Chapter 96: Speed Force
2023-10-23 Author: Rowing Without Oars 233
Orin Vale's figure floated in mid-air as he slowly surveyed his surroundings.
Chaos—that was the first impression the space he was in gave him.
It was a scene of utter chaos. The sky was filled with brilliant, multicolored hues, a disorderly vista that twisted reality, where inverted pavilions hung suspended in the air. Stone statues were displaced, and buildings and mountain peaks intertwined.
A rust-covered British Spitfire fighter jet was embedded headfirst into a towering mountain peak, while a dented Tiger tank lay overturned at the mountain's foot. Scrapes and bullet holes covered them, making it impossible to determine their origins or how long they had been forgotten in this time-space.
Time and space intertwined here as chaotic, disordered clouds drifted through the colorful sky. Inverted pavilions floated in mid-air, while stone statues with twisted and distorted forms were scattered haphazardly on the ground, as if recounting a chaotic history.
The anomalous spatial energy reaction from the Hyperspace Bracelet had never been this intense.
Orin Vale faintly realized that this was the legendary Speed Force. It was the source of energy that propelled the entire Multiverse forward, the origin of the speed of the fastest man alive.
Machines from wartime, stone statues, mountain peaks, and ancient structures from some unknown era...
The established lore of the Speed Force had been rebooted time and again, but this scene quickly brought to Orin Vale's mind a description from The Flash comics that matched what he was seeing.
The Speed Force was like a colossal ball of energy existing in a separate time-space. It propelled every time-space within the Multiverse forward, but as it moved, its energy would rapidly expand. It would accumulate more and more until it swelled past a critical point, desperately needing to be released.
When too much energy accumulated, it would turn violent, like a pressure cooker about to explode. As a result, traces of the Speed Force began appearing in many different time-spaces—sometimes as a bolt of lightning, a fleeting spatial rift, or a time-space explosion.
Many things throughout history had mysteriously vanished because of this. For instance, parts of the Mayan civilization's ruins, or the stone statues, aircraft, and tanks from unknown eras that Orin Vale now saw before him. There were also some unlucky souls from different time periods who were inexplicably pulled into the Speed Force, doomed to wander here forever.
Many inexplicable events in history were connected to the Speed Force: aircraft and ships that disappeared without a trace, and even rumored cases of people who vanished only to reappear decades later without having aged a day.
A Speed Force rampage was like an earthquake, flood, or hurricane—an extremely rare occurrence, but a type of natural disaster all the same.
The Speed Force was waiting for its pressure relief valve: The Flash, Barry Allen.
At first, people thought Barry had merely connected to the Speed Force, but it was later revealed that he was the one who created it. The moment he was struck by lightning, the Speed Force was born. It began to spread from that point in time as its center, extending into all dimensions and time-spaces, simultaneously reaching toward the past and the future until it covered the very beginning and end of time.
At the same time, Barry was its pressure relief valve. The Flash's running stabilized it, preventing the pressure cooker from exploding and stopping the energy field from creating reality-warping wormholes.
The light in Orin Vale's eyes gradually dimmed. He closed them, trying to feel the unique energy within this space.
Sure enough, he began to feel it.
Invisible to the naked eye, but flowing ceaselessly like surging lightning, was the energy known as the Speed Force, rushing relentlessly from the past to the future.
He even felt as if this entire time-space were alive, as if it had a consciousness of its own.
Orin Vale extended his consciousness, attempting to communicate with this space and, taking it a step further, trying to establish a connection.
Then he received feedback... A blunt refusal.
This result wasn't surprising.
The group of people who obtained the Speed Force, known as "Speedsters," might seem to have gotten their powers by accident, but according to the source material, they were all "chosen by the lightning."
Only with the Speed Force's permission could they connect to it and gain inexhaustible speed and the ability to traverse the barriers between time-spaces.
He wasn't surprised by this outcome, but Orin Vale wasn't discouraged either.
*You think I'm out of options just because you rejected me?*
While it was true that only those granted permission became Speedsters capable of wielding the Speed Force, the comics were full of others who used its principles to gain super speed.
Batman developed armor that could simulate Speed Force energy to achieve super speed. The Justice League villain Amazo could copy any superpower, including The Flash's speed. And the supervillain Vandal Savage developed the "Velocity 9" serum, which granted temporary super speed.
And Light, the driving energy of the Ultraman Race, was practically omnipotent. This was especially true since the Heisei Era began; each generation of his predecessors, while all using Light, had managed to forge different paths, unlocking various new forms and abilities. These ranged from minor powers like amplifying strength and speed, duplication, teleportation, purification, and telekinesis, to major feats like creating space, reversing time, and even creating universes.
One could say that with enough scientific research and the right approach, Light was capable of almost anything.
Therefore, all Orin Vale needed to do was analyze and understand—to study with a scientific eye and use his own Light to adapt to the unique laws of this universe.
With a flicker, his body shot forward, trailing a blurry afterimage.
Like a bolt of lightning piercing through space, in an instant so brief it was negligible, he had already rushed several miles away.
*So fast!*
This move was also a common technique of the Ultraman Race: Mach Movement.
From the Heisei-era show-off, Dyna in his Miracle Type, to Ultraman Cosmos in the movies who teleported as if it were free, super-speed skills appeared more and more frequently with advancements in special effects technology, eventually becoming a standard racial ability.
This was a skill Orin Vale had mastered ages ago. However, after analyzing the workings of the Speed Force's energy, he gained a sliver of insight into the unique spatio-temporal laws of the DC Universe. He then applied this insight to how he channeled his own Light energy when executing "Mach Movement."
As expected, his speed instantly skyrocketed.
Moreover, this was just a shallow insight from his initial contact with DC's unique spatio-temporal laws. He could feel that this was merely the tip of the iceberg. The Speed Force was something far more vast, and the knowledge it contained went much deeper than what was visible on the surface.
Yes, knowledge. That was what Orin Vale had always valued most. Only knowledge that he had completely learned, mastered, and could apply freely was the one thing that truly made him feel grounded.
In the Land of Light, there was already a precedent of Zero Bunny entering a burst mode to unlock his Shining form and gain the ability of time reversal. Orin Vale felt that if he studied hard, he might also comprehend some sort of "Lightning Shining" form from the Speed Force and become the Land of Light's next time-based powerhouse.
Among the Ultra Brothers, in terms of flight speed alone—excluding superluminal travel during interstellar voyages—the fastest in atmospheric combat was supposedly Taro, with a flight speed of Mach 20.
And Orin Vale felt that he was now even faster than that!
For a recently graduated junior scientist like him to be able to fly faster than a Big Shot from the Security Patrol—that would have been completely unthinkable before.
Orin Vale activated the bracelet's function again and performed a scan. This entire space was filled with Speed Force energy, but there seemed to be variations in its intensity. The bracelet acted like a radar, displaying the energy density of the surroundings, and through its display, Orin Vale quickly saw the density increasing in a certain direction.
Orin Vale flew in that direction for a while, and soon a desolate temple appeared within the chaotic time-space before him.
It was a desolate great hall. The walls were a stark gray, cracked and peeling from the erosion of time. Faint fragments of murals were visible in the colonnade; they were blurry but seemed to depict the story of an ancient tribe and lightning.
The energy readings converged at the center of the temple, where a golden stone churned with lightning.
*Some kind of Speed Force mineral.*
(end of chapter)