(Without a doubt, it was time to ask for monthly votes. I cleverly padded out a line! Oh, right, and...)
This was everyone's first night in this Remote Frontier World. Far from home, in unfamiliar surroundings, with the fact that "beyond this world lies the Fire Line" weighing on everyone's minds, and... actually, I wasn't going to dwell on that nonsense. Qian Qian was sleeping beside me like a little pig, and Lin Xue was no better. I figured the Pandora sisters and that Rogue in the next room were probably in the same state. We were all long accustomed to sleeping in every imaginable environment. In theory, we had reached the point where we could fall asleep the instant we closed our eyes and wake the instant we opened them, even amid mountains of blades and seas of fire. It was a state attained through endless hardship—or, if you preferred, sheer lack of common sense. Same thing. Anyway, after crossing worlds often enough, even the pickiest sleeper had to adapt.
Big Dumb's house was indeed quite large. Perhaps that had something to do with his contributions to the village, or perhaps it was simply because of his size. In any case, it was a very large house, far too large for one person to occupy. Even with that black cat living here, most of the place still stood empty. We were resting on the second floor of the main house tonight. It should have been the owner's living quarters, but Big Dumb stubbornly reserved the best rooms for "the noble guests from the Imperial Capital," while he himself went to spend the night in a side room across the courtyard. It made us feel rather bad, because I could tell that Big Dumb was not well-off—or rather, nobody in