“Ah…”
Waking up felt miserable.
Shiratori felt a dull ache coursing through her body, and it took a good while for the discomfort to subside.
Even though the Neighboring World was technically her home, shouldn’t she, by all logic, sleep soundly in her own home?
She rubbed her eyes and sat up with a weary expression, her eyes staring blankly into the surrounding darkness.
Pitch-black and ice-cold, it felt like the void at the edge of the universe.
Shiratori floated weightlessly; even a gentle tilt of her body could send her drifting forward.
The entire space was so quiet that even the sound of her own breathing echoed with unnatural clarity.
Under such conditions, sleeping well in a “home” like this would actually be the extraordinary thing.
Having considered this, Shiratori nodded and lazily stretched her arms, releasing the fatigue that had accumulated in her muscles.
“…”
As she stretched her body, her slender fingers brushed against the medal pinned to her chest.
A slight ripple passed through her quiet eyes.
Shiratori reached out, took hold of the medal that had once symbolized her faction, and cupped it in her palm to inspect it closely.
An eagle—a blue eagle, symbolizing freedom and peace, power and protection.
This was the emblematic mark of the Allied Forces.
Back when she was first converted into a robot, Shiratori had already been pinned with this medal.
It was precisely at that moment that she realized a certain truth.
That it was nothing more than a lie named freedom.
Whether it was traveling or simply walking around, everything was forbidden.
Charging and maintenance even required permission.
She was restricted at every turn, tightly bound inside the base.
The only thing exempt from restriction was the firepower she unleashed on the battlefield.
As the most pinnacle engineering creation of the European Alliance’s FutureTech team, Shiratori was loaded with every lethal weapon this world had to offer.
The destructive power of each weapon was measured in the units of collapsing skyscrapers.
Yet surprisingly, her codename was simply Shiratori, matching her outward appearance—white tail fins and wings enveloping her body.
It was impossible to connect her with the title of the Spirit possessing the greatest destructive power; the naming was based solely on her outer look.
No matter how one looked at it, however, the codename was an absolute mockery.
Combined with her own experiences, it truly was a title dripping with irony.
And precisely because of her habit of recklessly unleashing firepower in her past life, she had chosen to clash head-on with Ellen earlier.
After all, who could possibly match a war machine in raw firepower?
Yet such a person had actually appeared, forcing her to flee in quite a pathetic manner.
War always compelled everyone to abandon their kindness and common sense.
Wandering the front lines, Shiratori had long been numbed by the sensation of killing, casting aside the fairy tales of her childhood and the textbook lessons about treasuring life.
She had thought that death would finally put an end to it all.
Yet, she was tossed into this world by a pixelated deity.
Furthermore, every time she stepped out of this cold, dark space, she was met with endless hunts.
Given Shiratori’s strength, dealing with them was trivial.
Aside from Ellen, humanity’s strongest Wizard, she had no reason to fear those pursuers.
A life not worth regretting, a death in its proper place.
She no longer possessed a single shred of emotional fluctuation toward life.
But this place differed from the war-torn world of her past; there was clearly no need to fight to the death here.
If she simply defended herself, she wouldn’t get hurt, nor would she cause the death of her comrades.
Yet, she still couldn’t help but unleash her firepower.
Watching the cities filled with skyscrapers—the very sight she had longed for as a child—collapse in flames before her eyes, her heart remained entirely unmoved.
She didn’t even stop to consider how many people were being rendered homeless.
Thus, the only thing she could do was survive.
Freedom and peace, power and protection.
The prerequisite for all four, as far as Shiratori was concerned, was slaughter.
Yet, the vast sky capable of enveloping the entire Earth had no room for someone as small as her.
Would this world prove to be more wonderful than her previous wasteland world?
She was no longer that rigid-thinking robot.
Since the deity had granted her a chance to live, she had to thoroughly experience everything she hadn’t gotten to try in her past life—entertainment, fine food, music, and all forms of emotion, including friendship and romance.
However, her emotions had been forged on the foundation of a cold machine.
Even if the deity had turned her into this, the authenticity of these feelings still left her unable to help doubting them.
Forget it, best not to dwell on these unrealistic thoughts for now.
It was better to carefully consider how to bypass those AST hunts after manifesting in the real world and acquire a normal human identity.
According to a certain Spirit decked out in a red-and-black color scheme, Spirits could actually control their spacequakes when manifesting—any Spirit with a bit of control over their own power could pull it off.
Only now did she recall that such a method existed.
Of course, that wasn’t the only way.
There was another method: folding one’s hands, sacrificing a European seal or a blue-haired boy who was rewarded as the 1,000th customer every time he went out to play, and praying for a Silent Manifestation.
That was a way to appear without triggering a spacequake, keeping one’s presence relatively stable.
Still, she was a native European; she probably didn’t need such tedious steps—if one conveniently ignored the previous six times she failed to achieve a Silent Manifestation.
“It’s probably better not to manifest right now.
After all, I’m dead tired at the moment…”
Having just woken up from a far-from-comfortable sleep, she didn’t want to go back outside for now to trade gunfire head-on with the AST.
A lingering trace of exhaustion remained in the corners of her body, and it wasn’t going to vanish anytime soon.
Next time she manifested, however, Shiratori decided to control the spacequake using the method the red-and-black Spirit had told her.
Relying on those slim odds all the time wasn’t going to work out.
“Though that strongest Wizard really is incredible.
She could probably split mountains and cross seas even without a Realizer.
It’d be trouble if she happened to spot me while I’m exploring my emotions.”
“Achoo—!”
Ellen, who was currently dealing with a mountain of paperwork, suddenly sneezed without warning.
Sweeping those thoughts aside, Shiratori closed her eyes to sleep a bit more.
Perhaps because a second sleep was always deeper, she failed to notice a force dragging her out of the Neighboring World.
Not until the sound of honking car horns echoed in her ears.