DC: A New Beginning-Chapter 76: Foundation

After walking through the alley, Rachel suddenly looked over at Viktor, who had been silent ever since leaving the Batcave.

"Do you have any hobbies?"

"Hmm? Why are you asking that all of a sudden?"

Viktor was slightly puzzled.

"You look completely lifeless right now. I’ve heard that normal people can lift their mood just by doing something they enjoy."

Rachel shook the phone in her hand.

She’d probably spent a good chunk of time recently in some corner scrolling through the internet by herself.

He thought for a long time and couldn’t come up with a single hobby. He reached up and touched his chest with a slightly vacant look.

Viktor’s footsteps slowed to a stop.

Thinking about it now, making a lot of money, playing games, or chasing girls, none of it seemed capable of sparking any interest in him anymore.

The kinds of behaviors that should trigger dopamine in a normal person no longer brought him any joy or excitement.

He skipped past his memories of his previous life and thought instead about those fourteen years on Viltrum.

The fighting, winning fights, beating people to death, and getting even stronger.

Just thinking about it made Viktor’s heart beat noticeably faster.

"What the—"

Viktor rubbed his face in disbelief.

He’d always prided himself on being a pure-blooded human soul.

Why did every random thought now feel so completely Viltrumite?

"Hmm? Don’t tell me you don’t have any hobbies?"

Rachel, who had also stopped walking, tilted her head and looked at him.

"Hobbies? Does bullying the weak count?"

Viktor said it casually, making something up, and used one finger to push Rachel’s tilted head back upright.

Unexpectedly, Rachel took what he said very seriously.

"Sure it does."

"Don’t be silly, everyone on Earth is weak compared to me, and doing that would get me thrown in a prison."

Viktor wanted to rub the short hair on top of Rachel’s head, but she was wearing a hood.

He settled for rubbing his own face instead.

These past few years spent hanging in the air like a kite, Viktor realized his whole existence had been in a kind of empty.

There’s no need to eat, sleep, or anything tangible to him except himself.

The no-sleeping part had been particularly brutal.

The not sleeping part was especially rough.

The years of sleeping had created a mental habit, and losing a normally functioning body was a difficult thing to adapt to.

Before he’d learned to meditate, Viktor spent every night drifting around the small wooden cabin like a ghost, staring up at the moon, or crouching on the beach watching crabs dig holes.

Therefore, Viktor had developed a habit of rubbing his face whenever he had nothing to do.

It helped shake off the fog at a subconscious level and confirmed to himself that he actually existed.

"Then just find people you can bully without getting thrown in prison."

"You’re kidding. Where would you even find people like that..."

Viktor glanced down at the ground beneath his feet, then looked at Rachel with a strange expression.

They hadn’t walked very far from the Batcave. The ground beneath their feet was, after all, Gotham.

The Batman who had always treated all of Gotham as his personal territory didn’t seem to be in any position to manage things right now.

"Tonight, we go home first. This bold plan needs more time to think through properly, and let’s just sort out the foundation issue with the house for now."

Rachel nodded lightly and said that while he had gone to another world, she had already bought the building materials in Gotham that they had originally planned to buy in Metropolis.

"They were two-thirds cheaper than in Metropolis."

There was a faint hint of pride in Rachel’s tone.

Viktor’s face went a little pale.

"You bought materials in Gotham, and they were that much cheaper than the normal market price?!"

What kind of materials could those possibly be?

The wood might be stained with blood, the concrete might have something bodies buried in it, and even the nails might feel cursed.

Rachel pushed back with complete seriousness.

"The materials all looked perfectly good."

Viktor’s color recovered slightly, but then Rachel added another sentence.

"They smelled of lingering souls and the breath of curses..."

Viktor closed his eyes in pain. He’d forgotten that this girl was still rather different from a normal person.

Twenty minutes later, Viktor carefully extracted the escape pod from where it had been wedged in the cliff’s crevices, picked it up, and flew toward the secluded beach Rachel had previously set up.

On the way back, Rachel confirmed multiple times whether he truly didn’t need to rest tonight.

Viktor nodded each time with a slightly mournful look.

Viktor’s sleeping habits hadn’t returned yet.

After setting the escape pod aside, Viktor stepped on the sand under his feet.

"First, we need to deal with the foundation. You can’t build a normal house on a pile of sand."

Rachel nodded.

"I can reshape it with magic, but I don’t see any solid rock nearby."

Viktor thought for a moment.

"Wait here. I’ll go find some in the ocean."

He turned and jumped into the sea.

After seven or eight minutes, a surge of waves rolled in from the sea, washing over Rachel’s bare feet and at one point rising to her calves.

Viktor, whose force field had only just started awakening, flew out of the waves carrying a huge rock from the bottom of the sea, the size of a small hill.

He floated in the air with the giant rock above his head, seawater still streaming down its sides in steady streams.

"Do you think this rock is solid enough?"

Rachel raised both hands, framed her fingers into a rectangle, and squinted to compare the size of the rock against the size of the beach.

"It’s too big. And I want to keep a ring of sand around the future house. Why don’t you go find another one?"

Suddenly, Viktor’s mouth curved upward.

What was the point of awakening a force field if all he did was carry one big rock around?

"Ha. No need to find another one. Watch me reshape it."

He tossed the rock upward, and his force field spread through his whole body. In an instant, he became a blur, flying around the giant rock several times in midair.

He circled the rock several times at blinding speed before flashing back below it and catching it with one hand.

After the gentle shake, the irregular edges of the massive rock let out a series of sharp cracks.

The extra pieces broke off and crashed into the sea one after another, sending up huge splashes.

Suddenly, the rock in Viktor’s hands had become a carefully shaped stone block, like a giant upside-down obelisk.

The cut surfaces were so smooth they reflected the moonlight like mirrors.

Rachel’s usually cold eyes came alive once more.

She knew full well that Viktor was showing off his new ability, but she deliberately said nothing about it.

After calmly pointing at the beach below, Rachel took two steps back, raised her hands, and dark violet magical energy poured from her palms.

"Set it down. Don’t let it go crooked."

"Tch."

The smile vanished from Viktor’s face.

After grumbling, Viktor lowered the stone with the help of a force field and slowly placed it down until the tip of the upside-down obelisk touched the sand.

The dark magic took effect.

Rachel murmured her incantation rapidly, and the huge rock slowly sank into the sand like butter melting in a hot pan.

A moment later, in the middle of the empty beach, a large square platform of black stone now stood at its center.

Viktor clapped his hands out of habit.

Meanwhile, Rachel then dumped out all the building materials they had bought recently from her magic storage space.

Finally, she pulled out a roll of blueprints, flicked it open with her middle finger, and three villa architectural engineering drawings automatically unfolded into three floating villa construction designs in front of Viktor.

"You said you have experience building a house, didn’t you?"

Noticing the blank look in Viktor’s eyes as he stared at the drawings, Rachel showed a barely visible smirk.

Looking at the dizzying lines and the detailed measurements down to the millimeter on the blueprints, Viktor swallowed nervously.

"Well... the way I learned was probably a bit different. I may need to study what exactly these drawings are showing first later."

...

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