Just as we were about to enter again, Miyabi pulled the hem of my military-style clothes.

"Wait, WhiteGod. We... don’t have enough time remaining to clear Hell difficulty right now."

"...Ah."

I almost forgot.

Right now, we only had about an hour and a half left in our login time. The number had been sitting in the corner of my mind this whole time, and I had simply stopped paying attention to it somewhere between the ambush and the inventory check.

Thus, although it pained me, we decided to postpone the Hell difficulty clearing.

Even by an optimistic estimate, it would take us three hours to get through it properly. Rushing it with one eye on the logout timer wasn’t how I wanted to approach a first clear—especially not on Hell.

If we tried it now, the time we were logged out would be added on top of the dungeon clear timer regardless. And nobody else would be capable of clearing Hell difficulty anytime soon, so there was no rush pressing on that end. The reward would still be waiting for us when we came back.

Instead, we shifted our priority.

Reaching level 50.

With the remaining time, running the dungeon one more time should be more than enough to push us all to level cap, claim our first job advancement, and unlock the next map. A clean, efficient use of what we had left.

"But... wouldn’t it be bad if we went to the next map without clearing the Hell difficulty first?" Eri, who had been quiet for a while, chimed in cautiously.

If what she said were true, it really would be a significant waste. But...

"No," I answered confidently. "Unlike the Tutorial Map, we can return to the Beginner Map anytime we want from other stages. It doesn’t lock behind us."

[BlazingSlash: Damn, does this WhiteGod have connections to the game’s devs? How does he know all these little details?]

[LittleBaiGuo: You new here? Don’t bother thinking. He’s a god. 🙂]

[IWantToBeWhiteGod: Mom, when I grow up, I want to be WhiteGod! 😍]

The chat was getting curious about my source of information, as expected. I had neither the intent nor any particular incentive to clear their doubts, so I didn’t.

After that, we ran the Hard difficulty one more time—pushing the clear time further down to 59 minutes 59 seconds. Just under the hour mark.

It wasn’t intentional. I’m genuinely not lying about that one.

After coming out, all of us hit exactly level 50.

The moment the level registered, the experience gain cut off entirely—the system’s hard cap asserting itself without ceremony. The last few scraps of EXP from the Basilisk at the end simply evaporated, uncredited and wasted. A minor annoyance, but not one worth dwelling on.

All that remained now was to advance our classes. The real step forward. But...

"For that, we need to go to the city and use the advancement room." I sighed, shaking my head. "With the warning already popping up, we only have five minutes left. At most, we can get back to the city and log out. Forget about advancing today."

One disappointment after another, really.

Still, this was good enough.

More than good enough, if I was being honest with myself. The advancement could wait a few more hours.

Reaching level 50 with the full party intact, securing Hard difficulty first-clear, and leaving the Justice Guild with nothing to show for their effort—that was a productive session by any measure.

Only after leaving the Beginner Map would we truly start riding on our accumulated advantages. Only then would the gap between us and the runner-ups start to stretch into something genuinely insurmountable.

Running at the top of our speed, the four of us arrived at the city center just in time to be forced out by the logout prompt. Since we had coordinated our login times from the beginning, this happened to all of us at basically the same moment—one second we were standing in the city square, and then we weren’t.

My vision went black.

Then, gradually, my senses returned.

The roar of the air conditioning filling the silent room. The faint chill settling against my cheeks, sharper than I remembered it being when I’d first logged in. And the warm weight pressed against my side—

My eyes opened wide.

I looked down in a rush, and immediately felt like an idiot for not having anticipated this.

Wrapped tightly around my waist, arms locked in a comfortable embrace and showing absolutely no intention of loosening, was a brightly smiling woman dressed in nothing but her own cheerful expression. Her orange eyes staring at my face.

Another android, unmistakably—similar in presence to Ram and Gwen, that same particular warmth that felt both manufactured and completely genuine at the same time.

"Welcome back, Master. Sunny is thrilled that you’re back!" She greeted, the moment our eyes met.

"Sunny, huh..." I whispered, keeping my voice carefully low. "So you came to reality this quickly as well. What a surprise."

I sat up slowly, stood up from the bed, reached into my old wardrobe with practiced familiarity, and threw a set of clothes toward her without making a production of it. The motion was getting uncomfortably routine.

"Wear these. Visitors will be coming through soon, and I would prefer to avoid more misunderstandings than I’ve already accumulated."

Miyabi, Ram, and Gwen were literally in the next room. Through the particular sharpness that came from years of staying alert in places where alertness was the only thing keeping you breathing, I could already hear the soft sounds of movement beyond the wall.

Footsteps, the faint creak of floorboards, people starting to stir and orient themselves after logging out. Coming this way. Probably to check on me.

"Got it, Master!"

Thankfully, Sunny had sharp instincts.

She didn’t waste a single second, pulling on the clothes I had thrown with the kind of efficient, cheerful speed that suggested she was treating it like a personal challenge. The sounds from her side of the bed were brief—rustling fabric, a small shift of weight, and then silence.

Knock! Knock! Knock!

The knocks landed against my door with the particular cadence of someone who had already decided they were coming in regardless.

"Kamishiro?" Miyabi’s voice came through clearly. "Can I get in? I need to confirm something..."

I didn’t delay. A few steps across the floor, navigating the familiar obstacle course of my own trash piles with the ease of long practice, and I had the door unlocked and open.

Three beauties standing at the entrance, looking at me with varying degrees of expectation.

"Miyabi." I said, smiling easily. "It’s about my new android, right? Perfect timing."

I turned and waved Sunny forward.

She came with an excited, bouncing step and a wide smile that hadn’t dimmed at all since I’d handed her the clothes, now wearing an oversized shirt with the sleeves rolled up just enough to keep them from swallowing her hands entirely.

She stopped beside me and looked up with an expression of cheerful readiness.

"You called, Master?" She asked.

With her being noticeably shorter than both Ram and Gwen, she read as younger by a few years—though that didn’t diminish her presence in the slightest. I shook the thought off and spoke before it could go anywhere unhelpful.

"Yes. For now, you should stay in the next room with these three. Can you do that?"

Sunny looked at my face, then at the three girls arranged in the doorway, then back at me. She nodded once, her smile climbing even wider. "As you wish, Master!"

This android, honestly.

She picked up on unspoken context faster than most people I had known in two lifetimes. I couldn’t help the slight grin that came with it.

With Sunny now standing outside and happily attaching herself to the group, I leaned in slightly toward Miyabi, dropping my voice to something quieter and carrying just enough of a smile to make it feel like a kindness rather than a dismissal.

"Is that all? Then go and sleep now. Even a short rest is better than none."

"Uh? Ah..."

She looked confused for a moment—her expression cycling through something, working through it—then reached out and caught the cuff of my sleeve lightly. Her expression shifted into something I couldn’t quite categorize. Like she’d been reaching for something and found the shelf empty.

I held her gaze for a moment, feeling my own pettiness clearly enough to recognize it, then sighed internally and let it go.

I patted her hair lightly, pinched her cheeks with just enough playfulness to make the point land softly, and then whispered.

"Goodnight, Miyabi."

I closed the door and locked it, leaving her on the other side.

"Phew..." I leaned back against the door and slid slowly down until I was sitting on the floor, listening to the wood at my back. "That was close..."

If Miyabi had seen Sunny unclothed in my room, the consequences would have been difficult to even begin calculating. One outcome was certain, at minimum—Miyabi would’ve held it against me for a good while, and not without reason.

Avoiding that particular pitfall had been, all things considered, the best move I’d made all session.

I sat there for a moment, listening to the muffled sounds from beyond the door. Footsteps. Then what sounded distinctly like Miyabi squealing about something—the reason for which I decided not to investigate.

Eventually I stood, returned to the bed, and dropped into it face-first.

I was no stranger to going several nights without sleep—had done it so many times in the previous timeline that the body had stopped protesting and simply adapted. But a few consecutive days of something approximating normal living had apparently reset that particular threshold.

The fatigue hit the moment my face met the pillow.

Tomorrow was going to be busier than today. That much was already certain.

I closed my eyes, and didn’t fight it.