Multiverse: Deathstroke

Chapter 375: Ch.374 Speed Force Storm

Barry looked at Su Ming with some resentment in his eyes.

"You could've told me your location, you know."

Now that the Flash was here, even if they couldn't defeat their opponent, they could absolutely retreat safely. Su Ming relaxed a bit, enough to answer Barry's complaint.

"First of all, this is an unordered magical space; you had to find it yourself. Second, as long as we're still on Earth and I'm not deliberately hiding my location, Batman is definitely keeping an eye on me. Lastly, letting him handle my phone was part of my plan from the beginning."

"So I was in Atlanta fixing the sinkholes caused by the cavemen, then had to return to the Justice Hall in Washington to locate you, then come all the way to Massachusetts, using the Speed Force to pierce illusions and find you from among tens of thousands of different spaces?"

Barry complained, feeling tired—not just physically, but mentally.

Su Ming squinted at him. "And in the Justice Hall, you still took a bath, changed clothes, ate a few pizzas, and had a meeting with Batman in bullet-time, right?"

"Uh... how did you know that?" Barry rubbed his head awkwardly. He really had done all those things, even managing to use the bathroom and get some new gear from Central City.

Barry knew Deathstroke was meticulous, but it was surprising how much Su Ming seemed to see everything as if he had been there. It amazed Barry.

Su Ming could predict these things because Barry never had a true sense of urgency. Using the Speed Force, he could finish all those tasks in probably less than 0.1 seconds.

Time was always ample for Barry, making it difficult for him to ever feel rushed.

"Because you have burnt rosemary leaves stuck between your teeth, you smell like shower gel and uniform cleaner, and your complaints against me are baseless—unless Batman said something to you."

Barry's eyes widened, and he sucked in a breath. "Are you a devil or something? You even deduced that?"

"Just basic logic. The real deduction starts now."

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Su Ming pointed his greatsword at the creature observing Flash with curiosity nearby. The Upside-Down Man seemed intrigued by the Speed Force user, tilting its head and sizing Barry up.

"Ew, what is that? It looks slimy and is covered in scales."

Barry grimaced with disgust. He hadn't paid much attention to this thing when he rushed in, but now, seeing it up close, it looked so gross.

"What you see here is the dark side of magic in this world, and it wants to kill everyone," Diana explained to Barry while still dealing with the tentacles attacking her.

"Why?" Barry asked Su Ming quietly, looking at the large lizard-man suspended in midair.

He had encountered the dark side of the Speed Force before, which was Black Flash. Black Flash wanted to kill Barry to maintain the Speed Force's balance, but it never tried to kill everyone.

"Because wizards—no, everything in this world owes it. The debts are probably thousands of years overdue." Su Ming provided a simple explanation.

"Uh..." Barry blinked, feeling a bit guilty and lowering his stance. "Sounds like we're not on the right side of this..."

"As Batman said, it's time to carry out deeper justice." Su Ming patted Barry on the shoulder, giving him a boost of confidence. "Anyway, it plans on a mass slaughter. Do what you have to do."

Barry sighed, his gaze firming as he took a deep breath. "I always knew the wizards would cause a big mess. There's no such thing as powerful magic that you get to use for free."

Batman understood this as well. Why else would he have Diana, the Justice League member most familiar with mysticism, assemble the Dark Justice League?

Unfortunately, it was too late—the debt collectors had come before the team had even formed.

"Even the wizards understood that. They just chose to bury their heads in the sand." Su Ming sneered before giving Barry his orders. "Run, Barry. Create a small-scale Speed Force storm. Diana and I will deal with it."

The Speed Force storm would extract the concept of time from the life and objects within it, accelerating them to dust. The Upside-Down Man, however, was a magical concept, so such an approach should be futile.

However, the Speed Force storm had another usually unnoticed feature: anything trapped inside it that didn't possess Speed Force powers wouldn't be able to leave on its own.

Su Ming's plan was to use the storm to enclose the Upside-Down Man in a small space, then find a way to throw it out of this world.

"This could harm both you and Diana. The Speed Force will drain your life and time."

Barry seriously warned them. The Speed Force storm was usually used by speedster villains.

As their opponent, Barry often had to run in the opposite direction to stop such storms, so he understood the principle, even though he had never used it himself.

"No problem. I have Nth metal. The Speed Force can't drain us." Su Ming said as he plucked a drop of Nth metal from his greatsword and placed it into Diana's shield-holding hand, simultaneously clearing the tentacles around her.

Barry had seen firsthand how Nth metal helped Batman and Superman regain their youth. If it worked for a regular person like Batman, there was no reason it wouldn't work for Diana and Deathstroke.

He no longer hesitated. Immediately, he began running. The Speed Force storm didn't require very high speed, but it did need Barry to channel the Speed Force to pull in the surrounding elements while running.

The goal was to tighten the connection between the Speed Force plane and this world and to let it draw energy from here.

Barry's speed was still very fast, and almost instantly, Su Ming, Diana, and the Upside-Down Man were trapped inside a red storm filled with lightning.

The powerful Speed Force directly affected the two of them. Unlike before when Barry took them along at high speed, now the Speed Force wasn't empowering them—it was extracting something from within.

It was an abstract sensation, hard to describe, but Su Ming could feel himself weakening, as could Diana.

What was being extracted was time—such an abstract concept.

Su Ming made a mental command, activating his Nth metal skeleton. His skin, which had begun to decay, immediately returned to its original state.

Diana did the same. Upon realizing her aging, she clenched the metal droplet.

The tentacles pouring from the door fell into an odd cycle—one part would turn to ash and wither, while another would continuously emerge from the door, seemingly endless.

But now, they no longer needed to spread their focus to deal with it.

As for the Upside-Down Man, it seemed completely unfazed, instead taking great interest in observing their coping methods.

The inner world remained so new to it.