She did not look like the sort of person I imagined living in ruins.
In my impression, whether in movies, anime, manga, games, or the news, people living in ruins were always ragged and tattered.
But the clothes this girl wore, while they couldn’t be called brand new, were fairly clean—just soaked through.
The white robe had probably been soaked through by the earlier rain, revealing a few glimpses of peach-colored skin.
Glistening droplets made her waist-length golden hair cling to her back, still dripping.
A few grains of sand still clung to the palm tightly gripping my arm, digging in with a slight sting.
She stood like that, one foot bare in sand that could still be squeezed for water, looked up, and gazed at me with eyes that reflected the blue sky.
“Angel, it really is Lord Angel!…”
At this moment, her eyes were filled with the Halo above my head and the embarrassed expression on my face.
Perhaps only then realizing something was off, the next instant she hurriedly let go and moved her chest away from my collar, then bowed deeply toward me.
“Ah, I’m sorry, that was far too rash. To appear before you looking like this.”
Then she patted herself down, as if searching for something.
After that, she picked up a reddish-brown, branch-like short staff from beside her feet and waved it in circles through the air, as if conducting an orchestra that was playing a cheerful dance tune.
“O wind spirits who dance lightly upon the earth, please heed my call and come to my side. I offer you the tender leaves of the fragrant nanmu and invite you to dance a joyful dance beside me… Dance, dance… Please carry away the rain and dew upon my body…”
A green magic circle lit up beneath the golden-haired girl’s feet.
The way she waved the short staff looked as if she herself were dancing with the wind.
As a tender green leaf drifted away from her opened palm on the breeze, the rainwater on her body was blown away in that dancing little wind, and her beautiful golden hair became dry and smooth once more.
Then she turned her gaze toward me again.
“Ah… forgive my presumption…”
The short staff in her hand was probably something like a wand, similar to the one used by the purple-haired girl in the Hero’s party earlier.
While she twirled the short staff in circles in front of me, a green magic circle also appeared beneath my feet.
A gentle breeze carrying the fresh scent of leaves brushed against my body, soft and warm, carrying away the damp rain-qi clinging to me.
Magic…
Such a gentle magic.
Even the feathers on my wings grew soft and fluffy in the mild wind.
I looked up at the girl before me.
Having put away the wand, she placed both hands in front of her legs, stood properly there, and smiled at me.
“The incantation was very gentle, very cute,” I said, looking up at her. “Is it a wind-magic incantation?”
“Eh? Eh?!”
But the moment I said that, the golden-haired girl in white widened her eyes in panic as if she had been struck by beans, then covered her flushed face.
“Th-thank you, Lord Angel.”
“Nn… hm?”
Thank you?
In the midst of my confusion, the girl carefully took two steps closer, half-bent so that she was at the same height as me, and said,
“I am a trueborn child. My parents were once nobles of Talgico. But the year I was born, my father committed a crime and was thrown into prison, my mother was sold to Fūga Street, and I lost my status as a noble heir. If a kind person hadn’t sent me to the church, we would probably have died long ago.”
“Such an improper incantation has truly sullied Lord Angel’s ears. I am very sorry. Because of that, I never attended proper incantation classes. I learned all of this on my own in the church library… The incantations are things I made up myself as well. I hope Lord Angel will not take offense.”
Eh…
All of a sudden I didn’t know what to say.
This life story, these words, had caught me completely off guard.
Looking at those clear, azure eyes, I unconsciously took a step back.
“Being able to create incantations yourself is pretty amazing too.”
“It’s just the random inventions of us lowly folk~,” she said. “If you have a certain amount of magical knowledge, you can still create one or two of these simple incantations. They’re just not as efficient as proper ones, and you always need to exchange something for them…”
“It can’t be helped. Poor people have no right to an education. At most you learn to read at the church. The church does have a library of a certain size for those with ambition to study. So people who can use magic are welcome wherever they go. It’s not… that bad, really.”
Not that bad…?
Perhaps she simply didn’t feel her life was particularly hard, only because she had long grown used to it.
“That’s right, Lord Angel!~”
While I was still in a daze, the girl recovered her cheerful expression, placed a hand on her chest, and said,
“My name is Alice Lafka. It’s an inconspicuous name, but it would be enough if Lord Angel could remember it.”
“Ah, um… that, my name is Lin Yulin…”
“Eh?!”
?
I hadn’t even finished introducing myself when Alice was startled into another full-face blush.
Then she excitedly covered her face, wearing an enraptured expression.
“L-Lord Angel introduced herself to me…!”
“Ah… um…”
Was this something that warranted such an exaggerated reaction?
So this Halo on my head really was something that easily caused all sorts of misunderstandings.
An angel…?
A title I had never dared to imagine.
But…
At that thought I couldn’t help turning to look at the pair of pitch-black wings behind me.
Did she not know what a black-winged “angel” meant?
Without my noticing, the sky seemed to have grown a little darker.
I looked up.
The sun still hung high in the middle of the sky, but the clouds around it were gradually taking on threads of crimson.
“That’s right, Lord Angel.”
While I was still in a daze, Alice’s voice came from a direction that was almost pressed against my ear.
I turned to look at her.
She stood beside me with her hands behind her back, smiling at me, looking very familiar.
I tilted my head slightly and looked at her the same way.
“What is it?”
“Does Lord Angel have any plans next?” she asked, still smiling.
Plans…
I had none at all.
Rather, I had only just arrived in this world.
No reincarnation goddess, no starter perk, not even a map or a beginner’s tutorial… nothing.
All that was left to me were mysteries.
“Are angels common?”
Even though I knew asking this would expose the fact that I knew next to nothing about this world, I still couldn’t help asking Alice.
“Not really.”
For some reason, although Alice was still smiling, she looked lonely.
“You are the first angel I have seen in my life. Perhaps it is only because my faith is too devout.”
“But for most people, even the priest of our church has never seen an angel. Whether their faith is devout or not, everyone has only seen them in legends and picture books.”
What, isn’t that the same as our world?
I couldn’t help taking a deep breath.
No wonder Alice had decided I was an angel based only on the Halo and the wings.
But at this point it was already hard to open my mouth and explain that I might not actually be an angel.
Looking at my reflection in her clear eyes, I couldn’t help taking another step back.
“Perhaps it would be better not to get involved with me.”
***
Trueborn:
After the War of Heaven, the vast majority of humans in this world lost the ability to reproduce.
Only a small portion of humans retained reproductive capability, namely the so-called nobles.
However, the reproductive organs of ordinary humans are highly degenerated.
Although their function is unchanged, they cannot undergo meiosis and thus cannot produce sperm or eggs, and therefore cannot reproduce.
As a result, humans who possessed natural reproductive ability gradually became the nobility through the course of history.
Only nobles and nobles can naturally produce offspring.
Naturally produced human offspring are trueborn; otherwise they are citizens.
Ordinary humans are born from the Temples and assigned to ordinary families according to the laws of each nation.
Temple: A byproduct produced by the Agbais Protocol after the War of Heaven.
The Agbais Protocol stipulated that humans must not infringe upon any products or living beings belonging to Eden.
At the same time, aside from a small number of humans reserved to preserve gene-pool diversity, genetically modified humans would lose the ability to reproduce naturally, and gene-based reproduction and the allocation of innate abilities would be carried out uniformly by the Eden Statistics Bureau.
Note: In the early period after the War of Heaven ended, a large number of Ideal Ring production and construction facilities were still able to operate normally.
However, because human genes had been modified by the Agbais Protocol, humans born from the Temples could not pass the facilities’ genetic-factor authentication.
In a broad sense, humanity lost the ability to control and use the Ideal Ring.
Precisely because of this, the large amount of resources left behind by the previous humanity provided excellent conditions for biological evolution.
Besides humans, more intelligent species were born on the Ideal Ring.