Stelle pushed past Robin and stepped forward. "We're here to ask you a few things. About the process of shaping a dreamscape, and what that process consumes. Also..."
Robin nodded, picking up the thread. "We want to confirm a few things."
"Alright, alright, just please don't take too much of my time. I've already been working overtime for two months..." The Dreamweaver's mood hadn't fully recovered; he was still in a slump.
Stelle began her questioning. "Does crafting a dreamscape require Memoria? For instance, to construct the sensory effects of time, space, and substance in a dream, or to create these kinds of spatially dislocated structures."
The Dreamweaver explained, "Memoria is the very material of memory. To put it simply, it's the crystallized, materialized product of a living being's memories. Its main function is to shape and connect the memories of many different people. In this ocean of memory, the dreamscape becomes a vast city. That way, everyone can become a part of this dream platform."
"Aside from Memokeepers, most people can't actually control the memories within their own dreams. That's why they need the assistance of this third-party force, which allows them to perceive and experience things as if they were real."
"Let me give you an example. Say, in reality, you want to view a so-called 'cell' under a microscope. You'd have to follow all the rules of the physical universe to accomplish that task. If you miss a single step, it won't work."
"But in a dream, it's different. We can make a person cognize that an object is a microscope, and then make them cognize that the perception projected by this microscope is the structure of a cell. The entire physical process in between can be skipped. In doing so, we've effectively recreated the entire experience of using a microscope within the dream."
Stelle hadn't yet grasped the full implication, but Noldrei had already completely understood Penacony's current structure.
The key issue was the authority to use Memoria.
[I see. Penacony isn't a true dreamscape. It merely uses Memoria to simulate the human experience of dreaming within reality. The actual dream isn't constructed here.]
[No wonder I was disconnected from you. It wasn't that your consciousness was lost, but that only at that moment did you truly fall asleep and enter your own dream.]
[That's when your perception achieves a true separation from the material world. There might be a truer, more authentic dream environment hidden within Penacony.]
Stelle grew thoughtful. She asked the Dreamweaver, "So, based on what you're saying, the Penacony we're in now isn't what we'd normally recognize as a dream, or the kind of dream we truly enter when we sleep. In other words, we're currently in a material dreamscape built from Memoria, used solely for connecting memories?"
The Dreamweaver had never considered this before. He could only access and use Memoria to craft and modify the dreamscape while he himself was in the dream.
He never expected Stelle to propose such a theory: that Penacony was fundamentally a dreamscape grafted together with Memoria, not a true... dream?
"Hiss... that... that actually makes some sense," he stammered. "If I were really dreaming in the outside world, I should be able to replicate all those fantastical, bizarre things from my own dreams right here in Penacony. And yet, I have to rely on Memoria to handle all of it."
"But people can create memories on their own. And these memories, when shared, should create even more inspiration..."
"Strange... that's not right... That's not right at all..."
The Dreamweaver seemed to have fallen into a vicious cycle. He instinctively felt that Stelle's challenge was correct, yet he couldn't explain why his job as a Dreamweaver was even necessary.
The human mind itself possesses the ability to organize memories and craft dreams. In theory, every person is an excellent Dreamweaver; it's just that most people have never considered replicating this ability within a dreamscape.
And yet, here in Penacony, it required an external material like Memoria to participate in the dream-crafting process.
So where did humanity's innate dream-crafting ability go?
The Dreamweaver was lost in this conundrum.
He vaguely felt as though his current work existed specifically to prove the legitimacy of some other entity's creation, rather than being a result of his own inherent productive ability.
"Yeah, why is that?"
"Huh? What's going on?"
"No, that's wrong. How can you build a dream without Memoria?"
"That's not right either. There are plenty of people who don't have Memoria. Do they need it to dream, too?"
"Wrong, wrong... where did it all go wrong?"
The Dreamweaver looked as if he'd encountered a game-breaking bug. For the first time, he began to doubt his own profession, even wondering if his work had any real meaning.
"Is he... trapped in his own mental labyrinth?" Firefly thought the scene was quite tragic. A perfectly fine Dreamweaver had been completely broken by the combined efforts of Robin and Stelle.
Acheron pondered the issue. She felt it wasn't just about Memoria, but... some kind of special power of a Path?
An impossible death in a dream?
As if a thought struck her, she suddenly turned to Robin. "Miss Robin, if someone is attacked in Penacony, are they harmed in any way? For example, if someone on the street suddenly hits a passerby with a large hammer."
"No, they won't be. In that situation, the person would simply return to consciousness. They would just 'wake up' back in reality and recover," Robin explained Penacony's safety measures. "There are complete protections in the dreamscape as well."
Stelle suddenly spoke up again. "Then why do people go missing in Penacony?"
Of course, she already knew the answer. The Reverie Hotel wasn't reality, but a dreamscape steeped in Memoria. And Penacony wasn't reality either. Even if people "woke up," they would only return to the dream-state of their hotel suite. This truth could be easily exposed just by "killing" someone. The disappearances in Penacony were no accident.
This wasn't Stelle asking the question; it was Noldrei.
"Disappearances... 'disappearances' refers to..." Robin thought for a moment, then said hesitantly, "Could it be the work of traitors within the Family?"
Stelle shook her head. "No. Instead of asking why people go missing, we should be asking..."
She pointed toward the far-off edge of the Dreamscape Frontier. "...why does a dream have a border? And beyond that border, could there be another dream world, one not controlled by Penacony?"
Acheron suddenly felt a strange sensation.
She scanned her surroundings with alarm. The Memoria around them seemed to be pulled by some unseen force as it began to melt.