Lingering spirits don't dream.
Or rather, because they don't need sleep, even if they force themselves to rest, the concept of dreams doesn't exist for them.
At the very least, during the half year after crossing over and becoming a lingering spirit, Miles hadn't had a single dream.
And during the week after obtaining a brand-new body, there were likewise no signs of dreaming at all.
Until last night, when Miles, after a long absence, had a very long dream.
In the dream, Miles returned to his life before crossing over, an utterly ordinary daily life.
Scenes of living together with his older sister, relying on each other after their parents passed away.
"Dropping out to work? Miles, you don't need to worry about me. Leave making money to your big sister."
"Hehe, this is the card you like, right, Miles? I saw it while working and picked up a pack on the way back."
"You pulled an ultra-rare card? What's that supposed to be? …Huh! Selling it online can get this much money? That's a scam, right? A pack of cards is so cheap."
"No need to sell it. I'm giving you a gift just to make you happy, not so you can sell it."
"Do your best in the weekend tournament!"
Even though he had already been gone for half a year, in the dream, his sister's face, every glance and smile, was still vividly clear.
"It's already morning. If you don't leave for the tournament now, you'll be late, Miles."
Knock knock knock!
"Don't sleep in!"
Knock knock knock!
At the end of the dream, the hurried knocking overlapped with reality.
Someone really was knocking on the inn room door.
Groggily getting up, perhaps because it had been so long since he last dreamed, Miles' body climbed out of bed while his consciousness was still left behind, his whole self not yet fully awake.
"Coming, coming."
Almost purely out of instinct from memory, Miles opened the door. "Let me sleep a little longer, sis."
"You still dare to call me 'sis'?"
Outside the inn room door, Alice Carlos appeared within Miles' hazy field of vision.
The effect was outstanding. Miles woke up instantly.
Crap.
He'd slept too deeply and mixed the dream with reality.
When he opened the door, Miles had really thought it was his own sister knocking to hurry him awake.
Turns out he'd stepped right on a landmine.
After yesterday's self-destruct-button operation from Aisha, Miles guessed that what Alice least wanted to hear now was him calling her 'sis'.
"But…" Miles scratched his head, trying to salvage things. "If I don't call you sis, then how should I address you?"
"Just call me Alice."
"O-okay, Alice."
On a brand-new morning, what greeted Miles was an extremely awkward door-opening kill.
Clearly, only Irena should have known the inn's location and room number, so how could Miles have guessed that Alice would knock on his door first thing in the morning?
Alice narrowed her eyes into a thin slit and guessed, "Miles, are you wondering why I know you're staying here?"
Mind reading… What a terrifying woman.
Miles nodded honestly.
"In a small rural town like this, there are no secrets. Just ask around a bit, and you'll know where you stayed last night."
That made perfect sense. Since he'd been brought back by Aisha, Miles would draw attention just walking down the town streets, and there were probably quite a few townspeople who had seen him last night.
"So, is it convenient to go inside and talk?"
"Oh, sure, sure. Alice, come in."
Letting a girl like Alice stand outside the inn room door talking really would have been impolite.
After getting Miles' permission, Alice walked into the room, casually closing the door behind her, then locking it as well.
Click.
Alright. Now this place was a sealed room.
Miles had no idea what Alice intended to do.
Looking at Alice Carlos sitting upright on the inn room sofa, possessing both elegant poise and a serious demeanor.
Miles even felt that in the next second, a classic scene of a family elder meeting a grassroots male lead would unfold.
Alice would suddenly pull out a gold-coin card from her bosom and say to him, "There's one million in the card. Leave my sister."
That would be really hard for Miles to refuse. (×)
However, the scene Miles was expecting didn't happen.
After what was probably a difficult internal struggle, Alice, who had been sitting upright on the sofa for a long while, finally spoke slowly.
"Miles, actually, I already know about you and Aisha."
"Eh?"
Miles' first reaction was surprise that Aisha had actually confessed.
That would mean Alice should know that he had been Aisha's lingering spirit, living inside her body for half a year.
Anyhow, it seemed Alice wasn't as angry as Miles had imagined.
"Miles, are you wondering why I'm not angry?"
"Alice, could you turn off your mind-reading cheat?"
"Knowing that my most important little sister's body was used by another man, as her sister, it would be impossible not to be angry."
Her brows tightly furrowed, Alice shot Miles a fierce glare.
That was the truth.
"Albeit as the acting head of the Carlos family, everything you've done leaves me with absolutely no standing to be angry."
After that, the tightly knit brows gradually relaxed, and an extremely complex emotion surfaced in Alice's refined eyes.
That was also the truth.
If it hadn't been for Miles back then, Aisha would definitely have been expelled from the academy because of her credit issues.
After that, if Miles hadn't carried the entire royal capital alone, single-handedly breaking through three generations of the Slint family.
The royal capital incident wouldn't have been resolved so perfectly, Aisha wouldn't have become a Royal Knight, and the Carlos family's path to rise wouldn't have gone as smoothly as it had now.
Weighing right and wrong, as the acting head of the Carlos family, Alice could still tell what mattered most.
Under normal circumstances, when a family encounters a benefactor like this, it wouldn't even be excessive to set up a monument for him within the family.
As the younger sister's boyfriend? Most families that ran into someone like Miles would probably beg him to marry in, just to add another entry to the family genealogy.
What made things extremely difficult for Alice was Miles' other identity.
A divine relic bearer. The lingering spirit of the Millennium Puzzle.
It wasn't that Miles lost his identity as the Millennium Puzzle's lingering spirit after obtaining a body.
On this point, Elra, herself a lingering spirit of the Millennium Ring, had even more authority to speak.
Since the soul had originally resided within the Millennium Puzzle, the bond between Miles and the Millennium Puzzle was inseparable, and had nothing to do with whether he had a physical body or not.
If anything, having his own body was actually a form of indirect amplification.
This was also why, after obtaining a brand-new body, Miles was able to draw out the Millennium Puzzle's hidden power even more effectively than before.
As for the deal Alice had made with Elra, its content was to gather all seven Millennium Items.
She had originally thought the Millennium Puzzle on Aisha would be the easiest to obtain. How easy her own sister was to persuade, how obedient she was, Alice knew better than anyone.
But because of Miles' existence, and the destiny that divine relic bearers were bound to be drawn to one another, Alice sensed that this battle would be hard to avoid.
The unavoidable final battle would happen, but not now.
At present, the Millennium Items in Alice's possession, aside from the Millennium Ring, also included the Millennium Eye and Millennium Rod obtained after killing Reigun Seth during the Royal Capital battle, as well as the Millennium Scale acquired amid the chaos in Axet.
Only the Millennium Key, Millennium Necklace, and Millennium Puzzle remained.
With every Millennium Item acquired, the overall power of Alice's Deck increased.
For example, after obtaining the Millennium Scale, Alice gained [Nibiru, the Primal Being].
So if a battle with Miles was truly unavoidable, Alice hoped it would be after she had obtained the remaining two Millennium Items.
The Millennium Key had long been slumbering beneath Fusion Academy.
Previously, Alice had attempted several times to infiltrate the underground space beneath Fusion Academy to take the Millennium Key.
However, every attempt had been stopped by that woman teacher named Erin Rockefeller.
She usually looked like an extremely unreliable, lazy teacher who smoked and drank, yet each time she could precisely detect Alice's infiltration.
Moreover, Erin Rockefeller's strength was extraordinary. If Alice were to clash head-on with the legendary Fusion Shaddoll, even if she won, she estimated she would have to pay a heavy price.
That left the remaining obtainable Millennium Item: the Millennium Necklace, located on a certain young girl within the Holy Varian Empire.
And recently, as a Livorden noble, Alice happened to have a reason to travel to the Holy Varian Empire.
"Miles, I can understand why Aisha relies on you so much. Because of your existence, Aisha obtained the title of Royal Knight. Or rather, that title should have belonged to you in the first place."
After saying this, Alice took an invitation letter from the Holy Varian Empire out of her jacket pocket and placed it on the tea table in the inn room for display.
It was the same one Miles had seen earlier in Alice's study.
"'The Holy Varian Empire cordially invites the Carlos family and the esteemed Livorden Royal Knight Aisha Yuna Carlos to attend His Imperial Majesty the Emperor's birthday banquet.'"
"So this invitation, in reality, should be inviting you, Miles."
"But the name written on it is Aisha Carlos."
"Even so, I hope you'll come along."
"Huh?"
As for an imperial emperor's birthday banquet, Miles had not the slightest interest in it.
It was probably just some lofty old emperor sitting on a throne, listening to the invited nobles flatter him from start to finish.
"Right now, the relationship between the Holy Varian Empire and the Kingdom of Livorden is extremely delicate. You should know that, Miles."
"Yeah. Because of the Royal Capital battle, right?"
"This is the Empire's first formal invitation since the war. Whether for the sake of the greater situation, for the peace of the continent, or even due to the wishes expressed by the royal Kaisers, the Carlos family is being asked to agree to this."
"So rejecting it casually would be troublesome."
Nodding, Alice continued, "That said, the internal situation of the Holy Varian Empire is far more complicated than it appears."
"The current emperor, Quaedes, is known as the strongest emperor in the Empire's history."
"Quaedes?" The name didn't sound like that of an old emperor at all; it sounded more like a girl's.
"Regardless, titles like 'strongest emperor' are usually just bragging, said for other countries to hear, right?"
After all, boasting costs nothing.
The strongest emperor was always the next one, and it provided a certain level of deterrence in international relations.
"Not entirely. Quaedes ascended the throne in front of everyone by defeating the previous emperor with water-based Xyz. His strength is unquestionable. It's just that he's too young… only seventeen years old."
"A seventeen-year-old emperor?" Miles was startled. "Does that mean a puppet regime?"
Normally, the younger the emperor, the more easily they were controlled by eunuchs hidden within the upper echelons.
"That's right. The Empire may appear calm, but in truth, because of the new emperor Quaedes, undercurrents are surging beneath the surface."
"That's also why one of the Empire's three great families, the Slint family, could do something as outrageous as launching a surprise attack on the Royal Capital and starting a war."
"Alice, you're telling me all this because…?"
"So you understand that going to the Holy Varian Empire is not an absolutely safe matter. Therefore, Miles, I plan to invite you to accompany us in the name of the Carlos family head. If danger arises, protect Aisha."
"Just accompany and protect Aisha? Then what about you, Alice?"
"Miles, you don't need to worry about me. Just protect Aisha, and that's enough."
"'Miles, you don't need to worry about me. Leave making money to your big sister.'"
A strange sense of déjà vu arose once again.
Alice had actually spoken words incredibly similar to what his sister said in his dream last night.
Why were they so alike?
Not just the taste of their cooking, but their attitudes when angry, and even the way they valued their younger sibling over themselves—it was all so similar.
"I'll agree, Alice."
"Huh?"
With her long brows lifting slightly at the tail, Alice hadn't expected Miles to agree so easily.
All the other lines she had prepared in advance ended up being useless.
It threw Alice off her rhythm all of a sudden, leaving her unsure what she should say next.
"Th-then… we'll depart in two days. I know you and Aisha asked the academy for a week off, so you should be able to make it back in time."
"Does Aisha know about this?"
"When I left, she hadn't woken up yet. I'll go back and tell her now."
Convincing Aisha had always been the easiest and most straightforward part of arranging things for Alice.
Except for what happened with Miles last night.
Glancing at the time, Alice slowly stood up. "It's about time I went back and dragged my lazy sister out of bed. Miles, do you want to come back and have breakfast together? I'll cook it myself."
With things said to this extent, Alice was clearly signaling that she was no longer angry about what happened at dinner yesterday.
Since Alice had offered him a way out, Miles naturally wouldn't refuse the goodwill.
"Yes. I'm actually really looking forward to Alice's cooking."
Pushing open the inn room door, the two of them walked out together.
"(*?ロ?)!!!"
In fact, Aisha hadn't slept in. She had woken up just ten minutes after Alice got up.
Because she was worried about Miles sleeping outside alone, Aisha rushed straight to the inn where Miles was staying, the location Irena had told her, the moment she got out of bed.
As a result, before she even had time to knock on the door, Aisha saw this scene in the corridor.
In the early-morning inn hallway, her sister and Miles walked out of the same room together.
"(ノдヽ) What kind of reaction am I supposed to have right now?"
This question was way beyond Aisha's syllabus as well.
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