Even if you're a corrupted magical girl, you still have to try to redeem yourself.

This idea came to everyone's mind.

They discussed how to awaken Mizuno Yuu, and also what Hyakki Senyu had gone through before.

While most of these are just the girls' wild guesses, this one thing is certain.

Sleep brings nightmares, nightmares bring despair, and only when magical girls fall into despair will they fall into true sleep together.

Yuuki and the others quickly realized, thanks to the psychological suggestion method suggested by Mizuno Yu, that they were in Mizuno Yu's dream, and that the dream's owner was much harder to wake up from than they were.

No matter how much they reminded her, even after they had already told her directly, Mizuno Yu just couldn't realize that she was dreaming.

Now that Mizuno Yu has mentioned information about reality, it should be a sign that she is beginning to realize that she is dreaming.

However, Mizuno Yu mentioned these things in an extremely strange and distorted way.

This is a signal, a signal that one is being pulled into a deeper state of slumber.

"It's a deep sleep!"

Yuuki Yui acted decisively, grabbing Mizuno Yui and pulling away the arm Mizuno Yui was using to cover her face.

Mizuno Yu's eyes are usually calm, but now, with tears streaming down her face, her pupils are unfocused, like black holes, and just one glance seems to suck you in.

Seeing the look in Mizuno Yu's eyes, Yuuki Yu panicked even more, grabbing the other's shoulders with both hands and shaking her violently.

But it was all in vain. No matter how hard Yuuki tried, Mizuno Yuu, whose head was bobbing up and down, kept muttering the words that Yuuki couldn't understand.

"Mizuno Yu! Hey! Mizuno Yu! Wake up!" Yuuki Yu slapped Mizuno Yu's cheeks. She had tried every way she could think of to wake a sleeping person, but none of them worked.

Sleep is so close, so very close, yet Yuuki Eri is powerless to stop it.

"How about I give it a try?" Helica cautiously raised her hand.

Yuuki Yui had no way to deal with Mizuno Yui herself, and now she could only resort to desperate measures.

"It's up to you!" Yuuki Yui put her arm around Mizuno Yui's shoulder and handed Mizuno Yui's body to Helica.

Helica didn't even bother to pick up Mizuno Yu.

Under the puzzled or even angry gazes of others, Herika kicked out, sending Mizuno Yu, who was in Yuuki Yuki's arms, flying several meters away.

Mizuno Yu's body rolled several times on the ground before finally stopping at the bottom of the crater she had created with the moon.

Yuuki Yu, who was holding Mizuno Yu, felt her arm go numb, which showed how hard Mizuno Yu had been hit.

Herlica jogged a few steps and came to the bottom of the giant pit. She helped Mizuno Yu up and gently patted Mizuno Yu's face.

Just as Yuuki was about to ask Helica what she was doing, she saw Helica grab Mizuno Yu's head and slam it to the bottom of the pit.

Mizuno Yu's face was precisely embedded in the ice crack created by the Moon Bow after her divine liberation, and the sound of her head hitting the ice made the people around her twitch their lips.

Herlica pulled Mizuno Yu's face out again with a pop, examined it carefully, and then gently laid Mizuno Yu's body flat.

Just when everyone else thought it was finally over, Helica straddled Mizuno Yu and started punching him repeatedly in the face.

Yuuki Yui couldn't stand it any longer. Before Mizuno Yuu woke up from her nightmare, she might be beaten to death by Helica.

Baqi moved even faster, leaping into the giant pit, her hands slipping under Helica's armpits, grabbing Helica's arm and forcibly pulling her off Mizuno Yu.

As Herika was being pulled up by Baki, she was still waving her fists and shouting, "Ora ora!"

As Herika was pulled up, Yuuki Yui reached the bottom of the pit and picked up Mizuno Yu, who was lying on the ground with bruises all over her face.

Mizuno Yuu has indeed stopped crying and muttering to herself, but she seems unable to move now.

"What are you doing?!" Yuuki Yukari roared angrily at Helica, "How can you save someone like that?!"

"You just slapped her in the face too."

Yuuki Yukina became even angrier when she heard Helica still stubbornly arguing.

"I was slapping! Slapping! Do you understand? What do we do now? Mizuno Yu has been beaten up like this."

"But the dream wasn't over yet, was it? We all woke up the moment that little ghost fell into a deep sleep, right?"

"You're still arguing back!"

"And...when she cried before, I punched her twice and she stopped crying...I was thinking, maybe that would work too?"

"Again?!"

Yuuki raised her fist at Herika, and although she was now much closer to Herika than she could reach with one hand, Herika still shrank back.

"How...how could this possibly work?!" Yuuki Yui withdrew her fist, rubbed Mizuno Yu's head which was resting on her knees, and continued to scold Helica.

When Yuuki Yui rubbed him, Mizuno Yui actually reacted.

“Ugh…” Yuuki Yu clearly heard Mizuno Yu let out a groan.

Then, she saw Mizuno Yu open her eyes, but her swollen eyelids made her wince in pain.

Mizuno Yu tried again, and although she could only open her eyes a crack this time, she was finally able to open them.

"Yuki? Am I dreaming?"

“Yes, you’re dreaming!” Yuuki Yuuki blurted out while she was intently launching a stern critique of Helica.

Yuuki Yui subconsciously made a sarcastic remark, paused for a few seconds, quickly glanced at Mizuno Yu lying on her lap, then at Helica, her expression becoming even more interesting.

"You...you're awake?"

"Hmm..." Mizuno Yui, supporting herself on the ground, climbed up from Yuuki Yui's lap: "I'm awake."

Noticing her surroundings, including the tear stains on her face and the injuries all over her body—most of which were inflicted by Helica—Mizuno Yuu became even more puzzled.

"Where am I? Am I really dreaming?"

After Mizuno Yu finished speaking, she immediately changed her words.

"Is this my dream? Was I the one who was attacked this time?"

"Huh?" Not only Yuuki Yukino, but also Tomoe and Nishio Reki were all wide-eyed.

Hasn't he fully woken up?

What a group of people had been working on for so long and still couldn't accomplish, was actually achieved just because Herika beat up Mizuno Yu?

If they had known this beforehand, the conditions for them to pass the level would have been far too easy.

Several people turned their necks blankly and looked at Helica.

They happened to see Helica slowly close her wide-open mouth, and then reveal a very smug expression.

"See? See? I told you beating her up would work!"

Chapter 116 The Origin of Dreams

"Uh, so it's not that beating you up is helpful, but... pain can relieve your stress, relax you, and make you feel happy. It provides an outlet for your extreme despair, so the negative emotions that have been building up over this period are released?"

Yuuki felt that reading out Mizuno Yu's series of abstract explanations was an insult to her own brain.

"Yes, that's right, that's how it is."

Mizuno Yu said in a very serious tone.

What do you think?

Yuuki asked the other three for their opinions.

The three people were surprisingly in agreement, and even their expressed feelings were exactly the same.

"abnormal."

Yuuki Yui turned back to Mizuno Yui and nodded.

"Yeah, pervert."

Although it's a bit perverse, it's a lucky accident, so the result is always good, right?

After Mizuno Yu regained consciousness, the dream began to gradually collapse. Now all they had to do was wait for Mizuno Yu's dream to completely dissipate, and then everyone would wake up peacefully together.

Although Mizuno Yu's nightmares were also abstract, involving both generals and monarchs, Yuuki Yu knew what they represented.

Every event in the dream has a corresponding reality. For example, the country that was taken away may correspond to the company owned by the Mizuno family, and the dead general may correspond to Mizuno's deceased family members.

Although it's a bit abstract and includes the story that Mizuno Yu always tells her about General Yumimoto, that's roughly the gist of it.

In card games, you can have a deck that can incorporate several different expansion strategies; don't even dream about it.

The business battles in the Mizuno Yu route of the game are incredibly melodramatic, just like the melodramatic dream they are experiencing now, but that's exactly what Mizuno Yu wants to do.

Furthermore, in the game, the D Endings are all about Nishio Reki or the three starter families being killed by the corrupted magical girl; there are no storylines about business battles failing.

In addition, the business war plot is really, really, really melodramatic, and Yuuki Yuu has no feelings for Mizuno Yuu. In order to collect CGs, I skipped other parts as much as possible.

Since Mizuno Yuu never mentioned her past within Nijisanji, Yuuki Yuu truly didn't know that Mizuno Yuu had such a strong obsession.

Yuki En guesses: Mizuno Yu is probably not afraid of going through pain again, but she is afraid that her efforts will be in vain.

Therefore, when the general, who symbolized family, died, Mizuno Yu only expressed pain, but did not break down to despair.

Yuuki Yui also witnessed firsthand how Mizuno Yuu grew from that clumsy little follower of the general to what she is today. It can be said that after experiencing this dream, she has a deeper understanding of Mizuno Yuu.

However, she still couldn't understand why Mizuno Yu had turned out to be a freak and a freeloader, and she didn't want to understand such a terrifying thing at all.

Maybe after you understand it, you'll start giving things away like crazy.

Seeing that the others had fallen silent after calling her a pervert, Mizuno Yu lowered her head in embarrassment and apologized to them.

"I'm sorry you suffered so much in my dreams."

"I'm not upset, I'm not upset. Anyway, we'll be fine when we wake up. You're not fully awake yet. I'm just a little tired." Yuuki waved her hand, politely declining Mizuno Yu's polite remarks.

Now that the formalities were over, Mizuno Yui got straight to the point.

"However, it will be some time before the dream collapses. Yuki, what have you done in places I don't know about? Why did you kill two prime ministers in succession, burn down the prime minister's residence, assassinate the monarch, and even target the fake Sakura?"

As expected, it's still the most comfortable time to be around Mizuno Yu now. Herlica's success was accidental, but Mizuno Yu is genuinely and seriously analyzing the whole story.

Although the reason for Mizuno Yu's awakening was incredibly abstract, it was still the result of her reasoning.

Thinking of all this, Yuuki Yui breathed a long sigh of relief. The pressure that had been weighing on her heart seemed to disappear as Mizuno Yui returned to normal.

This is their first time overcoming slumber; it's a great victory!

“I told you this before, but you didn’t believe me. You thought it was just something we were telling you to fool you. But apart from killing the monarch, we didn’t do anything else.”

Yuuki Yu had no reason to lie, and Mizuno Yu knew this well, but this only made the mystery in her dream even more complicated.