They backtracked to the Kleeshira Ruins and found the pedestal that had stuck in Misaki’s memory. It still had the glowing angels’ footprints on it.
“I see that pattern here!” Misaki exclaimed.
Makoto looked around impatiently, catching up to Misaki.
“Great, but how does this help us find Kettle?!” he said.
“It…it might…”
Misaki hadn’t really thought that far in her single-minded urge to check on the connection between the markings in the monastery and in the ruins. Neither she nor Makoto knew what to do from there on.
Vampy looked at the humans out of the corner of her eye. Before they noticed, she’d gotten an ax out from somewhere. She approached the pedestal.
“If it was the angels that took the girl, she might be underneath this.”
Without hesitation, she struck the pedestal with the ax. The strike was deafeningly loud and sent a cloud of dust into the air. As it cleared, Makoto and Misaki saw that Vampy had her eyes fixed on the ground, and she was frowning.
There was not even a scratch on the pedestal.
Maybe it’s protected from me like the churches…
While it could also be that Vampy wasn’t strong enough to destroy the pedestal, the fragile-looking girl could break through rock with a touch of her finger. If her weapon left no mark on the pedestal, it was more likely that it was protected by some special power. A power like that of the Prayers…
Misaki placed her hands on top of the pedestal.
“Let me see if this comes off!”
Vampy watched with astonishment as Misaki pushed the top of the pedestal to the side, revealing stairs leading underground. It seemed that only those blessed by the angels could interact with objects marked by them. If Misaki hadn’t prayed in Koane earlier, she wouldn’t have been able to open that passage nor would she have even noticed that there was anything special about that pedestal.
“She’s gotta be there, Misaki!”
“I hope so! Let’s go!”
Makoto and Misaki had no doubt they’d find Kettle at the bottom of the secret passage. They readied their silver weapons and were about to run down the narrow flight of stairs that disappeared into the darkness below.
“Wait.”
Vampy blocked their way with her arm.
“Why are you stopping us?”
“There is no time, so I will be brief. You must promise to stay behind me and not attack anything. Is that clear?”
Vampy was dead serious. Misaki nodded in silence, and Vampy cast her buffs on Misaki and Makoto. She stared suspiciously at the staircase, but before taking the first step down, she sensed that Makoto was in a scrappy mood. She treated him to a fierce glare.
“I wasn’t asking you nicely. It was an order.”
For the first time, Misaki and Makoto felt a menacing, almost bloodthirsty aura from Vampy. Overwhelmed with fear like a frog stared down by a snake, Makoto stiffly acknowledged the order.
“!”
A new presence let itself be felt in the world. Sylvia was the first to sense it.
“Wait!” she called to Shuutarou and Elroad.
The three of them were flying over the areas yet unexplored by players, searching for churches and monasteries.
“What is it?”
“Kettle is in those ruins.”
She pointed to an area far behind them, the Kleeshira Ruins.
No sooner had she picked up on Kettle’s location than something that had been concealing its presence decided to come out of hiding. To Shuutarou and his Overlords, the aura of threat the mysterious being emanated felt like discharges of electricity in the air.
“A rather troublesome entity awaits us,” said Elroad as they turned back.
As they neared it, the entity’s powerful aura grew stronger. Elroad reckoned it was at least on par with them, the Overlords.
We shouldn’t be taking our master to such a dangerous place…
Shuutarou was silent, his eyes fixed on their destination, wanting only one thing with his whole being—to find his friend. He was unable to think of anything else.
They flew to the ruins as fast as fighter jets. When they arrived, they received a telepathic message from Vampy.
‘We’re going there now.’
‘Please be careful,’ Shuutarou replied.
Pleased that her master cared about her, Vampy cut the telepathic connection and jumped to action.
Shuutarou, Elroad, and Sylvia dived to the ground. Elroad traced a glyph in the air, summoning a magic circle.
“Dark Procession!”
Something began to ooze out of the magic circle, dropping onto the ground, where it spread like a sinister dark stain from which monstrous creatures darker than the night began to emerge. A hundred of them began to creep to the ruins, where each went in its own direction. A hundred little screens appeared in front of Elroad, from which he could observe each of the summoned creatures.
Dark Procession was the skill he had been using to search the dungeons and fields, while Sylvia relied on her sense of smell and instinct.
Sylvia was wearing a gloomy expression, as worried about Kettle as her master was.
“We’ll find her soon. I’m sure she’ll be okay, Master,” she said to cheer up Shuutarou, and then she ran off to search the ruins herself.
A few seconds later…
‘I found her!’ she reported.
Shuutarou looked to Elroad, who gave him a slight nod. Together, they flew to where Sylvia was waiting.
“She’s down there.”
She was standing next to a pedestal with the cover moved to the side, ready for battle with her light swords out. It seemed she didn’t want to go down the underground staircase before they joined her.
Shuutarou gazed down without any hint of fear. “We’ll rescue Kettle, no matter who we have to fight.”
The two Overlords shuddered at the new emotion in their master’s eyes—not so much resentment as a deep, dark grudge.
What were the angels?
Players could read in the Ciola Tower background information that the tower had been built for two reasons—spotting invading armies from neighboring countries from afar and watching out for monsters coming out of the underground labyrinth. Yet the tower had never been completed, since the project was abandoned following an attack by the angels.
The angels subjugated those who opposed God. Also known as “punishers,” these beings were different from a police force; they simply punished sinners.
The angels were merciless to anyone who dared try to ascend to the heavens without God’s permission. Ciola Tower allowed people to get closer to the celestial world where God resided—a sinful enterprise that the angels destroyed before its completion.
The king of Sandras, who had commissioned the tower, was so enraged at the angels that he had machines built specifically to slay the angels, and he remade his castle into a fortress.
This was the story behind Ciola Tower and Fort Sandras. But it begged the question: Why did the angels not destroy the fort with its angel-killing machines? The answer was simple—they ignored it because they didn’t deem it a threat to them. The fort was left standing as a message to the players that the power of machines was useless against the angels.
As Misaki and Makoto descended the staircase, they felt a crushing sense of foreboding, different from Vampy’s threatening aura earlier. It was an unshakable feeling of walking toward certain death. Had this been a flesh-and-blood person, Misaki and Makoto would have promptly fainted.
“Do not fear. My blessing will protect you,” Vampy said softly to the two humans, who were so terrified that they’d forgotten how to speak.
At the bottom of the staircase was a laboratory, which felt out of place considering the ancient ruins above. On the far left side, the players could see a room with glass walls. At the very center of the lab stood two strange white creatures.
These things are the holy angels people are supposed to pray to? How deluded do you have to be…?
At a glance, Makoto could tell those creatures specialized in killing.
“You were not supposed to have come here.”
The robotic voice reached every corner of the lab.
The angels were humanoid, but they stood four meters tall, with two pairs of wings growing out of their lower backs, and smooth, masklike faces. Far from making the impression of holy beings, they seemed blasphemous.
Angel Level 120
Makoto’s heart sank when he saw the one angel’s level.
The angel lifted its hands. “What do you seek here, children of hope?”
“We’ve come to retrieve someone important to us,” Vampy replied in a low voice, looking toward the glass room.
“Someone important?” the angel repeated emotionlessly. “You must mean the sinner.”
The angel directed its gaze to the same spot Vampy was looking at. Misaki’s Sense Life skill picked up a signal, and a blue dot appeared on her map, confirming her suspicion that Kettle was trapped in that room. But she wasn’t there alone—countless red dots surrounded her. Misaki gasped.
“Don’t do anything. Remember what I said,” Vampy warned Misaki, who managed to regain her composure.
Misaki considered the fact that it had been two days since Kettle’s abduction. If she’d been in that room with all those monsters that whole time, she should be dead, which meant that she was being kept alive for some reason.
Misaki willed herself to remain calm and leave everything to Vampy.
“We cannot hand her over to you. Unfortunately, she has glimpsed the world’s secrets.”
Vampy didn’t understand the angel’s cryptic explanation, and she didn’t care, nor was she going to stand there chatting with it any longer.
She swiftly caught something out of the air with her bare hand. Makoto saw the pointy end of a dagger right in front of his face. Vampy had stopped the crude-looking weapon just before it struck him.
What the…?!
The dagger had been thrown so fast, he hadn’t even seen it coming. Beads of sweat appeared on his brow.
“A surprise attack? Are you so afraid of us that you have to resort to that?” asked Vampy with a faint but confident smile playing on her lips.
The dagger shattered into light particles and disappeared. The angel held its hand over Vampy and began to chant.
“Seal of Death.”
Red and black lines appeared on Vampy’s body, creeping from her toes up her torso to her hands, neck, face, and eyes.
“How simple it would be if I could die from something like this,” she scoffed.
The deadly markings shattered. Vampy patted the dust off her dress, completely unbothered.
The angel stood motionless in silence for a moment. “Who are you?” it demanded, on guard now that it had seen Vampy was no ordinary opponent.
This time, both angels attacked at once. Vampy got her ax out and prepared to counter them.