Ellie looked at the fighting women, utterly perplexed by what she was seeing. Why did she come this way? Max was about to leap out of the bushes when Cy kept him still. It took him a second to realise why.

  “Thank god!” Jacquotte quickly scurried behind Ellie. “This woman is crazy! She tried to shoot me-”

  “Hey, I was shooting at the weirdo behind you.” BB started to defend herself, when Ellie calmly raised her hand. They waited patiently for Jacquotte to finish her ramblings, BB readjusted her clothing for more modesty. In her head, she was already preparing her defence.

  After recounting her long tale about being harassed by a pirate woman during the day, hounded by the same woman during the night, and then getting into a fight in the gardens, Jacquotte finished with, “I… I want to go home.” She sniffed before she wiped her tear-filled face with her nightcap.

  Ellie gave a few nods of understanding before facing BB. “Is she taking drugs? Or is she just mentally unwell?” Her straight face caught BB off guard.

  “How could you think-”

  “You’re in your nightgown and talking about nonsense. What else am I supposed to think?”

  “You two are the crazy ones,” Jacquotte snapped back. She broke out into a sprint towards the mansion. For as weak as her punches were, her pace was surprisingly fast. Instead of chasing after her, BB let out a whistle of admiration.

  “… Should we go after her?” Ellie asked, genuinely concerned. “If people see her in her nightgown, it’ll create a big scandal.”

  “Scandals just intensify love.”

  Ellie’s brows furrowed. “What?”

  “There you are.” Max took advantage of the confusion. BB and Ellie couldn’t tell who he was speaking to. “Hm? Where’s Jacquotte?” He feigned ignorance.

  “If you’re talking about the woman in her nightgown, she ran towards the party,” Ellie pointed in the direction she went. “… How do you know her?”

  “Do you know each other?” BB butted in. She was clearly curious. “Ah, there you are Cy!” Max turned to see a red-eyed Cy had emerged from the shrubbery.

  Ellie was cautiously looking over the strangers in the garden. Semi-empathetic, Max thought it would be best to clarify since he wasn’t even sure how much dream Ellie knew about him. When they first met, Max’s existence was only just a rumour.

  “This is BB,” he pointed over at the extravagantly bowing woman before realising they forgot to exchange last names.

  “BB Pampadour,” she lied on his behalf.

  “You’re on a first name basis?” Ellie’s eyes narrowed, trying to process their relationship.

  “Just part of our culture. Apologies Lady Pampadour, I shouldn’t have called you by your first name.” BB gave him a little wave to show there was no offence. “She’s a famous musician I brought with me from my hometown.”

  “What instruments can you play?” Ellie asked, still suspicious.

  “Any and all.” BB’s tone would’ve put him on edge if he wasn’t confident of the woman in front of them.

  “Violin?”

  “Of course.”

  “Harp?”

  “One of my favourites to play.”

  “Timpani?”

  “Tim-pan-what?”

  “I’m sure she can play a song for you later,” Max interjected before the interrogation got too intense. BB eagerly nodded to show her enthusiasm. It appeared to have temporarily satisfied Ellie. “This is Lord Vanga.” Cy clearly wasn’t sure about how to act in accordance with the times. “You’ll have to forgive him. He’s mostly blind.” Cy shot him a nasty look before realising the copout he was given.

  “You poor soul,” Ellie threw him a face of genuine sympathy.

  “Don’t worry about it. It’s a recent thing, and it’ll go away soon,” Cy explained to prevent any misunderstandings.

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  Ellie maintained a sympathetic smile before moving closer to Max and whispering to him. “Is he diseased?”

  “It’s not contagious,” Max reassured her. “It’s a thing that comes and goes for him. He’s had it since birth.”

  “Ah,” Ellie contorted her face to show her real emotions. “You have quite a collection in your company, huh?” Her voice was judgy towards Max, who could only shrug in reply. She wasn’t wrong. “This is your debut into high society, right? Maybe you should attend alone next time.”

  “Who is this lovely lady?” BB intervened.

  Max was about to speak, when Ellie spoke for herself. He didn’t know why he even attempted. She was the type to always represent herself. “My name is Elenor Gillery Piggott, daughter of Baron Piggott.” Ignoring Cy, whose jaw was on the floor, she gave a well-rehearsed curtesy. “Well, shall we go get your other weird friend before she starts some scandals in her nightgown?”

  “Great idea.” “Why don’t you ladies go ahead?”

  Max and Cy gave each other a sharp look. Cy beat him to the punch. “Our friend, Lady Pampadour, has found herself… in need of some better clothes. As a fellow lady, perhaps you could help her? We’ll join you later.”

  Ellie merely glanced at an enthusiastic BB before deciding he was right. “I have some stuff with me. We can probably get that dress semi-patched up with a few pins, broaches, and shawl. Luckily, I have a spare one. The colours won’t match… Still, it’ll be better than this. Shall we meet in the library? Do you know where it is?”

  “Yes,” Max confirmed, before the pair waited patiently for the lady and the pirate pretending to be a lady to wander off together. BB was doing a terrible job blending into this world, even Cy looked more natural. Perhaps Minna was spot on about how great BB would be as a pirate. It was the best explanation for her lack of adaptability so far. Since the dream began, Max had been questioning his initial judgement of her. “Maybe we should have come into this with more of a plan?”

  “You son of a bitch,” Cy snapped at him. Instead of retaliating, Max kept quiet and calm while Cy continued to rant. “I knew you could be a selfish prick, but to go this far? BB and I have been trying to help you the moment your stupid story began, but that’s just not enough for you, is it? We’re wasting time playing out your fantasy with your previous wife, while BB is inching closer to death-”

  “Only if she chooses not to kill me when the deadline hits,” Max interjected.

  “Well, lah-dee-dah, aren’t you so lucky that she’s even considering not acting on it!” Cy hit back. “Just what were you thinking?”

  Max thought for the right words for a moment. “Let’s kill two birds with one stone.”

  Cy couldn’t believe his ears. “Are you fucking stupid or something?”

  “Did I have any reason to believe it wouldn’t work?” Max finally began fighting back. “BB came across as a professional when it comes to love and someone eagerly willing to go against the genre of her story despite the risks. How was I supposed to know she was a maniac when it came to trying to seduce women?”

  “You could’ve stuck with us this afternoon?”

  “Then how would we pull Jacquotte into this dream? Without my runes, it would just be me, you, and BB. You probably would be running out of magic by now if I didn’t scar those runes on your ear.”

  “You did what!?”

  “Hold on,” Max held up his hands to keep Cy from exploding at him. “You asked me to put them there… And I added a few more that I thought would be useful for you.”

  “What did you do!?” Cy held his ears. “How many are on my ears?”

  “…Three on the right, and six on the left-”

  “What!-”

  “But to be fair, you should be getting a surge of magic!” Max shouted to drown out Cy’s attempts at talking. “You were complaining about the level of your internal magic going down after leaving Tsujuma. They’re multipliers and storers. So give it a couple of days, and that and the magic you don’t have to spend healing will mean you’ll get a real boost in abilities.” Max tried to get him to smile, but Cy maintained his horrified face. “If you want, we can add more-”

  “I’m good.” Cy continued to frown, but at least the distracting offer calmed him down significantly. He let out a sigh. “You should have just told me about Ellie.”

  “I wasn’t sure it would really work,” Max admitted. “If I can’t keep my concentration, then this can all go haywire.”

  “That’s for damn sure. I’m actually surprised she looks... normal. Especially, since you two were together for such a long time. I would’ve thought she would be a weird blend of her at different times.”

  “I’m trying.” He didn’t want to admit there were already some inaccuracies.

  Cy seemed suspicious of his words before slowly nodding. “Right, we should have a fair amount of time left. You had your fun, so let’s get serious. How are we going to get that toxic pair all loved up before we run out of magic?” Max shrugged. “Come on, now. I thought you had a plan.”

  “I did. It hasn’t really worked out like how I thought it would,” he openly admitted. “If BB was who she said she was, then this should be no problem for her. All that’s left is either keep trying, give up and enjoy the dream, or end the dream. You’re the one powering this thing, so you can make the call.”

  Being left with the decision was clearly not what Cy was expecting. He took a few seconds to think before he began grumbling in a low voice. “We already put in some effort,” he finally concluded. “Even if it doesn’t work, it can give us an idea on how hard it is to change genres for other stories.”

  “That’s the spirit.” Max was clearly pleased the dream was going to go on for a little longer.

  “Speaking of the system, how is the timer for the sub-goal?” In his eagerness to get the dream going and see Ellie again, Max had forgotten about it. He took a second to check the HUD. “When I last checked my fate, we’ve got about six hours in real time to make this work. Otherwise, I’ll use up too much magic… You know, you look really creepy when you’re interacting with the system. You intensely stare at nothing.”

  “Yep,” Max wasn’t really paying attention to what Cy was saying. “It’s slowed, nearly to a stop. BB must be doing a decent job at slowing down time.”

  “At least she’s doing something right. Since it’s slowed down, the sub-goal’s probably not connected to the dream.”

  “Right, but that only leaves the question: what triggered it?”