Chapter 30: Invincible in Dreams
Orin Vale stood in the cafe, looking around.
"It doesn't look any different. Are you sure we're in a dream?"
"Of course. Who do you think I am? I am the Wizard, after all. When has a spell I've cast ever gone wrong?"
The Old Wizard puffed out his chest and stroked his mustache.
Come to think of it, all the customers who were sleeping at their tables earlier were gone. Not a single person was left.
Instead, a girl's scream came from the room in the back.
"Kara?"
Orin Vale turned and pushed the door open. He saw the little girl cowering pitifully in a corner of the room, completely trapped. She was surrounded by ominous villains, their faces fixed in sinister sneers as they brazenly sized her up with cruel gazes.
They all had green, wrinkled bodies, scarlet eyes, and ferocious mouths twisted into cruel smiles. They looked just like... green peppers?
"?"
A question mark appeared above Orin Vale's head as he stared at the green pepper monsters, each with a large head, a pair of tiny arms, and a pair of short legs.
Have the green peppers become sentient?
Kara cowered helplessly in the corner, wearing the same white dress she arrived in, hugging her knees. Tears in her eyes, she looked utterly pitiful. "You... you stay away..."
This bizarrely styled nightmare left Orin Vale at a complete loss.
For a moment, he couldn't tell if this was the nightmare's influence or if she genuinely hated green peppers this much.
At this moment, the Old Wizard came forward and patted Orin Vale's shoulder. "Let's go. She's trapped in her own nightmare; there's nothing we can do to help her. All we can do is find the culprit and end this."
Orin Vale nodded and followed him outside.
The scene outside the dream world's cafe was utter pandemonium.
It was a Gotham plunged into total chaos. Cars crashed recklessly on the roads, and disgusting creatures with large eyeballs and a mess of tentacles scaled the buildings.
Old Wang from next door was having a pleasant chat with the neighbor's wife when her husband suddenly appeared. A group of youths with baseball bats tried to take advantage of the chaos for some looting, only to suddenly encounter a large, snarling Bat descending from the sky, which beat them silly in a few quick moves.
Truly a nightmare with Gotham's signature touch.
"Lord of this Domain, Dominator of Nightmares, in the name of Wizard Shazam, show your true form at once!"
The Old Wizard raised his arms high, his sleeves fluttering in the wind.
Orin Vale silently supplied a "By order of the law!" sound effect in his mind, feeling it was a perfect fit.
A surge of darkness suddenly erupted in the middle of the city street, like pitch-black lava!
It roiled and flowed, gathering in one place, and transformed into a giant humanoid figure over a hundred meters tall. Beneath a black hood was a fleshless skeleton, its deep eye sockets glowing with a dark red light. Its entire body was shrouded in a wide cape, standing tall amidst the jungle of steel and concrete.
"To think someone dares to resist me in the world of dreams—my domain! You dare to defy your fate!?" the skeletal face shouted grimly.
At first, Orin Vale thought the skeletal face looked familiar, like Taskmaster from the neighboring Marvel universe. It wasn't until the fiend shouted "fate" that Orin Vale remembered who this character was.
Doctor Fate, real name John Dee, a patient at Arkham Asylum. He possessed the ability to control dreams and had once dragged most of the Justice League into nightmares, nearly wiping out the entire League within the dream.
The moment this giant shadow appeared, the movements of everyone in the city froze.
Suddenly, he became the sole focus. All eyes were involuntarily drawn to him, staring at the towering, massive body as if held by a magnet.
Then, fear.
Yes, fear. This was the only thing everyone in the nightmare could feel from that body.
It was as if a deep breathing sound lingered in everyone's ears as an unparalleled fear invaded their souls. Their limbs turned ice-cold, their bodies felt submerged in frigid water. The whispers of a demon were like a biting wind, and even the air they breathed became unprecedentedly thin, seeping into their bodies bit by bit, causing the most indestructible willpower to collapse.
"That's right, fear me! And then despair!"
Doctor Fate clenched his fists, and it was as if endless darkness was surging into his body from all directions.
"The more you fear, the stronger I become! This is my world, and I am the one true God!"
A gale whipped up out of nowhere. The Old Wizard looked up at the giant shadow before him, his expression exceptionally grave. "He is stronger than I imagined. With my current magic, he's a bit difficult to deal with."
"Step back. I must use a forbidden spell. Perhaps it can—"
Before he could finish, a brilliant light exploded behind him. Sacred white light bloomed like thousands of lotuses, and a rapidly growing fist burst from the light, smashing into Doctor Fate's face with a world-shattering blow.
Just then, Doctor Fate was reveling in his swelling power and laughing heartily. His skeletal jaw, wide open in laughter, was knocked out of its socket with a "crack." His hundred-meter-tall body came crashing down with a rumble, demolishing an entire row of buildings along the street and kicking up a cloud of dust.
The Old Wizard's mouth fell open. The forbidden hand seal he was halfway through forming froze, and he forcefully swallowed the second half of his unfinished sentence.
Then it turned into: "...Or doing it your way works too."
Also standing a hundred meters tall, a slender, red-and-silver giant now stood between the buildings, its eyes glowing with a faint golden light.
Orin Vale's normal size was about fifty meters. It wasn't that he couldn't get taller, but the energy consumption would accelerate, making it generally inefficient.
But in the dream world, the restrictions weren't so strict.
The moment Ultraman appeared and his light erupted, even the dark clouds in the dream domain's sky seemed to be scattered by the brilliant pillar. The desperate and oppressive fear instantly lightened, as if a heavy stone had been lifted from everyone's chest.
All the city's citizens couldn't help but raise their heads, staring in unison at the newly appeared giant.
The Old Wizard narrowed his eyes.
He now realized Orin Vale wasn't bragging when he claimed to have some understanding of the laws of dreams.
Now, looking directly at the red-and-silver giant that had appeared in the dream, even the Old Wizard felt as if he were staring into a scorching sun.
"I see. The essence of his body is the magic of light, so he uses some method to break down his physical elements and reassemble them in the dream dimension. This creates a body adapted to the laws of the dream world, allowing him to exert power no weaker than in reality..."
Although he figured out the principle behind the Ultraman Race's method of entering dreams in a single glance, thanks to his vast experience, this was a technique the Old Wizard had truly never heard of before. He couldn't help but stroke his great beard, an even more interested expression appearing on his face.
They're called Ultraman, I believe?
What a terrifying race.
If even someone with the experience of Wizard Shazam was a little surprised, then one could only imagine how baffled Doctor Fate was at this moment.
Knocked flat on his back by the punch, feeling the searing pain spread across his body, Doctor Fate's skeletal head was swimming with question marks.
I was hit by a fist?
In the nightmare that I rule?
Wait, wasn't I supposed to be invincible in a dream?
Don't tell me I'm using a fake cheat?
(end of chapter)