This power was definitely not simple—at least not to them.
After all, they'd never seen power like this before. Even Dr. Harrison Wells, who was familiar with future events, frowned in concern.
He was very surprised about Barry's ring. He'd never heard of any ring like this, even compared to the Green Lantern Corps.
The power in this ring wasn't weak. He could clearly feel the threat it posed.
If he couldn't ensure his speed continued increasing, he'd be easily destroyed by this power.
After all, the Speed Force in Barry's body had merged with the ring's power for a moment and changed into an unprecedented form of Speed Force.
The power was far beyond his expectations. He could even clearly feel how potent it was.
Because at the moment Barry's Speed Force changed, his own Negative Speed Force had suddenly seemed to... disappear.
His power was connected to Barry's Speed Force. He'd been stealing Barry's speed this whole time.
As long as Barry existed, the Speed Force would exist, and his Negative Speed Force would also exist.
"What was that just now? It seems I need to look at the future timeline messages again," Harrison thought to himself.
He looked up at Barry. "The power of this ring looks very strong, but we need to be careful about these so-called demons."
Regardless of anything else, he and the demons weren't in the same camp. These cruel creatures were harmful to his plans.
"Yeah, I understand. But I'm probably going to be really busy for a while," Barry said.
These words coming from Barry's mouth seemed particularly incredible. So much so that Cisco was genuinely shocked.
Who was Barry?
He was The Flash—the speedster with super speed, the fastest man in the world.
And now, the fastest man in the world was saying he was going to be busy?
This was like a strongman telling others he wasn't strong enough. It surprised everyone around him.
But Cisco's surprise didn't attract much attention from the others. Barry saying he'd be busy seemed pretty normal to them.
After all, Barry still had his day job. During work hours, he needed to work for the police department, finding clues in various cases.
At night, he not only had to fight metahumans, but now also needed to guard against demons appearing. He really would be busy.
In the Batcave
"Master, how are you feeling?" Alfred asked as Bruce returned to the Batcave.
This was the first time in over twenty years that Bruce had sent out a distress signal, and it had sounded very urgent. Alfred had to take it seriously.
"I'm fine. Marcus arrived just in time," Bruce said.
Thinking back to how Marcus had dealt with the beetle demon, Bruce's heart was still turbulent.
He knew Marcus was powerful, but at that moment, it had seemed like Marcus was just playing around. He'd simply waved his hand and smashed the beetle demon—which they'd regarded as an incredibly strong enemy—into pieces.
And Marcus's speed had been incredible too. Even The Flash, who was known for his velocity, couldn't compare with his teacher.
"Marcus's strength is really terrifying," Bruce sighed, taking off his bat suit and lying down on the sofa.
"Alfred, do you think there are other people as powerful as Marcus?"
"I think there are," Alfred said, offering his honest opinion as he handed over a cup of tea. "I don't know exactly how strong Mr. Marcus is, but there should be people with similar strength to him."
Bruce took the tea and sipped it, nodding slightly. Marcus's strength was indeed incredibly powerful, but Bruce felt there should be others in the world who were equally strong.
As he speculated about who might match Marcus's power, Bruce drank his tea in one gulp.
At that moment, Selina—dressed in her black catsuit—walked in, swaying her hips.
"I heard from Alfred that you called for help? What happened to you?"
When Alfred had been on the phone with Marcus earlier, he'd informed Selina about Bruce's situation.
At that time, Alfred had been particularly serious, telling her that Gotham might need her to guard it for a while.
She'd known immediately that something major must have happened to make the old butler so serious. After all, Gotham was maintained by Bruce.
She just helped Bruce with it. Most of the time, her identity was still "the thief" in the minds of various corrupt capitalists.
Seeing it was Selina, Bruce smiled and placed his cup on the table.
"A demon appeared in Central City—a very powerful beetle demon. The strongest attack I could use with the weapon Marcus gave me could only compete with its first form. I couldn't even break through the shell of its second form."
He pulled out the large horn from the beetle demon that Marcus had left behind.
"See? This is the horn from that demon. You can try it yourself. The shell is really incredibly tough."
Looking at the black horn in Bruce's hand, Selina drew the dagger from her waist. She channeled her strength and struck at the horn.
DING~
A crisp sound rang out as the dagger and horn collided.
The horn remained unchanged, except for a shallow mark on it. Other than that, there was no difference.
"What a hard horn. You're really lucky to have survived that thing!" Selina said, tossing the horn back to Bruce.
She took off her mask, sat on the sofa, and exhaled a long breath.
"Gotham's still the same. I haven't found any magic circles for summoning demons in Gotham!"
She'd searched all over Gotham carefully but hadn't found any demon summoning circles, nor had she seen any traces of demons.
"If you ask me, there probably aren't any demons in Gotham. After all, the statue's right in the center of the city. No demon would bother with that."
Selina said softly. She felt that the power Marcus had left in Gotham was suppressing the demons.
All the demons were unwilling to respond to Gotham's summons.
It had to be said, her idea was closer to the truth. Marcus's power had enveloped Gotham, which made all demons unwilling to respond to any summoning from the city.
After all, compared to other magic circle summons, Gotham felt like a trap to them—as if they'd be destroyed immediately upon entering.
They were demons, not brainless idiots. They knew to seek benefits and avoid harm.
There were easier passages to enter the human world—why would they choose to respond to that very dangerous place?
This situation left the group trying to summon demons somewhere underground in Gotham completely dumbfounded.
They'd tried various methods to summon demons for several days now, but no demon had responded. It was as if their demon arrays were all fake.
Yet the array they were using was exactly the same as the summoning arrays in other cities.
Demons in other cities were being summoned one after another, but not in Gotham. No matter how they tried, nothing worked.
"Strange. We've summoned according to the arrays from other cities. Why haven't we seen any traces of demons?" one summoner wondered aloud.
They didn't know how much material they'd spent, but until now, no demon had responded to their summons.
"Maybe something's affecting the magic circle," another summoner suggested.
They'd been ordered to summon demons here, but they hadn't summoned anything at all.
If demons hadn't been appearing in other cities one after another, they would've thought the summoning circle for demons was fake.
The summoners stopped talking and continued trying to summon demons according to the ritual steps.
Regardless of anything else, they had to summon demons.
They surrounded the huge magic circle and performed the summoning according to the various steps, waiting for a demon's response.
Bruce and his allies didn't know about any of this. They only knew that Gotham hadn't shown any magic circles for summoning demons, which meant they had no way to investigate further.
"We've checked the demon factory Marcus mentioned many times. There's no trace of demon summoning there. Selina and I have searched all over Gotham, but we haven't found anything related to summoning demons."
Thinking about this problem gave Bruce a headache. If they couldn't find the people behind this, they couldn't cut off the summoned demons at their source.
After thinking for a long time without finding any clues about the demons, they could only choose to contact Constantine.
After all, compared to these amateur exorcists, Constantine was a real expert.
"Contact Constantine. We can't find any trace of demon activity!" Bruce ordered.
Alfred called Constantine, who was recuperating at home.
The previous exorcisms had cost him considerable energy. Even with the Incinerator Ring, he was still exhausted.
Right now, he needed to rest for a while to recover and get back to his best condition.
Ring ring ring ring
The phone rang suddenly. Constantine reached out with difficulty and put the phone to his ear.
"Hello, this is exorcist Constantine..."
"It's me, Bruce," came Bruce's voice through the phone.
"I encountered demons in Star City and Central City. The demon in Star City was a bull-headed demon. Its body was very tough—machine guns couldn't damage it at all. In the end, it was only the heavenly power from the Incinerator Ring that destroyed it.
"The demon in Central City was a beetle demon with two forms. I could still deal with it in the first stage, but in its second state, we couldn't compete with it at all. In the end, Marcus had to come personally to destroy it."
Bruce explained in detail, describing the demons he'd encountered in both cities.
After hearing Bruce's description, Constantine couldn't help but sit up abruptly. The pain in his body made him gasp repeatedly, but he sat up straight anyway.
"You said you encountered a bull-headed demon and a beetle demon?" His voice sounded very agitated, as if Bruce had encountered something he absolutely shouldn't have.
"Yes, a bull-headed demon and a beetle demon. Is there a problem?" Bruce asked, confused.
He didn't know why Constantine was so worked up, but he knew this matter must be very important.
"Problem? It's a huge problem!" Constantine said urgently. "Those two demons aren't ordinary demons—they're servants of higher demons! They're dedicated to serving high-level demons!"
Others might not understand what high-level demons were like, but for Constantine, it was very familiar territory.
High-level demons were different from other demons. They were kings among demons. Although they also regarded human souls as food, they wouldn't act personally.
Most of the time, they obtained souls through various means of deception or trading.
The actual dirty work was mostly handed over to their demon servants, while they themselves reaped the benefits.
The bull-headed demon and beetle demon Bruce had just mentioned were servants of two different high-level demons.
"As servants of higher demons, their power far exceeds that of ordinary demons. They possess some of the abilities of higher demons, one of which is demon projection.
"They can project their power into the human world. Although their strength is severely reduced, they're still unmatched compared to other demons and humans..."
After hearing Constantine's explanation over the phone, Bruce finally understood why the demons he'd encountered in both cities had been so difficult to deal with.
The Minotaur Demon had been manageable—he'd attached heavenly power to machine gun rounds and killed it.
But the Beetle Demon had seemed extremely powerful. He'd had to send a distress signal, and Marcus had dealt with it personally.
If that was the case, then the situation made sense. Although they'd only destroyed projections, at least it was certain that such powerful existences among demons weren't everywhere.
"If you'd exiled them, it would be fine—the demons wouldn't notice anything. But you killed two demon servants, which means they've discovered you. They'll attack again with even stronger projections!" Constantine said in a serious tone.
This was what he was most worried about. When demon servants noticed their projection was destroyed, they'd create stronger projections and attack the same place again, over and over, until the threat was eliminated.
This was why Constantine chose to exile demons instead of destroying them most of the time.
Of course, these ordinary demons wouldn't report the destruction of their projections to the higher demons, and the higher demons weren't interested in these minor encounters. That was the only good news.
Constantine's words made Bruce frown. Just destroying projections of two demon servants had attracted even more powerful demon projections? That gave Bruce a serious headache.
"This is big trouble," Bruce muttered, rubbing his temples.
"That's right. I didn't expect you to encounter demon servants. After all, demon servants don't usually respond to summoners," Constantine agreed.
The people behind this had even summoned demon servants. It was conceivable what price they must have paid.
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