Multiverse: Deathstroke

Chapter 120: Ch.119 Reduced to Ashes

Chapter 120: Ch.119 Reduced to Ashes

But this time, Su Ming was overthinking it—he didn't even need to go looking for the Murder Machine because it had already come to him.

A large group of emaciated, tuxedo-wearing elderly men surged toward Su Ming amidst the tide of enemies. They had blank expressions and used the nanobots within their bodies to form various weapons, opening fire on Su Ming and Clark in the sky.

These Alfreds charged with a speed that belied their aged appearance, all while emitting strange, mechanical synthesized voices, like a malfunctioning old tape recorder.

"What can I do for you?"

"What can I do for you?"

"What can I do for you?"

This was their standard butler catchphrase, but now it carried an eerie, spine-chilling tone. This definitely wasn't the Queen's English—it was probably the accent of Hell.

A malfunctioning AI and a nanobot integration platform like this should have been dealt with by Cyborg, who could have used the processing power of the Mother Box to hack into their programming.

But Su Ming chose to face them himself, relying on the promise from Hephaestus to request Zeus's thunderbolt. With sustained high-voltage electric shocks, he could overload these nanobots and short-circuit their CPUs.

A conventional EMP wouldn't work—the electromagnetic pulse wouldn't last long enough.

The key now was to locate the Murder Machine's main body. These butler robots were just his creations. If the controller wasn't taken out, this battle would turn into an endless war of attrition. The battlefield had plenty of metals that could be converted into nanobots.

"What can I do for you?"

One of the butler robots morphed its hands into two massive cleavers, slashing toward Su Ming's chest. Under the pitch-black sky, its expressionless face appeared disturbingly calm.

Su Ming dodged the attack. After all, a program was just a program. It might have integrated that world's Batman's combat experience, but Batman's knowledge of lethal weaponry didn't match Deathstroke's.

"If it's convenient, could you just drop dead? Thanks."

Su Ming backhanded the robot butler's head off with his large sword, then kicked its body away. But after flying a short distance, it disintegrated like layers of paper, then reassembled into a new Alfred. Several more robot butlers gathered around.

"What can I do for you?"

"What can I do for you?"

On the dim battlefield, these humanoid-but-not-human monsters repeatedly recited their mission in mechanical tones, while the weapons they created struck at Su Ming from every angle.

Blocking, parrying, and countering—Su Ming wielded his large sword and Godkiller in a flurry, repeatedly driving these things back.

"I already told you what I want, but you're not delivering. Poor service!"

Stalemate wasn't an option. Su Ming rolled to avoid several energy beams, tossed a few standard grenades to temporarily hold off the butlers and some other enemies, and called for air support.

"Clark! Blow some cold air over here!"

Nanobots can be frozen in extreme cold. It wouldn't need to last long—just enough for Su Ming to locate the Murder Machine, send a location screenshot, and it'd be over.

Up in the sky, Clark heard Deathstroke's request and immediately swooped down, freezing a cluster of enemies in front of Su Ming with his breath. Then he pointed out the Murder Machine's location.

Running through a series of ice sculptures, Su Ming sprinted at full speed. The Murder Machine was hiding in an inconspicuous crater on the battlefield. If not for Superman's X-ray vision, it would have been completely in Su Ming's blind spot.

Enemies kept pouring in from all sides, but Superman could handle them. All Su Ming had to do now was dash toward his target.

"Hmm, the location is good enough. Marking... and sending."

He didn't get too close. Instead, he kept his distance from the Murder Machine, pulled out his phone, and sent Hephaestus a screenshot. The image was of a rock, with the Murder Machine's two pointed ears sticking out from behind it.

Through the eyes of the surrounding Alfreds, the Murder Machine had, of course, noticed Su Ming's actions. But it couldn't comprehend why someone would be using a phone on the battlefield—this defied logic.

Instinctively, it decoded the signal Deathstroke sent, only to find that it was an uploaded photo on some social media site?

What was this? Did this Earth have such strange customs? Not only did they take selfies before meals, but they also took selfies in the middle of a battle?

After being transformed into a mechanical lifeform by the Alfred Protocol, the Murder Machine was undoubtedly the most logical thinker among all the Nightmare Batmen. After all, his brain had been replaced with a computer, filled with nothing but 0s and 1s.

This allowed him to interface directly with Earth's various data networks and control most automated systems.

But it also introduced a flaw—he couldn't comprehend actions that defied human logic.

He had a database of the Joker from another world as a behavioral template, believing he could understand any madman. Until now, when he discovered that this world had two Deathstrokes. The previous Deathstroke wasn't much different from the one in his own world, easily captured by the Dark Knights and strapped to the Tuning Fork.

But this one not only wielded weapons that could threaten him but also behaved in ways he couldn't understand.

He hesitated slightly, feeling his CPU overheat a bit, but ultimately dismissed it as a meaningless display of vanity.

"Human vanity, tsk tsk."

He prepared to summon more Alfreds to eliminate the enemy while he retreated to rejoin Barbatos.

But just then, the sky brightened.

Gotham, which had been shrouded in darkness with only the black cosmic rift overhead, suddenly turned as bright as day.

A massive bolt of lightning, like a waterfall, suddenly descended from the sky, striking the Murder Machine directly. Not only him but also many of the butler robots and other multiverse villains around him were engulfed as well.

Within the blue-white column of light, these figures instantly disintegrated and vanished. The intense electric current broke them down into particles, leaving only wisps of smoke.

The Murder Machine held out for a second or two longer, but then it too was consumed by the light.

Su Ming hit the ground, lying flat as the lightning strike shattered countless rocks, creating a massive gap in Challenger Mountain. The debris pinged off his armor.

Was that lightning? It felt more like some kind of orbital weapon.

Su Ming could feel the ground trembling violently beneath him. He looked up and saw a golden light and some shadowy figures in the sky. He could vaguely make out an old man with a white beard, wearing a white robe, holding a golden spear and sitting among the clouds.

The strange metallic weapon was the most dazzling thing, not only emitting a powerful golden light but also constantly shifting, like a living bolt of lightning branching out repeatedly.

Around the old man were several other figures, also draped in white robes. The bright light made it impossible to tell who was who, but Su Ming was certain they were the Olympian gods. And of course, this meant that the old man wasn't Father Time.

Zeus had intervened. After Su Ming fulfilled his promise to help Diana eliminate The Merciless, the Olympian pantheon had delivered their promised reward.

And Zeus had clearly put in real effort. Su Ming had expected a few small bolts of lightning to fry the Murder Machine's circuits, allowing Clark to freeze him, and then Su Ming could finish him off with the Sword of Ares.

But Zeus had gone above and beyond, gathering the entire pantheon to unleash a divine artifact's full power, utterly disintegrating the Murder Machine.

The Murder Machine did have dark energy protection, but the energy within him was nothing compared to the full might of an entire pantheon's positive energy. Zeus didn't need to find any specific countermeasures—he simply overwhelmed it with raw power.

Of course, while eliminating the enemy, Zeus also took the opportunity to make a grand display, letting the whole world know that the Olympian pantheon had intervened. This would likely yield them a new wave of followers afterward, making it well worth their while.

Clever. The old gods are always scheming. If he could avoid it, Su Ming would prefer not to deal with them at all.

When you think about it, they already had Wonder Woman fighting on the battlefield as the Olympians' representative. Now, with the main god stepping in directly, it would seem to everyone else that they were the ones who resolved everything. They might end up being the biggest winners in all this.