It was already dawn so quickly.
The door to the lying room suddenly swung open, and a maid in a servant's dress walked in.
"Milord, you're awake."
The person who entered was someone Sean didn't recognize at all, but her outfit was striking. In this world, most servants wore coarse linen clothes, with women perhaps adding skirts. Only in some large noble households were maids given custom-tailored attire, but the principle remained simplicity and modesty—never outshining the mistress, and certainly never encroaching on her position.
Yet the maid before him was dressed like something out of the anime he'd seen in his past life: a short skirt barely reaching her upper thighs, long white stockings, and a deliberately exposed gap at her chest.
"Milord, would you like hot water prepared? Or something to eat today?" The girl's attitude toward him was exceedingly kind, and her red hair even looked strangely familiar.
Wait.
Am I dreaming?
The place he'd fallen asleep was Baron Myrand's home in Valley Town—how had he suddenly ended up here?
The moment he sat up, the maid rushed forward to support him.
The sensation of her closeness, the fragrance emanating from the girl, the warmth of her palm—everything felt exactly like reality.
"Where am I?"
"This is your castle, milord," the maid said, stepping forward with a smile.
Her figure had the same exaggerated curves as Freya's, and her face felt as delicately sculpted as Lucille's. The key point was that she was his own maid, just like in a dream.
No.
This *is* a dream.
Sean suddenly realized he couldn't see the status indicators that usually appeared above people's heads.
He scrambled to get up.
"Milord, put on some clothes first!"
Ignoring the maid calling after him, he opened the door.
Sunlight streamed in, stinging his eyes with a dry ache.
Even this sensation was so real. But when Sean looked at the world before him, he became even more certain that his current state was a dream. What lay ahead wasn't Valley Town at all, but a towering castle perched almost at the top of a hill, with plains stretching as far as the eye could see.
Threshing grounds, cities, fields, and forests.
Everything seemed to lie beneath his feet. Sunlight and a gentle breeze brushed his face, and even the feeling of his hair blowing was so vivid.
"Milord, what's wrong?"
Sean turned back to look at the maid emerging from the room.
"Who are you?" he asked, staring at her face.
"I am..."
Her voice suddenly stopped there.
"Has my master not given me a name yet?"
He had intended to ask the maid directly if a wizard behind the scenes was casting magic, but her response was this instead.
"My master can give me any name." Her smile felt familiar to Sean.
It was only then that he suddenly realized—this kind of smile and these features weren't typical of girls in this world. He'd been in this world for nearly a year and had almost forgotten his original one. But the girl before him had the face of an Eastern girl, buried deep in his memory.
*I* get to name her, and she looks just like I imagined.
Sean looked at the layout in the distance. His position was likely the castle at the highest point, and below were all the planned areas—cities, crops, forests, and farmland—everything matching the blueprint he'd envisioned for Oro City.
It had appeared here.
He thought about moving the orchard in front of him, and suddenly, a chunk of the landmass seemed to vanish. The orchard instantly turned into a lake, like when he used to play building games. Even more impressive, the people by the lake's edge showed no sign of discomfort.
Hah.
So that's how it is.
This was his dream, and everything in the dream was under his control. Whatever he wanted, whatever he wished for, he could have.
Sean closed his eyes, trying to wake himself from the dream. When he opened them again, his vision returned to the room.
Still the room at Baron Myrand's house. Nothing had changed.
He tried to sit up. The fine hairs on his arm still retained the vivid sensation of the maid supporting him.
He looked out the window. Valley Town's streets were dark, barely visible, with a few nocturnal insects emitting faint specks of light.
So that's it.
Everyone in this town was trapped in that kind of real, self-indulgent dream. No wonder they looked so eager during the day, even letting their daily lives slide so they could spend more time asleep.
Sean got out of bed. His mind still seemed immersed in that dream from moments ago, because it felt so real—and he had been the creator of that dream world.
Even Sean found this thrilling and novel.
He walked out of the room.
Baron Myrand's house was silent.
Everyone was still asleep.
He conjured a flame in his hand using magic, lighting his way.
But the room still showed nothing unusual. Such a dream couldn't arise randomly; the realness of it was enough to captivate anyone.
Magic?
Yet Sean couldn't detect any trace of magic in the room. He even took out the pocket watch magical artifact Ignia had given him to measure, but still found nothing.
He even examined the strange ornament by the door again, but found nothing special.
But if it wasn't magic, such a thing couldn't happen.
He pinched his arm. The sensation from earlier was slowly fading.
Maybe the body was more relaxed at night, and sometimes feelings lingered longer. When Sean was little, he occasionally had nightmares about ghosts or monsters—dreaming of a hand grabbing him from under the bed, then waking up to find his arm really felt like it had been grabbed.
Later, he understood that it was a false signal sent by the brain during rapid movement, transmitted to the body. The feeling just now was like that, only more real than a dream, almost indistinguishable from reality.
If magic wasn't the cause, what else could produce this state?
He remembered that in the dream, he couldn't even see those people's status indicators, but that was probably because he didn't want to.
Wait—the brain.
Sean deliberately sniffed the air in the room a few times.
A smell of tree sap—that faint, slightly juicy scent you get when cutting into bark and reaching the phloem or wood. In contrast, the scent on the branch ornament was very weak.
Looking at the room's layout, these smells probably came from the wood of the room itself, not that little ornament.
Maybe he'd been wrong from the start.
The next morning, Ross and Aslant came out of their rooms very late, both wearing blissful smiles.
"Good morning, Count."
Ross seemed especially energetic today, as if Sean hadn't seen him this happy since they'd set out together.