Pei Guang believed in this kind of thing. Game time itself isn't directly proportional to real time, and feeling a difference in a dream... seemed quite normal too.
Firefly: "Maybe purely in terms of time spent together, the time I've been with you has already exceeded anyone else..."
Pei Guang, on the other hand, was deep in thought: "That's not the issue. I think I finally understand... why there are so many people with missing emotions in Penacony."
"Huh?"
Firefly didn't understand why Pei Guang forcefully shifted the topic to this?
Pei Guang: "We've met quite a few people lacking emotions along the way, right? There were even many people for whom Stelle took drinks to retrieve their emotions and farm favorability.
I was thinking before, even if these locals in Penacony work in the service industry, from what I understand, their working hours are quite reasonable, the pay is good, and they have free time.
Now looking at it, that's not the case! With this setup, an eight-hour workday might actually be an eighty-hour or even eight-hundred-hour workday. It's just that the feeling in the dream is different from reality, plus using reality as a reference, they think they only worked eight hours.
After finishing work, they leave the dream to do something else in reality before resting. Good lord, working eight hundred hours and resting eight hours? Even a robot couldn't keep that up, right?"
Pei Guang's speech left Firefly confused: "Huh?"
No, she was talking to him about relationship issues, what was he talking about?
Firefly clenched her fists.
She took a deep breath, then grabbed his face with both hands: "You are not allowed to change the subject~"
Looking at the puffed-up girl in front of him, Pei Guang reached out and poked her cheek: "I get what you mean. I wasn't changing the subject, I just suddenly thought of these things and wanted to mutter them once to reinforce my memory. But speaking of which, is there something else you wanted to say?"
Firefly, having her cheek poked, pursed her lips: "There is~ I... want to show you my everything..."
Once this sentence was out, Pei Guang's expression instantly became serious: "Show everything? No, no, it's not good to do that on the street in the real world. How about waiting for a private environment with no people?"
"Huh?"
Firefly originally wanted to tell Pei Guang everything else, like the Stellaron Hunters' plans, her goal, and what she needed to do.
But why did Pei Guang want her to wait for a place with no people?
Pei Guang: "Yes, wait until we return to reality, then you can show me everything! For now, let's not go play, let's do the quest first."
"I'll listen to you. Actually... I told you I wanted to go for a stroll just because I wanted to say something to you alone. My goal wasn't to play there; we can go anytime..."
Originally, Firefly planned to reach Clock Studios Theme Park to express her feelings, but she didn't expect to just let it happen naturally halfway there.
At the same time, hearing Pei Guang's thought of wanting to see her in reality... also made Firefly feel more urgent about the Watchmaker's Legacy.
Pei Guang, on the other hand, marveled at Firefly's boldness. At the same time, he was a bit annoyed.
If he had kept hanging out with March 7th in Penacony, would the one showing him everything now be March 7th?
How is this developing towards a harem route?
Pei Guang pondered inwardly whether to go for the harem route. After thinking for a while, he decided to try and see if he could stick to the pure love route.
In many games, it's too hard to change routes after favorability explodes.
But precisely because it's hard, it's interesting. Playing a game smoothly once gets boring: it's better to have some challenge.
But if the pure love route becomes impossible because another character's favorability exploded... then it's fine too.
If pure love doesn't work, there's always the harem route or dying alone. Since there's a romance subplot, Pei Guang's attitude was either pure love, or if not, then harem.
Since he's playing a game, he definitely wouldn't settle.
However, Pei Guang could also tell that if neither the pure love route nor the harem route worked out, the most likely outcome was dying alone.
Basically, romance games all follow this trope. They give the player a pure love route and a harem route.
Of course, if the player wants to have their cake and eat it too, the higher probability is dying alone.
But it didn't matter. There were plenty of things he could play with in this world.
Finding a wife in a game was just one of countless ways to play. He could only say that adding some romance simulation made it more fun, but it wouldn't affect things if there wasn't any.
Worst case scenario, he could just install some lewd mods later. Getting some animal-eared girls or various maids wasn't impossible either~
As a player, Pei Guang was very flexible, but the prerequisite for this flexibility was that his pure love route had completely hit a dead end.
"Ah~ looking at it this way, I might be forcibly given a ring in the future? Forget it, let's just push the plot normally first. How long has it been? I guess I have to reach the grand finale to enter the real selection route."
Pei Guang thought to himself: if it were an all-ages RPG, usually the final selection phase would only happen around the ending.
Before that, he should just play normally.
Choosing the route was a matter for later. Right now, character favorability was maxed, and she even said she wanted to be with him in another map?
Regardless of the future route, at least in this mission, he must get what Firefly needed.
"What are we doing next?" Firefly asked Pei Guang. She had her own plan, but it had been torn to shreds by Pei Guang.
Now she could only follow Pei Guang down the rabbit hole.
Pei Guang: "Simple. Find Aventurine and tell him the truth about death. This is the only main story-related quest we have right now."
The Xipe Cake's quest was currently complete. The self-aware Dream Troupe members he could encounter had mostly been taken away.
Sunday's quest was also done.
Originally, it was to find the truth and tell him, but Something Unto Death acted early and delivered the truth right to his face, even wiping out the Family's upper management in one go.
Now he was just waiting to go to the deeper Penacony to ask him for quest rewards.
So rounding up, only Aventurine's quest was left at this stage, and his quest was still related to death and the deeper Penacony.
Pei Guang felt emotional at this moment and looked at Firefly: "Sigh~ sometimes I want to complain. As expected of a dream setting, they always love the 'deeper dreamscape' trope! And this Grand Theater, I just don't know who we'll fight in the end. Do you have any intel?"
Firefly: "I don't know. I only know that here... I can find what I want... Um... March said your predictions are accurate? Why don't you guess?"
Pei Guang rolled his eyes: "Guess what? Guess that the Order, swallowed by the Harmony, wants to play a revival match? That the so-called truth of Penacony is stopping the Order from playing a revival match? This is only the second formal map. If we fight an Aeon here, what am I gonna fight later?"
"Order... Aeon?"