Nightmare's Source! Mysterious Havoc!

Ignoring Titan's mad curses.

Five minutes later.

Superman's mood had calmed somewhat.

"Do you two even understand how dangerous this place is?" Clark turned his gaze toward his own child—and his older cousin, who had apparently been used as a weapon earlier.

"Uh... he brought me here! He said he needed to save your life!" Kara immediately ratted him out, holding nothing back as she sold Ian out completely.

Clark heard that.

His pupils trembled.

He recalled the strange feeling from last night, along with Ian's "nonsense."

"Who told you to come here?"

Clark suddenly turned to Ian.

"My Super Intelligence?" Ian answered honestly.

This time, he really was telling the truth. He had relied entirely on deduction, but the expression on Clark's face increasingly looked like he wanted to punch someone.

"Wait. The two of us need to have a proper talk later," Clark said sternly to Ian.

Then he turned back and fired several bursts of Heat Vision. Titan, already battered beyond recognition, began to collapse frantically.

Then.

Countless lights and shadows around them began to shatter, revealing the sewage plant's restaurant beyond them once more. The scattered lights and shadows seemed drawn by some force as they crazily converged.

A black sphere began to form.

Within it.

It was as though a shattered world constantly flickered into view, with countless unwilling souls roaring at the outside. Superman seemed entirely unsurprised, as if he had seen this before.

"What is that?"

Kara wanted to step forward and touch it.

"You can't touch it!"

Clark grabbed Kara and pulled her back.

His expression was grave, carrying traces of worry and vigilance.

"Is this what injured you?" Kara lowered her head and looked at Clark's arm. She could sense Clark's injuries, so it was not hard to guess why he was wary.

"Did whoever sent you here tell you how to deal with this thing?" Clark did not answer Kara. Instead, he turned to Ian, who was staring at the black sphere in shock.

"I don't know. That big shot didn't say."

Ian's eyes were clear.

"Maybe I can deal with it?" He wanted to be Gul'dan too, his body filled with Fel Energy every day. Just thinking about it told him that kind of leveling speed had to be fast.

Thinking that.

Ian could not help swallowing.

Clark saw his reaction perfectly clearly.

"Pica... Dr. Hannibal mentioned that symptom."

Just as Superman sighed and prepared to have Kara use Heat Vision with him to see whether they could destroy the sinister black sphere solidifying in midair before it escaped.

"Become our new hope!"

The black sphere suddenly trembled.

Then, like an arrow leaving its bow, it shot straight toward Ian! Superman reacted quickly and raised a hand to intercept it, but the black sphere seemed to turn intangible and passed through his palm.

[Mergeable data detected!]

"Ah~"

He was overjoyed.

He immediately opened his mouth.

Ready to welcome the food delivered right to him.

And at that moment.

Everything froze.

The world around them rapidly faded into colorlessness.

"Have you lost your mind!?"

A pale hand appeared out of thin air.

It grabbed Ian by the throat.

Leaving Ian utterly unable to swallow the duck that had already reached his mouth. The fake Death Tessa—or rather, a certain female big shot unwilling to reveal her name—gradually appeared.

She merely squeezed Ian's throat.

"Blegh~"

The black sphere was spat out by Ian.

"Stealing food from someone's mouth!?"

Ian got angry, then did nothing with that anger. What else could he do? Faced with one of the strongest beings in the universe, he could only watch as her black-gloved hand seized the black sphere.

"Do you know what this thing is? And you still dared let it into your mouth?" Even as the female big shot held the black sphere, she appeared cautiously wary.

At that.

Ian raised an eyebrow.

"If I don't eat it, how am I supposed to know what it is?" He used his peculiar logic to conceal the truth that his system had told him it was edible and non-toxic.

"..."

The female big shot clearly did not suspect much.

Her attention was entirely on the mysterious black sphere in her hand.

"This is a broken world... You can think of it as part of a universe. Well, a fragment of a universe. It carries things that do not belong to our universe."

"Yes, it is part of another universe—the remains of a universe." The woman lightly shook the black sphere in her hand, and ripples began spreading across its surface.

Faintly, countless tiny lights and shadows could be seen flickering within it.

They looked like countless living beings roaring inside.

"Gasp! Something this high-level?" Ian was far from calm. Perhaps because his gains had not been ideal, the female big shot's explanation filled him with a sense of dread the more he thought about it.

"So there are still lives within these shattered universes." Although a faint unease stirred in Ian's heart, he immediately seized the opportunity to pry out useful information.

"They are merely remnants of the past. They do not count as life... Of course, if such cosmic remains are allowed to reside in another universe and complete their revival, those remnants will indeed gain life again."

For some reason, the female big shot was not playing the Riddler this time.

She had switched to a mode where she answered every question.

Naturally, Ian would not let this rare opportunity pass. "That can happen? One universe can parasitize another universe? Like a parasite?"

He could not help thinking of several people he had encountered who did not belong to the DC Universe.

Could that also be a form of cosmic parasitism?

Just as Ian could not help muttering to himself internally.

"More precisely, only universes like this one, already shattered and reduced to partial remains, choose parasitism. As for universes that remain intact, they choose gentler methods. That silent fusion is difficult for us to detect, nowhere near as easily noticed as the parasitism of cosmic remains."

The female big shot looked at the black sphere in her hand with disgust in her eyes.

"Us?"

Ian caught the detail.

"That is not something you should know."

Clearly, the female big shot did not intend to answer that question.

"All right."

Ian digested the information. "So why did this shattered universe appear inside a chef's body? Could it be because they choose a Chosen One?"

In Ian's eyes, this even concerned himself.

He could not afford to skip over it.

"To parasitize our universe, they naturally need to choose a host within this universe... a host with a 'legal' identity. But do not ever think that is a lucky thing."

"These foreign substances seek out lives with weak wills or empty hearts. They give those lives illusory power and aspirations, making them believe they have gained some sort of mission."

"Yet in truth, everyone parasitized by these shattered universes is merely a disposable tool. That unlucky fool you drove to his death was not the same person your father encountered yesterday."

The female big shot looked deeply at Ian.

"You should thank me for saving you. Otherwise, like every subject in the incidents I have handled, you would have become a manipulated puppet and a madman gradually losing your own will."

"Many voices would rise and fall within your mind, tempting you... Those are the obsessions belonging to remnants of the past within the cosmic remains." Her tone was extremely serious.

"Believe me, no one can withstand such devastation, even people like us..." The female big shot's words abruptly stopped, and a wistful expression appeared on her face.

Who knew who she had thought of.

"Hmm? Why is your face getting paler and paler?" The female big shot cast aside her memories and looked at Ian again, only to find that the boy's complexion was terribly wrong.

Even in the black-and-white world, the boy's face was frighteningly pale.

"Nothing... I just naturally have cool-toned pale skin." Ian forced out a smile. As for the Nightmare World he entered every night, he felt as though he had found the reason.

However.

That still did not seem to explain some things.

For example, a mission?

He did not have one!

Voices driven by obsession.

He did not have those either!

Even the little psychological problem he had was about to recover completely.

Was that right?

Actually, on closer thought, he and that chef were different. The chef's strength came from some shattered universe and was utterly unstable, while his own strength came from the system.

It was as solid as could be.

They were completely incomparable.

Thinking that, Ian hurriedly calmed his heart like still water once more.