Days as a Spiritual Mentor in American Comics Chapter 6132 - 5145: Machine Soul Utopia (Part 2)

In Shiller’s view, this also makes sense. Many people think of American comics as featuring superheroes like Batman, Superman, Spider Man, etc., but little do they know, the most well-known and arguably artistically accomplished comic series in the history of American comics is "The Sandman," to the point that it’s hard to mention American comics without talking about "The Sandman" series.

Just because this series is more like a collection of illustrated stories rather than commercial comics, the storytelling isn’t very strong, focusing more on philosophical thinking and artistic discussion, mostly based on Western thought, which isn’t conducive to spreading in the East, so many people don’t know it.

However, the comic series and its adapted animations have won numerous mainstream awards, and the creator of this series is the famous Neil Gaiman, who is also the creator of classic works like "American Gods."

Since its release, this comic series has been well-received, and its depth and breadth of dissemination could indeed rival Cthulhu works, and from this perspective, building a bridge between the two isn’t impossible.

Having determined the basic approach, Shiller started the operation. Actually, he didn’t need to do much; his main task was communicating with the Sleep Demon, who would then talk to the Thousand Cats Dream. Shiller was concerned whether the Sleep Demon could explain clearly, but they have no way to directly communicate with the Thousand Cats Dream, even having the authority of the Kingdom of Dreams doesn’t help.

The main reason is that after the Siamese cat’s child was killed by humans, it has held considerable hatred towards humans, building the Thousand Cats Dream to change society back to a cats-dominating-humans state, thus one can’t expect it to communicate well with humans.

As a matter of fact, Arrogance also didn’t agree with Greed seeking help from Thousand Cats Dream, because last time it only made things worse, directly turning them into cats and throwing them into Cat City Gotham, causing them to scramble around, hardly ruling out the possibility of intentional revenge.

However, this is currently the best method they can find, so even knowing some problems might arise, Greed decided to trust. But now it seems cats are indeed unreliable; you never know what whim they might act on.

Greed was actually prepared for the possibility of being turned into a cat, as Arrogance had already learned from past experiences; as long as Thousand Cats Dream agreed to help, being a cat wasn’t so bad; didn’t they manage in Cat City Gotham before?

Unexpectedly, not only were they turned into cats by Thousand Cats Dream, but they were also directly thrown into the prehistoric forest, not even the modern prehistoric forest, but likely the dinosaur era.

Imagine, you’re just a carnivorous mammal of the family Felidae, subfamily Felinae, genus Felis domesticated cat, while your opponents are theropod dinosaurs, reptile class living fossils, resiliant creature king, and these top predators could all be living in the same area.

Now, Shiller is thinking at the entrance of the den, not because he’s finished working and is ready to rest, but because now there is a Thunderous Giant-beaked Bird trying to shove its beak into the small den they just found, to grab them and eat them.

More terrifyingly, the beak of the bird reaching in is made of metal, an authentic steel giant beak that could spark if it snaps too quickly. Shiller couldn’t help but think, have they actually been thrown into Jurassic Park?

Actually, they’ve only been here for a few hours, but when they landed they encountered a small issue—a Big Crocodile and a little dinosaur seemed to be fighting, the situation looked too dangerous to observe closely—causing them to be separated from their teammates. Shiller took Little Superman and hid in a hole under a tree root, only to be blocked now.

They have two other teammates, one being Spider Man, who is fairly familiar with Iron Man, brought along to track Iron Man’s whereabouts. The other is Constantine from Arrogance’s cosmos, brought to cope with any bizarre occurrences in the Cthulhu Mythos.

They prepared quite well, and even without using superpowers, the wisdom and reaction capabilities of this team are not to be underestimated. But who knew they’d be thrown into this primitive large forest, where the focus isn’t on strategy and puzzle-solving; even when they landed, what mattered was luck.

Clearly, none of these people had good luck, not Shiller, not Little Superman, who wouldn’t have ended up in jail if he were lucky, not Spider Man, let alone Constantine. These four together are just negative plus negative equals negative, nearly getting caught in a world war upon landing, and after being forced to scatter, they got blocked at the door.

During the escape process, Little Superman’s tail was bitten by some unknown creature, possibly a spider, which hurt him terribly, and now he can only curl up in the cave holding his tail and cry, while Shiller thinks of how to get the Thunderous Giant-beaked Bird with a metal beak to back off.

After some experiments and checks, Shiller confirmed they hadn’t turned into anything beyond ordinary domestic cats; their body structures don’t support upright walking, their claws can’t grasp, and the only predator trait they have is fangs that are adorable compared to the ancient creatures outside.

More frighteningly, they even lost human vision; cat’s vision is far inferior to human’s, not only is their color perception less rich, but they are also near-sighted. The cats they turned into perfectly inherited these flaws, with all their views being a blur, and they can’t really see colors.

However, the good thing is that hearing and smell have indeed been enhanced, and reactions might be quicker, but the enhancement is quite limited. Otherwise, Little Superman wouldn’t have had his tail bitten. Actually, cats do have advantages, they have claws for climbing, can hunt at night thanks to their good night vision ability, and if they formed a cat group, they might even hunt bigger prey, after all, they still possess human wisdom.

But now, they must find a way to get through this moment. This bird not only pushed its beak inside but was continuously clawing at the dirt near the entrance. If he keeps digging, Shiller and Little Superman might really get snatched away.

This hole is small, and there’s nothing inside, but possibly due to the different geological conditions from Earth, the soil at the bottom is softer, and there are some hard lumps in the soil. Because of poor vision, it’s unclear what they are, but Shiller guessed they might be some minerals.

He tried to dig down a bit, which was actually quite difficult because a cat’s claws aren’t suitable for digging, and they couldn’t use tools, only clawing bit by bit. After some time, he finally found a suitably shaped hard lump, picked it up with his mouth, and managed to hold it with two paws. Taking advantage of the bird’s open-mouth gap, he wedged it into the beak.

The clicking sound stopped immediately, and the bird was in a very awkward situation. With a stone stuck in its mouth, it should spit it out, but because Shiller had wedged the stone near the base of the beak tightly, the bird had to open its mouth wider to spit it out. However, the hole was too small, and it couldn’t open wide enough.

It tried to pull its beak back, but because the beak was open and larger towards the end, it couldn’t retract it. At this point, if it hadn’t tried to forcefully pull outward but pushed inward and turned slightly, it could have spit out the stone. But clearly, this bird didn’t have that kind of intelligence.

This is like the dog world’s dilemma, where animals rarely have the consciousness of advancing by retreating, so when they can’t get something out, they forcefully pull. The more they pull, the tighter it gets, and stuck panic forces it to pull harder, eventually, it was tightly wedged.

Although that’s the case, the two cats still couldn’t get out. Shiller didn’t plan to escape at this time; he wedged the bird, betting that there might be predators nearby, and sooner or later, a bigger boss would pass by and eat it.

Sure enough, it wasn’t long before the bird suddenly let out a miserable cry, as if bitten by something. It struggled even more but got wedged tighter, followed by blood pouring in, and soon the bird stopped moving.

Carefully, Shiller approached the entrance; the light outside was normal, seemingly not blocked by a massive creature, but Shiller cautiously made no noise until hearing a companion’s call.

"Are you inside?" It was Peter’s voice. "It’s us, hurry and dig this open, come out first."

Shiller immediately began digging. At this time, Little Superman hobbled over, crouched beside, wiped his face with his paw in a cat-face-washing manner, dried his tears, and then started helping dig.

Shiller noticed his swollen tail; considering he hadn’t shown signs of poisoning, it was likely he was stung by a bee rather than injected by a spider or snake venom. After all, given a house cat’s small body type, a bite from a venomous spider is no joke, not saying it would kill but would at least cause unconsciousness.

"If you’re feeling unwell, just rest for a while," Shiller said.

Little Superman said nothing, only kept clawing at the dirt. Several cats coordinated inside and out, finally creating a small hole. This showed another advantage of cats; known for their fluidity, cats can squeeze through even smaller holes as long as their skull fits.

Shiller exerted himself squeezing through the hole, and Little Superman, with a smaller body type, also squeezed through. On the other side was Peter, a classic-colored American Shorthair, seemingly very smart. Constantine was an English Short-hair orange cat, slightly larger than Peter, and with brighter fur color.

Now they were in a huge jungle, in the distance shadows of huge creatures moving could be vaguely seen, accompanied by all sorts of roaring and footstep sounds. The air carried a damp bloody smell with a rotten odor mixed in along with some unidentifiable scents Shiller wasn’t familiar with. Being a cat for the first time, he couldn’t identify many subtle scents he couldn’t perceive as a human.

"Let’s move quickly," Peter said. "I discovered a tree over there with colonies of fungi growing on it, maybe we can use those to climb up. I feel it’s safer living in the trees, what do you think?"

"Indeed," Shiller said. "It’s too dangerous on the ground."

But just as the two cats turned to leave, Shiller hurriedly stopped them, looked back at the bird, and said, "Under the circumstances, let’s have a meal first."