DC: I am Bruce Wayne

Chapter 74: It Is Finally Time

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"Success is harder than failure for many things in this world."

– Osamu Dazai, (Bungo Stray Dogs)

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<(Bruce Wayne POV)>

"Nah, it's best not to do anything stupid especially when I can do this later in the safety and comfort of my Bat-cave with the assistance of Cortana and my AmuSphere. I won't have to risk the death of my current personality if I just upload the surviving portion of the previous Bruce's mind to Cortana's servers and modify it first before I assimilate it into myself." I finally mumbled to myself as I withdrew my finger from the 'extract' option beside the 'Unknown Life' folder visible on the PC.

Instead, I focused on the 'Ra's Al Ghul's Amazing Experiences' folder which could be naturally downloaded into my mind without any presence of his personality due to the ritual. I had been steadily absorbing the memories and knowledge inside that folder for a while now. I could have easily done it all at once but I didn't want to face the intense mind-bending mental pain and spiritual exhaustion that would come from absorbing almost a millennia worth of information. After all, I wasn't a masochist.

So, I stuck to only absorbing a decade of Ra's Al Ghul's knowledge every few days since I wasn't in any rush. I preferred meticulously combing through his memories and using them to their full potential rather than just absorbing all of them at once and not knowing what to do with them or worse being overwhelmed with too much information at my disposal and becoming like Ra's Al Ghul myself.

In fact, these absorbed memories had been the reason I was so successful in keeping so many of the generals under Ra's Al Ghul still loyal to me. Despite their wish to grab power for themselves the moment they learned about Ras Al Ghul's possible death, the only reason they didn't rebel was that I had learned some of their biggest secrets and weaknesses Ras Al Ghul knew about them and had basically used those to threaten them in the letters that I had sent them in a bid to blackmail them into continuing to be loyal to me.

A lot of them listened while some even thought that Ras Al Ghul wasn't dead and was retiring with me being his next successor, having his direct support. Of course, some didn't give any importance to the letters, refusing to bow to my threat but I wasn't worried about them. Even with the tiny bit of knowledge, I had about Ra's Al Ghul's connections and resources, I knew that by the time any of those factions attacked, the new League of Assassins under me would just be too powerful to stop.

'I see, that explains why that cunning old man never tried using any mystic abilities on me.' I thought to myself after I pressed on the 'extract' option beside one of the countless files in his folder and gained access to the last decade of Ra's Al Ghul's memories, something I desperately needed to make some sense of a few things.

Ra's Al Ghul just like me was afraid of entities affecting him or manipulating him to their will. That's why he didn't practice conventional sorcery. He also wasn't a natural homo magi. But that didn't mean he could not use magic at all. He could. What he did to achieve that was simply sacrifice his life force and vitality to be able to get the chance to wield mana.

Of course, his having unrestrained access to the Lazarus Pits meant that he never faced death due to a shortage of life force. Whenever he used up too much of his vitality, a bath would simply be enough to bring him to his peak.

But despite all that, the reason Ra's Al Ghul hadn't used any magic against me that day by sacrificing his life force was because he was already running low on it. The blend of chemicals that he ingested to get physical abilities equal to mine had almost ruined his body from the inside and drastically reduced his life force, leaving his reserves not nearly enough to cast any magic. He also couldn't take a bath in the Lazarus pit because even though that would bring his body back to its peak, it would also nullify the strengthening effects of the mixture.