Who Put Them on Her?

-5- Who Put Them on Her?

Under the AI's guidance, Ivette spent the entire afternoon learning how to use this retro-style "art of wellness," completing the initial steps of the Meditation Method.

But after putting it into practice, she confirmed that the Meditation Method truly could not save her.

The moment she left this dream, she would immediately face a survival crisis caused by a shortage of food. The effects of the Meditation Method would not become apparent until years later. By then, it would be far too late. What use would it be?

Soon, it was around four or five in the afternoon.

At Dr. Tabitha's reminder, she had no choice but to take off the Vision Terminal and accompany the doctor to the large cafeteria at the end of one of the floor's corridors.

"...Little girl, you're still growing. Eat more," the uncle serving Ivette said warmly in the cafeteria.

Ivette glanced at his mechanical right arm, which had been completely replaced with metal, and gave him a sweet smile. "Thank you, Uncle."

After getting her food, she found an empty corner table and sat down. Her smile immediately faded as she began to think.

From her interactions with the cafeteria uncle, Dr. Tabitha, and the staff members she had met along the way, she felt that the people here were all perfectly normal and friendly.

That made her doubt her own "human experimentation theory."

After all, if they really were conducting human experiments, there was no need to treat these orphans so well. Private rooms, Vision Terminals, dedicated recreation halls, and such gentle attitudes... Wouldn't it be cheaper to simply lock them up and provide basic food and water?

Still, she could not rule out the possibility that Dr. Tabitha and the others were being kept in the dark. If she had a chance to leave and survived, she could look for clues within the Ruined Base...

At that thought, another idea suddenly surfaced in Ivette's mind—what if this dream was permanent?

Would she be trapped here for the rest of her life?

But...

She would be trapped if she went out, and trapped if she stayed in. Of two evils, choose the lesser. Staying in this dream somehow seemed like the better option.

Over the following days, Ivette spent most of her time in the computer classroom. Besides studying Black Tide Language, she constantly borrowed the AI programs there to gather common knowledge and information about this world, searching for ways to survive after leaving the dream.

Yet the AI's answers gradually made her heart sink.

—Being in the wilderness would at least be manageable. She could survive in the wild if she had to. But she was trapped inside an inescapable metal base. In a place where not even cockroaches or rats could survive, where was she supposed to find food?

Magic Light Vines might look pretty, but they were full of toxic alkaloids. Even if they did not poison her to death, their indigestible cellulose would kill her through intestinal obstruction. They could not be used as emergency rations at all.

All things considered, the only way to survive was to stay in this dream and never leave!

Once she understood that, Ivette suddenly found it rather funny.

If a protagonist in a normal novel were trapped in such a bizarre dream, they would surely do everything they could to escape. Yet she was the only one who not only did not want to leave, but was desperately trying to remain in the dream a little longer...

Obito was right.

What was so bad about the world of illusions?

And so, caught in the contradictory mindset of striving to survive while despairingly waiting for death, Ivette spent six months in the dream.

Late one night, as she watched the walls gradually fade away, Ivette understood that she was finally about to leave.

Honestly, after staying in the dream for so long, she had thought it would last forever. Unless she starved to death in the real world, she thought she would never get out.

Now it seemed that was not the case. The dream had merely lasted a little longer.

With mixed feelings, she changed into the white dress she had worn when she first arrived. After waiting anxiously, once every scene had vanished, deep darkness appeared before Ivette's eyes.

She slowly opened her eyes and saw the minus tenth floor of the Ruined Base, covered in Magic Light Vines.

She had finally awakened.

But unlike before she had entered the dream, all the mist around her had vanished, as if it had never existed.

Mm, just as the AI had said, magic followed the conservation of energy too. If the mist had dispersed, it meant its energy had run out...

As for what the mist actually was, the AI program in the dream had offered a plausible hypothesis. It believed that after many people died, their spiritual bodies and memory bodies had failed to disperse in time. For some reason, they had become entangled, eventually forming a field of magical energy. It had also cited material on cult organizations that researched necromantic technology to demonstrate the feasibility of such an occurrence.

Considering that this place had indeed suffered an enormous disaster and many people had died here, Ivette decided to accept that explanation for the time being.

She then stood up and patted down her skirt. Feeling that her physical condition was fairly good, she planned to search this floor for anything that could be salvaged and reused.

Suddenly, one small discovery brought her movements to an abrupt halt.

If she remembered correctly, before entering the dream, she had only been wearing a white dress and nothing else. But now, she had underwear, white pantyhose, and clean little leather shoes on her feet—everything she had worn in the dream!

Who had put them on her?

Yet if they had been put on with such perfect accuracy, could she really have brought them out of the dream herself?

Ivette's heart began to pound violently. There were two possibilities. The first was that a mysterious person was hiding here, capable of peering into her dreams and secretly dressing her in extra clothes while she slept—but that was obviously absurd and could almost immediately be ruled out.

Then the second possibility was that this dream was not merely a dream. It might have been a special method of time travel. Using this dream, she had truly returned to the past and brought things back with her!

Damn it, I should have brought some tools!

Ivette was filled with regret. Then, after a moment, she suddenly realized something. She immediately took off her pantyhose and began examining the soles of her feet—before entering the dream, she had always walked barefoot and had gotten them covered in gray-black grime. On the first day of the dream, she had been bothered by that, so before going to sleep, she had deliberately washed her toes clean.

If her feet were still clean now, that would mean she really had physically traveled through time. Otherwise, it was still only a dream.

Several seconds later, under the faint blue-green glow, Ivette's delicate brows furrowed slightly—her feet were still dirty. She had not physically traveled through time.

Then where had the extra clothes on her body come from?

Could someone really still be hiding here? Some kind of ghost or evil spirit? Had the dream she experienced actually been nothing but an illusory world created by an evil spirit?

At that thought, Ivette felt a chill rise from the bottom of her heart. Even the surrounding scenery became frightening, as though countless eyes were secretly watching her from the darkness.

Fortunately, as someone who valued logical thinking, she recovered quickly. After only a few deep breaths, she dismissed that low-probability possibility.

More importantly, she knew very well that the worst thing in a situation like this was scaring herself.

She could not let external factors fail to appear while she scared herself into developing mental problems first. Then the fake would become real.

In the end, after thoroughly checking the minus tenth floor and finding no clues whatsoever, Ivette could only attribute this abnormal phenomenon to that strange Dream Mist.

And afterward...

Returning to the minus ninth floor where she had lived for half a year in the dream, Ivette looked at the Magic Light Vines in the hall and could not help baring her teeth in helplessness.

Fuck it, I'm done!

At worst, I'll starve to death and restart!