Chapter 2: Anyone would think that. I thought so too.

Thanks to the Gungnir Mk.4 armor’s power assist, with a time lag of less than 0.001 seconds, I sprinted from the city to a nearby forest at roughly seventy miles per hour, according to the helmet’s HUD. After confirming there was no one around, I activated the communications switch on my left upper arm.

"Erika, I’m returning to the flagship. Bring a drop craft down nearby in stealth mode."

"Understood. Dispatching the Hummingbird."

This time there was no full hologram. Instead, a small window opened on the HUD, displaying the holographic girl’s face. She acknowledged the request and vanished almost immediately.

Less than five minutes later, the drop craft Hummingbird—its surface projecting the surrounding scenery and rendered nearly invisible—touched down in a clearing between the trees. When it disengaged stealth mode, its squat, dark-green hull appeared, and the rear cargo hatch opened.

I boarded, and before the hatch fully closed, lights flickered to life in the unmanned cockpit. The craft lifted off, redeployed stealth mode, and took flight.

The Hummingbird’s antimatter gravity pulse engines punched through the atmosphere in moments, and it docked in the hangar of Einferia, the flagship of my MCSF space fleet, lined up in orbit.

Back aboard the flagship, I headed straight for the bridge. In the center of the unmanned bridge, atop a monitor table embedded with a glowing sphere, stood a twelve-inch-figure-sized hologram of a girl in a white, old-style school swimsuit, hands on her hips.

She was Erika—the AI that governed the entire fleet, empty of anyone but me.

The characters in Warfire Universe, being from a Western game, were all realistically rendered, with distinctly Western features. I, however, had applied a fan-made character skin replacement mod, turning them into anime-style cute girls more in line with a Japanese player’s tastes.

"Welcome back, Master. The fleet is currently presumed to be adrift in an uncharted region of space. We attempted to contact Galactic Federation Space Force Headquarters, but there has been no response so far. With automated maintenance, the fleet can continue operations for five hundred Earth-standard years. However, there is a possibility this situation may affect your life functions. I judge it necessary to make contact with a Galactic Federation–affiliated force as soon as possible."

"It’s questionable whether we can reach the Galactic Federation, but my life functions should be fine. There were people from the same world as me on the planet below."

"The same world? Orbital scans detected only entities similar to Earth-type humans, with a civilization level equivalent to the medieval period."

"Ah—no, forget that. Anyway, the important thing is that I was able to make contact with human-like beings."

"Understood. However, the planet’s atmosphere contains unidentified microparticles that cannot be cross-referenced. No toxicity has been confirmed, but caution is advised."

"Got it. I’ll be careful. Still, there are a lot of things I want to check, so I’m planning to head back down to that planet."

"I cannot recommend that. While the planet resembles an Earth-type world, there are numerous unnatural aspects. Aside from the continent where you were located and a few surrounding islands, the entire surface is ocean. No biological or mobile entities have been detected outside that area. It resembles a partially constructed sandbox. I judge the probability of it being a naturally formed environment to be below five percent."

"Ah… a partially built sandbox. Yeah, that’s probably it. Even if it’s an MMO, they wouldn’t build a planet-scale setting in its entirety."

"MMO. Massively Multiplayer Online. Does that have some relation to the planet? An explanation is requested."

"All that matters is that life activity on that planet probably isn’t a problem. More importantly, was the fleet okay? We were in the middle of a fleet battle—are all ships accounted for?"

"Hmph… I am not fully satisfied, but understood. The enemy fleet vanished immediately after you boarded their flagship in ground combat gear. We do not know where they went, but given that our own coordinates also became unconfirmable, it is reasonable to assume that we were displaced instead. All fleet units are intact. Two destroyers, Lilstar and Silent Screamer, sustained damage, but emergency repairs have been completed. Fortunately, the enemy fleet was weak."

…Did she just sulk a little?

Fleet AIs often give the protagonist advice, but that kind of reaction felt rare. Then again, the fact that I myself—rather than a game protagonist—was standing on this bridge was strange enough, so there was no point nitpicking details.

The fantasy city on the surface had felt oddly real, too.

In any case, I was relieved that the fleet I had painstakingly built was safe.

Four Siren-class destroyers
Three Sylphid-class high-speed cruisers
Two Sleipnir-class planetary landing ships
Three Bahamut-class space battleships
Two Lindwurm-class space carriers
And the flagship I had designed from scratch using the battleship construction function, spending an entire three-day holiday on it: the Einferia-class super-heavy space battleship, lead ship Einferia

A proud fleet of fifteen ships in total. I’d once shown it off on social media and gotten some awkward reactions.

Still, there was one more thing I needed to confirm.

"Erika, I want to take off the armor. How do I do that again? I really need to pee."

"Have you forgotten, Master? The Gungnir Mk.4 armor can only be donned or removed using specialized equipment located in each ship’s hangar. As for excretion, the armor is equipped with a purification system, so it is not a problem to relieve yourself as needed, regardless of volume. There is no need to report this to me. Please do so whenever you like."

Even if she told me to just go whenever I wanted, doing it while wearing the armor was a bit much.

I hurried to the hangar.

Standing on the platform equipped with a gate-like machine fitted with armor-removal arms, the apparatus moved over my body like an automated car wash, detaching the armor piece by piece.

The helmet came off, revealing blonde hair that reached down to my shoulders.

The arm and leg plating detached, exposing slender, pale limbs.

The torso armor was removed, baring a chest fuller than one would expect for that build. Finally, the groin component came off, revealing something with an indescribable shape—an indescribable part.

To avoid misunderstanding, I’ll put it simply: it wasn’t convex. It was concave.

On a monitor beside the platform—presumably for checking the wearer’s vitals—was displayed the image of a completely naked blonde girl.

Of course, it was a mod. In the original game, no matter how much you edited the protagonist, they ended up with a realistic, Western-looking face, wearing a comic-book-style full-body suit instead of underwear, and you couldn’t take it off any further.

It was a single-player game protagonist that no one else ever saw. There was nothing wrong with installing a nude mod. And staring at a cute girl the whole game was obviously better than staring at a guy’s butt. Anyone would think that. I certainly did.

Making excuses in my head to no one in particular, I checked the character name displayed on the monitor.

"Clarice."

That’s what it showed. Thank goodness it wasn’t “Marudashi-ko.” Though, at the moment, I was in fact completely exposed.

For the record, I ended up peeing inside the armor after all. I didn’t make it to the hangar in time.

After confirming that my body was exactly what I’d imagined it would be, I headed to the ship’s residential area for the time being. In the room I’d designated as my quarters, I found and put on a simple space navy uniform—clearly heavily influenced by a long-running sci-fi TV drama series—then returned to the bridge.

Although the interior of the space battleship I’d painstakingly designed was an AI-controlled unmanned vessel, the living facilities were well developed. I wouldn’t go so far as to believe the saying that “a game that obsesses over toilets is a good game,” but attention to detail in places like this was important for atmosphere—and by extension, for gameplay.

Because the super-heavy battleship I’d built with such care stretched to a full three thousand meters in length, simply moving around inside the ship was a chore.

"Erika, prepare for planetary descent. Just in case, I want to send the Triad down to the surface. Find a location where we can land it without anyone around."

"Understood. Initiating descent preparations for the Sleipnir-class planetary landing ship Triad Primus. There is an uninhabited island in the southeastern part of the continent. It is slightly removed from the medieval-level indigenous settlement where you were previously located, but with support from the Hummingbird or a Dragoon unit, I judge it can be reached within five minutes."

"Then drop it around there. I’ll descend directly from this ship via the Hummingbird. The same place as before is fine."

"Understood. By the way, Master, will you not be wearing armor? Planetary insertion without ground combat armor is not recommended."

"I feel like it’d stand out too much… I’ll bring a communicator and weapons, but is there something more suitable?"

"I judge that the Achilles Mk.6 light electromagnetic shield suit is appropriate for infiltration missions. For weapons, I recommend the Arondight six-shot grenade launcher or the Dainsleif plasma railgun."

"Yeah, the suit’s fine, but those weapons are way too much. There was a handgun and a foldable assault rifle, right? Those’ll do."

"In that case, you will be unable to respond if you encounter enemies equipped with electromagnetic shields or tank-class armor."

"I doubt I’ll run into anything like that… and if something does happen, I’ll have the Triad provide support."

"Hm… Very well. However, if Master is lost, this fleet will lose its guiding will and wander an unfamiliar universe. Please be extremely careful."

"I know. All right, I’m heading out."

"What are you saying, Master? If you have a terminal with you, it is the same as if I am accompanying you. Einferia is like my body, but it is still a battleship. I am an AI. Please think of me as always being with you."

"…Got it."

And so, once again, I started walking the long path from the bridge to the hangar.

Since I could talk to Erika from anywhere on the ship, I really should have handled all of this in the hangar from the start.