Chapter 1672: Bruce Wayne and the Magic Stone (Part 16)

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The door of the room, unsurprisingly, had been blown off. After Harley rushed in excitedly, Little Bruce glanced back at the door handle with a lock hanging from it, which was quite ordinary, resembling the metal locks you'd find on a garden's iron gate, seemingly requiring a suitable key.

But the door wasn't even made of steel; it was just the usual wooden door found in castles. Little Bruce had no doubt that a trained agent could break it down with several strong hits.

This gave Little Bruce some understanding of the trial's difficulty.

The first challenge's Tree Demon seemed very dangerous, but it had too many weaknesses. It would only attack those who tried to force their way through without a key. This meant that finding the key would allow someone to bypass the challenge, and it seemed that the key was hidden somewhere within the school, making the process of obtaining it not perilous.

One could either use brute force to break down the door, like Harley did with explosives, or use agility and nimbleness, taking advantage of a child's smaller size to crawl under the Tree Demon's arms, luring it to attack the door and thus break it open.

As Little Bruce thought about this and walked into the room, he heard Barry exclaim. Turning his head, he saw Barry grabbing an excited Harley, saying, "Keep your box of explosives away, this place is full of glassware, it would be a disaster if they were damaged!"

Stepping over the remnants of the wooden door, Little Bruce truly entered the room, which was filled with bottles and jars.

Shelves embedded into the walls reached up to the ceiling, neatly holding an array of glass jars varying in size—some with wide mouths, others with narrow ones, some shaped like round-bottom flasks, and others more like small basins. But all were made of beautifully fragile glass.

Little Bruce quickly went up and grabbed Harley's other arm to stop her from pulling the pin on a grenade, as aside from the door they entered, there was no other exit.

"What if there's something behind the wall?" Harley insisted.

"What if there isn't?" Barry tightly held her back to prevent the overly excited, crazed girl from destroying everything in the room with explosives.

"It seems to be a puzzle," Little Bruce looked up at the walls full of glassware and said, "Someone already anticipated that you would use explosives to force your way through, and if you really mess this place up, the door might never open."

"Is that why you insisted on using glass jars for those plants?" Pamela turned her head to look at Schiller behind the screen and said, "You guessed that among them, someone would resort to violence, and you didn't want them to solve each challenge that way."

"I was hoping to save some money on repairing the building," Schiller shook his head lightly and said, "Letting a real Gotham lunatic go wild here, even the world's richest person wouldn't be enough to cover the costs."

"That's actually enough," Bruce spoke up but quickly shook his head and added, "Only if the fairies in the Maya world need rest, otherwise they would be exhausted."

"So what kind of puzzle is this?" Constantine asked, "Do they need to identify the properties of these plants?"

"Yes, and the rest is just a simple arrangement puzzle," Pamela nodded calmly and continued, "It's all stuff I've covered in class. As long as one person was listening carefully, they should be able to solve it."

"It looks like a classification puzzle," Little Bruce surveyed all the shelves on the four walls and said, "If I remember correctly, the plants in this room should be divided into four categories: Potion Ingredients, Alchemical Catalyst Ingredients, Ritual Ingredients, and Inert Ingredients."

"I remember from the magic botany class," Barry touched his cheek, also looking around and adding, "But they never covered so many plants. Most of these are unfamiliar to me; maybe they were mentioned in higher-level classes."

He turned his head to look at Harley, who blinked as she walked past each wall, then said, "The class covered about half of these plants; the rest were not discussed."

"But we can guess," Little Bruce sighed softly and said, "Professor Pamela once mentioned in class that plants growing in a certain world have similar properties and appearances, which can be seen as belonging to the same genus."

"Based on the plants' shapes, colors, and magical properties, we can also discern their effects. Let's start by taking down the bottles," he said.

Two ladders were placed in the room's corners, obviously to help students reach and inspect all the jars, which the three of them began to remove from the shelves and set on the floor, Harley starting to sort them.

Harley, being in a higher grade and having attended more classes, had nearly two months of magic botany lessons, which taught students to identify plants frequently appearing in the magical realm and understand their effects. She efficiently categorized all the plants she recognized, and the rest was straightforward.

Once all the plants with identifiable properties were grouped by category, anyone could see the similarities among them.

Potion Ingredients were usually more like the stems of herbaceous plants, such as the Spiral Grass Barry and others saw in their first class, a typical example of Potion Ingredients, characterized by their soft, fine structure and dim magical glow.

Alchemical Catalyst Ingredients usually had a strong magical presence, filling the entire bottle with magical light, mostly appearing as flowers and soft leaves, looking similar to plants from the non-magical realm.

Ritual Ingredients had bizarre shapes, either resembling dried fingers, eyeballs, or animal claws, often covered with tumors and pus, like the plants you'd find in a dark swamp in a horror story.

Inert Ingredients referred to those plants that would not react with any products made from the other plants, usable as containers, stirrers, or other tools in frequent contact with potions, naturally being mostly wood-based plant cuttings or branches, tough, dry, and dark in color.

"Only one question remains," Harley looked down at the sorted bottles and jars and said, "Which wall should each type of plant go on?"

"The one with the fewest should definitely go on the wall with the door, as there are fewer shelves on that wall," Barry suggested.

Little Bruce scoffed, "Your brain finally turned over for once."

Inert Ingredients were the least in number, so the three used the ladders to place these plants on the wall by the door. After they finished, Barry exhaled and looked at Harley, "Good thing you didn't blow up the shelves on this wall, or we would have failed before we even started."

Harley, however, smiled and shook her head, "It's not that simple. Obviously, there's another solution to the puzzle in this room."

Harley crossed her arms, looking back at the bottles and jars on the floor, and said, "If I'm not mistaken, some of the plant materials here can be combined into a special potion that should also reveal the exit."

"But that's risky," Little Bruce said, "Because you don't know if pouring out the materials from the bottles will allow them to be returned and trigger the arrangement puzzle mechanism, so unless there's absolutely no clue or the shelves are damaged, we don't need to resort to that method."

Harley nodded, "Although I do like to make a big fuss, I'm not without sense. I guessed that there might be something important in the room, so I deliberately avoided the walls when throwing the grenade, which worked out. If we were to concoct potions here, everyone's clothes would end up smelling strange."

After this, the three began to study the remaining three walls, and then Harley discovered a rune in each corner of the lowest shelves, presenting no puzzle to solve, as the rune simply indicated the type of plant.

It took a little more time to properly categorize all the bottles and jars. Then, a magical light bloomed in the center of the floor, and a door slowly opened, leading down a dark tunnel with no visible end.

"Well, it looks like I can't bring all my big toys down there," Harley lamented, glancing at her cartload of munitions, "Without knowing how deep it is below, we can't just dump all this stuff down there. If it triggers a safety mechanism, it could cause a chain of explosions, which would be a real pity."

Harley carefully selected three handguns from her cart, handing two to the others, and pocketed a few grenades before slinging a shotgun over her shoulder, gesturing towards the door in the center of the floor.

Little Bruce looked down, but at that moment, Barry said, "I'll jump first. If there's any danger below, I can give you a warning."

Little Bruce opened his mouth, seemingly about to object, but Barry interrupted, "At least you're right about one thing: your brains are valuable assets, and it wouldn't be good if they were damaged."

Barry jumped down, and Harley gave Little Bruce a slightly neurotic smile, saying, "That's just how these fools are, right? Always feeling guilty about not being able to contribute to the team, soft yet tough, like a sponge soaked with tears."

"I reserve my opinion; they're like stones, hard, foolish, and helpless, only this Mr. Allen has just been washed up on the riverbank, still unaware that his life will continue in this stubborn way until he becomes as annoying as those stubborn adults," Little Bruce responded.

After speaking, Little Bruce also jumped down, and Harley shrugged, looking at the empty air and musing, "I wonder who will end up being the stubborn adult."

As Harley's figure also disappeared through the door on the floor, Constantine laughed and looked at Bruce, "Yeah, who could it be? I'd raise both hands to agree

 it's definitely not Batman."

Bruce turned his head to look at Schiller, who slightly tilted his head and surveyed Bruce, saying, "But having too many whimsical ideas isn't necessarily better."

"Some people's whimsical ideas are easy to see, while others always carry on in silence, known only to themselves, finding joy where others cannot see, right, Professor?"

[Read at www.patreon.com/shanefreak, and thanks for the invaluable support!]

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Next Chapter =>Chapter 1673: Bruce Wayne and the Magic Stone (Seventeen)