A time traveler arrives in the Multiverse with an ability that turns confident assumptions into reality. If he believes an ordinary object should perform an impossible task, the rules of the world may simply adjust to make it happen. A bicycle can rise into the sky, common equipment can behave far beyond its normal limits, and even the human body can ignore expectations that should be absolute. The power sounds convenient, but every new idea raises a larger question: if reality keeps obeying what he thinks is “scientific,” how long will it be before no one—including him—can tell where logic ends and imagination begins?
Chapter 28: 028: Shootouts Every Day
At first, the gunfire—which seemed extremely faint compared to the commotion at the venue—didn’t attract anyone’s attention. Even those who heard it mistakenly assumed the organizers were setting off fireworks or something similar. It wasn’t until someone in the crowd fell to the ground after being hit by a bullet, and those around them began screaming and shouting warnings, that the entire venue instantly descended into chaos. Spectators inside the venue frantically fled toward the exits or scrambled to find cover. The casualties caused by the stampede in the chaotic crowd actually outnumbered those directly hit by gunfire. Kraft and Fat Liao, however, remained unharmed. Because of their smaller stature, they weren’t in the line of fire, and with Alice the robot by their side, the chaotic crowd couldn’t do them any harm. “F**k! When did places outside Hell’s Kitchen get this dangerous?” Kraft and his two companions scrambled and crawled to take cover behind a flower bed. The gunfire outside continued; nearly everyone who could escape had already fled. Most of those still at the scene were trapped because they’d been too close to the front to squeeze out. “Sometimes being too close to the action isn’t worth it.” Once they were temporarily safe, Kraft even had the presence of mind to crack a joke. “Hey! Kraft! Do you have any inventions that can solve this situation?” Fat Liao asked, while struggling to hide his bulging body behind the flower bed. “Damn it! When I get back this time, I’m definitely going to start losing weight!” “Do you want me to sponsor your weight-loss kit?” By this point, Kraft had already contacted Haro via his Bluetooth headset. From the intel Haro provided, he knew there was only one shooter—an elderly white man staying at a nearby hotel. Given Kraft and his team’s current position, it was virtually impossible for them to be hit unless their luck was absolutely terrible. That’s why he had the leisure to banter with Liao the Fat. “Did he fire the shots because the noise was keeping him awake?” After explaining the situation to Liao the Fat, he finally let out a sigh of relief, then grumbled indignantly. “The music festival has been advertised for so long—he should’ve known about it ages ago! Why did he even choose to stay nearby?” Kraft rolled his eyes. “The nearby hotels are meant for festival-goers in the first place. That old guy clearly planned this way in advance, okay? Pulling a gun over a noise complaint… you’ve got some nerve.” “Um… big brother?” Just then, Alice’s timid voice rang out from beside him. “What is it?” “Can’t you just help them?” Alice pointed at the wounded man lying on the ground in the distance, wailing in pain, her face filled with compassion. “There is a way to handle this… but it would cause too much of a commotion.” Kraft furrowed his brow. “I don’t want the FBI coming knocking on my door.” Given Kraft’s views on people of other races, there was no way he’d risk exposing himself just to save these people’s lives. “B-but they look so pitiful…” Faced with Alice’s pitiful little face, Kraft instantly felt a headache coming on. In truth, even if Kraft had flatly refused Alice’s request, she wouldn’t have said much more—but now that Kraft truly regarded her as a daughter (strike that) a younger sister, he naturally couldn’t just ignore her wish. “Let me think of a way.” Kraft reassured Alice with a resigned sigh, then began to think about what tools he might have to resolve the current situation without making a sound. If it were just a matter of dealing with that gunman, Kraft had plenty of options—he could even have Alice charge right at him, and it would be easily resolved. But to resolve this issue without the others finding out, Kraft could only think of one solution: the engineering contraption he kept in his bag—the Dwarf Mind-Control Helmet. He’d originally intended this for Hulk, whose whereabouts were currently unknown. Since the guy looked like he didn’t have much going on upstairs, the mind-control helmet—capable of manipulating others’ thoughts—should keep him completely under control. However, there was another problem: the Dwarf Mind-Control Helmet’s range wasn’t that great, and Kraft was too far away to manipulate the gunman at all. “Come over here and block my line of sight.” Kraft thought for a moment about the gear in his bag and on his person, quickly finalized his battle plan, and beckoned to Liao the Fat and Alice. He didn’t need to worry about the cameras—Harlow had already taken full control of them all. However, there were other people to his left. Although they were all lying on the ground and not looking this way, and the dim light made it hard to see clearly, Kraft was still in the habit of playing it safe. Liao Fat and Alice followed Kraft’s orders, moving to his left to shield him completely. Fortunately, Kraft was the smallest of the three, so blocking the view wasn’t difficult. Then the two watched as Kraft took a comically shaped hat out of his backpack and put it on his head. The hat looked like an iron wok, with a black-and-white spiral disc stuck on top. As soon as Kraft placed this strange hat on his head, the disc began to spin slowly. After staring at the disc with a strange expression for a moment, Liao the Fat felt a bit dizzy. “What the heck is this?” He rubbed his eyes, which were starting to see double, and muttered as he looked down. But Kraft had no time to explain. He pulled another metal device shaped like a stopwatch from his bag, snapped open the protective case covering it, and pressed the button inside. Then Liao the Fat watched as Kraft vanished right before his eyes. Before he could even cry out in surprise, he felt a howling gale sweep past him, and cold air mixed with a bit of sand and dirt flew into his mouth, which had opened wide in shock. “Phew, phew, phew!” Liao the Fat hurriedly spat out the sand from his mouth, momentarily forgetting to scream in shock. Kraft had no idea he’d nearly been set up by Liao the Fat—that useless teammate. As he activated his dwarf invisibility device, he also fired up the dwarf rocket boots on his feet; since the invisibility device lasted less than 20 seconds, he had to act fast. Also, since there wasn’t enough time to take a detour, Kraft, worried he might accidentally get hit by stray bullets, activated the Dwarf protective belt around his waist. I fucking love Dwarf tech! Now invisible and protected by the force field generated by his Dwarven protective belt, Kraft quickly cut across the venue and dashed to the base of the hotel. Before the invisibility device’s effect wore off, he found a hidden spot and took cover. At that moment, chaos reigned inside the hotel as well, with occasional shouts and sobs echoing through the air, while the most dangerous gunfire continued unabated. Fortunately, the floor where the gunman was located wasn’t very high, and Kraft’s current position already placed him within the control range of the Dwarf Brainwashing Helmet. Kraft raised his head and fixed his gaze on the killer, whose head was half-exposed through the window. He then flipped the switch on the mind-control helmet. As the black-and-white disc on his forehead began to spin rapidly, Kraft’s consciousness felt as if it were being pulled out of his body by a vortex, then fired like a projectile toward the gunman at the window. “Hmm… So this is what it feels like to control a human?” By the time Kraft came to his senses again, the scene before his eyes had shifted to the shooter’s perspective. This wasn’t much different from when he’d previously tested the device on animals, but the difference was that the sense of repulsion was far greater when controlling a human than when controlling an animal. Since the Dwarf’s mind-control helmet only lasted a dozen or so seconds, Kraft didn’t have much time to waste. He immediately grabbed the gun in his hand and aimed it at himself. “Click-click-click…” The moment Kraft pulled the trigger, his consciousness returned to his own body. He rubbed his chin; although he had no other senses besides sight and hearing while controlling others, shooting at himself was certainly no pleasant experience. After dealing with the killer, Kraft opened the back cover of the invisibility device, replaced the jade that served as its power source with a new one, then picked up a stone from the ground, ground some gunpowder from it, and poured it into his shoes. Before anyone else could react, he used the same method he’d used to arrive and slipped back to where Alice and Fat Liao were. “Now that we don’t have the robot maid anymore, this invisibility device will do just fine!” The moment he returned, the first thing Kraft saw was Fat Liao’s chubby face, which clearly read “LSP.” “Get lost!” This music festival shooting was based on a real-life incident that took place in Las Vegas. The perpetrator was a white elderly man who fired a machine gun for over five minutes, killing about fifty people and injuring over a hundred. In the end, he shot himself to death in his hotel room.
