Entering the "Dream Festival" so smoothly both surprised Angel and struck her as perfectly reasonable.
When this special dream had truly activated the previous year, the Royalist Faction of the Numinous Episcopate had already sent a team to try to enter it. They had neither the experience Angel had gleaned from her predecessors nor the protection of the Goddess who wielded authority over dreams, yet they had succeeded on their own. That meant the Dream Festival did not resist outsiders entering; it merely sealed all their memories inside, making them forget everything upon waking.
"But all of this seems even more extreme than the Pale Empress described..."
Angel murmured, her gaze sweeping from the streets below to the plantations beside the primeval forest in the distance.
There still weren't many people on the streets, but a sizable disturbance had already broken out in the nearest bar. The patrons, guards, and bartenders were all physically brawling, roaring with excitement, utterly unlike their usual polite, amiable selves. Every so often, someone was thrown out of the building and landed in the street, either dead drunk or unconscious.
At the street corner, several men dressed as local hunters were carrying hunting rifles and ammunition, excitedly discussing plans to hunt in the primeval forest at night. But after only a few exchanges, they turned bloodshot eyes toward the houses on either side of the street, as though they had found new prey.
Thick smoke rose from a plantation farther outside town, with flames flickering through it. Someone had clearly set it on fire. Chaos reigned around it: some tried to put out the blaze, others slipped into the estate, while even more stood idly watching, as though what was burning was not their livelihood but a few weeds.
*Everything's gone mad... Is this what