From Horror to Comedy

Chapter 42 From Horror to Comedy

into the night.

The blonde girl walked down the street at night, surrounded by deep darkness. She tried hard not to look at the shadows around the empty neighborhood, and not to imagine that there were strange shadows writhing in the darkness.

If possible, Zola certainly wouldn't want to walk the streets alone in Gotham at night. Everyone knows it's a dangerous city, especially for a young, beautiful, single woman.

Unfortunately, tonight's situation was special, and she really didn't have many options. Near the end of the workday, one of her rather dim-witted, bumbling bosses suddenly slapped his forehead and announced that tomorrow's plan needed to be changed. As the saying goes, once the boss speaks, subordinates become difficult to deal with; Zola had no choice but to work overtime until midnight before finally going home.

Walking at night is indeed risky. But this was her first time, and she felt that walking at night only occasionally might not cause any problems.

Clearly, she was naive.

She heard footsteps.

Zola stopped and turned to look behind him.

No one is empty.

The streets remained deserted, without a single ghost in sight. The jagged buildings in the darkness seemed abandoned, their outlines grotesque and menacing, involuntarily conjuring up the various mysterious and terrifying legends that had accompanied this city for centuries.

The footsteps seemed to have stopped.

Zola turned and continued walking, his footsteps echoing again. But when he looked around, there was still no one there.

A profound sense of fear washed over her, as if some monstrous monster was baring its fangs and claws, closing in from the darkness. She took off running, turning and sprinting at full speed. The sound of her footsteps miraculously transformed into running, following her like a shadow.

Fear clouded her mind. Zola didn't remember how she got here, but when she came to her senses, she was already in this abandoned building.

Gotham is filled with abandoned buildings and warehouses, places any ordinary citizen knows to stay away from, because they are often associated with legends of ghosts, monsters, or owls.

Zola slipped into a room covered in cobwebs and locked the rusty but thankfully functional lock. These actions nearly drained her of her last ounce of strength; she slumped against the door, panting heavily.

The footsteps stopped. After two minutes of silence, she began to wonder if it was just her imagination. Most paranormal events end with a similar conclusion: perhaps she was just too tired from work during the day, and her weary brain was scaring herself.

But that thought vanished the moment the axe shattered the door.

Unable to control herself, she let out the sharpest scream, her body reflexively moving away from the door. An axe forcefully smashed open the door, and through the crack, a burly figure could be vaguely seen in the darkness, wearing a hockey mask, wielding the heavy axe repeatedly, swinging it at the old wooden door.

The overwhelming fear almost numbed Zola. In a daze, she felt like Wendy Torrance from The Shining, watching helplessly as her last line of defense was slowly breached, each second bringing her closer to death.

Then a hand landed on her shoulder.

Zola gasped again and darted away like a startled rabbit. Turning her head, she saw that a second person had appeared behind her in the room that should have been empty except for her.

A person whose entire body is covered in some kind of exoskeleton metal, painted in red and silver, with a striking blue crystal on his chest.

For some reason, despite it being a cold, mechanical body, seeing him gave me a strange sense of security.

She remembered; she seemed to have seen it on some urban legend website. Like Batman, it was a mysterious figure who had recently become active in urban legends.

The posters on the forum referred to him as "Ultraman".

"Step back, ma'am."

Shen You, clad in armor, calmly stepped forward, gripped the handle, and snapped the lock with a click.

The door was pulled open. The man outside, wearing a hockey mask, stood with an axe raised in both hands, seemingly never expecting the door to open. He brought the axe down with a thud, smashing it onto the metal skull of the mobile suit.

Sparks flew as the axe spun like a dart. The masked man held the half-broken axe handle in his hand, blinked twice beneath his mask, and stared blankly at the armor before him, which was completely unscathed.

Then he silently hid the half-broken axe behind his back.

"I'm sorry," he said weakly, shrinking back.

Shen You casually threw a punch, and the masked man flew straight down the corridor to the end with a thud, his back cracking against the wall before he lay motionless on the ground.

dong dong dong.

knocking.

The darkness seemed to deepen, and there wasn't a single light source in the abandoned building. The eerie knocking sounded as if it were coming from all directions, making it impossible to pinpoint its location.

"It's happening again!" Zola nervously crossed her arms. "First it was footsteps, and now it's this again. I knew there was something wrong with Gotham! This place is definitely haunted."

A ghost?

Shen You, on the other hand, remained calm.

In his previous life, he was a staunch atheist who never believed in supernatural forces or myths. However, that depends on the world.

He firmly believed that the strict rule of "no supernatural beings allowed after the founding of the People's Republic of China" in the past was perfectly acceptable, but this was DC after all. The highlight of this world was its inclusiveness; anything was possible. Aliens, Cthulhu mythos, traditional monsters, otherworldly demons—you name it, it was there.

Luckily, he's Ultraman.

The Ultraman universe is not necessarily less rich than DC's; the TV series have featured almost everything, both scientific and unscientific.

Tsuburaya Productions, under the guise of targeting children, remained incorrigible and constantly scheming to create horror films. The set of Showa-era Ultraman films was filled with a colorful array of childhood traumas, resembling a kaleidoscope of children's insoles. Under these circumstances, the Ultraman predecessors were also forced to fight against various ghosts and vengeful spirits; the Land of Light curriculum even included exorcism techniques summarized by their predecessors based on experience.

Shen You selected relevant courses based on his interests, and he summarized his experience in just two concise sentences.

There is no monster that a single Specium cannot defeat.

If so, then two shots.

There's no way around it; our Land of Light focuses on technology, not mysticism. Asking them to do some serious exorcism involving chanting scriptures or performing rituals would be too much to ask.

They wouldn't understand or be able to handle anything too complicated. But as the saying goes, justice prevails over force, and truth is everywhere within range. Ultraman is all about physical salvation; even Satan would have to stop when Specium, at 500,000 degrees, is thrown into the air.

dong dong dong.

The knocking sounded again in the darkness, echoing through the gloomy corridor, sounding eerie and unsettling.

Shen You remained silent, raised his palm, and a blue light shone from it.

A beam of light pierced the darkness, like a gleaming sword, sweeping across the entire corridor of the abandoned building.

Boom boom boom—

An exaggerated series of explosions shattered the doors of rooms along the way. A blinding flash of light tore through the path, almost blasting through an entire floor and leaving a trail of scorching heat.

Behind a shattered door along the way, a humanoid figure, charred black by the heatwave, stood there blankly, blinking twice in bewilderment, its right hand raised in mid-air as if preparing to knock.

However, the door in front of him was gone, making his dark-clad, hand-raised posture quite awkward.

Zola slumped onto the floor behind him, staring at the steel figure before him, his expression a complex mix of emotions, unable to utter a word.

It was terrifying just a minute ago.

It felt like I'd stumbled into some kind of horror movie set, and I was just a background character used to create atmosphere in a classic scene.

Just a minute later, the atmosphere changed drastically. Not only did the terror in my heart vanish instantly, but looking at the door-knocking ghost's awkward pose, I even found it somewhat comical.

Then she understood.

From horror movies to comedies

The only thing missing is Ultraman.

(End of this chapter)