Gray mist conveyed a definite thought, saying, "This isn't for attacking anything, but for transporting something to the target location."
"Ah?"
This answer really was unexpected for Shiller.
Ever since Shiller had learned from Nya that Anatoli had come up with a strange cannon and had fired at the Stars, he had been trying to figure out what Anatoli was up to.
In his impression, this doctor wasn't someone who loved weapons development and had a phobia of insufficient firepower; he didn't exhibit any violent traits, and was extremely gentle most of the time. If you couldn't touch the paranoia and madness hiding beneath his gentle facade, you would only think he was a kind-hearted good doctor.
Greed felt he was very much like him.
Anatoli's weapons development must have been for something, but Shiller really couldn't see the reason. From his perspective, there wasn't anything that needed such a weapon to attack.
Shiller had been in Marvel for quite some time, and he had enough resources to create an indestructible weapon, but to him, it was meaningless. Whom would he use it against? Abstract Entities? But even if he didn't attack them, didn't Eternity and Death run at the sight of him anyway?
Precisely because he couldn't understand, Shiller needed to investigate, but Nya would certainly not tell him anything, and he wouldn't agree to Nya's strange conditions.
Shiller could only start with the victims.
That shell didn't hit Nya directly, which meant that it wasn't intended to take Nya's life, but there were other unlucky ones in the Stars who were nearly hit by it.
That unlucky one was Helada.
This was the only useful piece of information Shiller had gotten from Nya, but as for how to summon Helada, and how to extract the truth from him, Nya was ignorant.
Shiller only knew that the Outer Gods of DC and Marvel were the same entities, and that no matter which cosmos they were summoned in, they were the same Outer God, and clearly, Marvel was more suitable for summoning.
Shiller had considered using magic to summon, but the biggest problem was that he wasn't very proficient in magic, and Supreme Magician Strange would definitely not allow him to summon something so dangerous.
Therefore, Shiller set his sights on Reed.
Reed was quite impressive in conducting normal scientific research, but he was even better at delving into dangerous things, standing out in his research of perilous items. Stark couldn't compare with him in this regard, and only Doctor Destruction had the ability to compete.
However, Doctor Destruction had almost no weaknesses, and getting his cooperation for work would cost Shiller a great deal, but tricking Reed was much simpler. Even without paying him, Reed himself was very willing to research these dangerous things.
Fortunately, Reed was facing problems in his pursuit of Susan, and Shiller had resolved these issues for him and provided useful advice. The condition was that they had to make a deal, where Reed needed to help Shiller find a way to summon Helada.
Completely unsurprisingly to Shiller, this guy had an incomparable talent in causing trouble. The higher the danger level of what he was summoning, the more efficient he was.
Using some basic equipment transferred from New York, it took him less than three days to whip up a complete set of devices for summoning Helada.
But just having these devices wasn't enough, or rather, these devices were actually prepared for the superheroes. What really needed to be leveraged was the superheroes' spiritual power.
Reed believed that the so-called call of the Stars was actually the brainwaves of a person or a group meeting the search criteria of the Stars. It's similar to the Stars continuously emitting a type of invisible wave that would respond upon encountering brainwaves with certain specific tags.
This specific tag could be something like praying in a special way, drawing a Magic Array, or it might even be just simply uttering a certain word.
After Shiller had given Reed all the information about the Outer Gods, he believed that most of the Outer Gods would definitely respond to brainwaves that persistently fixated on them.
Simply put, the more you want to see an Outer God, the easier it is for the Outer God to respond to you. There's a saying, 'If you haven't done anything wrong, you've nothing to fear from a ghost knocking at your door; but if you have, and you're especially scared of ghosts, then you're more likely to see ghosts.
Typically, to accumulate enough brainwaves to summon an Outer God, at least a group is needed. We're not talking tens of thousands, but at least hundreds of people, and they need to maintain this type of thinking over a long period. This is the origin of the heresy of the Outer God believers.
But clearly, Shiller didn't have the time to create a heresy, even replacing the original Hydra with Helada wouldn't work; it was simply too slow.
So Reed came up with a solution. He proposed that the thoughts of superheroes were different from ordinary people, seeming to hold a significant weight in the entire cosmos, possessing special powers. As long as they kept thinking of Helada and calling out to him, Helada would definitely appear from behind the Stars.
Of course, just their calling wouldn't work; it also had to be combined with something Reed concocted similar to a Cerebro Amplifier, constantly magnifying their thinking, to ensure that it could definitely reach deep into the Stars and draw Helada's attention.
The plan worked, but what wasn't expected was that Helada turned out to be rather thin-skinned; not only did he not answer, but he also cursed them out. After all the cursing, he still didn't provide any useful leads.
Shiller thought about it and decided to still trust Gray mist. He asked, "Do you think this is a Transmitter? But if it's for transportation, why go through all this trouble? Wouldn't a Teleportation Portal do?"
"How would you set up a Teleportation Portal on the other side, then?" Gray mist asked a key question, "If you don't venture deep into the Stars, how can you leave a Teleportation Portal there? And without a Teleportation Portal, how do you go deep into the Stars?"
"Uh..."
Shiller was really stumped. It was an obvious logical paradox.
Normally, it's impossible for anyone to enter the world of an Outer God using any method, let alone the elaborate chamber of Asathos, also known as the depths of the stars.
If you can't get in, how can you open a teleportation portal?
Even for mages, to open a teleportation portal in a very distant place, one must first fly there and then open the portal. If it's completely inaccessible, there's no way to open a portal there.
So-called teleportation "face-kicking" isn't about opening a portal directly on someone's face from miles away; first, someone must sneak over, and then you can open a portal to transport an army.
Therefore, for places that are completely inaccessible, traditional teleportation portals cannot be used.
Shiller seemed to somewhat understand and said, "So this thing is designed to send something directly to a place that is normally unreachable?"
"I think it should be," said the Gray mist. "You could say it's a weapon because it really is like a brick flying with immense force, shooting it directly with an unimaginable powerful force."
"What did he shoot into the depths of the stars?"
After a moment of silence, the Gray mist said, "Is there a possibility that he shot himself over there?"
"What?!" Shiller was shocked again by the Gray mist's bold guess.
"Nya once mentioned that Dr. Anatoli glanced toward the depths of the stars and happened to see him, so he answered Dr. Anatoli's call. Don't you think this story contains some embellishments?"
The words of the Gray mist made Shiller fall silent.
It's probably not just some embellishments, Shiller thought. Instead, it's like finding a needle of truth in a haystack of embellishments.
To mention the most obvious point, Nya holds a very high status among the Outer Gods, almost second only to Asathos, akin to being the second-largest shareholder in a company.
At the time, even if Anatoli was impressive, he was still an ordinary being. To Nya, ordinary life is as insignificant as dust. Even if Anatoli had the feather of Lucifer, that would only be like a regional manager's subordinate. Why would Nya pay attention to such a being, lend him power directly, and not take it back?
Anatoli must have done something extraordinarily shocking.
Considering this, the story Nya told of their first encounter with Anatoli is probably as watery as an ocean.
"Just because I glanced over you in the crowd, we forged a fated contract." It does sound like a beautiful love story, but if one party is a crazy Soviet and the other an Outer God, the reality is certainly not so wonderful.
Shiller felt that the situation could be like this.
There was a time when Anatoli was a bit short on cash. With the feather of Lucifer, he'd fleeced everything within the cosmos, the Multiverse, even the entire world, but still felt it wasn't enough.
So, he set his sights on the domain of the Outsiders.
Summoning these beings was extremely troublesome, taking a lot of energy without necessarily bringing much power in return. So, the clever Anatoli thought, if the mountain won't come to me, I shall go to the mountain.
He then created a cannon, whose primary purpose was to shoot him directly into the homeland of these Outsiders, and its secondary purpose was to negotiate peacefully with these beings from their homes.
As expected, Nya was the first unlucky one.
Anatoli stuffed himself into the cannon and, whoosh, shot himself into the depths of the stars. When Nya, who was sleeping peacefully at home, opened his eyes, he saw something that should absolutely not exist before him.
Normally, terror wouldn't be an emotion that an Outer God would experience, but considering Nya's level of emotional richness, he was definitely terrified in that moment—no, man, who are you?!
And, of course, the rest was easy to manage. Nya, being a being who never skimps on his power once his interest is piqued, certainly made things happen.
Furthermore, Shiller suspected that Anatoli was not aiming directly for Nya. He might have just taken what he could get, and Nya was just out of luck.
As absurd as this string of conjectures sounds, Shiller felt his assumptions were reasonable because Anatoli was such an absurd person. Otherwise, why would he initially want to cure Shiller?
To Shiller, Anatoli was a person with two hundred pounds of weight and a hundred and ninety pounds of defiance. The more you say he can't, the more he has to prove he can. Healing Shiller was like this, just as saving Gotham was.
The more something is claimed to be beyond salvation, the more he has to save it. The greater the difficulty, the more he's energized, and he can come up with the most ludicrous and bizarre methods for it. Looking back at his trail so far, how many of the things he's done could have been done by an ordinary person?