Chapter 64: Wrap-up Work

Impressed by the capabilities demonstrated by the Civilization Preservation Society and anticipating the potential discovery of a vast treasure left behind by them in the future, Yvette felt it necessary to maintain closer contact with this mysterious organization going forward. It would be even better if she could infiltrate it and become a member.

However, achieving this would take time, and in the dream world, time was precisely what Yvette lacked the most.

Based on her estimation of the volume of the dream mist this time, the entire dream duration was about three months, leaving her with only a month or so remaining.

With such limited time, simply attending university lectures as an auditor every day and returning to research the upgrade of spell specifications would consume eighty percent of it. It would be extremely difficult to find an opportunity for further contact with the Civilization Preservation Society, and she might not even have the chance to take on mercenary commissions.

It seemed she would just have to wait for her next dream entry. She hoped the timeline fluctuation wouldn't be too drastic then—neither pulling her back into the past nor leaping far into the future... she sighed inwardly.

Thus, during the final month of the dream, Yvette began the preparatory phase of her concluding tasks.

She sold the bio-prosthetic armor she had listed on the dark web for a transaction price of 2.4 million. Although waiting a bit longer might have yielded a higher price, her wallet had already been flattened after trading the information on the Prometheus Program, leaving her with no way to hold out for better offers.

Immediately afterward, her first purchase was Arch-Tech's *Detailed Explanation of Spell Architecture Engines*, which cost a full 1.2 million credit points.

This book systematically explained the modular composition of the engine and included many industrial practical cases. It was well-suited for a beginner like her, allowing her to bypass many pitfalls that her predecessors had stepped into.

How should she put it? Although very expensive, at least in her view, this book constituted a necessary expense. After all, every upgrade in spell specifications was like enlarging the size of a canvas, allowing painters to depict finer details upon it. This wasn't as simple as merely touching up a few blank areas, but rather required a complete redraw.

To use an analogy, a game might offer thousands of equipment choices, but your game protagonist could hold at most six pieces of equipment. Naturally, you would choose the best loadout within that limit of six. Now, if you were given ten equipment slots, would you simply buy four new equipment pieces on top of your original foundation?

That would certainly mean clearing everything out, reconstructing your strategy, and figuring out how to maximize combat effectiveness with ten equipment slots. That would likely result in a completely different equipment build from before.

The existence of a self-developed engine would help accelerate this process for her in the future. Otherwise, every time her magitech terminal was upgraded or a new spell developed, she would have to bootstrap it from scratch or hunt everywhere in the dream mist trusting to luck... which would be painful, lengthy, and highly impractical.

...

After deducting 1.2 million credit points, the 2.4 million credit points she had just acquired were immediately cut in half.

Without time to dwell on the heartache, Yvette immediately browsed the black market again. However, because military-grade equipment was exorbitantly marked up, the gear she could afford was less effective than simply using spells. After a casual glance around, she abandoned the idea of acquiring more combat power.

For her, military-grade equipment worth calling useful started at a price of 5 million, which she completely could not afford.

Fortunately, having the new ring with a capacity of 100k roughly fulfilled the goal set when entering the dream.

Consequently...

Using her remaining funds, she purchased some functional supplies and professional books.

First was the "Military First Aid Kit" from Black Tower Pharmaceuticals, which contained potions and runic secret drugs to cope with various situations, as well as a mysterious medicinal liquid called "Vitality" that could replenish life force and even had anti-aging and life-prolonging effects.

According to Black Tower's promotional claims, with this first aid kit, even if one's head were chopped off, there was still a chance of rescue—truly a life-saving divine artifact.

Next was Scale-Shedding Biology's "Material Repair Fluid," an organic liquid that functioned much like spray paint. After being sprayed onto aged or corroded materials and air-dried, it could vastly increase their service life and strength, bringing them close to the level of steel. It was an exceptional companion for scavengers.

Following that was a batch of low-to-mid-range "elemental chips" produced by minor factories, which would also come in handy during scavenging runs, serving as replacement parts for large pieces of equipment that were otherwise well-preserved except for damaged chips.

Then came some industrially manufactured artificial mana cores. These were entirely tailored for natural mages; with a tiny market and high production costs, their price had skyrocketed to a staggering 700 credits per point of mana. After careful deliberation, she bought enough for about 500 points of mana, costing 350,000, and had to wait over half a month for delivery.

Finally, there was Rift-Space Group's *Analytical Study of Spatial Runic Technology*. Compared to the previous items, this book was likely the most expensive and most useless thing, because even the current Genesis Civilization's understanding of spatial runes was limited to "verifying their existence."

The Rift-Space Group itself, as the superpower at the forefront of spatial rune exploration, did not even have a single practical application on the ground. They merely kept building castles in the air, proclaiming things like "spatial gate technology will reshape the landscape of the future logistics and transportation industry" or "spatial rings will be the greatest invention of the future," and so on.

Yet if you asked them when spatial rune technology would become reality, it invariably became the eternal answer of "another thirty years."

Yet Yvette bought it anyway. Her reason was naturally not out of pure curiosity, but rather her belief that although the Rift-Space Group had repeatedly failed to produce anything convincing, the Aurora Belt and the Abyss Remnants were undeniably intertwined with spatial runes.

Perhaps it was simply an elemental pollution phenomenon caused by spatial runes, except that the manifested effect was the connection of two worlds...

In any case, gaining a prior understanding of this mysterious rune classification certainly could not hurt.

...

To prevent herself from drifting out of the dream while sleeping and causing her possessions to be left behind, Yvette spent almost no time sleeping during the late period of the dream's third month.

She purchased language courses for "Emerald Tongue" and "Silver Mirror Tongue," studying these two new languages while remaining constantly vigilant, resulting in her nodding off in sleep deprivation every single day.

She also specifically bought a small service: if she failed to log in for more than three days, an automated message would be sent to the contacts on her citizen account stating that she had to disappear for a long time due to force majeure, and asking them to leave messages if they had questions.

This way, even if she suddenly vanished from the face of the earth for several years, it wouldn't cause too much misunderstanding.

Finally, near the end of the third month, upon seeing the world before her suddenly grow ethereal and blurred, she made a decisive move and grabbed a nearby travel suitcase—this case held the important items she had purchased during this excursion, along with some spare clothing.

In addition, she scooped up a small plastic box nearby, inside of which was a live hamster.

She intended to use this hamster to test whether she possessed the ability to bring living creatures out of the dream as well.

If she succeeded, it would indicate that the dream was not the past, but a real world, perhaps a parallel universe on a certain timeline.

If she failed...

Then she would have to judge based on the circumstances.

...

A few minutes later, as everything around her dissolved into complete haziness like melting dabs of paint, boundless darkness entered Yvette's vision.

She stood in the silent dusk, exhaling a soundless breath. Looking at the bright moonlight filtering through the shattered window not far away, she confirmed that she had returned to the real world, back to the eve of bidding farewell to the residents of the Puppet Town.

The fishy stench in the air had not yet dissipated; the streets outside the ruined buildings were likely still flowing with blood. Perhaps less than five minutes had passed.

She lowered her head, conjured a illumination spell, and glanced at the plastic box in her hand.

The hamster was inside, but the previously lively little creature was now lying motionless in the wood shavings. She opened the lid and poked it, discovering that its body was warm, but it seemed to have fallen into a deep sleep from which no amount of touching could rouse it.

It was simply as though... it had become a vegetable.

A few minutes later, after numerous attempts, Yvette arrived at a definitive answer.

The hamster's body was alive, but its spiritual entity was gone. The instant it broke away from the dream, its spiritual entity failed to follow; only its physical shell had crossed the boundary between dream and reality.

As for whether its memory data had followed along, it was impossible to determine. But with its spiritual body gone, it was effectively dead; what did it matter whether the memories came along or not?

It seemed it was impossible to bring people out from the dream... Which made sense; there was no need to let them know about such a hopeless future...

Yvette gave a soft sigh, burned the hamster's corpse, picked up her large travel suitcase, and rose into the air. Gliding past the collapsed walls, over the boundless corpses in the dark, and past the starry sky above the treetops, she flew toward the direction from whence she came.