"Everyone, stand up and applaud! Let's celebrate this sacred moment together!"
Barry was the first to rise, and the others — pulled by some unseen force — followed suit, clapping enthusiastically.
"That, uh… Barry… what's with that long name?" Ailan asked bluntly.
"It's Ouga, not Diga. And is it really that long?" Barry countered.
All three nodded honestly.
"Fine." Barry sighed helplessly. "I hereby announce that the Uncle Barry + Ouga Ultraman Fan Club + Universal Love Mutual Aid Society is officially disbanded."
Yeah, it was a bit long. Time to get back to basics.
"From now on, we'll call it Straw Farm."
"Straw Farm? Why that name?" Ailan frowned. "Sounds… like we're doing farm work or something. Totally uncool."
"Look over there." Barry pointed toward a nearby field.
It was a circular rice paddy with a stone statue of Ouga Ultraman wearing a cross in the center. Strangely, the field was overrun with wild weeds.
"Ladies, friends, finish eating — we've got work to do." Barry handed out freshly baked pastries, urging them to eat faster.
This dreamscape was Barry's private domain.
After devouring the three skeletal fish — the dream-demon seeds that burst out of Freddy's soul — his dream powers had advanced by leaps and bounds.
He could now construct a dream world with special properties, capable of transmitting and receiving signals on his behalf, channeling the faith gathered by the statue in Crystal Lake in the real world.
The statue inside this dream functioned as a faith collector — a fantasy-built conduit for belief.
The rice field beneath it symbolized faith made tangible, while the weeds represented impurities within that faith.
Barry needed helpers to weed out those impurities — to purify belief absorption — just like cleaning rice before cooking it for better nourishment and digestion.
Once again, it was time to accelerate his power growth.
He handed out three bone-white scythes interwoven with straw and demonstrated how to cut down the weeds. Simple enough — one look, and they got it.
But the harvested weeds couldn't just be tossed aside. They had to be thrown into a delicate model of a city.
Anyone who had ever been to Silent Hill would recognize it — it was an exact replica.
The model acted like a furnace: as soon as weeds were thrown in, they burned. The smoke and ash that resulted were absorbed by the city itself.
It looked easy, but doing it was another story.
The weeds were incredibly tough. Maria and the others had to use a lot of effort to cut even one.
Among them, Maria was the slowest. Ailan, on the other hand, was absurdly efficient — the more she worked, the more energized she seemed, almost like she was high on adrenaline. Her eyes, though, were starting to turn bloodshot.
Kristen's psychic powers made her quick and nimble, allowing her to cut more smoothly.
And Barry?
He was supervising, watching closely for changes among them.
Not everyone was qualified to be a "farmer." Only those who had signed a contract with Barry could hold one of those special scythes and harvest the impurities in faith.
Maria's pace was steady. Ailan was clearly absorbing a bit of the negative energy from the weeds — gaining a bit of experience from it. Kristen… showed promise for the future.
Eventually, Kristen would be the one to guide others into dreams, while Barry himself had bigger plans.
He'd become like a nightmare — a wanderer across the dream realm.
After watching for a while and encouraging his teammates, Barry slipped away.
Once he was gone, the three women — who had been silently working — began to feel a strange shift in the atmosphere.
Maria, looking uneasy, avoided Ailan's gaze but kept glancing thoughtfully at Kristen.
Kristen, being the newest member, wanted to prove herself, but Ailan's insane speed made that hard. Add to that Maria's constant sidelong stares, and Kristen was feeling serious pressure.
As for Ailan — she only cared about cutting grass.
---
"Manifest — Avatar of Wrath!"
With a thought, Barry summoned it: a golden serpent with a white, grotesque face, thorn-like bone spines down its back, and eight limbs that looked like arms.
The White-Faced Golden Serpent burst through the hole of the dreamscape and emerged into a vast, surreal world.
It was like an endless ocean, filled with bizarre sights.
Dream fragments from countless beings overflowed from their bubbles, forming hazy, shifting illusions of unconscious thought.
Here, you could see chickens playing basketball, ducks with assault rifles having shootouts, Ultraman fighting Saiyans, and Gray Wolf battling Bear Big and Bear Two.
A beautiful blonde girl transformed into a failed "manly" guardian of Tokyo.
The strangeness went on endlessly.
Countless dream bubbles floated around, and Barry's wrath avatar slithered among them like a true serpent.
He didn't know where he should go — or how to enter these dreams.
Each bubble represented someone's dream. Barry quickly realized he couldn't just enter them at will.
Though they looked fragile, the outer layer was unbelievably tough. Even as a massive serpent, he couldn't bite open the smallest crack.
So he couldn't get in — no matter how hard he tried.
No wonder Freddy, even as a lesser version of a dream demon still evolving toward his final form, couldn't freely enter anyone's dream either.
Without the proper conditions, you couldn't invade another's dream.
Freddy relied mainly on the hatred and trauma of Elm Street — those emotions acted as both guidance and a drill to break through barriers.
Otherwise, entry depended on chance — or on encountering someone naturally gifted with spiritual sensitivity, whose dream barriers were weaker.
Like Maria.
Fate… where's my fate?
Barry's long serpent body slithered between the bubbles, unable to enter any of them — frustratingly close, yet shut out.
The weaker his connection to his own dream became, the deeper his avatar had ventured.
If the distance grew too great, the avatar would simply burst apart, and Barry would have to recreate it later.
But since human anger was infinite, he didn't need to worry about running out of Wrath Avatars to send exploring.
He swam and swam.
The journey was almost over — his link growing faint.
Then suddenly — a jolt ran through him. His instincts screamed that a fated dream bubble was nearby.
Where? There!
Barry's serpentine body twisted sharply, reversing direction and whipping forward — crashing headfirst into what looked like an ordinary, unremarkable dream bubble.