Iver felt his consciousness slowly sinking into a warm sea.
It was as though waves like those of a hot spring were pushing and rocking his body.
The sensation was similar to, yet different from, what he had felt during the Full Moon Ritual. That strange, enveloping warmth was clearer and more soporific, while the depth to which his consciousness "sank" was not very great—he had only lost consciousness for a short while before quickly waking up again.
When Iver woke, he looked around.
He immediately realized the greatest difference between this ordinary dream and the Dream Realm Promotion Ritual—
This seemed to be a middle school, and theoretically, it should have been a girls' school.
The students were all wearing black uniforms—black dresses resembling nun's habits, but with greater emphasis on beauty. Looking at these uniforms, modified from nun's habits, Iver felt that they looked somewhat like black-and-white maid outfits.
Judging by their builds, these students were basically only thirteen or fourteen years old.
The reason he said "basically"... was that some of them were clearly older, appearing to be around seventeen or eighteen. A few even looked to be in their twenties, like university students, and stood a head taller than the others. This was probably because the dream's owner had retained different impressions of them from different stages of their lives.
Yes, "them"—although the uniforms and school both looked like those of a girls' school, there were inexplicably some male students among them.
Some students' faces were completely blurred, as though the faces of many people had been fused together. They looked as if their "image quality" was poor, and even their features were constantly shifting. Without looking closely, they seemed to have no faces at all.
—It was as if some people had 4K clarity, while