I Sell Bottled Water for Gold in Another World! - Chapter 149: Return

“Is Fate the excuse of the forsaken, is Free Will the delusion of the chosen?”Such was a question that Xavier, the Demon King, never had the chance to ask himself. As he lay defeated, awaiting his death, he wondered about the wretched life he lived.'The hero who killed me, the one who held the same ambitions as me. We both wanted good for the people, for the world. We are both two sides of the same coin, yet, fate decided that he will be the one the light will shine on.Perhaps it was me too, perhaps it was my karma for flowing the rivers of blood with my sword. But still... It was fate that squashed the humanity in me first!Damn fate, if I had one more chance, I would've lived for myself more, I wouldn't have taken this arbitrary role of being a necessary evil... This world, this game of destiny... It can burn to ashes for all I care.'As he sunk into the cold embrace of death, a certain [REDACTED] heard his dying wish with amusement and cast their die, reversing the wheel of time one last time and going all in on him on a risky gamble with the stakes of their world.

The story revolves around Charles Karino, a Levaamu Empire mercenary aerial pilot who mans the twin seater reconnaissance seaplane Santa Cruz. One day, he receives a preposterous assignment: to fly solo over 12,000 kilometers of enemy waters to protect a girl named Fana del Moral. Fana happens to be the next in line to the empire’s throne and a girl possessing beauty “equal to 5,000 beams of light.”

This is a standalone book. There’s another series under the name “To Aru Hikuushi e no Koiuta” (Love Song for a Certain Pilot) set in the same world, but in a completely different place and with different characters.

– Ulrezaj @ Mazui

Adapted to anime as “The Princess and the Pilot”

BLURB> He was reborn by mistake. Raised with purpose. Loved by a god. Worshipped by monsters. And the galaxy doesn’t stand a fucking chance.Irvine’s soul took one wrong turn through the wheel of karma and woke up in a body grown by an intergalactic hivemind goddess with boundary issues and galaxy-sized ambition. Now he’s the golden child of a psychic swarm that feeds on control and burns whole worlds for affection.With Crystal at the helm, warriors like Kimchi, relic-weapons like Kiya, and a council of psionic horrors eager to call him king, Irvine must choose what kind of god he wants to be.Because when a hivemind learns to love......it doesn’t know when to stop.The universe will kneel—or get devoured trying.SYNOPSISIrvine didn’t ask to be reincarnated, but the cosmos had other plans. And it didn’t hand him a cheat code or a clean slate—just one random boon, selected by an uncaring divine roulette wheel.Good karma? Bad karma? Balanced as all fuck.Now he's reborn in the body of a psionically tuned alien hybrid, raised from psychic infancy by Crystal, the hivemind queen of a race so advanced they’ve abandoned individuality for shared omniscience. All except her baby boy.Irvine is the singularity inside the swarm, the first soul allowed to think, dream, and desire independently. Trained by warriors like Kimchi, advised by bio-symbiotes like Kiya, loved ferociously by hive sisters like Diane, and shadowed by powers ancient and unnamed, Irvine is both weapon and wielder, saint and sacrifice.But empires don’t run on hugs and handjobs. As Crystal expands her dominion—across star systems and sentient nebulae—Irvine must lead the charge through blood, fire, and psionic flame.His soul is still human. His body? Engineered for extinction. His heart? Not entirely his anymore.

They call him Ghost.A name whispered in fear across warzones, black markets, and underworld circles.To the world, he's a phantom—a faceless mercenary who leaves no trace but bodies in his wake.To his enemies, he’s a death sentence.To his brothers-in-arms in Graveyard, he’s family.But to himself... he's a haunted man searching for a past stolen in gunfire and smoke.After a flawless mission deep in the Eastern Province, Ghost returns to the hidden forest base he's called home for sixteen years. Yet the victory is short-lived. His foster father, the commander delivers an unexpected order:“That was your last mission.”Now, Ghost—real name Miles Sterling—must step out of the shadows of war and into a world he’s never known. Guided only by a scarred letter, a fading memory, and the voice of a woman he hasn’t seen since the day everything was taken from him.But war forged more than his body and name.Behind the mask, behind the scars, Miles has another secret.One he’s kept hidden even from his brothers in arms.He’s not just a weapon.He’s a ghost with a fortune—a hidden empire he built in silence, across borders and black markets, forged in strategy and blood.A man of many names, and many shadows.Beneath the bullets, tattoos, and silence lies a truth buried in ashes.And Ghost is about to dig it up—one letter, one enemy, one memory at a time.