Hermit: Someone beat you up? / Speculation on the Sirens' creator's experimental goals based on psionic energy applications...

Wherever the lightsaber swept, every insect, large or small, was utterly destroyed. The shrouded sunlight fell once more, illuminating a sea almost completely covered in densely packed insect corpses.

Another layer of insects lay atop those corpses, which oozed disgusting pus and gave off a foul stench, their wings constantly trembling as they devoured their own kind.

One glance sent a chill rising from the soles of many blood-crazed shipgirls' feet straight to the tops of their heads.

Before they could react further, however, a gentle gravitational pull drew them, sheltered by the light, toward the sky.

"Your Majesty..."

Warspite, whose greatsword was pitted by insects with highly corrosive bodily fluids, looked at Elizabeth beside her. She looked equally wretched, all her queenly composure gone.

"..."

Faced with Warspite's uncertainty, Elizabeth, who had only survived because her Royal Navy sisters had protected her with their lives, gently shook her head. Feeling the warm power flowing through her body, she softly said:

"Let us trust him, Lady Warspite."

After the shock of that sword strike cleaving through the Insect Swarm, the girls, who had nearly lost themselves in slaughter, regained their reason under the nourishment of Gwen's psionic energy. They did not resist that warm, gentle power.

They still could not fully verify the identity of the Commander they had yet to meet, who had announced himself in their minds through some unknown ability.

But that power, as warm as the sun, made these girls who had just walked through hell willing to place the greatest possible trust in Gwen.

Soon, the familiar figure appearing before her completely shattered the composure Elizabeth was barely maintaining—

"...Belfast?"

Looking at Belfast, whose maid dress was not even creased, as though she had just stepped out of Buckingham Palace, Elizabeth asked softly in a