Shiller smiled and lowered his voice as he spoke, "I have my reasons for doing this, and besides, it's not a big deal. It's just about making them feel a bit frustrated for a while."
"Right." He then looked at Dream Power Doctor Strange and asked, "How deep are they in the dream? They must have entered the deeper levels of dreaming by now, right?"
Dream Power Doctor Strange nodded and said, "The stronger their desires in the dream, the more they engage with the dream, and the deeper they go. Although they have not reached the deepest level yet, they won't wake up easily now."
"Let them stay in that state, and going even deeper is fine."
"What are you going to do?"
"Don't worry about it, just do as I say."
After saying this, Shiller walked over to the group that was still holding a tactical seminar and said, "It seems that you won't be able to defeat Helada tonight. I don't have time to hang around here and wait, so I'll be leaving now."
Stark puffed his beard and glared, but unfortunately, he couldn't refute since they had lost the first time. Everyone had to watch helplessly as Shiller left.
Taking a deep breath, Stark said, "We'll go with my plan next, try one more time. I just don't believe it!"
Back in the real world, Shiller slowly opened his eyes and let out a sigh, asking into the air, "What time is it now?"
"It's 3 AM, sir," came Ultron's voice from the nearby electronic alarm clock. Ultron continued, "Mr. Reed is waiting for you in the lab. Would you like to go now?"
Without saying anything, Shiller stretched, got dressed, and slowly walked toward the basement's temporary lab.
Reed was adjusting his equipment, glanced at Shiller without saying anything, and Susan was beside him, holding experimental records and checking some data.
"How is it going?" asked Shiller.
"It's ready to use," Reed said. "This works on the same principle as Cerebro but is far more advanced; you just need to place a person here."
Shiller saw several experiment beds at the end of the lab, connected to some devices below, but nothing above.
"Are you sure this will work?" Shiller asked, to be safe.
This seemed to touch a nerve in Reed, who sprang up and said, "Of course it works! It will absolutely achieve the effects you want! You can't doubt my technology..."
Susan quickly pulled him back and gave Shiller an apologetic look. Shiller shook his head and said, "I'm not doubting your technology, I'm just not sure if it can be done with scientific means..."
"I wouldn't have agreed if it weren't possible," Reed retorted disdainfully. "The so-called Stars are nothing but a mysterious dimension that's not untraceable but manifests periodically, targeting specific groups of people. That's the true nature of what you call 'the call of the Stars.'"
Talking about his area of expertise, Reed spoke freely, "The materials you provided show that besides certain people whose brainwaves naturally differ from the norm, another critical summoning condition is mentality."
"What we often refer to as the disturbance of thoughts is actually the process of brainwave radiations changing the world. An individual's brainwave is minuscule, hardly changing anything. However, for a species, a civilization, their collective thinking can disrupt significantly."
"And pinpointing the disturbance specific to certain thought processes may be the prerequisite for the Stars to reveal themselves before some civilizations. As long as we meet their search criteria, they will naturally appear before us."
"I want more than just appearance," Shiller reminded.
"Yes, thus I need you to focus their attention on a specific image so the thought disturbance created is more precise, making it easier to lock onto a mysterious entity within an entire mysterious dimension, and easier to prompt it to inspect this disturbance."
"Okay, I'm not too concerned about the principle; I just hope this works," Shiller said. "Let's go upstairs and move some people."
"Susan, stay here and keep an eye on the equipment. We'll be right back," Reed turned back to Susan and then, as if suddenly remembering something, added, "Are you hungry? Do you need us to bring something back for you to eat?"
"Oh, no need, we shouldn't eat in the lab, and I'm not hungry anyway," Susan smiled at him.
As Reed turned to leave, his face flushed red. Just after leaving the basement, Reed grabbed Shiller's sleeve and said, "Your method really works well. Recently, I've been treating Susan as a valuable research subject, and she has responded to me more than before..."
"That's good to hear," Shiller nodded. "I see you two are almost there. When do you plan to confess?"
"Confess?!" Reed raised his tone, "We haven't known each other for very long, isn't it too soon to confess now?"
"Not only is it not too soon, but you must also seize this opportunity," Shiller intentionally played coy, saying, "If I successfully summon Helada, I'll tell you how to maximize your chances of a successful confession."
Reed clenched his fist and said, "Don't worry, it will definitely work!"
The two of them went upstairs to the guest room on the second floor of the Stone House, opened the bedroom door, and using the Gray Mist, Shiller dragged the sleeping superheroes to the lab's experiment beds.
"They haven't even woken up," Reed exclaimed in surprise.
"They are deeply asleep," Shiller explained. "Dream Power Doctor Strange has absolute control over the dreams. As long as Professor X doesn't interfere, everything should proceed smoothly."
"How do you know he won't interfere?"
"He might have already tried, but he won't act rashly, the Mutants have too many concerns."
After finishing, Shiller turned to look at the adjacent machine and said, "Did you really modify those ordinary machines in such a short time? Are you sure you don't need more time..."
"I told you, no need!" Reed was quite confident in this aspect and said, "When I agreed to your deal, I was sure of success. Let's start."
Shiller nodded, stepped back to give Reed space, and watched Susan's focused gaze on Reed, knowing well that girl must be charmed by him.
But it wasn't just due to Shiller's assistance; Reed's major problem was his emotional intelligence. The short plank in the barrel was too short, rendering the length of the long planks useless. However, once the short plank was somewhat mended, it was easy for people to realize how long the long planks were—an allure of such a super-genius when taken seriously could not be resisted by ordinary people.
Soon, the machine started to function. On the surface, nothing seemed to change except the equipment on the wall facing the experiment bed and the superhero's head lit up.
But Shiller clearly perceived something different—the moonlight streaming through the door became brighter.
At a sudden transformative moment, Shiller rushed up the stairs, opened the door, passed through the Stone House's living room to the outside, and then made his way to the nearby ridges.
Here, the silver-white moonlight illuminated the fields as though it were daylight. When Shiller looked up, he saw the shimmering stars calling out to him.
Suddenly, Shiller felt something sticky at his feet. Looking down, he saw a gray swamp with countless bubbles rising from beneath, and more and more heads began to emerge.
In a daze, Shiller saw glimpses where he was gazing up at the moon from a very low place, witnessing the ever-changing phases of the moon reflecting the light from the stars, as if he had become one of the many heads.
He felt his perspective rising, moving through the muddy swamp, bathed in moonlight.
Looking down, he saw his own headless body slowly falling down.
"Gray mist!" Shiller shouted.
The next second, he was back on the ridge. Shiller looked around; there was no swamp or heads, just bright and gentle moonlight.
Shiller looked up at the moon but saw nothing unusual. At that moment, he heard the Gray Mist say, "That's a realm existing only for spirits, you need your soul to detach to freely roam that dimension. Do you want to go?"
"Will you come with me?"
"Of course."
Instantly, Shiller felt himself floating up again. His body remained stationary, but his viewpoint soared into the sky.
He flew higher and higher until he was almost face to face with the stars. Just then, he smelled the rotting odor of swamp mud again, and in a flash, he saw himself standing above the swamp once more.
"Helada! Are you there?!" Shiller shouted loudly.
He didn't expect these Outer Gods to respond to him in a normal way; not everyone was a chatterbox like Nya. But not all Outer Gods were blindly foolish and uncommunicable.
They usually stuffed the required communication information directly into your mind. Some people went mad because they couldn't bear the knowledge; others, even if they could accept it, couldn't understand it and spent their lives studying the truths behind this mysterious knowledge.
However, Shiller felt he could accept and understand the messages from the Outer Gods since Gray Mist, being one of them, could translate directly for him.
After shouting that name, Shiller heard some faint sounds, similar to water boiling, but he saw no moon here. He suspected that the gray swamp under his feet was actually the moon itself.
"If you can hear me, answer me one question—what was it that struck you through the stars initially?"
In an instant, Shiller felt a huge force pulling at his soul. He didn't feel pain, but the high-speed movement caused him a momentary daze before he came back to his senses, finding himself back on the ridge.
"What's going on? Gray Mist?"
"What else? He threw us out."
"Did he say anything?"
"Let me see... hmm... uh..."
"What happened? What did he say?"
"He... was distinctly impolite."
Shiller hesitated and asked, "Did he curse?"
"Yes, and quite vulgarly. Are you sure you want me to translate it?"
"Translate it, please?"
"Hmm, it essentially sums up to 'Nataru!'"
"That's quite crude, isn't it?" Shiller said, shocked. After thinking, he asked, "Was there nothing else but the curse?"
"There are some memory fragments. Do you want to see them?"
Shiller nodded, then felt images appearing in his mind. This seemed to be the first-person perspective of the Outer God, but unlike humans who perceive the world through senses, their first-person perspective was completely different.
To Shiller, it seemed like a jumble of incomprehensible symbols piled together, some areas even pixelated, until a beam of light penetrated all the signs, causing an unprecedented collapse.
Shiller could only describe the whole process in such abstract terms as the dynamic images extracted by the Gray Mist looked like a broken computer, making no sense at all.
"Want to hear my opinion?" Gray Mist asked.
"Of course."
"Well, in my view, this thing wasn't a weapon, but a transmitter."
"Transmitter?"