After putting away his phone, Pei Guang noticed Firefly holding a sparkler, blinking at him.
"What's wrong?"
Firefly handed him another sparkler and invited softly, "Together?"
"Sure."
Under the blooming fireworks, the two of them enjoyed a brief moment of joy.
While Pei Guang and Firefly were lost in that happiness, the tourists who had just entered Penacony's Golden Hour weren't nearly as lucky.
Some of them had decent luck, since after getting blown up as part of the fireworks, they managed to land safely. But others… not so much.
No one could tell if the fireworks themselves were faulty, or if bringing real fireworks into the Dreamscape caused some kind of glitch—or maybe someone had messed with them.
Among these fireworks, a few actually exploded when hitting people.
When Pei Guang's attention had been on the fireworks, nothing strange happened, but once he turned his focus back to Firefly and started waving the sparklers with her, some of them malfunctioned.
Those hit by fireworks would instantly burst into gorgeous explosions, turning into dazzling bursts of color, and when they did, they dropped various materials that rained down onto the temporary platform Pei Guang had built.
Pei Guang was happily waving his sparkler when a few pieces of glowing loot clattered down onto his head.
"Huh? Where'd this stuff come from?"
He didn't immediately figure out who was dropping materials, but it didn't really matter: items lying on the ground wouldn't despawn anyway.
Playing with Firefly took priority.
All good things must come to an end. When their sparklers burned out, the fireworks ceased as well.
Firefly still looked delighted, but when she glanced at the ground now littered with all sorts of items, her expression turned serious.
"These are…"
"Probably the Dreamchasers we blew up with the fireworks, right?"
Pei Guang seriously analyzed the scene. Aside from that explanation, he couldn't think of another possibility.
But seeing those materials scattered everywhere suddenly sparked a very efficient idea in his mind.
A fierce internal struggle began.
Should he prioritize efficiency, gathering materials fast but tanking his reputation, or should he play it safe, keeping good favor at the cost of fewer rewards?
As Pei Guang weighed his options, Firefly noticed his conflicted look and asked nervously, "What's wrong?"
"I'm thinking about something big," he admitted. "Since you're here, maybe you can give me your opinion."
After a moment's hesitation, Pei Guang explained, "Here's the thing. I have an idea that could help me gather materials really efficiently, but… it would lower a lot of people's favorability toward me. Doing it means I'll get a ton of useful and useless loot, but also that a bunch of Dreamchasers entering the Dreamscape might get kicked out before they even realize what happened."
Even though it was a dream, Pei Guang didn't want to go on a killing spree for no reason: he still had to consider reputation points.
If he hadn't seen all these dropped materials, he probably wouldn't have thought about it. But now, looking at the loot and how little time it took, he was tempted.
After all, defeating enemies here could actually drop credits. He'd only realized it before during fights with the Bloodhounds, and even then, he hadn't given it much thought.
Those battles were tough, the Bloodhounds were strong. If not for their loot allowing him to build turrets to counter them, he might not have been able to hold them off.
And since they attacked from all directions, setting traps took effort and time. After that mission ended, Pei Guang had no plans to target them again: especially since Stelle was the one looting corpses, letting him relax.
But this situation was different. These people couldn't fight back, and there were a lot of them.
Every second, new Dreamchasers fell into the Dreamscape. And Golden Hour was one of Penacony's most popular dream zones, meaning the influx was massive.
Pei Guang roughly calculated that if he really committed, he could farm hundreds of drops per minute.
But doing so would definitely tank his reputation with Penacony, and with the Dreamchasers. What if low favorability locked him out of future quests?
He hesitated.
Seeing him conflicted, Firefly instead thought seriously for him.
"If possible… I think you should go for the more efficient option. As for being found out—well, as long as no one entering the dream sees us, no one would connect it to us, right? Besides, this is a dream. People don't really die here. Every day, plenty of people get kicked out of the dream in all kinds of weird ways…"
Indeed, people arrived in Penacony in strange ways—and left it in stranger ones. You could see all sorts of ridiculous "deaths" here.
Since no one actually died in the Dreamscape, most of those "deaths" were just the result of people believing they should die, and thus automatically waking up.
Since the beginning of Penacony's dream-entry system, not a single person had ever suffered real harm or mental illness from dying inside the dream.
Her words tipped the balance in Pei Guang's mind.
If this were the real world, Firefly would never have suggested that: no matter how efficient it was, she wouldn't want Pei Guang heading down a bad path.
But this was the Dreamscape. In dreams, anything was possible. Like she said: if no one found out, then there was no problem.
She didn't know exactly what Pei Guang planned to do, but whatever it was, she'd choose to support him.
Hearing her reasoning, Pei Guang made up his mind.
"Alright then," he said, grinning. "Let's do this."
Since he had discovered such a great opportunity to farm massive amounts of resources, how could he not take advantage of it? He was a player, after all!
Just like Firefly said, normally you can't die in a dream. The Family even guaranteed that the Dream World was absolutely safe.
So as long as he didn't use anything that would actually harm their minds or bodies and just made them "die" back to reality it should be fine, right?
At that moment, a smile appeared on Pei Guang's face.
He looked toward Firefly. "Sorry, but I need to set something up here."
Firefly replied, "It's okay, I'll stay with you. I don't have anything to do anyway. Hmm? Do you need me to help with something?"
Pei Guang thought for a moment. "Actually, yes! Wait here for a bit—I'll go grab some materials. Try to see if you can craft things like I can."
Firefly said, "Okay~"
Based on Pei Guang's experience, as long as someone was in the same party, they would share part of his player-like abilities, such as building, opening chests, and so on.
After all, in games, players could freely choose which character did these things. Translating that into reality didn't seem impossible at all.
Pei Guang quickly got to work.
He quickly returned to the previous building, dismantled a large amount of construction material, and then flew back up into the sky to build a platform using what he'd gathered.
While he was still constructing the platform, some Dreamchasers began to enter the dream and fall toward it, but before they could land, Pei Guang's nearby turrets blasted them right back to reality.
Using turrets wasn't his ultimate goal, though: yes they were efficient, but they took up too much space, and he didn't have enough of them.
What Pei Guang really wanted to use was something simpler and more brutal: the Engine of Creation!
He only had five of them in total. He placed one at each side of the massive floating platform and one in the center. Once everything was set up, Pei Guang retracted the turrets.
Everything was ready. The Engine of Creations powered on: Penacony Monster Tower, activate!!!