"Gurgle~gurgle~"
"Dear little Sparkle, just hold on a little longer—it'll be time for your water break soon."
Inside the dream bubble Sparkle had so carefully constructed, the roles of hunter and prey had quietly swapped.
She'd considered the possibility of her own plan backfiring, but what she never expected was that Lynelle's mental strength wasn't solely invested in her own psychic defenses.
Instead, it was split into several separate power nodes, each housed in different areas—her core, her signets, and more.
That meant even if Lynelle actively dropped her mental guard, she could quickly reconsolidate her various authorities. And as for whether Sparkle might slip through the cracks during that window, turning a simple intrusion into full mind control or memory theft...
Well, the last person who tried to slip through those cracks was Black Swan, and she'd been so thoroughly doxxed, wave after wave, all the way up to the Emanators, that she'd started doubting her own existence.
All things considered, Sparkle knew Lynelle well—but her intel was outdated. And now she was experiencing a familiar defeat CG once again.
The worst part? Lynelle didn't even need to adjust the restraints upward.
These devices had been built for Lynelle's own measurements, and Sparkle just happened to be at a slight disadvantage in the height department, so...
After being strapped into the very equipment she'd prepared for Lynelle, Sparkle realized with some dismay that her toes couldn't quite reach the ground.
And with her light, petite frame, her support points were... rather awkwardly placed.
"Guh... damn you, Lynelle..."
"What did I do?" Lynelle's expression was perfectly pitiful.
"I even gave you a rest and water break every six hours, you know. In your original plan, you weren't going to give me any breaks at all—I saw it in the dream bubble's logs. This is already plenty merciful."
"And besides..."
Lynelle leaned in, reaching out to gently pinch Sparkle's flushed, burning-soft cheeks.
"My dear Sparkle, tsundere's been out of style for ages. You're clearly enjoying this~ After all, in that dazed state, your subconscious emotional leanings are completely impossible to fake, aren't they?"
"I'll win next time for sure!"
"There, there... of course you will, sweetie~" Lynelle patted the girl's head in a coaxing, child-soothing tone, then decisively cranked the remote control to max.
As Sparkle's eyes rolled back and even her little pink tongue lolled out involuntarily, Lynelle casually tossed the tiny button aside.
"The dream bubble's got about six hours left. It'll dispel automatically when the time's up. So, my dear little Sparkle, enjoy yourself all alone~"
"Looking forward to your next move~"
With that, Lynelle exited the dream bubble. After all, there was still time left on it, and she needed to find Sparkle's real body first and move her somewhere safe.
Otherwise, given Sparkle's tolerance just now, if that brat's consciousness happened to pass out in the dream bubble and her body wasn't properly hidden... well, that'd turn into a very different kind of story.
"Hoo, Sparkle knows my abilities pretty well—she hid her real body way out here..."
Tracing the psychic residue left behind in the illusion, Lynelle had no trouble doxxing Sparkle's physical location. But... her current state looked a bit disheveled.
"So... sensations from inside the dream bubble get faithfully relayed to the body and trigger physical responses? And since dream bubble time flow is adjustable, doesn't that make this some kind of... pleasure-accumulation play?"
Looking at Sparkle—whose clothes had come undone from all the convulsing, with suspicious wet traces left all over her little hiding spot—Lynelle's mind spontaneously generated several interesting new ideas.
But just then, her phone started beeping again, snapping her out of her reverie.
"Who now... oh, right, timing-wise, could it be Stelle running into Firefly? That idiot Sparkle, she went and burned twelve hours in one go, almost threw the whole plot off—wait, it's not Stelle?"
Seeing Corruption-chan's avatar on the message notification, Lynelle fell into thought.
"Corruption-chan? Something happen on your end?"
"There's been a bit of an unexpected situation over here... but don't worry, Mom—ah, I mean, Big Sis Lynelle."
Corruption-chan's voice came through the comms. "I think I've ended up in some new area, so I wanted to let you know. Oh, and I keep hearing dragging sounds and weird water noises on your side... Lynelle sis, you're not in some kind of trouble again, are you?"
"Trouble? Oh... you've got it wrong."
Lynelle blinked, then shook her head with a wry laugh. She realized Corruption-chan had probably interpreted those sounds as her having just killed someone and disposing of the body.
But really, she was just carrying a limp, noodle-soft Sparkle over to the bed. And those water sounds... well, let's just say Sparkle had real potential as a fountain maiden (complimentary).
"I'm just settling a friend down. She just finished some... healthy physical activities and passed out. Anyway, tell me about your side. You said earlier that after entering the dreamscape, you got transported somewhere strange—what happened?"
"Honestly, I'm not really sure myself..." Corruption-chan's voice sounded genuinely baffled.
"I wandered around that area for a while, and like you said, I found quite a few 'traces' of my kind. But I remembered what you told me, so I didn't dig deeper into them—just kept looking for a way out."
"Luckily, I ran into a kind creature near what looked like the dreamscape's border. It heard my situation and was really helpful—escorted me out. I'm staying with it now; it's pretty simple-minded and seems to have already decided we're friends..."
"?"
After listening to Corruption-chan's description, Lynelle slowly typed out a question mark.
Wait. Based on what Corruption-chan was saying, didn't that friendly creature sound... kind of familiar? No way...
"Corruption-chan, can you tell me... what's your friend's name?"
"Oh, that I do know. It's not great at talking, but if I heard right, it's called... Sleepie?"
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T/N: If you want advance chapters, you can find it at [email protected]/AspenTL