Rewinding time slightly to the moment Rest and his party were settling in for the night.
In one of the tents belonging to the pioneer group, a young girl crouched on the floor.
"Haa... haa... haa..."
She gasped for breath, her fingers digging into the carpet spread across the ground.
No one else was inside the tent.
In a space as spacious as the one Rest and the others occupied, the girl trembled all alone, her small frame quivering.
"...I... I can't take it..."
The girl muttered, her voice thick with exhaustion as she writhed.
A nosebleed trickled down her doll-like, refined features, staining the rug a dark, rusty red.
Though her sighs sounded labored and pained, her face was transfigured by an expression of pure, unadulterated rapture.
"...Rest... Clover... the real... Rest...!"
The one writhing in ecstasy while her nose bled was Ulula Lavender.
She was the daughter of the house that dominated the Eastern Frontier—the Margrave Lavender family.
Ulula had returned to her assigned tent after greeting Rest, but as soon as she had dismissed her subordinates and stepped inside, she had collapsed in a heap of overwhelmed emotion.
"He was real... he was moving... Rest Clover... we actually breathed the same air...!"
The reason for Ulula’s agony—to put it in the terms of modern Japan—was a massive overdose of her "Oshi."
Long before she had ever met him in person, Ulula had harbored intense feelings for Rest.
It was a sentiment that transcended mere romance; it was the devotion one felt for an idol, a favorite to be worshipped. It was a blend of romantic longing, admiration, and religious fervor, seasoned with a distinct pinch of madness.
A child of the frontier nobility, Ulula had been dispatched to these lands on her grandfather’s orders.
Her official mission was to convince the influential figures in the capital of the threat posed by the neighboring Geisel Empire, stoking their appetite for war.
However, that primary objective had already vanished from Ulula’s mind.
Her personal reason for coming to this place was solely to meet Rest.
"I-I imagined it... but he's a thousand times... more beautiful...!"
Though Ulula had sought Rest out of her own volition, seeing him in the flesh was far more wonderful than any glimpse through a crystal ball.
As she pressed both hands into the carpet, Ulula’s eyes flickered with iridescent light.
These "Fairy Eyes," inherited from her mother—a fortune teller—possessed the power to perceive things that did not belong to the physical world.
The sight of Rest as seen through those eyes was enough to shatter Ulula’s entire worldview.
An infinitely welling spring of mana.
Branches and leaves of potential that spread out as if to veil the very heavens.
It was a landscape so overwhelmingly majestic that it defied description.
If she had to find an analogy... it was like gazing down at the Grand Canyon from the sky, looking up at Niagara Falls from its base, standing among the ancient, towering Jomon Sugi, or witnessing the sunrise from the peak of the Alps. It was as if she were witnessing the creation of the world or the birth of a star.
It was a sight of such overwhelming power that it fundamentally upended her values and her perception of life.
"Hafuu..."
Faced with that miraculous vision, Ulula rolled across the carpet.
Had she not strictly forbidden anyone from entering, the vassals of the Margrave Lavender House surely would have rushed in to investigate the disturbance.
"Rest... Rest... Rest... Rest...!"
She repeated the man's name over and over like a broken toy.
Since childhood, Ulula had been subjected to a rigorous elite education for one purpose: to serve as a weapon in the war against the Geisel Empire, her family's sworn enemy.
She was supposed to have been raised as a doll—one who suppressed her own will, killed her emotions, and moved only as her grandfather commanded.
But by discovering the existence of the anomaly known as Rest, a sense of self had sparked within her, as if a fire of life had been breathed into her soul.
The doll-like girl who had finally gained an ego... what would this change in Ulula Lavender bring to Rest?
That was something no one yet knew.