Two Hours of Day One
"...Do you like this look that much?"
Day 1
14:26
The watch on my wrist ticked steadily away, and I sat up straight in bed. This was my first time occupying this body—but it was far from my first time seeing this sight.
This dungeon was a half-and-half blend of an Interference Dungeon and a Scenario Dungeon, one where 'I' could observe young Lily like a ghost hovering at her shoulder.
And like an Interference Dungeon, 'intervention' was possible here—with one condition: young Lily had to behave like a child her age.
In other words, she couldn't suddenly start swinging a sword around or casting spells the way I would. To put it simply, young Lily's ' believability' had to be preserved at all costs.
At first, partly to gather information, I moved Lily's body at 7 a.m. and took her wandering all over the harbor until she reached her neighborhood, where she played with her friends. Then she returned late in the evening, sat down to the lavish meal her parents had prepared, and was about to get moving again—but exhausted, young Lily ignored my intervention entirely and went to sleep.
And then—
[FAILED]
[Returning to Day 1.]
I was back at Day 1 again.
No explanation of the conditions—just sleep, wake up, and suddenly I was regressing for the first time. The whole mechanism was so unusual that not a single viewer understood it properly either, so with the limited information I had, I formed a plan.
First, the 'time' point that had appeared in the tip window, and the condition that a disaster would arrive if the date ran over. In an instant I was on my second run, and I used the time that had been wasted meaninglessly on the first run to carve out a window of free time for myself.
If time was important enough to be emphasized at every turn, then something had to happen when it was left empty.
And the result of that reasoning was exactly this situation.
"Well, the plan worked, at least."
Tiny fingers wriggled at my side.
Through my intervention, I had taken possession of young Lily's body.
"...Do you like this look that much?"
I glanced sideways at the camera. The chat window was a flood of "yesssss" and squeals over how cute I was—along with a healthy serving of viewers verbally abusing the more unhinged members of the audience.
I shook my head and stretched my arms out, pushing open the window.
I'd managed to take over the body, but there was a time limit—and above all, I still couldn't afford to damage young Lily's 'believability.' What the people saw, always and only, had to be a twelve-year-old child.
"First things first—I can't get caught, so let's make this look convincing."
With my small hands, I manipulated mana to puff up the bed into a convincing human shape. The blankets and mattress were sculpted so precisely that no one would ever suspect unless they flipped the covers back.
Fortunately, minor magic that didn't register to other people's eyes was fair game.
Divinity, though—that's off the table.
Mana was one thing; a few of the villagers here had already been awakened to it, so any display could be waved away. Divinity, on the other hand, could neither be explained away nor hidden. Beyond mere human eyes, some special something might sense it and ship me straight back to the beginning.
I cast a perception-dampening spell with my meager reserve of mana and slipped out through the window.
From the rooftop, I looked down and took in the port city—or rather, the port village—at a glance. A harbor of modest size, a reasonable number of people going about their day.
So far, nothing particularly unusual stood out.
I contemplated Lily's body. It wasn't especially strong, but it was sturdier than the average child her age.
This should be enough to keep me from getting badly hurt.
Easing my gravity, I dropped lightly to the ground.
Thud!
"Hm?"
"What is it?"
"No, something just fell, I swear..."
"There's nothing there? Hurry up, we've got a whole shipment to sort through."
"Tch. Must've been a cat."
The two mustached men traded words and walked off.
I had perception dampening active, but it wasn't full stealth—make noise like that, and of course eyes would turn. I'd just barely ducked behind the wall in time; I'd nearly been caught the moment I landed.
"Now then... let's start looking."
14:36
Time remaining: 2 hours 14 minutes
I had to find some kind of clue within that window. Time to move—and fast.
Day 1
15:36
One hour into the search.
I was trudging all over the harbor on young Lily's short little legs, but nothing easy was turning up.
Kyahaha~
What came in today...?
Hey! I've known you since...!
Why is there so much cargo?
Ohohoho~ buy me this one~
Just villagers, an endlessly spreading sea, and wooden buildings. Nothing worth a second look.
"Hmm..."
Here was the reason this dungeon felt like an Interference Dungeon mixed with a Scenario Dungeon: just as in the first run, stretches of time devoted to repetitive actions—sleeping, playing, the like—could be fast-forwarded at my discretion.
By dungeon time, more than a day and several hours had passed, but in real terms only about four hours had gone by.
However, the moment I took possession of the body, skipping became impossible.
Not that I had any reason to skip, anyway.
"...Flying does carry quite a bit of risk, though."
Get spotted even once, and it was straight back to the start. That was exactly why I'd gone to the trouble of puffing up the blankets instead of using a clone or some special measure, and slipping out through the window. Every one of those actions was something a child would 'plausibly' do—and even if young Lily remembered any of it, it would all be well within the range of things she could acceptably have done.
The perception dampening, likewise, was just to avoid drawing attention—not true invisibility.
But the moment I started flying around or blatantly ignoring people's gaze, the story changed entirely.
"...Which is to say, someone might start questioning an impossible phenomenon. And then, naturally, the believability shatters and we get sent back to the beginning."
"A dream, you say?"
"......"
A dream, huh.
It was true—if she believed it was a dream, everything changed. Dreams were where impossible things happened outside a person's understanding all the time, so flying around or acting strangely wouldn't be much of a problem.
As long as it's not too strange.
At worst, something a twelve-year-old might plausibly imagine—or a warped version of something she'd actually seen—might still slide.
"That's actually a good idea."
I immediately channeled more mana into Lily's body. My little frame grew lighter and faster, letting me move around at three times my previous speed.
Still not even close to a knight's pace, let alone a lower-ranked ranker's.
But it was more than enough to sweep the entire tiny village. I covered in five minutes what had taken me a full hour before, and one thing became certain.
I can't find it just by looking.
I had sharpened my eyesight too, and it was useless. All that remained was to touch things directly and judge for myself.
I moved straight for the harbor. The ship I'd arrived on was still moored there, and there was so much cargo that they were still unloading it.
"They wouldn't have given us useless time."
When the whole dungeon hammered on how important time was, they wouldn't have handed me a meaningless one. And notably, the very start of this loop—Day 1, 07:15—began on the ship's deck.
In the first run I hadn't been able to control her directly, so I'd missed it entirely. But not this time.
Something might be hidden among the cargo.
"Move this over here!"
"Hold on, wait a sec..."
"Careful over there!"
Everyone was so frantically busy that they wouldn't have noticed me even without the perception dampening. Dodging their gazes, I slipped around to the back of the towering stacks of cargo—piled so high that it would take five of me standing on each other's shoulders to reach the top.
I laid a light hand on one crate and let a thread of mana flow into it, mapping out its contents.
Round objects... fruit?
Nothing unusual there. Next crate.
I worked my way through every crate in the first row, but beyond household goods and food, nothing stood out.
Now I needed to check the stacks higher up, but—
"Hnngh."
A height I could have reached without thinking in my real body was now out of reach. I'd shrunk by a good fifty centimeters or so, so of course—but it still felt profoundly strange.
Flinging mana at things from a distance would be less convincing than touching them by hand, so I had no choice but to fly, or climb up on something. I grabbed a lone crate sitting off by itself beside the stacks and dragged it over to use as a step. It was far too heavy for young Lily to budge, but a little magic made it light as a feather.
It's a dream, so this much should slide.
"Let's see... nothing special here eith—"
"What are you looking for?"
"?"
I froze. My hand stopped midair, and I turned my head.
"...Uncle?"
An uncle. A man with a large leather pouch in one hand was looking straight down at me.