What a stupid thing to say… Ais very much wanted to cover her face, but the dream-body wasn't cooperating.
She mostly understood: that oddly simple question had probably stemmed from her anxiety about her sleeping posture.
The dreaming version of herself seemed unable to distinguish dream from reality, and had also become considerably more direct. So on seeing the person responsible for all of this appear, she'd immediately expressed her concern in a single blunt, contextless sentence.
"That's actually how someone in a dream is supposed to behave. So what's going on with my clear-headed awareness right now? Is it related to my transmigration? I don't usually dream like this — is it because I didn't fall asleep naturally?"
She speculated, but couldn't land on a reason why having this partial consciousness served any purpose. She'd just proven she couldn't even prevent herself from speaking.
Alec Howard blinked, then worked out what the question meant. He shook his head, smiling visibly:
"You won't fall. But don't you have other concerns?"
"Ais" received the reassurance without further questions and turned back to watching the distant fireworks, answering with an air of complete indifference:
"Hmph. I haven't done anything wrong. Why should I be worried?"
So direct. So guileless. Ais knew this was perfectly normal dream behavior, but she could barely watch.
"Is that so?" Howard settled down beside her, tone unconvinced.
"Of course!" "Ais" immediately responded by planting both hands on her hips in protest — and then, without Howard asking a single thing, simply began talking on her own, starting from the moment she'd become an Assassin and working through everything she'd done and encountered.
Howard listened without a word.
Ais, meanwhile, began experimenting — testing what she could and couldn't influence.
Through trial and error, she gradually found that her clear awareness could exert simple effects on her dreaming self. She could control one hand, for example — pushing the hair that kept brushing her face behind her ear. She could control her throat and say what she wanted to say. She could stop one foot from swinging.
In short: she couldn't simultaneously command every part of herself the way she could when awake, but targeting a small section at a time was entirely manageable. And whenever her attention shifted from one part to another, the previous section automatically reverted — without any perceptible change.
"So in an abnormal sleep, a portion of consciousness remains awake — is this to prevent the transmigration secret from coming out? But then why bother? I could voluntarily reveal it. And besides, I'm not usually like this when I sleep."
The experiment had produced results but raised more questions. Now she found herself genuinely curious, hoping Howard would ask something more pointed — to see what exactly was going on here.
This had actually been one of her original reasons for seeking out the church — just not under circumstances anywhere near what she'd imagined.
And right as the dreaming version of herself had just reached the part about clearing the Instigator potion's influence, Ais's inspiration was triggered. An unknown, unfamiliar force suddenly appeared in her perception.
"Is this the power generated when a deity responds to a ritual?"
She had no other explanation. This force was so solemn, so vast, so ancient — and yet it made her tremble involuntarily.
Even with her consciousness still submerged in the dream, her inspiration couldn't ignore it. It fed the sensation back into the dream — trying to wake the dominant consciousness. The dream itself became unstable; even the distant fireworks began flickering and breaking apart.
As the dream destabilized, Ais felt more and more of her awareness surfacing. The portion of the dream-body she could control expanded, and she even began to dimly sense her physical body in reality.
A force of profound calm — one that stilled both mind and spirit — settled over the dreamscape, and the fraction of her consciousness that had been maintaining clarity began to ebb. She sensed this force was not impossible to resist — but she made no move against it.
The force arrived abruptly and departed completely. The dream steadied again. But Ais kept a small thread of awareness clear throughout.
Howard apparently hadn't noticed. Looking at the faintly unsettled "Ais" beside him, he spoke in a calm, reassuring voice:
"It's passed. Nothing to worry about."
Howard's steady, gentle voice dissolved the last residual unease in Ais's sleeping awareness. He looked at the now-fully-settled "Ais" and asked directly:
"I believe you haven't done anything wrong. So tell me — why did you first decide to become an Beyonder?"
"As for that… honestly, I can't understand my own thinking back then anymore…"
An instinctive disclaimer first — then the dreaming self began, somewhat bashfully, describing the big idiot's situation and the gambler's logic behind his choices.
After hearing this, Howard pressed further:
"And after you became an Assassin, why didn't you return to gambling?"
Ais immediately stepped in for her dreaming self:
"Because when the Assassin potion was drunk, that gambler was already dead. The person living in his place now is someone completely different."
That was what she said — but the words she actually heard herself speak in the dream were strangely altered: "Because my thinking changed completely after drinking the potion, compared to before."
"The near-death experience during the potion's effect is something I remember very vividly…"
She tried to push further — to state the truth, to mention things from before the transmigration — and found she was powerless. The words that left her mouth became entirely reasonable, attributing all the inconsistencies in her behavior before and after to relief and fear following a narrow escape from death.
And it wasn't only her words that had become strange.
Howard, apparently unaware of anything unusual, didn't remark on it. He pressed on:
"Could you tell me what you looked like before?"
Looking at the hesitating "Ais," he added:
"Don't worry. I won't laugh."
Ais could feel clearly that the apparently ordinary reassurance carried a force that promoted calm — and she sensed the dream shifting, as if trying to show something in response to that guidance.
"Ais" let go of her hesitation at the reassurance and was just beginning to gesture for a more accurate description when Howard cut her off:
"That is what you looked like, isn't it?"
"Ais" turned, slightly confused — and there in midair, both of them appeared: the big idiot's figure, and beside it, a normally-built male figure enveloped in a faint gray mist — her own form before transmigrating.
Both of them did, technically, count as her previous appearances — so "Ais" registered no surprise and simply nodded slowly, as if she hadn't yet figured out where the images had come from.
Both images and she still noticed nothing. The still-lucid part of Ais sighed. The pre-transmigration figure had been her doing — except for the faint gray mist. And even with both images side by side, Howard detected nothing off.
Apparently whatever that gray mist represented was preventing her from revealing anything unrelated to this world.
So why go to the extra effort of keeping her partially awake during the dream? If she hadn't been interrupted by an external force, all this partial wakefulness gave her was the ability to watch herself reveal everything — without even enough clarity to resist.
Just as Ais was deeply puzzled by her own anomalous dream state, Howard stood:
"Time's up. Thank you for your cooperation. Mr. John."
At his words, Ais's inspiration was triggered again. This time it felt as though something had been unlocked — the dream destabilized once more.
And this time, Howard made no attempt to stabilize it. So Ais — still slightly moved by his courtesy — was pulled out of the dream and woke.