Although it had only been a brief encounter.
From the conversations of the Hero’s party, I could imagine that this ruin must be quite large.
He said that traveling here after they discovered a certain landmark had taken a full three days.
Perhaps the Hero and I were rather similar in some ways.
If it were me, I would probably choose to explore it even if it took three days.
But what kind of landmark could be seen from so far away?
It should be something extremely tall, extremely magnificent…
Huh?
In the rain, if I looked carefully, a faint shadow seemed to appear in the overcast sky.
I couldn’t help raising a hand to block the raindrops falling from above and squinted, trying hard to look.
Even though the threads of rain had already blurred everything in my vision, I could still faintly see—there seemed to be a gigantic object floating in the sky.
No, it wasn’t floating.
It was probably even more towering and massive than it appeared.
Following that blurry outline into the distance, it stretched from above my head all the way to the horizon, and the part near the ground looked like a gigantic wall that blocked half the sky.
A tower? …
For a moment I couldn’t find the words to describe this astonishing object.
It was enormous, soaring into the clouds, seeming even taller than the sky.
At its feet lay a row of mountain peaks, and between the peaks were scattered shadows that looked like buildings lying every which way.
The rain made everything so blurry.
That mysterious and distant thing swayed in the rain.
Somehow, when I saw this scene, an indescribable feeling rose in my heart…
It felt as if I were dreaming at this moment, my consciousness wandering through ancient and distant memories.
Huh, a strange feeling.
My heart thumped thumped.
An inexplicable familiarity, a feeling as if I had seen it in a dream.
Was it déjà vu?
My wings shook off the water droplets and spread open in the rain.
Desperate to know what that was, I was just like that day in the library when I desperately wanted to see Lingyin.
Even though the rain striking my body sent waves of stinging pain, I had no intention of stopping.
Lingyin…
Yes, Lingyin.
I had seen you countless times in my nighttime dreams, beneath the starry sky.
Was it you who called me into this dreamlike world?
The high tower that rose above the peaks of the clustered clouds drew closer and closer before me.
Faintly, I felt this scene growing more and more familiar.
Had I truly come here in a dream?
The sand, thoroughly soaked by rain, spread out beneath my feet in a vast dark brown.
As I approached that towering structure that seemed to pierce the heavens themselves, it had already almost completely blocked the entire sky in front of me, looking full of oppressive force.
I even forgot the situation I was in.
Although this world had been quite unfriendly to me at the beginning, when its grandeur and mystery unfolded before my eyes—an ancient and heavy feeling made me immerse myself in it.
It couldn’t be called beautiful.
It was simply magnificent.
The rain had draped a layer of mist over this gigantic object of unknown purpose.
It should still be some distance away from me, yet it already felt so close.
The clouds in the sky gradually dispersed, and the rain slowly stopped.
Standing on the ground, I stepped on the wet sand.
It was still just as difficult to walk on.
But after the rain stopped and the sky cleared, the entire world looked much clearer.
At a glance I could see very far, although it was still endless sand.
The accumulated rainwater had turned many places into mirrors reflecting the sky.
An azure, azure world seemed to merge with the sky, making it impossible to tell where the sky was and where the ground was.
Well, this world probably had its good points too.
A puddle sent out ripples with my footsteps, producing a crisp patter.
I looked down at the white clouds reflected in the puddle.
They drifted and moved in the sky, revealing the high tower above the blue gradually disappearing into the azure.
In the sky there seemed to be a faint band of light extending far, far away.
A blue world.
Sunlight dyed everything around in a layer of golden halo.
When I came back to my senses, I was probably standing in the ruins of a city.
The surrounding buildings weren’t tall, but there were some high-rises in the distance.
There was a very high mountain, and looking from afar, there were also some buildings standing on the slope.
If the Hero’s party hadn’t run into me and had come here instead, they would probably be very excited, I thought.
I…
My appearance, my looks.
Looking down at myself in the puddle, reflecting sunlight above my head was that red Halo symbolizing the Southern Cross.
An angel’s Halo.
This was probably truly an angel’s Halo.
There were simply too many questions in my heart; for the moment I didn’t have the energy to wonder why Luna had something like this and would give it to me.
I thought it was probably because of this Halo that I had come here.
But I didn’t have the pure white holy wings of a true angel.
Those wings still hanging with tiny water droplets were pitch-black and glossy.
My face looked a few years younger.
The dark circles left from frequently staying up late had disappeared, looking just like I had when I first graduated from junior high.
My hands had become a size smaller.
I remembered I only started growing during high school.
Although I hadn’t grown much, I had grown a little, at least.
The twin tails falling on my shoulders were how I had looked before I met Lingyin.
Even if getting younger when crossing into another world was a standard trope, was it necessary for me?
I felt as if I had faded.
My eyes had changed from dark brown to a strange purple.
Not only my skin, even the color of my hair had faded, as if the color had been washed away overnight, becoming a stretch of white, faintly carrying a very, very light pink under the Halo’s color.
This faint pink unknowingly made me think of you, Lingyin.
You were probably living in some corner of this world.
Perhaps at the far, far other end of the sky.
Although my wings weren’t pure white, one day they would carry me to your side.
I hoped so, closed my eyes, and took a deep breath.
Perhaps it wasn’t so bad.
This world.
So people really were like this, I suppose.
Seeing some beautiful scenery, even one’s mood would become a bit more cheerful.
It was just that for a long-term shut-in NEET, it was truly too vast.
“Eh?” At that moment, a clear girl’s voice suddenly came from beside me.
“An… angel?…”
In this almost deserted desert ruin, the quiet atmosphere had almost made me forget my own existence, and the matter of encountering the Hero.
Suddenly hearing a person’s voice, I couldn’t help being startled, and the water droplets on my wings splashed up along with it.
In a spray of water sparkling with crystalline sunlight, I turned to look in the direction the voice had come from.
A woman wearing a white robe and a white gauze hat, with a head of golden hair.
In the splashing water, she stared with those sky-blue eyes from beneath a collapsed and broken stone slab, looking at me as if she had just crawled out from behind it, frozen there.
Could there still be people living in these ruins?
If that was the case, then the Hero’s party had really gotten injured for nothing…
I wondered what their reaction would be if they found out.
“Th-that!”
But before I could recover from my confusion, the girl under the stone slab didn’t even care about the wet slipperiness of the sand and crawled out from under the slab in two or three movements, then charged straight at me.
??!
This momentum—my right leg had even already started turning outward in preparation to run.
Then, probably because the sand that had just been soaked by rain was really too slippery, the straw sandals on her feet suddenly snapped in the sand, and she stumbled and fell onto me with a bang.
I—I can’t escape!
***
World Overview
Daidalte Mega-Superstructure:
A superstructure that has existed since the Mythic Age.
It is also the entirety of this world, with large unexplored portions remaining.
According to observations by some astronomers, the map preserved by the United Church (Three Saints One Church) is most likely the true appearance of this world.
Eden: Church scriptures record it as the place where angels reside, and also the first continent created by the gods in this world.
At the end of the Ideal Ring Era, humans who had obtained Construction Tower technology built eight Towers to Heaven from Ipsiss leading to Eden, and divided Ipsiss into eight regions.
From then on, humanity proved the existence of angels.
Ipsiss: A product of the Ideal Ring period, assembled by dismantling the six major planets that originally orbited the star in the stellar system.
It is a glorious testament to humanity.
Thermoelectric Conversion System:
A thermoelectric conversion technology obtained by humanity after contact with the angels, capable of converting more than 97% of the light energy projected onto its surface into electrical energy.
Contactless Power Transmission System:
Because the Thermoelectric Conversion System outputs direct current, after constructing a Thermoelectric Conversion System that enveloped half the star’s brightness, humanity installed the same type of stellar-ring drive used on Ipsiss onto the system, causing the power generation system and the stellar ring to maintain a certain differential rotation.
On the basis of this differential speed, the Contactless Power Transmission System converts the DC output of the thermoelectric conversion system into grid-compatible alternating current, avoiding large-scale renovation of the power grid.