

"What do you mean?"

"You see, in this game, shooting means rolling dice, right?"

"Yes, what about it?"

"So whether we end up killing someone depends on the dice's roll. We take the shot, but whether the bullet hits the vital spot is about luck, right?"

"Uh... makes some sense."

"Luck is determined by God." Bruce took the gun and said, "Which means it's not me killing, but God."

"I see now," the pale knight said.

"See what?"

"You don't just kill; you're also good at sophistry."

Bruce rolled his eyes and said, "If God wants to stop me, then He should step forward. If He doesn't, then He must want more people to join Him, and I'm just fulfilling God's wish. You can't simply construe this as slaughter."

"Can you be any more shameless?" the pale knight asked.

"Of course, I've selected the shooting skill."

"So you're almost certain to hit?"

"Yes."

"Then why did you mention God's mood?"

"If God was in a bad mood, He should have stepped in when I was selecting my skills, but He didn't."

The pale knight no longer wanted to speak with him, and he even quickened his pace by a few steps, hoping to put some distance between himself and Bruce.

"Well, God is too far from me," Bruce sighed, but then he changed his tone and added, "But God's eldest son is now watching over me from inside my head, and he didn't intervene to stop anything. Surely, that can't be blamed on me, right?"

Looking at him as if he was some filthy object, the pale knight climbed over the wall of the TV broadcasting center and told Bruce, "There's a bit of medication left at my place. After the game is over, you could give it a try. It should help with your current predicament."

Bruce pretended not to hear what he was saying, carried his gun past the security booth, and tried the side door's handle to find, to his surprise, that it was unlocked. He opened the door a crack and squeezed through.

To avoid any surveillance inside the TV station, they had shed the expensive suits they wore during the day, changed back into their original clothes, and masked their faces, which was mainly to deceive the Church.

The TV station wasn't very large. Bruce led the pale knight around the first floor without spotting any suspicious individuals, so they went to the second-floor window and stared out. Just after midnight, a car stealthily parked in the nearby grove.

A few people got out of the car, one of whom went to the front door to distract the guards, while two others climbed over the back fence.

Once the guard was lured away, the last person came in, pushing a cart that clearly contained the items they needed to set up.

"Looks like quite a few have come," Bruce said, caressing the rifle's trigger, "How many do you think you can lead away?"

"It depends on how alert they are, but it seems they're not very cautious. I think maybe three," the pale knight judged, then added, "The one left might be a technical staff, there might be no need to kill him. It would be better to keep him alive for questioning."

"I'll do my best," Bruce said. "This gun doesn't have a silencer. Once I fire, it will definitely cause a commotion. Better you take it."

Bruce handed the rifle back to the pale knight, and they split up, each taking a different route to lead their targets away before they could meet up.

The pale knight's action on his end was very successful; the two who climbed in from the back hadn't even started upstairs before he lured them away.

The person distracting the guard was a bit delayed. The person with the cart came in first. Seeing this, Bruce knew they weren't very professional, or perhaps hadn't been on any dangerous missions before, to leave such an obvious flaw.

He directly took the person with the cart hostage. By the time the one distracting the guard came back, he only found that his companion and the cart had disappeared together.

Bruce first knocked out the cart-pushing individual, tossed him into the storage room and locked the door, then opened the cart's box.

However, what disappointed him was that it seemed to contain just some props for disguise, like foam boards, nail guns, glue, and such, there was no sign of any key prop.

Although the Church was inadequately guarded, it was still quite cunning; the key prop was probably on another person.

After giving it a moment's thought, Bruce roughly grasped their plan. Using or activating this prop probably required some disguise. The two who came from the front door were likely the disguise team, whereas those who climbed in from the backyard were the ones carrying the key prop, ready to find a place to set it up.

The pale knight noticed something peculiar since one of the two men he was leading away was acting suspiciously, as if he was afraid others wouldn't realize he was hiding something.

The pale knight's original plan was to lure them a bit further before shaking them off, but given the current situation, there definitely was a twist involved. He didn't plan on leaving the matter entirely to Bruce, so after shaking them off, he circled back and got behind them.

First, he knocked out one of them when they weren't on guard. When he tried to deal with the other, a thrown dice failed to successfully ambush him.

Fortunately, the pale knight had a gun in hand. He decided to leave the one holding the key item for last. The guy wasn't exactly tough, and upon facing the dark muzzle of the gun, he reluctantly handed over the object in his arms.

It was a doorplate.

The pale knight was stunned for a moment when he saw the doorplate, because it reminded him of something similar Shiller had.

So, was this item the source of the weirdness?

The pale knight thought it was not that simple, and with another surprise attack, he knocked out the remaining person as well and searched both of them, eventually finding several screws wrapped in paper in the pocket of the one who held the doorplate.

Looking at the screws and the holes in the doorplate, the pale knight roughly figured out how to use it, but he refrained from acting rashly and dragged both men into a secluded room to lock them up.

After meeting up with Bruce on the second floor, the pale knight had the chance to take a closer look at the doorplate, which had "1011" written on it.

Bruce had also found related clues about the hotel while surfing the web earlier. Although he wasn't as knowledgeable as Shiller, he could roughly guess what was going on.

Bruce simply told the pale knight to secure the doorplate and return to the car, as keeping such an important object on him wasn't safe. As for Bruce, he headed to the venue for tomorrow's news program recording.

Since the recording was scheduled to start early the next morning, the venue had already been set up that night. Bruce walked around inside and eventually climbed up to the air duct above through the rack behind the news backdrop. He then followed the duct to the outlet on the other side of the venue.

First, he removed the grille of the outlet and checked the view to discover a clear sniping path leading straight to the seats, the perfect shooting distance. At this range, the shooting accuracy was essentially 100%.

Bruce calibrated a few times, set up the gun, and then put the grille back. With only a few hours left before the interview started, he decided to wait right there.

The pale knight was observing the exterior, and by around 4 a.m., staff members began trickling into the TV station. By 5:00, the key presenters and experts had arrived.

Around 5:30, a car entered the station's gates. The surrounding reporters immediately sprang into action, besieging Old Silterk with a variety of questions from inside the car.

Seeing that familiar face, the pale knight finally relaxed. He then noticed that at the side entrance of the station, a group was pushing past the security's attempts to stop them.

They were holding various signs in their hands, all with grief-stricken expressions. They were the people Bruce had incited the day before. Ms. Theresa, leading the charge, scratched the security guard's face, and the crowd broke through the side door, rushing towards the venue.

As the sidelines were breached, the reporters no longer tangled with the security at the front door. Instead, they skittered around to follow the protesting crowd, hoisting their cameras high and storming toward the venue in droves.