525 Nothingness ?

Michael's words were a revelation.

Nightmare Cat's eyes lit up when he said, "Yes, the laptop is his lifeline. Without it, he is nothing."

He willed the disruption of all electricity and internet access in the dreamscape.

At last, something that he had done seemed to have flummoxed Zhao Yao, whom was staring at the blank laptop screen dumbly. This pleased him tremendously. He could not help but let out an enormous belly laugh.

"Hehehe. I wonder what you are going to do now."

As if in response, Zhao Yao got changed and left the apartment.

"Hehe, are you heading out to find a working power source? It'll be futile, boy. I've cut off all the electricity. All of it. Your search will suck all the happiness and hope out of you. Enjoy your nightmare…"

Three hours later, Nightmare Cat was gawping at Zhao Yao with his mouth hanging wide open. It turned out that he had not left the house to look for a power source. He was looking for materials to make his own generator. It worked perfectly and he was now comfortably nestled in the covers, back at his game.

Nightmare Cat slumped forward, his paws holding clamping onto his throbbing head.

"How did he do that?" he wondered aloud.

Michael could not help but roll his eyes.

"You know," he started, "You could just make his laptop disappear."

Nightmare Cat looked at him.

"Make his laptop disappear?" he repeated after him, venom dripping from his words, "That's not enough. I want everything to disappear. I want him to suffer. I want him to be stuck in a limbo of nothingness!"

He concluded his proclamation with a sinister chuckle.

He was still laughing when he crushed the very core of the dreamscape that he had created. The world around them began to crumble. Then, darkness swallowed it whole.

Michael watched the rapid decay in stunned silence.

"This…" he thought to himself, "He's just going to wipe the world out of existence? It's such a simple solution, but perhaps that's why it's the best one."

His gaze fell on Zhao Yao, whom was curled up in the fetus position, completely alone."

Michael let out a breath he did not know he was holding.

"He has no one for company. Even light and sound have abandoned him. Anyone would be driven insane. This will break even the strongest man. It's really just a matter of when."

At that moment, Michael realized that he had underestimated Nightmare Cat's ability. Nothingness was a fate far crueler than any catastrophe that could happen in real life, but in the dream world, he could make it a reality.

While Michael was pensive and Nightmare Cat was cheery, Zhao Yao was not exhibiting much emotion at all. There was no trace of panic or fear in him. Calmly, he simply opened his mouth. A vortex warp appeared briefly. Then, he was gone.

"What happened?" Michael gasped, "Did he leave the dream?"

Nightmare Cat blinked a few times in surprise. He shut his eyes in concentration, obviously trying to find something. When he opened them, he said, "He hasn't left. He has the power to cross to another dimension. But don't worry, he may be somewhere else now, but he's still ultimately in the dream world."

With that, he raised a paw and scratched the air.

It was as if they were in a play and Nightmare Cat had ripped the backdrop to reveal a brand new one. Both himself and Michael had left the darkness and entered the extradimensional belly. And right there, smack in the middle, was Zhao Yao, whose eyes were glued to the laptop screen, fingers flying across the keyboard.

He was playing a computer game. Again.

Nightmare Cat might have been defeated again, but he was not discouraged.

"Hmpf," he snorted dismissively, "I'll reduce this place to nothingness too."

He waved his paw in the air and everything in the confines of the belly vanished.

"That should do," he said smugly.

This second disappearing act seemed to have done the trick. Zhao Yao simply sat there, still as a statue, as if he was recovering from the shock of being thrusted into nothingness once more. There could be nothing more pleasing to the Nightmare Cat's eyes.

"Well, it seems like I have finally succeeded," he declared with a bellow of laughter, "Do you see the true horrors of my power now?"

When Zhao Yao finally moved, it was to lie on the ground. There, he closed his eyes. It seemed like he had fallen asleep out of boredom.

"Really? You think that sleeping will help?" Nightmare Cat snorted, "It won't. No matter how many times you sleep and wake, you can never leave this dream. It will only worsen the disorientation and hasten your descent into madness."

The cat tilted his head to the side. Yes, he wanted to hasten the process too so he could see what shape Zhao Yao would be in in the end.

He skipped forward one day in time, then decided to just go for it and jumped past a month.

Somehow, Zhao Yao was still lying on his side, fast asleep.

Nightmare Cat and Michael stared at his unmoving form, dumbfounded.

"He… He's still sleeping?"

A switch in Michael's mind flickered on.

"Hey, could he be dreaming within this dream?" he wondered aloud.

Nightmare Cat's answer was immediate and firm, "A dream within a dream? Impossible. Without my permission, nobody in here can dream."

The cat's gaze lingered on the sleeping man for a while longer before he decided to find out what was going on in his mind. This was a cake walk for him. The thoughts of a person who did not recognize that he was, in fact, dreaming can only blossom from the subconscious. Accessing the subconscious was Nightmare Cat's forte. It was how he could create and control the dreamscape in the first place.

The cat waved his paw over Zhao Yao's head, drawing wisps of smoke. They hovered above Zhao Yao and fused into a cloud. In its center, his thoughts were displayed for the two of them to see.

When they peered in, they were greeted with the sight of countless beautiful women, cats, and places that Zhao Yao had come across in his adventures around the globe. He was even accumulating riches and new superpowers in his legion of escapades.

Nobody would have expected to see that Zhao Yao had single-handedly created a whole new world with just the power of his imagination.

Michael was utterly flabbergasted.

"This guy..." he thought to himself, "He can live vicariously through his imagination for so long?"

"This isn't just about living vicariously," Nightmare Cat interrupted, brows furrowed, "It's his superpower. He can create illusions of some sort. Whatever he can think up, he can actually experience. He is like his own server. He hosts every virtual game imaginable and he can play whatever he wants, whenever he wants."

"Even so," he continued, "A normal person shouldn't be able to live in a virtual world for so long."

"So how is he is doing exactly that right now? How can such a person exist? How can a virtual world satisfy you? Don't you have higher aspirations and expectations?!" he roared.

Nightmare Cat seemed to have hit his breaking point. He felt defeated. There was nothing he could do to break the man sleeping in front of him.

Michael was at a complete loss as well.

"We've failed completely," he thought, "Even on his turf, Nightmare Cat is unable to beat him."

"There is nothing remarkable about his appearance, but he hides immense physical and mental strength beneath that facade. In fact, it is his mental capacity that is truly terrifying. His ironclad determination borders madness."

"This man is an undefeatable psycho."

Now, Michael felt quite unnerved as he looked into Zhao Yao's thoughts, where he was happily hopping from one adventure to the next.

Suddenly, a loud explosion rang through the air and Zhao Yao vanished.

"What was that? What superpower is it this time?" Michael asked.

"That's not it," Nightmare Cat said curiously, "He left the dream. How did he do it?"

"Left the dream?" Michael echoed, "Then you have to send me back out there. It'll be too late if we don't return right now. We can't hurt him here and neither he, us. It'll be different out there in the real world."

There was a glimmer of light in Nightmare Cat's eyes as he made sense of Michael's words.