"Tell me a story?"
Angel repeated the little girl's question under his breath.
The little girl blinked at him expectantly. "Yes! What kind of story will there be today?"
A trace of puzzlement crossed Angel's face. This Dream Guest is a little girl who loves stories?
Should I give her what she wants?
This was a Large Dream Bubble, so the little girl's lucidity had to be at least level five.
At that level, she could easily dictate how the dream changed, potentially making it dangerous... And children of five or six were notoriously changeable. They could be laughing one moment and bawling the next, and the changes brought on by her tears would surely make danger spring up everywhere.
Maybe I should just control her with an illusion.
But when Angel looked at her childish face and eyes brimming with hopeful stars, he hesitated.
He had not entered this Dream Bubble to clear it. He was here to investigate whether anything about it was abnormal.
There was no need, then, to bring the Dream Bubble to an end so quickly.
Besides, he had yet to find anything "abnormal." If he controlled her outright, he might miss the anomaly.
The anomaly might lie not in the Dream Guest, but in the Dream Bubble—or even in the interaction between them. In that case, controlling the Dream Guest alone would accomplish little.
With that in mind, Angel decided not to use an illusion to control her for now. He could do so once he found something abnormal or sensed danger.
"What kind of story would you like to hear?"
Angel went along with the little girl's request.
At the same time, he studied the cottage out of the corner of his eye.
The cottage was roughly three stories high, with an open