Days as a Spiritual Mentor in American Comics-Chapter 4560 - 3642: Edge of Tomorrow (51)

A flash of golden light, and Barry appeared in Shiller's office. He let out a sigh and then slumped onto the sofa nearby.

Shiller walked over to the water dispenser, got him a cup of water, and placed it in front of him, saying, "Worn out, huh?"

"Not bad." Barry downed the glass of water in one gulp, wiped his mouth with his sleeve, and said, "This time it's not just me; there's Clark's brother, Hai'er, and he was a huge help."

"Where did you learn the technology to reboot the cosmos?"

"Just from that Flash—uh, let me think—it's the one who brought about Thomas Wayne's Flash. Their universe rebooted before."

"Why'd you think of learning this?"

"Just as a safeguard." Barry spread out his hands and said, "That time travel was quite dangerous. If we failed, and we couldn't deal with Hai'er, Earth would be doomed. I had to learn reboot technology just in case; otherwise, I wouldn't dare act."

"But I feel this isn't quite a reboot, more like time reversal. Did you innovate something?"

"Not exactly; it's mainly because Hai'er is pretty impressive." Barry chuckled and said, "If I were to reboot, I could only do a hard reboot and wouldn't know what time point we'd return to. But he can manipulate time, and can simply take a segment of time and reverse it, achieving the effect of time rewind."

"Sounds complex, but the effect is indeed excellent."

"Exactly, honestly, the tricky part is how to preserve specific people's memories. The past few days I've been running all over Earth, marking everyone whose memories need preserving. I'm really careful during the rewind for fear of hurting their minds."

"So when you came to see me that day, was it to mark me too?"

"Sort of, but mainly to let you know what we were doing. You must have guessed already, Professor?"

"Had a feeling when I saw you." Shiller nodded and said, "After all, you've been interacting with Battleworld for so long and must have met quite a few other Flash. You couldn't not learn such technologies as a cosmos reboot. But I didn't expect you'd choose time rewind. Are there any limitations to this ability?"

"Only the first time is a bit laborious." Barry said, "You have to mark each person to preserve their memories; after that, it's much easier."

"How many times can you rewind?"

"We're not sure. This time the rewind seems to show the cosmos is pretty solid; likely it could withstand thousands of times with no issue. But I still hope Brainiac wises up and doesn't keep making me work hard."

"I doubt it." Shiller also went to pour himself a glass of water and said, "What if he runs off this round?"

"His base protocol is with me, where can he run to? Though this thing can't directly destroy him, it imposes many restrictions. If he doesn't play fair to clear the game, he can forget about me giving this thing back to him."

"Brainiac encountering you guys really is just like encountering a ghost." Shiller sighed.

"I reckon he's already gone to contact the Justice League. But he won't get anything; the Justice League won't help him. Either he does it himself, or he finds the human government."

"Did you preserve the human government's high-ranking officials' memory?"

"Exactly." Barry nodded and said, "Fear is humanity's greatest teacher. If it doesn't work once, do it a few more times. The fear of impending doom will teach them solidarity."

"I think you guys in the Justice League might need a name change." Shiller said, "Maybe call it the Tomorrow Alliance—if you don't listen, you'll never see the Sun tomorrow."

Barry laughed. His phone beeped, he glanced at it, then stood up and said, "Oliver's calling me for a review meeting. I'll take off, Professor."

"Go ahead, be careful on the road."

Shiller looked back at the TV. It was no longer Brainiac; his televised speech came to an abrupt halt, not making any examples about the wealth gap to brag about himself as before.

Apparently, this super artificial intelligence already knows what just happened, and knows who orchestrated it. But as Barry said, the Justice League won't help him.

Brainiac boasts Level 12 Wisdom and is nearly omnipotent in certain aspects. But he has a major weakness: he's not immune to the cosmos's rules.

He's not someone who can step outside the cosmos's rules. Whether it's the laws of space or time, they are iron-clad to him, and he cannot alter these things.

Of course, he could use his wisdom to build a big machine—mainly depending on how the editor writes it. But Shiller is sure that, with the Justice League having the advantage, Brainiac in their universe won't have this chance.

It's now the second round. Shiller quite wants to know how many rounds this self-proclaimed intelligent AI will need to clear this Hell Difficulty level.

Other universes' Brainiac, however strong, don't simultaneously face off against the Justice League, Yellow Lantern Corps, and Apocalypse Star. That's akin to stuffing Valkyries, the Burning Legion, and Emperor into the same boss room—what kind of game designs like that?

Moreover, Shiller suspects the Yellow Lantern Corps is just a prelude; the third-party forces are the Guardians of the Universe's Little Blue People and all of their Emotional Spectrum Lamp Group under them. Were this made into a game, the difficulty curve would get berated to death.

Actually, according to Shiller's feeling, their universe's Brainiac seems quite young. Perhaps it's because the Justice League is overall young and acted against Krypton too soon, pulling Brainiac in before he had time to wreak havoc on the cosmos, showing a kind of clear foolishness.

Other universes' Brainiac simply want to put planets and civilizations in bottles to collect, but now this Brainiac seems yet to figure out this skill.

Otherwise, if he wants to find the Mother Box on Earth, he can just toss it into a bottle and look for it slowly. But who knows, maybe the Justice League has some other tricks up their sleeve.

Even if Brainiac bottles Earth, they can still leave through Battleworld. By then, if they pull in villains from other universes, the boss fight roster might get even more exciting. Even Brainiac could get a headache.

Shiller sat back at his desk, staring blankly at the pile of unread emails. He should've had Barry tag his students. If Brainiac goes through hundreds of loops, they'd have to graduate eventually, no matter how stupid they are, right?

Just then, there was a knock on the door. Pamela pushed it open, walked in, and smiled at Shiller, saying, "Good evening, Professor. How are you?"

"Not bad," Shiller nodded and replied, "And you?"

"I'm exhausted," Pamela said as she plopped onto the sofa, "Keeping memories has its downsides. I've just been running around for days, and now I have to dive back into research."

"So who gets to keep their memories?" Shiller asked.

"Everyone who's worked for the Justice League kept theirs," Pamela said, "Of course, including the higher-ups in the human government, some other significant beings like yourself, and those we can't affect, like Lucifer."

As soon as she finished speaking, Shiller's phone rang.

"What happened?!!!!" Lucifer's roar came through the phone, "Why did the universe reboot?!!"

"How should I know?" Shiller retorted, "How did you guys build the universe? Why is the temporal structure so unstable? Do you know my students were this close to graduating?"

"Uh..." Lucifer stuttered. He paused for a while, clearly checking the timeline, "Oh, good grief... Why is your universe's Justice League so unreasonable?! There's an alien invasion, and instead of chasing them away, they reboot the universe to use them as free labor?!"

"Why don't you call them and yell at them? Why call me?"

"I thought it was you who rebooted it," Lucifer said, "Who else could pull this off besides you?"

Shiller caught a different tone in his words and said, "Forget about that. It's been a while since we've met. Want to grab a bite?"

"I'm on my way." The next second, Lucifer appeared in the office. He adjusted his tie, coughed twice, and said, "Let's go. What are we eating?"

Shiller turned off the computer and stood up, "Good restaurants need reservations, so we don't have many choices. Let's eat at the school cafeteria."

Lucifer sighed but left the office with Shiller. Walking toward the cafeteria, he said, "You should advise them to be careful. The universe's structure is intricate, which also means it's fragile. If you break it, you'll have to do a full reboot."

"I know you won't let it break," Shiller said, "In a way, it's like a relic of your old friend. No... that doesn't sound great, considering he's not dead yet."

They found a seat in the cafeteria. After ordering, Lucifer looked at Shiller and said, "You nearly scared me to death."

Shiller took a sip of wine and smiled, "Why, did you think I blew myself up again?"

"You're not exactly incapable of it; it's in your blood," Lucifer snorted, "If you blow yourself up and run back, who do you plan to drag along?"

"I don't really have a good choice," Shiller said, "But I am a bit curious; you know he's not dead, why not find him?"

"Uh..." Lucifer awkwardly shifted his gaze away.

"Did you two have a fight? How long ago was that?"

"A long time for you humans, but for me, it's like yesterday. Can't we have a few days of silent treatment?"

Shiller realized with a start. No wonder—for Lucifer's sense of time, events from decades ago could feel like they just finished arguing a second ago.

"Alright, whatever you say," Shiller said, "How many of these time fluxes do you think our universe can handle?"

"I don't know," Lucifer said, "Your approach is clever. It doesn't constitute a universe reboot, just an interference with the timeline, essentially creating an alternate timeline. As long as the discarded timeline is handled properly, there shouldn't be any problem. But can you handle it well?"

"I'm not too sure, I'll text Barry in a bit to ask."

Just as he finished speaking, Lucifer paused, then said with some amusement, "They just dealt with that discarded timeline. Guess how they did it?"

Shiller looked at him.

"They fed it to Doomsday."

"Doomsday can eat that stuff?"

"I just found out too."

The two of them blinked at each other. Lucifer clicked his tongue and said, "Looks like it was digested, but who knows if there won't be bellyaches at midnight... wait a minute. Why did Bruce take her to Heaven? They're not planning to crap in Lake Eden, are they?!!!