Louis was smart enough to deduce the pros and cons of switching from lucid dreams to natural dreams.
At the cost of the potential dream points profit of a dream, he could bring a person's spirit body into the dreamscape, and whatever they experience within the dream would later reflect on the life outside.
Extreme emotions may potentially cause some changes to their personality and the way they behave around Louis.
If their dreams weren't lucid, the energy would be harvested by the dream seed instead, converting into sustenance for Fairy and dream points.
Although the events of the dream may mirror deep and dark desires, these desires ultimately remain hidden in the target's heart and even they themselves might be oblivious to these desires.
That is to say, frequent lucid dreams might awaken or invoke some of these desires to some extent, and while people might hide them, their subconscious would still bring these dark secrets into the open once within a dream.
"In conclusion, dreams are an optimal channel to not only understand a human's heart, but to also uncover precious blackmail material?" Louis thought he understood.
However, that knowledge is still worthless if he didn't have any dream seeds to experiment with.
So, after cleaning up the dishes after having his meal, Louis grabbed his wallet and phone before stepping outside the house.
In all honesty, he didn't have a specific destination in mind, as he wasn't the "social butterfly" type of a guy.
He walked to the bus station at the neighborhood's entrance, waiting for the next bus while checking his chat groups on Whatsapp and Messenger.
While scrolling through, he found an expired group invitation to a chat called "Study Group" and it was organized by the class president.
After thinking for a while, he sent a text message to the class president.
- [Hey Prez, is that study group still a thing?]
Louis knew that Julie had just woke up from a dream not too long ago, though he wasn't sure what she was up to.
A few minutes later, the next bus stopped.
Louis didn't even bother looking at the bus number nor did he ask about the destination.
He climbed inside and paid through the QR code, and then he moved to the backseat.
At this moment, his phone buzzed and he received a reply from the class president.
- [Why are you asking?]
She didn't deny it right away, Louis thought to himself, fiddling with his phone.
- [I want to join the group]
- [You're going to be out of sync with the current study progress, that's not good.]
- [Are you suggesting to have private study sessions instead?]
By the time Louis realized what he wrote down, the message was already sent and marked as read. He cursed silently, as he subconsciously teased her as though they were in the dream.
On the other side, Julie's heart throbbed fiercely for some reason, but rationality quickly took hole of her thoughts.
She frowned before sending out a reply.
- [I'll add you to the group, but don't blame me if you feel out of place and this adversely affects your studies. Anyway, it's not like your grades could get any worse.]
Louis didn't know if it was his misconception, but Julie seemed more… tolerant? After that incident, she's consider it charity if she spared him a glance or said a word.
Now, they were actually having a conversation…
Shaking his head, Louis waited for a few minutes and received another invitation link.
It seemed that she wasn't willing to personally add him to the group.
After Louis entered, he realized that his authority to send images, links, voice recordings, text messages was revoked.
He could only click his tongue and check the pinned messages.
"So," he mumbled. "Study group is every Monday and Wednesday in club room 407, after classes."
He sent a brief thanks to Julie and shut his phone. It happened that the bus had stopped at the next station, so Louis got up and prepared to leave.
"Are you sure you want to get off in this neighborhood, kid?" A voice sounded next to Louis.
He looked over and saw a young teenager with tattoos, red hair, and ear piercings fiddling with his phone.
Louis raised an eyebrow. "Should I skip this station?"
The young teenager gave Louis the side eye, scoffing. "You're too clean for these streets, fool. A murder happened here a few days ago, it's already an active gang warzone, so you better keep your head down and wait for the next stop."
Louis didn't know why this guy was giving him a warning, but thinking about it, he might have noticed the exchange of messages from earlier.
If that was the case, then it made sense for him to think of Louis as someone trying to turn their life around.
After thinking about it, Louis sat back down and looked at this guy with delinquent vibes curiously. "I'm Louis, what's your name?"
The guy scoffed again, looking outside the window. A moment later, he spat out, "Kaz."
Louis smiled, because even though Kaz was acting cold, he was already added to Louis' connections list.
The connection was already at 20/100 points, which was very surprising.
Did he have some high school regrets? Is this why I easily left an impression on him? Was he also at a crossroads once, but instead of turning things around, he only sank deeper?
Many questions appeared in Louis' mind, but at the same time, he realized that he might have found something interesting for the day.
"Well, since you suggested I shouldn't take this stop," Louis leaned back into his chair and closed his eyes faintly. "Guess my plans for the day are ruined, I'll just follow you around for a bit instead."
Kaz looked over, his eyes gloomy and warning as he said, "Are you a fool? Better run back to wherever you came from. Good kids like you have better options."
Louis could tell that Kaz had no bad intentions.
He didn't know why he had that feeling, but maybe he was more sensitive to the seven emotions and six desires of the spirit body after obtaining that power.
In any case, his intuition shouldn't be wrong, so he merely smiled and didn't respond.