"What on earth just happened? Are we in the game world? Why are we here?" Hew asked, clearly shocked.

"Because you stumbled into the portal, you fool. I explicitly warned you not to!" Mike retorted.

Hew turned to him, silently questioning, 'then why are you here?' Mike simply shrugged, as if to say, 'to let you have all the fun?'

I chuckled, realizing I knew the boys so well that I could understand their unspoken language.

"Wait a minute!" Tom interjected. "Does this mean that we've been under the influence of the dream interface for some time now, and this is all a dream? Was the entire fight just a spectacle? Is this my dream, or is it a shared dream?"

"Ah, so this is the dream interface?" Mike remarked, sounding somewhat relieved, then turned to Lynx. "And you're an NPC?"

Lynx snorted, rolled his eyes, and jokingly extended a claw. "Come here, let me pinch you to help you check if you're dreaming or not!"

Alice chuckled. "Please take care of them, Lynx. They're very fragile..."

"This is the real world, not a dream interface made up world!" Julietta protested, sounding crestfallen. How could people not see reality and mistake it for a dream?

"Okay, so what's the next point in the show?" Tom continued with his proposed solution.

I was about to protest when Hew brought up my point. "Lores just got effectively grilled, and now we can see her horns because her illusions no longer work. I doubt that was somehow included in a pre-prepared show..." he said.

A silence followed, and then Michael exclaimed, shaking Julietta's shoulder.

"Bring us back! Make a portal to our world! Let's talk back there! Where is the damn portal?"

She turned to look a bit unnerved at his hand, then realizing he was just a kid, she shook her head and spoke softly. "Sorry, it's closed now, and I can't make another..."

"You mean symbolically, if we pass the portal, we're back in the real world? But no, the fight had started there!" Tom continued with his theory. "There must be an explanation for what happened to Lores. Maybe this goes based on what we think could happen?"

"You can't? Why?" Michael wondered. "Why could you open a portal in one direction and not in the other?"

"Because nobody was selling portals to Earth," Julietta whispered.

Alice chuckled at this while Tina approached Michael. "Is it true that you are Spartacius?" she asked in a whisper.

The other three boys continued to act confused, still not really believing they were in Aldea and debating pro and contra arguments. Tom looked like he didn't want to believe anything of this was real. Mike just stood stunned at the side. Alice and Lynx were now talking in low voices with Tina.

"Wait. Please, just stop this nonsense!" Tom interjected. "You all take this for real! It cannot be! This world has been created based on Thorwal's book. It is a virtual world. Virtual! If this is the game world, then our bodies are in some kind of catatonic state, and we only think we are moving and talking. All this is in our mind!"

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He turned towards Julietta. "This is new technology. How did you do this? We haven't even felt the transition! Is this a demonstration included in the visit?"

"But, but, what about Lores?" Hew asked. "Why would she play within a demo?"

Tom looked unnerved at him, wanting to reply something, but Julietta interrupted him. She shook her head and spoke slowly.

"No. You are physically here. This is no game, this is real. I am from this world. I moved from here to Earth some sixty-six years ago..."

"Bullshit. You are not Julietta Thorwal! Dreamland was created based on the story written by Thorwal!" Tom protested dismissing her. "You are an NPC from this game. You cannot understand this. For you, what you say is real, but we know the real world! This one was created for amusement!"

"Can an NPC even understand that it is an NPC?" Mike wondered.

The elf sighed deeply and shook her head again. "Thorwal was my man for more than fifty years. He wrote his story as I told it to him. He knew who I was and did help me to acclimatize myself with your society. That's how we got friends, then became engaged. I told him a lot of stories about dynasties, kingdoms, and epic fights. He liked it and wrote it in his books."

Hew raised a hand, thinking that he found the NPC's reasoning error. "After the initial book, with the game's success, Thorwal was asked to continue it and started to write further, but your knowledge was fifty or sixty years old! Did you know from the beginning that he would continue writing and left something for later? You cannot put the horse behind the carriage? It does not make sense!"

"Besides, how did you get to Earth in the first place?" Mike wondered.

She nodded with a sad smile.

“There is a portal. Our worlds are connected, and there have been movements between them during the eras. I discovered it based on an old manuscript from one of our old libraries. It was my secret. For a time, it was completely closed. After I tampered with it, it was again possible to pass through it at about one-month intervals. One just needed to know when. I used it from time to time. I even did some small commerce through it. Nothing big, just to earn me a better life…”

She was now calmer, realizing slowly that we had not been a commando team sent to capture her.

“So there is a portal!” I breathed a sigh of relief. It made sense. White Flower had also returned from this world not long ago, but this was a memory I did not have.

“Where is that portal?” I asked.

“On Earth in the Bounty County,” she answered, “and here it is in Aterga, near WhiteCastle City.”

That was disappointing. It would take a long travel to get there and to arrive where? In Bounty County? What would happen if we would emerge there?

"Oh. That's on a different continent!" Alice exclaimed. "Is it true that the city was taken by Mephisto not long ago? It was one of the last news I heard."

She nodded.

"Bounty County! So the so-called echo terrorists there are in reality Mephisto's goons?" Michael wondered.

She nodded again. "Yes, and yes," she said. "Mephisto now has both sides of the portal."

"Wait, you want to tell me that Mephisto is manifesting in our world?" Tom exclaimed, shocked.

The conversation continued in this chaotic way, the news being very difficult to digest, and it became even more so.

"So, this is the world the game was based on!" Mike finally said.

She turned to him and nodded: "Yes... but..."

"But?" he wondered.

"But it is now the game's world!"