novelonline Chapter 2319 Gotham Music Chapter (58)
Chapter 2319 Gotham Music Chapter (58)
Chapter 2319 Gotham Music Festival (Fifty-Eight)
Before the Atlantis cruise ship restarted, several figures jumped onto the ship. The leader, Constantine, shook the water off his hair. The gorilla detective Bobo next to him jumped onto the shoulder of the Dark Master. Zatanna sorted out the utensils in her pocket and made sure with the Black Orchid next to her that nothing was missed.
Oliver was very surprised by the appearance of this group of people. Although he did not have much dealings with the wizarding world, he had heard of the previous major event of vampire invasion of London, and he also consulted the Master of Darkness when dealing with local indigenous wizards in Mexico.
"Jim, why are you here?" Oliver walked up to Jim and shook hands with him. Jim smiled and patted his arm and said, "So you're back. I thought I had to wait for a while. How are you doing?"
"Not bad, are you here to help Schiller?" Oliver immediately realized something.
"Of course, but to be precise, he was helping us." Master Dark Night showed a trace of worry between his brows.
Oliver put his arm around his shoulders and led him to where the crowd was gathering on the deck. He said, "I heard that the situation in the wizarding world is not very good. Has it gotten better recently?"
"Things may get better later." Master Dark Night shook his head and began to talk about the recent situation in the magic world.
Previously, Schiller arranged a plan to reap a wave of Constantine, a famous black box in the occult world, which caused many mid- and high-level demons who had invested a lot of chips in Constantine to lose all their money.
The impact of the previous vampire invasion of London has spread to this day. Wizards have been killed or injured, and the magic world is short of talent. The Gotham Academy of Magic has just been established, and most of the students have not even completed two years of study, making them completely useless.
This has led to a lack of successors in the magic world of Schiller's universe. The demons have lost a lot of money and have become much more cautious when lending power. The number of magicians has dropped sharply, and the number of people borrowing power has also decreased. Without power, no one likes to consume. For a while, the economy of the occult world has declined and deflation has occurred.
But the DC universe actually needs magic, because in addition to angels and demons, there are many magical creatures among them. Their attitudes towards humans are mixed. Magicians are the backbone of dealing with the invasion of such creatures. The earth's magic defense network proposed by Strange also needs to be built. If everyone keeps doing this, they will get nothing done.
If this continues, the development of the magic world in this universe may lag far behind other universes. If any major event occurs on the magic side in the future, it may collapse at any time, which is something no one wants to see.
To break this situation, we still need to use the laws of economics. Normally, when the economy is in a downturn, the government should provide various preferential measures to help ease pressure on enterprises and stabilize production; for consumers, it should increase investment in consumer welfare to stimulate consumption. Shiller naturally did so.
Since the middle and high-level demons who are the backbone of the forces lending have no money, we have to find ways to promote their development. Only when they have money in their hands can they lend it out.
It may sound absurd, but after so many years of development in Hell, the vast majority of demons still make money by earning the difference in price. Even the generals under the demon king rely on this method and have not thought about innovation for tens of thousands of years.
The general process is to give a human a little power, and then recycle their soul after death. To the devil, the souls of the wizards are worth slightly more than the power, and they make money from this price difference.
As for the demon kings, they simply give more power to deceive more precious souls and make more profit.
Of course, if possible, they would also like to carry out a massacre and secretly collect souls for their own use, but unfortunately, on the one hand, Heaven is watching, and on the other hand, the Destiny Family will not allow them to do so. Therefore, it is not incomprehensible that Hell has been at the level of a small peasant economy for a long time.
After discovering the need to revive the magic world, Schiller went to work out a plan with the other three members of the Evil Fourth Power, and found Azazel and Beelzebub, who currently have the final say in Hell. After doing some research on the plan, they found that it seemed to work.
The method of trading between demons and magicians in the past was a bit like slash-and-burn farming. Probably the demons used some loopholes to lure humans into contact with magic, and then lent them the power. Humans took the power and squandered it, and after death they became food for the demons.
This deal seems fair, but in fact, humans are creatures with little self-control. They are basically willing to give in to temptation once it comes, which is the same as never testing human nature.
Therefore, humans have little initiative in this regard, but in order to gain powerful strength, they usually compromise with demons without any bottom line.
In the past, no matter whether you sacrificed other things or not, you yourself would definitely not be able to escape. Demons would not accept contracts that used purely external objects as transaction conditions, because most of the demons were not that strong. Except for the marked souls, they were not 100% sure that they could take the external objects back.
But after the demons' leeks were harvested, they had to lower their proud heads and find ways to get some funds to turn around. This gave humans a lot of room for negotiation. The most crucial point was that the price to be paid could be changed to something other than themselves.
Ordinary external objects cannot impress demons. What they like most is actually the human soul. But in their eyes, human souls are also divided into high and low, and the best is the soul of a sinner.
Sin will add a lot of weight to the soul. The heavier the soul, the mellower the taste and the greater the power it can provide. This is why many demons bet on Constantine even though they knew the chances were slim.
But it is not so easy to add more sins to your soul. In a world where God exists, if you are a devout believer and abide by the teachings conscientiously, you can actually wash away many sins.
Even if you are not a religious believer, you do not believe in anything, you have not done many bad things, or the bad things you have done are not serious, and do not reach the crime threshold, your name will not be engraved. Even if you sincerely repent after doing evil, this mark will not be added to your name.
Although some evil people do not do good things outside, they treat their family and friends well, so their sins will be reduced. Even some people do evil things in secret, but do some good things on the surface to cover it up, and their sins will be alleviated.
Therefore, it is not easy to accumulate a soul weight of more than 21 grams. Although there are many humans, there are not many such evil people. Often, you must carefully identify and investigate to get one or two.
Moreover, if the souls of these sinners were to go to hell in ordinary ways, they would also suffer losses. Only through the sacrifice of the execution ceremony can the losses be minimized.
"We just drew a magic circle under the sea." Constantine explained to Oliver, "After all, the souls of the sinners on the ship are very heavy. The execution ceremony is a bit like the way express delivery is packed. It must be delivered carefully so that it will not be damaged. However, the magic circle that collects the souls is a bit like airplanes and trucks during transportation. If the quality is not good and it is too bumpy, it will also cause damage."
"So you shipped all their souls off to Hell?" asked Oliver.
"Yes, as the first batch of transaction materials, a total of 99 sinners' souls, with an average weight of 25 grams. This is a great gift that even the demon monarch would look at with awe..."
"Wait, 99? But there are more than 99 people on this ship."
"Yes, there are only 99 truly perfect sinners' souls. The others that are below this standard are considered gifts. There are also some souls that are not even 21 grams and are defective. They will be sent back later."
Oliver slapped him on the forehead.
Although it sounds very strange, if you do good things, even if you do good things for your own benefit, it will cleanse your soul, causing your soul to not be heavy enough and be despised by the devil who loves sin, or even become a defective product.
At this time Amanda walked to the scale. She wanted to know how much her soul weighed. Maybe it should be 25 grams. After all, she had killed many people.
The goat demon sitting there looked her up and down, clicked his tongue and shook his head, seeming to be very unimpressed with her. Amanda walked up to the scale and weighed herself, and it was exactly 21 grams.
"Don't waste time, lady. Judging from the state of your soul, you are not suitable to stay here. Why don't you turn left and ask those angels if they will accept you." The goat demon said with disgust.
"That's impossible." Amanda said in disbelief, "I'm the head of the secret service. I've had my men kill a lot of people. I've also done all kinds of things like stealing secrets and snooping into people's privacy, and even breaking into people's homes."
Seeing that he couldn't convince her, the goat demon flipped through the parchment scroll in his hand, put on a pair of glasses from the side, and said with a frown, "Last June, you arrested two murderers. One of them killed 6 people indiscriminately, and the other killed a family of four, right?"
Amanda recalled and said, "Yes, the Michigan Ripper. The other one should be called the Garden Gnome or the Family Killer. I forgot. He is not very famous."
"This has reduced your soul weight by at least 0.2 grams, and this summer, you presided over the trial and execution of a killer who trapped children in cars and burned them to death."
"'The Wood Adder', I remember him, that damn bastard, he refused to plead guilty until the end!" Amanda said gritting her teeth.
The goat demon's expression became better and better, and he even smiled. He said, "I remember that this guy's soul seemed to have gone to our place. My grandmother liked his taste very much."
"Ma'am, it's an honor to meet such a righteous law enforcer like you. How about you come down and have some tea over there? When our boss is done talking, I'll take you to the depths of the Fire Abyss to meet our grandmother?"
Amanda looked at the goat demon's enthusiastic smile in a daze, but was still pushed off the scale by the soul that came later.
At this time, the black man with the eye mask came over, waved to Amanda and said, "Ms. Waller, come with me. Your family has been waiting for you for a long time."
Amanda was stunned, but when she turned around, she saw her mother's slightly old but unchanged face, and then she heard a familiar scream.
"Amanda! Amanda!! My little Mandy!"
She felt herself suddenly thrown into an embrace, and her mother held her face and said, "Oh my God, it's really you."
Amanda was about to speak when her father came over and hugged them both, saying, "You don't know how lucky we are that you weren't there that day. We were thinking about this the last second before we died. Fortunately, you weren't there!"
Amanda finally couldn't bear it anymore and tears burst out of her eyes like a dam breaking.
(End of this chapter)