Sunlight spilled across his cheek.
The clock on the wall ticked forward with steady, indifferent precision.
In a haze, Arato Sora found himself back in his own room. He lifted his head and looked toward the bedside clock.
Only ten minutes had passed since he'd left the dungeon.
He reached down and touched the bedding beneath him.
It was still warm—enough to confirm that his physical body had never actually moved.
If his body had vanished, then after all that time the spot he'd been lying on would have cooled back down. But it hadn't.
Which meant his body had stayed right where it was the whole time.
"So the 'Dream Game' really is what it says on the tin—basically just a dream?" Arato muttered with a faint, self-mocking amusement. "Guess I won't be pulling that classic novel trick of 'body-jumping into the system' to dodge pursuers."
If not for the system panel still floating in front of his eyes, he might've started doubting whether any of it had really happened.
A red warning hovered before him, glaringly real:
[Carried Item: "Queen Bee Corpse." Please quickly locate a release site. The system will retain the item free of charge for 10 minutes. After the time limit, the internal storage space will naturally be destroyed.]
Arato wasn't the type to wait until the final second just because the timer existed.
He camped often—trekking out to hunt for old mine pits—so his house had plenty of emergency supplies.
He went to the storage room, pulled out several plastic tarps, and spread them across the living room floor.
Mainly, it was to prevent the corpse's blood—if it bled—from smearing his house with sticky, disgusting stains.
And if the corpse was valuable in the world of magecraft, then the blood was probably valuable too.
Arato had no intention of letting waste happen right in front of him.
By the time he finished setting everything up, about four minutes had passed.
He raised a hand and lightly tapped the panel.
[Extract carried item "Queen Bee Corpse"?]
[Yes / No]
[Reminder: Once extracted, the carried item cannot be returned to the system for storage.]
After a quick glance, Arato pressed [Yes].
The next instant—
The massive queen bee—nearly human-sized—appeared right in front of him.
A sharp, nauseating stench immediately began to spread.
Luckily, Arato had prepared.
He moved fast, folding and sealing the plastic tarps into a makeshift airtight bag.
After that… it stopped being something he could handle alone.
He knew too little about the occult world. If he tried to "process" it by himself, he'd probably only ruin it.
And so—
He walked to the desk in his room and picked up the note Touko had left him.
In 1985, cellphones weren't a thing. Long-distance communication meant public phone booths or the landline at home.
Normally, if Arato wanted to contact Touko after she'd gone to London, it would've been extremely difficult.
But now, the occult world revealed its charm.
Surpassing the limitations of one's era—that was what magi took pride in.
While ordinary people could only rely on fixed-line phones, magi could, by using foundations and ancient myths, complete long-distance contact with ease.
For Arato, contacting Touko was simple.
It was written in the "Magecraft Notes" Touko had left behind—specifically a method meant for emergency contact.
She'd even designed a magecraft engineering blueprint tailored to him—using minerals as materials.
Using the ores in his room as a base, and using magical circuits as "wiring," he could establish a link between reality and the foundation.
In distant ages—an era of war, an era when a letter was worth more than gold—
Wives at home longed to send their thoughts and words to husbands far away, whether as soldiers or merchants.
Over time, that longing became stories lodged deep within the human heart.
And through endless oral transmission, it solidified into a magecraft foundation that hovered between the real and the unreal.
—Magecraft: "Distant Echo of Longing" (modified by Aozaki Touko)
It took as its anchor countless wives yearning for absent husbands.
It took as its "price" the vast effort and expense those stories claimed a single letter required.
By completely consuming and destroying an item that symbolized the target, the ritual could transmit image and sound to the person far away.
For Arato, the obvious item he could destroy without consequence…
…was the very note Touko had left behind.
He tore the white paper neatly in half.
A glare of prana roared through his body, latching onto a distant unknown.
"This thing—are you interested, Touko?" Arato spoke aloud. "I want to use it to trade for some knowledge I care about."
As he spoke, he slowly circled the giant queen bee, ensuring every angle was captured—transmitting the entire scene to the far side.
He had thought this through.
Touko had warned him about the cruelty of the magus world. Arato couldn't truly empathize, but he'd still grown cautious.
Compared to seeking out some unknown magus, Aozaki Touko was far more trustworthy.
Arato was a useful tool for getting back at Aozaki Aoko—and for that reason alone, Touko wouldn't be stingy about cooperating.
At least in the short term, Arato didn't believe Touko could simply let go of that hatred.
And that was enough.
Because going forward, Arato would likely enter more and more instances—and bring out more and more things.
Blind as he was in the world of magecraft, he needed someone to help him use and digest what he obtained.
And no one was better suited than Touko—who had already left Misaki Town and headed to London.
…
At that very moment, Aozaki Touko, newly arrived in London, was searching for a place to live.
Unlike what Arato imagined, the decisive, ruthless Touko had gotten on a plane even earlier than expected—and arrived even sooner.
When she received Arato's transmission, she froze for a second.
A cold-faced girl steeped in grim resentment was facing her first challenge in London:
—Making money.
Not merely mundane currency, either—but resources valuable enough to trade in the magus world.
Touko had cut ties with her family.
That meant no backing. No funding. No support.
Everything had to be built from scratch.
In her plan, she'd spend more than a year working for others, slowly accumulating enough capital to establish herself.
She believed in her talent. She believed she could reach her goal step by step.
With hatred driving her, she'd already prepared herself to endure mockery and humiliation.
But now—
Arato seemed to have delivered a "gift pack."
Touko's amber eyes went distant as she stared at the images Arato had sent.
A pristine corpse.
A fantasy species—something with the scent of the Age of Gods.
Even if it wasn't powerful, the concepts it carried and its research value were more than enough.
With this in hand, Touko could skip an entire year of grinding and directly trade for the laboratory and materials she needed to begin her research.
"..."
A proud, arrogant avenger might be willing to swallow humiliation—
because it would all become fuel for revenge later.
She would return to Misaki Town and repay the Aozaki family for everything—one hundred percent.
But if a chance were placed in front of her—
a chance that said: you don't have to be humiliated; you can get what you want right now—
Would she refuse?
-------
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