We lay there like that for quite a while.
Every now and then, floating dust nearly made me sneeze, but I held my breath and spent the time with Ariel.
Neither of us spoke for a long time, but we occasionally wriggled our clasped hands, confirming that the other was still awake.
"...Thank you for coming back."
"Yeah."
I quietly answered Ariel's brief thanks.
Could you really call this situation a return?
The world that had been a game to me had suddenly become reality right before my eyes.
Everything was still full of questions, but if only to live up to that faith, I had no choice but to do my best.
After returning from Star Plaza, where Sati had practically chased me off, I sat in the Leader's room and checked the panel.
[Ariel] [♡10]
'It went back up.'
Ariel's Affection, which had fallen to 8, had not only risen again but reached its maximum of 10.
'Ariel looked really happy.'
Seeing how genuinely delighted she was, I couldn't bring myself to tell her that I might suddenly disappear at any moment.
Yet contrary to that worry, time passed endlessly without me abruptly returning to reality.
Before long, an entire week had passed since Sati and Ariel began making resource runs as a two-person team.
[Available Data]
[182,405]
[Power Stone]
[1,297]
[High-Efficiency Battery]
[1,061]
Available Data had always been plentiful, but Power Stones and batteries were the most important resources at this point.
Once those two resources entered a stable range through the efforts of the two girls, life here became relatively comfortable as well.
"What, rest? I don't need it."
"I'll bring back even more next time!"
The problem was that neither of them had any intention of resting.
Even if not every other day, I wanted them to take a break at least once every four days. But whenever I brought up resting, they answered with things like, "I don't need it," or, "I'll bring back more."
Honestly, if I didn't wake any more Replicas, we had enough to last roughly two years.
It seemed they wanted to secure enough resources to last them a lifetime and then some.
"Then focus your exploration on here and here today."
"Wait, wait, wait..."
Just as I was about to send them on an operation to our usual designated locations, Sati suddenly repeated the word "wait" and cut me off, as though there was something she wanted to say.
"Hm? What is it?"
"There's something I'm curious about."
When I briefly asked what was wrong, Sati pointed to the coordinates for Stage 4-7 with a somewhat dissatisfied look.
"Why won't you go any farther than here?"
"Ah, I was wondering about that too."
Ariel chimed in with Sati's straightforward question.
Since they were the ones actually carrying out the operations, they must have noticed that I never had them cross a certain coordinate threshold.
It was only natural that the further a stage progressed, the greater the amount of in-game currency that appeared.
That principle had remained unchanged even after the reality patch took effect.
I had confirmed firsthand that Stage 4-1 provided more batteries and Power Stones than Stage 2-1.
Even so, the reason I couldn't readily send Ariel and Sati into later stages was simple.
"Because you'll get hurt from there onward."
To begin with, even stages beginning with the number 4 were areas where you could field at least four or five Replicas.
The only reason this worked was because I had raised the two of them, along with plenty of other Replicas, considerably before I quit the game.
Normally, an area that required five people was being repeatedly farmed by just two of them through sheer stats.
Especially considering how stage difficulty took a sharp leap whenever the first number changed, farming without so much as a scratch was impossible unless we increased our numbers.
At my casual answer, Sati crossed her arms, looking suspicious and somewhat puzzled.
"Hmm. You really have changed."
"W-What has?"
Her sudden assessment that I had changed made me flinch, and I stammered as I asked what exactly had changed.
"You've gotten softer, I guess? I don't remember you being someone who considered things like that when choosing operations."
"Yes, you've become kinder."
After Sati voiced her confusion, Ariel brushed even that awkwardness aside by calling me kinder.
Someone who hadn't considered things like that...
Ah, were they talking about when I was still actively playing the game?
Sure enough, back then, I would have pushed through stages ruthlessly with nothing but a three-star clear in mind.
"That sense of danger wasn't bad, though."
"Um, I... like the way things are now."
Sati, apparently more of a thrill-seeker than she looked, said that precarious feeling hadn't been bad.
Meanwhile, Ariel said she preferred the current approach—stable operations where no one got hurt.
Maybe, as a gamer, I had been a kind person but a ruthless commander during operations.
After all, I had sent Replicas on distant expeditions just to clear stages, even knowing they would be left close to death.
Now that I thought about it, wasn't I kind of a piece of trash?
A Leader who sat safely in a secure zone alone while driving soldiers into deadly situations for the sake of a successful operation.
It made me realize anew just how remarkable commander-type characters in mobile games were.
How could they send girls they had been laughing and joking with moments ago to battlefields where they might die?
"Anyway, that's why! End of discussion!"
"Hmm, are you embarrassed?"
Feeling my face grow hot, I clapped sharply and ended the conversation. Sati leaned toward me with a sly smile.
She really had an uncanny knack for reading the room.
"If you've heard the operation details, hurry up and go!"
"Yeah, yeah."
At my sudden shout, meant to cover up my embarrassment, Sati answered halfheartedly and left.
"We'll be back, Leader."
Ariel likewise left the room, smiling softly and dipping her head before following after Sati.
I had gotten swept up in the mood and vaguely brushed it off by getting angry, but Sati's point had struck at the heart of the matter.
We couldn't keep gathering resources with just the two of them forever, and advancing into later stages was indispensable for future purification work as well.
'It's time to start thinking about the next member.'
On the panel in the Leader's room, I ran my eyes over the list of inactive Replicas, passing one unfamiliar yet familiar face after another.
I should hear the opinions of the two who contributed the most resources, but now that their Affection had recovered somewhat, I had gained something resembling a say in the matter too.
If there wasn't a Replica the two of them wanted to wake, then this time I would make my own opinion known firmly.
While the two of them were away, I visited the Replica storage room that Ariel and I had come to when we woke Sati.
'Even coming back here, this place is kind of creepy.'
Countless Replicas lay silently inside cases arranged at regular intervals.
Within the unlit cases, the women were completely still, as though sunk in a long sleep.
It felt like walking through a morgue.
Not that I'd ever actually seen a morgue, but I imagined this was what one would feel like.
As I wandered through the storage room, which felt like a ghost could jump out at any moment—
'Ah, here she is.'
I stopped when I saw the name "Manu" written on the outside of a case and looked at the girl sleeping inside.
Manu was a girl who appeared to be around Ariel and Sati's age.
She was also the Replica I intended to wake next if Ariel and Sati didn't offer any particular opinion.
The other two might be a little disappointed to hear it, but this one alone was better than using the two of them together.
Ariel's signature weapon was a multipurpose rifle, while Sati's signature weapon could switch between automatic fire and a sniper rifle.
On the other hand, this girl's signature weapon was a bombardment hand cannon.
She began every stage by unleashing area-of-effect damage, and Manu was never absent from the lightning-fast composition that cleared stages fastest in the game.
She was, quite literally, a living bomber.
On top of that, her battery consumption efficiency wasn't bad either.
If we wanted to speed up our operation rotation, the next Replica I had my eye on could only be her.
'This is where you inserted the battery, right?'
Standing blankly before her case, I picked up a battery that happened to be lying on the floor and inserted it.
The click from the slot perfectly fitted for the battery gave me a strange sense of satisfaction.
The reason I was trying this myself rather than asking the other two was...
'So this is how it works.'
Even if Ariel could do it for me, it would be strange for me not to know how to handle the equipment myself.
Besides, if a battery was just lying around in a place like this, it had to be completely drained anyway.
As I lingered before the case, testing things and checking what other functions it had—
"...Leader, huh?"
A sudden eerie voice startled me so badly that my body jerked as I looked toward its source.
The voice had come from inside the case.
It was the very case where I had just inserted the supposedly drained battery.
Panicking at the sight of half-open green eyes, I began backing away in a fluster.
Could that not have been a drained battery after all?
While I stood there unable to hide my panic, Manu immediately opened the case and staggered out.
"Where have you... been all this time...?"
Stumbling forward with sleepy, half-lidded eyes, Manu pressed a hand to her forehead and said that. Then she fully closed her eyes and collapsed toward me.
I caught her body on instinct, but she was a mechanical human who fired a cannon closer to a bomber than a weapon without recoil.
By the time that realization hit me, it was already too late.
"Aagh—!"
Manu's body fell right on top of me, pinning me down so completely that I couldn't move an inch.
According to the setting description, the bodies of Replicas were made of light metal, but metal was still metal.
'S-So heavy...!'
There was no way a frail human could do anything about that weight on their own.
No matter how much I struggled, her body only shifted slightly.
Fortunately, she had fallen in a good position, so it didn't seem like anything had been twisted or injured...
The problem was that I couldn't move in this state.
"H-Hey! Could you get up!?"
I desperately shouted at Manu, who had closed her eyes against my chest, but she remained utterly motionless.
Could that battery really have had only a few seconds of charge left?
"Uuugh."
In the end, all I could do was let out a plaintive groan and endure.
I came here to practice, so why did this disaster have to happen?
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