Shooting

Sophia leaned against the terrace of the tall tower, her slender fingers tapping her jet-black wand as she looked down at the demon hunter who had once again barged into her nightmare Domain.

Behind Lin Rui, the mutated security guard, "Tyrant," pursued him relentlessly with heavy footsteps.

In the nightmare, that human body was now hideously swollen, its skin covered in writhing tumors and festering fissures, giving off a nauseating stench of decay.

Even a glimpse from a distance made Sophia's brow involuntarily crease with disgust.

"Heh, demon hunter." Her voice was cool, laced with deliberate mockery. "One fallen lackey has you running all over the place like a dog? How... embarrassing."

"Cut the chatter and help. Use your power." Lin Rui had no time to care how bedraggled he looked as he darted beneath the mist-shrouded tower.

Before his words had faded, Sophia swiftly raised her wand atop the tower.

In an instant, a dazzling silver-white fissure split the lead-gray nightmare sky. Savage thunderbolts, like furious silver dragons, plummeted from the heart of the heavens with a destructive roar!

Boom-!!!

The pillar of lightning struck Tyrant squarely on the head. Purple-white arcs raced wildly over him, instantly pinning his malformed, several-hundred-kilogram bulk in place.

Blackened smoke rose from his cracked skin, and the air filled with the acrid smell of protein carbonized by intense heat.

This was the home ground of her consciousness, the sanctuary of faith she had built since childhood, an absolute Domain forged by countless devout prayers.

She wrote every rule.

But Tyrant was no ordinary monster after all. He was an amalgamation of selfish greed and evil thoughts.

An almost mechanical roar rolled from his throat as he forcibly raised the enormous rifle modified beyond recognition, aiming its muzzle straight at the slender figure on the tower terrace.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

Dull, furious gunshots tore through the dream. Every bullet carried a twisted power of corruption, trailing dark red through the air as it hurtled toward Sophia's position.

The witch neither dodged nor retreated. She merely tilted her face slightly, and a pale-purple magical barrier flashed before her, stopping every bullet with an ear-piercing clash of metal.

As the two exchanged ranged attacks, gunfire and lightning crossing-back in the real world, the Gershwin Theatre had already become hell on earth.

Screams, sobs, and the crashing of overturned tables and chairs blended into a cacophony.

The security guard trapped in the nightmare kept pulling the trigger, firing wildly without aim.

The people in the theater scattered like startled birds. Some ducked into dressing rooms, others squeezed into cramped storage closets, and some simply lay beneath the seats, trembling with their coats over their heads.

Broadway's nights should have glittered with lights, fine clothes, and jewels, but now the tense reek of gunpowder had utterly defiled this one.

Outside the theater, sirens drew closer.

As soon as the shooting was reported, four or five armed NYPD officers rushed into the building, shouting, "Get down! Get down!" as they rapidly moved to flank the second floor.

Meanwhile, inside the nightmare Space.

Tyrant was about to pull the trigger again when a sudden chill ran down his spine-at some point, Lin Rui had circled behind him and closed in like a phantom.

Icy blue light danced along the frost-encrusted longsword as it plunged unhindered into the back of his head, piercing straight through that ugly, tumor-covered skull.

With a wet squelch, the sword tip emerged between his brows, bringing a spray of black-red pus, blood, and brain matter.

Tyrant let out a short, piercing howl in the nightmare, his enormous body convulsing violently. Yet he did not die, instead struggling fiercely.

At the same time, in the real world.

Standing at the end of the second-floor corridor, the fallen security guard who had long since lost his reason suddenly threw back his head and let out an agonized scream-the grievous injury to his soul had a tangible effect in reality.

The gun in his hands swung wildly out of control, bullets striking showers of sparks from the walls, ceiling, and railings as glass shattered all around him.

The arriving officers could no longer spare time for warnings.

"The suspect is armed! Open fire!"

Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang-!

The concentrated gunfire instantly drowned out every other sound.

Bullets struck the security guard's head, chest, and shoulders in succession. As though the last thread holding him up had been cut, his body slumped forward, blood rapidly spreading across a broad patch of the scarlet carpet.

The gunfire stopped.

Several officers exchanged glances, quickly confirming in lowered voices:

"Suspect down!"

"No other visible threats!"

"Stay alert. Keep searching!"

They cautiously approached the fallen body, kicked away the dropped weapon, and crouched to check his pulse-he was already cold.

A measure of order gradually returned to the chaotic theater.

Some people began sobbing quietly, some sat collapsed on the floor muttering to themselves, and others took out their phones and dialed with trembling hands.

Inside the nightmare, Sophia withdrew her gaze atop the tower and gave a soft snort.

She raised a hand to tuck a windblown strand of hair behind her ear. Her gaze returned to the demon hunter standing nearby with his sword, her tone still carrying that unmistakable tsundere air:

"...You got lucky this time."

"If you dare barge in again, I'll freeze you into an ice sculpture and put you beneath the tower as a decoration."

Lin Rui merely looked up at her, the corners of his mouth lifting almost imperceptibly, and said nothing.

The nightmare wind blew past, carrying faint traces of lingering thunder and the scent of blood. Reality and illusion briefly overlapped in that moment, then parted again.

Only as Lin Rui watched Tyrant's body slowly disappear did he let out a great sigh of relief.

He admitted that he had underestimated the dangers of the demon hunter profession, thinking every target would be as easy to deal with as a drug-addled vagrant from the slums.

There was a deep dent in his enchanted frozen leather armor, left by a hit from his opponent's high-powered rifle. Only now that the battle had ended did Lin Rui feel the dull ache in his chest. He had nearly died in the nightmare.

He turned back to look at Sophia atop the tower, and their eyes met. Before long, Sophia and the tower vanished together as she returned to reality.

Lin Rui also felt his body leave the dream and reappear backstage at the theater. Andrea was hiding right in front of him, barely daring to breathe.

"Leon, where did you go?"

Andrea did not notice anything unusual about Lin Rui's sudden appearance at all. Instead, she grabbed his hand and pulled him to her side.

"I heard gunshots and screaming. Someone must be shooting."

The manager's assistant who had been beaten up was also sprawled nearby, doing his best to curl up in the darkness and hide from whatever gunman he imagined might be there.

Lin Rui obediently huddled beside Andrea and quietly waited for things to pass.

In a little office cubicle at the theater, Sophia also woke from the nightmare.

She lay on the bed in a daze for several seconds, then immediately snatched paper and a pen from the bedside drawer and wrote down the fragments of her dream that were rapidly fading.

"The tower, the cold moon, a monster like a 'Tyrant'... and, what else was there... God, don't let me forget so quickly. There was an important detail.

"The name, the name, the demon hunter's name...

"Damn it, the reason I suddenly entered the dream seemed to have something to do with that name. I should know his name, so how could I have forgotten it?"

Unable to remember the name, Sophia grew a little frantic, but she soon calmed down and sketched a young, handsome face on the paper.

Someone who could serve as a theater's artistic director had at least some artistic talent.

Sophia was not only skilled at dance and music; she could produce a simple sketch with ease as well. As the lines grew clearer, the figure on the paper overlapped with the image she had seen in the dream.

"Leon." Sophia froze for a long moment, then murmured, "It was that kid who delivered the late-night food, the one Andrea introduced. But why would I dream about him?"

Just as Sophia was attributing that peculiar feeling to the absurdity of dreams, her phone rang.

It was a theater staff member. "Ma'am, are you safe right now?"

"What happened?" Sophia asked, puzzled.

The assistant replied, "There was just a shooting at the theater. Campbell, the security guard stationed at the entrance, suddenly lost control and fired indiscriminately into the crowd. The police arrived quickly and shot him dead."

Security guard? Shot dead?

Sophia froze again. She suddenly realized something: something connected to this seemed to have happened in the nightmare she had entered for no reason.

"That ugly-faced fellow in the dream who traded shots with me using a terrifying weapon... I couldn't make out his face, yet he felt familiar. Wasn't that Campbell?"

The assistant asked again whether Sophia was safe, and only hung up after receiving confirmation.

At that moment, a powerful thought surged through Sophia's mind.

She immediately rolled out of bed, quickly dressed again, left her little cubicle bedroom, and hurried back backstage with pattering footsteps.

Because a shooting had taken place in the heart of Broadway, the number of police around the theater rapidly increased.

An ambulance also came wailing up, and an air ambulance helicopter appeared in the sky as well.

"Was it really this serious?" Sophia was still wondering how many people had died in the shooting when she saw two medics carrying an injured man out on a stretcher.

The injured man was still screaming desperately, "No, no, I don't need emergency care! I can get up. God, why did you call a helicopter for me?

"My insurance is pretty good, but it doesn't cover this. My premiums will go up! I won't be able to afford it!"

The injured man struggled desperately to prove he was not as badly hurt as they imagined, but the medics attending him did not want to have made the trip for nothing. Even more concerned about losing their "performance numbers," they strapped him firmly to the stretcher.

No matter how pitifully he cried, they were taking him to the helicopter.

Amid the chaotic flow of people, Sophia recognized the injured man as the theater manager's assistant. He usually had a few clever tricks up his sleeve, but today he had run into terrible luck.

"An ambulance wasn't enough; they actually called an air ambulance. Hopefully his savings can weather this. Otherwise, his only hope will be negotiating with the health insurance company."

The police had sealed off the theater's first-floor entrances and exits. No one outside could enter, and they were only directing those inside to evacuate.

Amid the chaos, Sophia spotted Lin Rui at a glance.

As though their minds were in tune, the two exchanged a look from several meters apart, but neither approached, much less exchanged greetings. They simply walked silently toward the exit, parallel to each other.

But a woman's intuition told Sophia that she had not seen that kid in her nightmare for no reason. And that kid seemed to know something.