When it came to imagination...
Who was Ian supposed to be afraid of?
He turned around and faced the shadow of Cthulhu's will. The disruption in the core node had slowed its movements, but the horrifying malice pouring off it hadn't weakened in the slightest. It was already preparing to charge again.
Then, under the stunned gazes of Lina, as well as Saruman and Kag in the outside world, Ian raised his right hand.
An unusual look appeared on his face, equal parts mischief and absolute confidence.
"Watch this transformation!"
He shouted with everything he had, thrusting his right hand into the air in a dramatically classic pose, as if gripping an invisible object, and raising it high above his head.
The instant he moved, his imagination, backed by his immense mental force and the willpower of his Raven status, poured into the rules of the dream space like a brush rewriting reality itself.
Bzzzz, !
A blinding burst of pure, warm golden light erupted from his raised palm.
It was brilliant. Sacred. Completely at odds with the madness, blasphemy, and cold dampness of Cthulhu's dream. It was as though a miniature sun had suddenly ignited in the middle of the abyss.
The light rapidly condensed and took shape, becoming a sleek, elongated object with a strangely perfect blend of technology and divine beauty. It was silver-white, with gold and purple markings.
A... cylindrical device?
One end rested firmly in Ian's raised hand.
Ian glanced down at the object he'd manifested entirely through his imagination. It was identical to the transformation device of a tokusatsu hero buried deep in his memories.
The Spark Lens.
A wild grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. His gaze snapped toward the shadow of Cthulhu's will, which seemed temporarily frozen by the sudden burst of opposing energy and sheer conceptual absurdity.
Then Ian declared in a clear, hot-blooded voice,
"TIGA, !!!"
He spread the Spark Lens open.
BOOOOM, !
A pillar of golden light, countlessly brighter than before, shot into the sky!
Ian vanished inside it.
The golden radiance illuminated the entire crumbling dream plaza at once. Contained within that light were pure concepts, light, hope, protection, gigantification, powerful positive fantasies born from humanity's collective imagination, all standing in complete opposition to Cthulhu's madness.
The shadow of Cthulhu's will twisted violently beneath the overwhelming flood of pure imagination, releasing a silent shriek as though molten lava had been poured directly over it.
The darkness began to distort, then evaporate, then retreat.
At that moment, the rules of the dream were forcibly overwritten by something even more unreasonable, imagination. It was the kind of ridiculous thing that could only happen inside a dream.
"TIGA, !!!"
That declaration rang out like a divine command of creation, carrying all the hot-blooded passion of a young man, and an absurd amount of conviction.
The golden pillar completely swallowed Ian. The light was pure, blazing, and overwhelmingly heroic.
Against the sickly yellow haze of R'lyeh, the deep purple-black gloom of Cthulhu's dream, and the ever-present sense of madness and blasphemy, it was the most extreme contrast imaginable. Light itself seemed to be challenging the darkness.
The golden radiance expanded rapidly, stretching and reshaping. Within it, the outline of a gigantic humanoid body began to form, tall, streamlined, perfectly proportioned, radiating both power and sacred majesty.
Red, purple, and gold lines flowed across the silver-white body like living patterns. At the center of its chest, a diamond-shaped blue energy crystal shone like a beacon.
"I knew it. As long as there's light, even if it's just me yelling about light, Tiga will come to me."
In a world ruled by dreams, imagination plus absolute belief was practically unbeatable.
Within seconds, a giant of light more than fifty meters tall stood proudly in the collapsing dream plaza.
Silver. Red. Purple. Gold.
The giant lowered its head slightly. Its milky-white oval eyes silently looked down upon the twisted dream space below, still struggling under the contradiction in its own logic.
Nearby, the shadow of Cthulhu's will writhed inside the golden flames, steadily shrinking and evaporating.
Ultraman Tiga, Multi Type!
An existence violently manifested within this mad dream from Ian Prince's overwhelming imagination, immense mental force, and understanding of concepts like light, hope, and protection.
Mixed into it was something Ian himself probably hadn't even noticed, the childhood longing for a hero buried deep in his memories.
"W-What... what is that?!"
Lina had only just regained her senses when she looked up at the towering giant of light. Her mouth fell open into a perfect O, and her mind went completely blank.
"A giant?"
It didn't look like any traditional giant she'd ever heard of. It was more like a gigantic... glowing humanoid.
A god? Or some kind of legendary magical creation no one had ever seen before?
The pressure and radiance coming from that enormous body made her soul tremble just as much as Cthulhu's madness had. Yet the feeling was completely different. Strangely enough... it made her feel safe.
The light was intense, but there was no hostility in it. Instead, it seemed to drive away the gloom and bring warmth with it.
"Aaaaaaaah, !"
The shadow of Cthulhu's will was scorched by the pure light energy like snow thrown into boiling oil. It let out a silent, miserable shriek as its form rapidly shrank and faded.
Eventually, all that remained was a thin trail of resentful purple-black smoke before it temporarily dispersed beneath the blazing light.
Clearly, concepts like pure light and positive fantasy were exceptionally effective against a fragment of will born from madness and chaos.
"Never thought I'd actually get to be Ultraman one day."
Ian, now in Tiga's form, flexed one enormous hand. A faint metallic grinding sound followed the movement.
He could feel what seemed like endless light energy flowing through the body he'd constructed out of imagination. Even the simplest movement carried enough force to shake the surrounding space.
Ian nodded in satisfaction. The dream had made him powerful. Right now, he was Ian Tiga Ultraman.
"Not bad."
A vast, deep voice echoed directly inside Lina's mind, though it still carried Ian's usual calm tone.
"Much more fun than exploiting bugs in the dream."
He lowered his head and looked at Lina, who seemed tiny as an ant beneath him. The milky-white glow in his eyes softened slightly.
"Stop staring. We don't have much time."
Tiga extended one enormous hand and carefully held his palm out in front of her, moving with extreme caution so the pressure from the motion wouldn't hurt her.
"Maintaining this form burns through my... well, let's call it mental force. We need to get out of this damn place quickly."
Ian himself might have been acting completely ridiculous, but Tiga? Tiga definitely looked divine.
"Oh, okay!"
Lina finally snapped out of her daze. She stared at the enormous hand that seemed to be forged from light, gritted her teeth, and climbed onto it without hesitation.
The palm didn't feel like cold metal or hard stone. Instead, it was warm and solid, yet strangely unlike anything physical, as though it were made entirely from condensed energy.
Once Lina had found her footing, Tiga slowly curled his fingers around her, shielding her safely inside his palm. Then he raised his head.
His milky-white eyes swept across the dream plaza, which had become dangerously unstable after the disruption of its core node and the shock of his transformation. The pulsing, cerebral-cortex-like flesh covering the ground was already withering and peeling away.
The rotting masses of organ-like clouds overhead had been scattered by the golden light. Cracks covered the stone tablet of screaming faces at the center of the plaza, and the dark-purple light that had once burned at its peak was completely gone.
"A measly Cthulhu dream thinks it can trap Ian Tiga? Doesn't it know this is literally my field of expertise?"
"The core structure of the dream is still intact, but it's been badly weakened."
Ian quickly analyzed the situation. In his current form, he looked stronger and more confident than ever.
"I can smash through it and return to the previous layer... or I could just tear open a path straight back to reality."
No sooner said than done.
He kept his left hand closed protectively around Lina while straightening the fingers of his right hand into a knife-hand stance. Brilliant golden light rapidly gathered around his arm and palm.
"Don't be scared!" he told the nervous Lina. "I'm Tiga, the incarnation of light. Creepy nightmares like this are exactly what I specialize in beating up. You were born in the wrong era to watch Ultraman. If you could lend me your light, you'd understand just how reassuring this is."
Before he'd even finished speaking, Ian swung his right arm forward.
"Hah!"
A sharp Ultra Hand Chop slashed through the air, trailing a golden blade of light that seemed capable of tearing space itself apart.
It struck the distorted boundary of the dream, a chaotic barrier made from shifting blocks of color and countless mad whispers.
Riiip, !
The sound was like cloth being torn apart by overwhelming force.
The supposedly resilient dream boundary was forcibly split open by the sheer violence of Ian's light-powered imagination, leaving behind a massive gash dozens of meters long, its edges burning with golden flames.
Beyond it wasn't another deeper layer of nightmare. Instead, Ian could see the comparatively calm torrent of information belonging to the shallower dream layer they'd passed through earlier.
"It worked!"
Ian's spirits immediately rose. Without wasting another second, he took a massive step through the opening and returned to the space filled with shattered colors and fragments of knowledge.
But it was no longer the same as when he'd left.
Apparently, his escape, and especially his transformation, had fully activated the dream's defensive mechanisms.
The floating fragments of color no longer drifted randomly. They began converging, twisting, and transforming.
Countless dream monsters formed from pure malice, madness, and impossible geometry began growing out of the walls, the floor, and even empty space itself.
In moments, they surrounded Ian from every direction.
Some resembled deep-sea worms magnified millions of times, covered in razor-sharp teeth and clusters of compound eyes. Others were rolling spheres of flesh made from countless screaming human faces. Still others were nothing more than constantly shifting masses of darkness radiating mental corruption and shrieking noise.
Individually, these monsters might not have been particularly strong, but there were far too many of them. More importantly, their aura came from the dream itself. They were like the immune cells of this insane world, determined to eliminate Ian, the foreign virus invading their system.
"Heh. More?"
Faced with an endless sea of monsters, Ian didn't retreat. He chuckled, and battle intent rose in his milky-white eyes.
"Don't you know Tiga specializes in beating the crap out of things like Cthulhu?"
Perfect. This was a good opportunity to test the combat power of his "body of imagined light."
He drew his left hand toward his chest, clenched his right fist at his waist, and assumed a classic Ultraman fighting stance.
"Lina, close your eyes and hold on tight!"
Then,
"Haaah!"
Tiga moved.
He didn't bother with any complicated beam attacks. Instead, his enormous body charged straight into the swarm. A massive fist wrapped in brilliant golden light smashed forward like a warhammer.
This was Happy Type Tiga, after all. Those who knew, knew. Besides, being a beam-spamming mage didn't mean you couldn't throw hands.
BOOOOM!
Ian's very first punch blew apart the head of a worm monster as large as a hill. Golden light exploded in every direction, and the creature's enormous body instantly disintegrated into black ash.
Ian followed with a vicious side kick. A golden arc flashed through the darkness as several rolling masses of human faces charging from his flank were kicked apart at the waist.
"Dream monsters don't feel pain!"
Ian shamelessly borrowed a line from another Ultraman who was also known for being a walking artillery platform.
His movements were incredibly fast, and every strike carried overwhelming force. More importantly, each blow was infused with the purifying power of light.
Wherever he went, the dream monsters were torn apart in waves as though they were made of paper, their corrupted forms purified by golden radiance. Streams of light crisscrossed the dim, shattered dream space, ripping apart everything that represented madness and blasphemy.
"He's... that strong?!"
Lina kept her eyes tightly shut as she curled up inside Tiga's warm palm. Even so, she could clearly feel the violent impacts outside, the tremors, explosions of energy, and dying shrieks of monsters.
She was utterly overwhelmed.
He was... tearing monsters apart with his bare hands? Using the power of light to fight like some legendary giant inside this bizarre, terrifying dream?
This was so far beyond anything she understood that she didn't even know where to begin. Could dreams really be used like this? Just what kind of existence was the mysterious boy who had saved her?
Lina couldn't make sense of any of it, but that didn't make it any less astonishing.
The battle continued.
Tiga tore through the swarm like a golden storm, leaving huge empty spaces wherever he passed. But the number of monsters seemed endless. More kept pouring out from deeper within the dream, and their forms became increasingly bizarre. Their attacks also began carrying effects like mental corruption and spatial distortion.
Tiga's gigantic body moved freely through the shattered, warped space.
Sometimes Ian rushed straight into close combat with terrifying speed, crushing dream monsters beneath fists and kicks wrapped in golden light. Other times, he created some distance, firing small-scale Palm Light Arrows and Ultra Slashes from his forehead crystal or hands to accurately pick off bizarre creatures trying to spit acid or launch psychic attacks from afar.
"What a disgusting bunch of weeds."
Ian continued fighting while calmly observing the battlefield. Before long, he noticed something.
The places where these monsters were spawning seemed connected to certain corruption nodes within the dream, specific points where the surrounding energy was far denser than normal.
Simply killing the monsters wasn't enough; that was only treating the symptoms.
"I need to find and destroy those nodes. Otherwise, they'll just keep respawning forever."
Ian quickly made up his mind, and the battle continued amid the violent collision of light and darkness.
(End Of This Chapter)
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