"And who might you be?"
I was flustered.
No, anyone would have been flustered.
Getting teleported into outer space rather than a dungeon was absurd enough, but there was some unidentified little kid sitting right in front of me as though it were perfectly natural.
And that was not even all.
Why was there a person here?
Here is a frightening fact: while there was no scene in which stars suddenly popped out, [Dreamland: Mirror] had never had any NPCs to begin with.
You might think that was just as much bullshit as a rule saying I had to act according to option number four from now on, but it was true.
The name [Dreamland: Mirror] made it sound as though something grand would emerge, but in reality, it was no different from other dungeons.
According to the developers, they had created this dungeon to portray the heroine’s inner demons, but that was just the setting.
All you had to do was hunt the monsters that appeared, like in any ordinary dungeon.
That was the dungeon called [Dreamland: Mirror].
Of course, it was undeniably harder than other dungeons, but it was also true that it had little to offer considering its seemingly elaborate premise.
So there was no way it would have an NPC who clocked in just to kindly explain the dungeon.
Besides, the little girl waving at me and calling herself Maugis was someone I had neither seen nor heard of at Dawnstar Academia.
I had never encountered her even after twenty-nine playthroughs, nor had I ever seen or heard of her on the gallery.
Then there could only be one answer.
If she had existed in the game, she might have escaped my notice after only twenty-nine playthroughs.
But it was impossible for her not to have been mentioned even once on the gallery, where demons even worse than me practically lived.
In short, just like the items tossed down by those voyeurs up above, that little girl before me had some sort of connection to them.
No.
Was she even human to begin with?
She somehow reminded me of Iris when the Holy Virgin possessed her.
"What? Is there something on my face? Why are you staring at me with such a dumbfounded look?"
I must have been staring for quite a while.
The little girl in front of me tilted her head, apparently bothered by my gaze, and her eyes had narrowed into slits before I knew it.
They were narrow enough to give Kafka’s eyes a run for their money.
"Are you wondering why I’m here?"
I had plenty of questions.
Why had the Dreamland dungeon turned into this mess again?
Who was she?
And was this dungeon a mess again because of those voyeurs up above?
There was plenty I wanted to unload on her.
But.
Whether she had read my expression or my thoughts, the little girl who introduced herself as Maugis grinned and opened her mouth.
"Allow me to introduce myself once more. I am Maugis, a mage known by the nickname Moji—"
She raised her index finger toward the sky.
"—and the greatest genius of all time, one who insults even the gods."
After that cringeworthy introduction, the little girl clasped her hands behind her back, puffed out her chest, and continued.
Was she trying to make herself sound like someone incredible?
"And I am a knight adorned with the modifier ‘magic.’ Has that answered your question?"
A magic knight...
My gaze naturally dropped to my feet.
The description that had come with Bayard—the boots.
‘Boots crafted for you by a magic knight.’
If that item description was true... fuck.
As my thoughts reached that point, I cursed inwardly and gaped.
This little girl in front of me was the person who had made these insanely good boots?
No, wait. More importantly... if she was a magic knight.
I suddenly remembered.
[DEFEAT]
[You have been defeated.]
The message that had appeared when I died for the first time in my battle against Arghalia.
[The hidden gimmick embedded in the Dream Ticket by the ‘Magic Knight’ has activated.]
The message saying that the hidden gimmick a magic knight had embedded in the Dream Ticket had activated.
A retry.
Only after repeating that retry twenty-eight times had I finally managed to kill Arghalia.
Which meant that little girl in front of me was...?
When my thoughts got that far, my mouth fell open again before I knew it.
"Right. Remember now?"
Seeing my face, the little girl covered her mouth with both hands and giggled as though she found it amusing.
And the sight made cold sweat run down my back.
To anyone else, the little girl before me would have looked like nothing more than a short little brat with her arms crossed, glaring at me through narrowed eyes while pretending to be an adult...
But once I considered that she might stand alongside the Lionheart Knight, who had overwhelmed me with nothing but the will left in a corpse, and the Holy Virgin, who possessed Iris’s body and casually blocked the attacks of Sword Master Arghalia, I could no longer take her lightly.
She was someone who could rewind time over and over, something not even the dean, who had reached the pinnacle of magic, could do.
And the only person capable of anything similar was Isabella after she reached max level, and even for her, it was practically a trump card—not something she could do easily.
Yet this little girl had done it twenty-eight times?
And what made me feel even more chilled was this.
【Maugis】
◈ Level: ■@%+
◈ The target is in a slightly bad mood.
The [Insight Eye], which had observed even the dean and Professor Luke at level ninety, did not work on her.
Her name and current condition showed clearly, but her level was garbled, like the grades of items tossed down by those bastards above.
I did not know whether it was because she literally was not an existence from within Dawnstar Academia and therefore could not be observed.
Or whether she was an absolute being beyond even the dean and Professor Luke’s reach, making her impossible to observe.
I was inclined toward the former, since I did not feel that sense of helplessness from her that I had felt when the dean used Breath or when I was affected by Fear, even briefly.
Then again, Professor Luke, who was at the same level as the dean, had looked no different from a Skeleton 1, so regardless, she did seem to be an existence on par with the Holy Virgin.
Besides, she was a lunatic who had rewound time twenty-eight times.
And to begin with, a little girl calmly sitting in the middle of outer space could not possibly be ordinary.
I could lose my head if I acted cocky for no reason, so I should not let my guard down.
After clearing my throat once and sorting through my chaotic thoughts, I looked at Maugis and spoke.
"Ah, so... Maugis?"
"Call me Moji, friend. It’s simpler, isn’t it?"
At that, the little girl tipped her head back, flashed a grin, and winked with her left eye.
What on earth was she enjoying so much?
It was absurd to see her correcting how I addressed her while winking.
"Then, Moji."
I did not particularly want to argue with her.
It was tiresome, and I seemed to be the one at a disadvantage here.
And.
"So, how do we begin?"
I wanted to start and get this over with quickly.
No, where the hell was this place?
Normally, I would just kill the monsters that spawned in the dungeon.
But here? Forget monsters. All I could see were stars.
"Haha—!"
The little girl in front of me tilted her head at my question, then clutched her stomach and laughed while kicking her legs.
Unlike me, who stood on some invisible floor even in outer space, she seemed to be floating in the air. The moment her legs moved, she did a full somersault.
What the hell was so funny?
Was she not on the same level as the Holy Virgin?
She was completely different from the Holy Virgin, who always considered Iris’s or my circumstances before her own...
No.
If she was one of those voyeurs who made my [Oath of Chivalry] trigger at the most fucking inconvenient moments whenever things got difficult, perhaps the Holy Virgin had been the unusual one.
"How strange. I thought you’d ask about me or the ones up there first."
"I already asked the Holy Virgin all about that, so I’m not interested."
What would be the point of asking?
She would pull that ‘the time is not yet right’ bullshit and clamp her mouth shut.
I could see it coming a mile away.
"Did you? Right."
At my sigh-laden answer, the little girl’s eyes widened. Then she raised a hand to her mouth and smiled as though she found it amusing.
"But unlike that stuffy girl, I could tell you everything... what do you say?"
"..."
Judging by the way she was acting, the Holy Virgin seemed as though she ought to be older than the little girl in front of me.
Yet she merely giggled while treating the Holy Virgin like a child.
Still, how should I put this?
I had no desire to get close to her.
The little girl smiled as though she found this entire situation entertaining, but I found it deeply unsettling.
I did not know whether those damned voyeurs’ affection for me was positive or negative, but there had definitely been people among them who were friendly toward me.
There was the Holy Virgin, of course, and the Knight King, my generous sponsor, who had gifted me the most weapons out of all those spectators up above.
There was the Indestructible Knight, who gave me [Orlando’s Muscle Cultivation Method] early on—what was practically my livelihood now—and helped me beat Arghalia.
And the peerless knight, who helped me catch the lion, among others.
I thought the little girl in front of me belonged on that side as well.
After all, she had made the boots I was wearing.
And if not for Dreamland’s hidden gimmick, I would not even have made it here.
But unlike the Holy Virgin, who had given me similar gifts... how should I put it?
It was also true that I did not feel like getting particularly friendly with her.
Because no matter how I looked at her, this bitch had the face of someone who lived to stir up trouble.
Self-paced in an entirely different sense from Angelica.
So I had a feeling that getting tangled up with her would be exhausting.
"Well, rather than being suddenly spoiled, the true joy of a story lies in savoring it slowly."
After gazing steadily at me, the little girl pointed at empty space with her index finger and drew it downward.
Bzzzt—.
With a mechanical crackling sound, space split vertically, and the surfaces on either side peeled open as though they were doors.
It looked as though she was trying to make a doorway.
"You already know about [Dreamland: Mirror], so there’s no need for me to explain, right? I’ve already connected the bridge. Go through there, and you’ll arrive at that dungeon right away."
How should I put this?
Seeing her speak as though she knew about [Dreamland: Mirror], and as though she had already figured out that I knew about that dungeon, made it hard for me to take a step forward.
Really.
Were the Stars of Knights connected to my falling into this world?
Of course, even if I asked, there was no way she would tell me, just like the Holy Virgin, so asking would change nothing.
I sighed and opened my inventory.
I reached between the cascading footnotes, equipped Prydwen on my arm, and drew Clarent of the Coward, which I had obtained this time.
A famous sword shining softly in silver.
Even with a gigantic planet right beside us pouring out light and asserting its presence, the blade was not drowned out by that radiance at all.
The disappointing thing was that, unusually, it had no scabbard whatsoever, unlike Carnwennan or other swords.
Because of that, it was inconvenient in that I could only keep it in my inventory.
Still, its performance did not fall short in the slightest compared to the legendary weapons available in the middle and late game, so such an issue did not concern me at all.
I had been about to confidently head for the door the little girl had opened, when—
"Surely you didn’t mess with this dungeon too, like you did with the lion last time..."
The thought suddenly came back to me: those crazy bastards had caused that absurd real-time patch in which the lion, which had only been in the level-forties, became the body of the Lionheart Knight in the level-fifties.
So I looked at the little girl suspiciously.
Whew~.
The crazy little girl whistled and avoided my gaze.
Fuck, they really were making my life impossible again.
Several veins began to bulge prominently on my forehead.
As I took one slow step after another toward her—
"It’s a misunderstanding! What you faced back then were their mental images, but that was just a stopgap! What you have to face now is your true mental image, so I don’t really know!"
The little girl clenched both hands into fists and protested as though she had been wronged.
But.
The shit you people had dumped on me was too damn outrageous for me to trust you...
"Well, I can’t say I have absolutely nothing to do with it, but..."
Exactly.
At her mutter, several more veins began to bulge on my forehead and on the fist gripping Clarent.
Lord.
Today, another star rises.
No, was one about to fall?
"But!"
The little girl shot a hand into the air and continued in a calming tone.
All right.
Let’s hear your excuse, then.
"I’ll let you summon someone you know here! If you explain it in a way they can understand... a helper system! How about that?"
A helper system?
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