The battle concluded.

The remaining shadows all flew up to the clouds, and the Honey Candy Girl army descended from the skies and stopped fighting.

The dark clouds parted to reveal the sunlight, a beautiful pillar that pierced through the clouds.

The light illuminated the city, quickly scattering the lingering darkness. But the city wasn't restored to its original form. Instead, it started collapsing.

It was time for the dream to end.

Seiji and Mayuzumi weren't in a hurry to leave. Instead, they accompanied Reo and waited for her to stop crying and calm down.

"Brother Harano..."

"Let me introduce you, Reo-chan," Seiji said. "This is Mayuzumi Amami. For all this time, you've been treating her as your mother... you should say something to her." 

Reo looked towards Mayuzumi.

"Sorry... I've given you so much trouble." The little girl bowed and apologized.

"It's alright." Mayuzumi smiled gently and crouched down in front of Reo. "Reo, you gave your mother a proper farewell. You're really strong."

The little girl had an expression of sadness, but she didn't cry again.

Mayuzumi patted her gently on the head.

"This child's given you so much trouble, and you're going to let her off so easily, Sensei..." Seiji sighed. "Forget it. Since Sensei isn't going to make a big deal out of it, I won't say anything else either.

"Reo-chan, you did a very good job in saying farewell to your mother," he told her seriously.

"Brother Harano..." Reo looked towards him.

"You've had a really long dream, so it's time to wake up now." Seiji smiled. "Let's meet each other again in reality."

The sunlight reached the area where they were standing, and all three of them were covered by bright light.

Seiji opened his eyes.

"Brother!" he heard s.h.i.+kchan call.

"Mayuzumi!" he also heard Editor Yos.h.i.+zawa's voice.

He looked to his right side and saw that the manga author had opened her eyes. They exchanged glances and both of them smiled.

Then, Seiji looked to his left. He saw that Reo was slowly opening her eyes as well. The little girl looked confused when she saw the scene in this room.

"Welcome back, Reo-chan," Seiji said.

The last clear memory that Reo Tachibana had in the real world was visiting her parents' graves with her uncle Shouhei Hirai, and then going to sleep later that night.

It seemed that while she was sleeping—or perhaps while she was dreaming—the mysterious power within her was somehow activated. It transformed Shouhei Hirai, who was living with her, to transform into that puppet-like state and attack Mayuzumi.

Reo also had some hazy memories of searching many places for her mother and then finding her... Fine then—simply speaking, Reo Tachibana was sleepwalking!

She sleepwalked and located Mayuzumi who had the same mysterious power as she did, which caused this entire incident.

As for this power, the little girl didn't know anything about it. As for why she possessed it, or how she activated it, she knew nothing. After all, she was only a young child.

She forgot most of the dream-like experiences she had in her soul realm. She could only remember the basics of daily life there, as well as the most important things.

It was the same for Seiji and Mayuzumi. After they woke up, their memories of what happened in the soul realm were somewhat hazy.

Natsuya and the others were astonished to learn just how long the three of them had spent in Reo's soul realm.

After the connection to Seiji was cut off, everyone was incredibly worried. However, Natsuya was able to ascertain that nothing was wrong with Seiji's condition, and she didn't know what would happen if she decided to cut off the spell sending him to the soul realm.

When comparing their options of either maintaining or canceling the spell that sent Seiji to the soul realm, everyone trusted in Seiji's abilities and so they decided to not cancel the spell, focusing on reestablis.h.i.+ng contact with him instead.

In the end, their decision had been correct. However, what they never expected was that Seiji, Mayuzumi, and Reo had spent such a long time in Reo's soul realm!

"I've heard that the greatest masters of soul spells can cast spells that change the pa.s.sage of time within the soul realm." The student council president sighed. "It seems that this mysterious power has a similar effect."

This effect... if it was used properly, it could have many advantages, but the flip side was...

Seiji felt that he was lucky how the time ratio was still acceptable to him. If it had been even larger, such as one minute outside equaling one year inside, that would have been...

At any rate, it was fine since it was all over with.

After all this effort by everyone, not only did they help Reo and Mayuzumi to wake up again, they also discovered the true reason for Mayuzumi's nightmares and androphobia. The terrifying nightmares Mayuzumi experienced within her own soul realm ten years ago had left her with deep mental scars. It was caused by some effect of the mysterious power within her.

While they still didn't know what to do with the mysterious power, they could completely seal her related memories, which would likely cure her nightmares and androphobia.

Natsuya mentioned that she could try it.

"After hearing your experiences, I think that the critical factor in activating this mysterious power is the mental state of the person acting as the host to this power... basically emotions, feelings, willpower, and so on.

"After Reo Tachibana went to visit her parents' graves, she strongly desired to see her dead mother again, which activated the power within her and caused this incident.

"In her soul realm, whenever she strongly denied something, everything would transform into darker, more sinister versions, and when she stopped denying and sank into despair instead, a huge wave of undead spirits appeared.

"While the exact logic behind this power is still unclear, there's still a clear connection. This power will act according to the holder's emotions.

"From this, I can conclude that as long as the person remains calm and controls their own emotions, this power won't be activated.

"This means that as long as Amami-san maintains her normal composure, and allows me to cast my spell on her, I should be able to successfully seal her memories."

This was something that should be done as quickly as possible. Mayuzumi had already suffered so long in the soul realm due to all her nightmares. She had only made it through thanks to her strong will.

While she was "sick" in the soul realm, what she showed Reo wasn't entirely acting. It was necessary to seal those frightening nightmares as soon as they could.

Before that, there was one final matter, the biggest issue and the largest mystery of all...

What was that "Hinako Tachibana?"

Was she really Reo Tachibana's mother, the soul that had already died one year ago? Or was it just a very realistic phantasm imitation?

Seiji and Mayuzumi who had both personally witnessed and interacted with her believed it to be the former.

If that was indeed the truth, then it led to a startling revelation: it meant that the mysterious power possessed the powerful ability to summon the dead!

This was on another scale entirely from something like summoning a heroic spirit. After all, heroic spirits were existences born from humanity's collective understanding of the concept of a person in the past, not an actual dead person's soul.

It was also different from summoning a soul of the dead that had remained in this world after death. That was either a person's soul or a part of their soul that had remained in this world for certain reasons and merely summoned by a spell.

The mysterious power had managed to summon a formerly living soul who had already departed from this world!

What did this mean?

This meant that the mysterious power had completely shattered the barrier between life and death!

This was a serious matter. Although it seemed simple and wasn't a big deal in some anime stories, Summoning: Impure World Reincarnation in Naruto being a cla.s.sic example, it was actually a frightening power.

A dead person could come back to life with this power. This meant that death could be vanquished and opened up the possibility of resurrection.

Could there even be immortality? If so, it would definitely make many people go crazy with desire for this power!

Even if it was only a possibility, fearsome battles would occur over it.

There was no need to think deeper about it. The seriousness of the matter was evident to anyone who still had a normal working mind, even if they gave it little attention.

"This definitely can't be revealed to anyone," Natsuya said to everyone present in a grave voice.

s.h.i.+ka, Mai, and Saki were all worthy of their trust. The biggest uncertain factor was... Reo Tachibana who was still only an elementary school student.

"Reo-chan, you can't tell anyone about this because it's an important secret. There may be scary consequences if you tell others," Seiji said in a serious tone. "You can't even tell your uncle about it. There's nothing good that can happen if he knows about it. It may even put him in danger.

"You don't need to worry about how to explain to your uncle about what happened today. I'll help you with that. I just need you to promise me to keep this a secret."

There was actually another method as well: to seal Reo's memories about all this. But that meant that she would forget about meeting her mother and saying farewell.

That would be bad, and Seiji didn't want to do that.

Keeping a secret was important, but the connection between mother and daughter was also very important.

Reo looked at Seiji's face.

"Okay... Brother Harano, I promise you." She nodded and responded in a serious voice as well.