A Nickname You Can Trust

Faced with advice written under a username practically overflowing with "credibility," all I could do was tremble.

Thank you… overwhelming gratitude…!

At any rate, with the help of those damn jokers, I ended up forcibly receiving every kind of tip and training guide — plus a full one hundred and eighty-seven documents on how to take the most mouthwatering sideboob and thigh screenshots.

Alright. I've got it down perfectly.

I decided to immediately apply every curriculum — with the sole exception of the self-proclaimed 187 Sexy-as-Hell Tips Compilation — to our Belial and Pashtura.

As a result, the long-awaited Girls Talk session that had finally come together was thoroughly demolished on the spot.

"If that is what the Commander desires, then we must follow, must we not?"

"Mm."

"And while puppet manipulation is my primary specialty… I do not consider commanding other Superhumans a bad idea either."

That was Belial, looking as strict as ever. And then—

"Ahh, Commander… how did you know I like blowing things up?♡"

"…?"

"This is… unmistakably loveee♡"

"I'll say this in advance — the only things you're allowed to blow up are pirate ships."

"Of course♡ I would never destroy the Commander's precious little babies♡"

"…What?"

I'd told her to destroy pirate ships, and Pashtura was already casually dropping sex jokes and violating me with every breath.

"Then I'll be off to mining— ah, no, to training as well!"

"Mm."

"Commander."

"What is it, Jessica?"

"No matter how you look at it, Miss Ignis seems to have found her true calling since coming here, doesn't she?"

"…Yeah, she has."

For reasons unknown, Ignis had at some point started acting as if mining were her life's vocation — and on top of that, she'd transformed into a training-obsessed gym girl.

Watching those three subordinates, who somehow managed to look both indifferent and welcoming at the same time, all I could do was nod.

After seeing the three of them off to their respective assigned "training," I sat down with Jessica and cracked open a new manual, determined to finally get a proper handle on the facilities inside this base that I'd never fully learned.

The problem was that in the game, a "manual" was just a name — a clump of information you could check in real time with a single click. Here, though, reality meant they handed me an actual, genuinely thick manual.

"Uuuuh… doo-dda-dda… doo-dda-ee… doo-woo-dda-dda-ya…"

"Commander, even if you start babbling like that, the manual will not magically memorize itself."

And so, on top of being dragged into the game, I was forced to stare at a manual that looked every bit as complicated as the civil service exams of my previous life — and was, in fact, even more of a nightmare — while my brain melted into sludge.

Meanwhile, at the very hour Icarus was clutching a real manual and regressing into baby talk—

The community that had become the spiritual sanctuary for users kidnapped and locked into so-called NEW Astral Lagrange — the Gallery, as it was known — was blazing spectacularly over two sudden pieces of bait that had dropped out of nowhere.

First up was the interpretation of the bait-y question Icarus had thrown out just a little while ago.

Posts that took Icarus — who had genuinely been a veteran once — ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and framed him as either a pure newbie or a grandpa with dementia. And then there was this:

The small ball Icarus had thrown was rolling into a giant snowball.

Something about this did not look good.

While our Icarus was busy diligently poring over the manual—