A/N: Hello there, dear reader. It's me! the one who has plenty of stories started, and chapters for them not yet published - because I hate how they turned out - laughing at the very concept of a chapter, bringing you yet another story!

And yes, this is yet another story about an OC getting transported like our guy papa bones, but there's enough twists to it to not feel cheap, in my opinion. I'm open to suggestions and criticism, if anyone has any. Also, keep in mind that the MC is slightly a nutjob, and you may ask why. I don't know, everything below wrote itself with little interference from my conscious mind.

Enjoy.

Arc I: A City in the Sky

In the year 2126, a revolution on the entertainment market was made when a game development group announced their new title "YGGDRASIL", using state-of-the-art tech such as the neural nano-interface – until the release of YGGDRASIL, no attempts of using that technology for games or anything even remotely mainstream – YGGDRASIL featured a hitherto unseen level of player freedom, customization and sheer size, the likes that had only been dreamed about for more than a century. Beyond the basic knowledge about the systems to play the game and a general idea of the genre – that were almost completely generic with the exception of specific player controls, which were entirely a new creation – the dev team was very hands off about things that could be done in the game, leaving the playerbase to experiment hit and miss in most situations.

There were many sellpoints for YGGDRASIL for many different audiences, from the novel experience of really being in the shoes of your avatar and directly controlling their every move, to the customization, the aesthetics, the seemingly infinite adventures that could potentially be experienced on the nine worlds that seemed to be larger each time one travelled them, guild creation, which also includes guild wars and base capturing, the economy, roleplaying – name it, and there is audience interested on it.

From lone wolves who just wanted to sight-see – as such a thing was impossible to do in the real world – to people who joined together to clear some dungeon, attack some kingdom, or assault other players, to people who only wanted to vent anger or frustration with the over-the top action and violence possible in the game, to nekama and other types of roleplayers, to fantasy authors who wanted to use the game to visualize parts of a novel, or a character, or wanted inspiration, to any other kind of weirdo that could be possibly thought of, and more.

YGGDRASIL alone changed the way of the market in other ways, outside of the game itself. Its reception was so great, that the company responsible for the production of the Neural Nano-interface – an until then mere curiosity – had its stock empty overnight, and continued to be empty for months afterward, with their production unable to keep up with the astronomical-level demand spike. With the widespread use of the NNI, traffic going through other, more traditional mediums was reduced dramatically, and companies had to adapt, while a good number of them saw in the NNI new ways to make profit.

But such things were completely inconsequential to the YGGDRASIL player Sera, who in actuality was one of the few fantasy writers who could claim to make profit from their works of fiction nowadays. That ID being a pseudonym, just like the other names he wrote under. Not an extreme sensation in the world from his works – in fact, if you were to ask anyone about any of his pseudonyms, for people it most likely wouldn't ring a bell. But that's fine, he didn't care about that either – actually, being a celebrity would be extremely tedious if he were to be honest – and he didn't care much about money beyond using it to sustain himself with the bare minimum.

And YGGDRASIL had come out at the perfect time for him, as he had grown rather tired of other mythological settings he had already written about – namely Japanese and similar – and the (mostly) Nordic setting was a most welcome change for a completely new world for him to build.

Before starting up with the game, he had to catch up with what's what – being mostly unfamiliar with norse mythology – and reading up about the basic starting classes on the game, with their pros and cons. After carefully thinking about the very start of the next story he wanted to write, he finally decided.

Creating his avatar after the, so to speak, "primordial being" of this new world, he decided upon a particular heteromorphic race, the Angels. While by the point he joined the game the Great Prosecution of Heteromorph players was in its all-time peak, Angels were one of the few of such races that weren't killed on sight – mostly on two factors, first that Angels didn't look monstrous, and secondly but most importantly, the existence of the Guild Seraphim more or less guaranteed the protection of most angelic players, if they didn't have any prior confrontation with said player.

Now, the name of his character wasn't as much deeply thought about as he wanted, being that all those names had been already being in use, no matter how many hundreds of them he typed – and in a moment of desperation he just cut off the 'phim' from Seraphim and he found almost unbelievably an username which wasn't used. Momentarily, he was relieved, because he for sure would not be one of those who steep so low as to use random letter and number combinations to use as a name. The name was nothing inspired and he certainly couldn't link it up with the character he had in mind, but the name of the avatar wasn't very important when the time to type the draft and final novel.

What he hadn't expected was that just a few months into playing the game, his priorities shifted from writing at the top, to play YGGDRAISL at the top. He wasn't saying that he didn't write anymore, but it was certainly less than what was before.

And so a few years passed by exploring the Nine Worlds, fighting and running from mobs and bosses, discovering a few secret locations, grinding a bit so further exploration was easier, buying some mercenary NPCs because he quickly learned that teaming up with other people was a hit and miss that regularly was a miss when it came to what he was looking for. Somewhere after four years of playing the game he started to make liberal use of the real-money in-game market, such as gacha and other premium items. He always made sure to leave enough to subsist, but any plus was going mostly towards some thing or another in the game. A few years after that, he started again writing more than playing, because he had hit a metaphorical wall – the character he had designed, Sera, was mostly as he had imagined her, and he had seen much of the Nine Worlds, enough to have a very solid base to develop upon. What had been a slight bummer was that he had reached the 'cap' of accompanying NPCs he could personally create without having a Base, which was the high number of two – given that their character creation platform had to be somewhere, and being that he didn't have a base, those platforms had to go to his inventory. And those platforms occupied way too much space with his build for having more than to two to be a viable option.

That had been an absolute nerf on the devs' part, as before he started purchasing premium items there have been lone players with a legion worth of NPCs – but it had been deemed "too unbalanced".

Fast forward a few weeks, and he found a new opportunity while exploring the more dangerous parts of Midgard.

A lone figure walked through highly decorated hallways, coat of arms and windows sporadically ornamenting walls made of carefully designed masonry while pristine wooden floors that were carpeted with an extremely high-quality royal red fabric with golden embroidery led towards a great double door made from a bronze-ish metal to the outside.

Sera was lamenting the fact that he would lose all this he worked so much for. There was still so much that there could be done, explore, discover and create – heck, he still hadn't written up every character he had made on his little space he had made for himself.

Walking at a sedate pace, the Seraphim finally passed the great double door. He sighed, both in appreciation – like many times he had done before – and sadness alike.

After discovering this place and making it his 'base', he had spent a huge deal of time and money to make it just as one of the important places for his novel, and the result was one he was most certainly pleased with.

Originally when scouting this area, he hadn't thought much about it – it was your typical floating island somewhat common in the more dangerous parts of many of the Nine Worlds, albeit on the big side. Most of the time, such islands are largely empty with the odd trinket or some rare minor item hidden, and in very counted cases they turned out to be something really valuable, like a Dragon's Nest or the like.

So using a racial trait of his avatar, the ability to fly without the use of spells, he went up in the air to take a peek if there was anything interesting.

What he had found however, was something he didn't expect. The floating mass of rock was home to a few humanoid villages of various races, and some which were visibly destroyed, along with a ruined castle in one of the hills. With a big fucking Ancient Dragon resting on top of it.

He thought he had hit the jackpot, as Ancient Dragons were practically a goldmine worth of loot, and largely dismissed the rest of the landscape as simple "flavour" from the devs' part. But when he landed on the floating island, a "quest log" appeared on his HUD – a rare occurrence given the go-blindly kind of gameplay that was the norm on YGGDRASIL. In fact, the "quest log" didn't offer much guidance beyond stating "free the land from its oppressor", so it wasn't like it was of big help anyways.

It was certainly not an event, or at least not one wildly publicized as normally such a thing is, so he thought he had found a nice little easter egg, the kind that were a few thousand of all throughout the game.

It didn't really matter to him though, as he would hunt that wyrm with or without the need of a quest – it was to that level of a profitable endeavour.

His current "party" consisted of a single player – himself – and two NPCs that were meticulously created by him.

His build was an uncommon, though certainly not unseen one, a combination of mage and ranger that specialized in offense at long ranges and in a short span of time. Like literally everything else in YGGDRASIL, having this job had its own respective perks and penalties – being a hybrid job meant that there are some abilities that were locked and couldn't be used, such as specialized spells and skills and some branches of magic, but came with being able to use a rather unknown weapon class, the spellbow. This weapon served in many ways like a staff to many mage-classes, but had the unique ability of also being able to use normal arrows if the user so desired.

Being a magic archer was essentially like being a multitasker, able to do a great deal of magic damage but also capable of dealing physical damage – with the added advantage of being able to cast most spells at least ten times faster than other magic classes when using the spellbow, with the downside of being locked off from most of the more useful area-of-effect spells available, and having a heavy penalty when trying to cast without the bow. To be concise, a magic archer wasn't good at crowd controlling in most occasions, but could be very useful against single powerful enemies or even a reduced group of enemies. This class had also a wider choice of skills to pick for close quarter combat with daggers than other magic casters, and could even use swords, although with a reduced efficiency compared to full-blown warriors.

In many ways it was one of the best "jack of all trades, master of none" builds known, but the addition of his angelic abilities fitted this job almost perfectly – being able to fly around without mana consumption and casting spells in a fraction of the time other magic casters could, one could say he had become the ultimate partisan. There is also the fact that he had found out some racial classes of the angelic race gave specific buffs to his build, or that unlocked "unique" skills and spells.

Having his build in consideration, he prepared his two NPCs to both complement each other and himself – a close quarter specialist and a specialized magic caster capable of all magics he wasn't able to cast.

The first, armed with a stubby shortspear and shield combo, wearing a set of rather heavy armour and capable of minor spells from the Paladin class was a Cherubim named Drifa whose design was originally heavily influenced by Valkyries, but quickly started to take concepts from other European mythologies – not unlike YGGDRASIL itself. As it stands, Drifa was combat wise a very good tank capable of taking a beating very well, as well as being able to heal herself and do some minor buffs when the situation required. Sera had painstakingly and meticulously chosen Drifa's attire to match her build as best as it could, granting extra damage resistance for both magic and physical attacks, as well as resistance to various ailments and outright immunity to some others that the angelic race was not – such as the typical spam of Chronomantic spells ever so common in the later stages of the game. Drifa was, more importantly, also a character and key to the "tale of creation" for his new novel and had the character description full to the brim with lore.

The second was an Elder Lich, a logical choice given the race's affinity to the arcane, and the role that was needed to fill. Daith, a completely bare bones figure covered by a black robe that was reminiscent to many depictions of the Grim Reaper – as common as it would be, as almost every single character on the Skeleton Mage tree was dressed in the same fashion. Aside from clichés, his build was effective on what's it was intended to be. Liches' natural resistance to normal Necromancy and some types of magic meant that to attack Daith effectively one had to use different attacks than the ones effective to the other two. He served mostly as a support character but had several devastating AoE attacks that were used only when the order was given. Naturally, he also was a key character to one of the myths for his novel and had also his character description full.

Both of them were very good companions at level 80-ish, the same as Sera, but naturally couldn't measure up to a player who knew what he was doing, so for PvP they were in a big disadvantage. They were good for PvE encounters, however, and particularly well prepared to fight that Ancient Dragon resting on top of that destroyed fortress.

The downside to companion/mercenary NPCs is that for many things they needed direct orders to act optimally – no matter whether voice or written orders. Voiced commands were in more widespread use among those who used the NPCs, as most people would argue that saying things out-loud is faster than taking the time to write them, even if shouting them out loud gave off exactly what the character was going to do and rendering the command pointless as the enemy (in a PvP scenario) would be prepared for it. Written messages giving orders however could be set on private so the orders would be unknown to anyone aside the player. And this is what Sera used to offset the unbalance when dealing with PKers, because after so many years of writing he could actually write faster than he could speak.

So, after making the necessary preparations so the upcoming battle with the Dragon went as smoothly as it could, the group of three went up the castle and battled it. More than half of the fight was while flying as all combatants were fly-capable, and Drifa soaked up most of the attacks while Sera blitzed its sides with fast adamantine-headed magic-infused arrows and Daith got enough time to cast his more effective high-tier spells. In typical MMORPG fashion with a powerful enemy and few combatants, it took almost an hour to defeat the beast, but when finished, all that time was worth the rewards. Ancient Dragon scales and other materials were of very high quality, used in early-endgame crafting and otherwise were worth quite a bit of coin. But as he was packing up the loot, a message popped up again on his HUD, saying "QUEST COMPLETE!" and he was about to ignore it as it didn't gave automatically the rewards from completing a dungeon, but he noticed he couldn't close the window. Now reading it, with each word his surprise grew more and more.

"With the oppressor's vanquish, now it is possible to claim the land as your own. Do you want to take ownership of this location?"

What. He thought that to own a Guild Base you had to be part of well, a guild –which he was not – and it had to be a dungeon to begin with, which this location was certainly not.

But not to look at the gifted horse in the mouth, he accepted with growing excitement and dread in equal amounts. If it really becomes a Guild Base for him, depending on the amount of available levels available he could be free to make some characters that he had been thinking of for the last few years, and he was anticipating such an event because visualizing the two he made in-game certainly sparked more character development than he would have thought possible before. However, if it was too good of a deal, it could become a target for other players, and he knew with absolute certainty that he couldn't hope to best an attacking Guild with only a few NPCs and automatic defences.

What happened however was neither what he hoped for nor what he feared, but something in-between.

Many of the functions known for Guild Bases were there, some were not, and more interestingly those villages in the floating island became "affiliated" with him. Opening the new Base tab, he found in the treasury a few items that were mostly trash, and there was a "daily income" which specified that it came from the surrounding settlements. He had never heard of anything of the sort, but it didn't quite as much of a shock as YGGDRASIL was known for having so many things yet to be discovered. The income by itself wasn't anything to bat an eye about, it didn't reach ten thousand per day, so about a year worth of these 'taxes' could buy a single bone of the Ancient Dragon he just slew.

Also, his new base didn't count as a Guild Base, so it couldn't be used as an objective for Guild Wars – meaning it couldn't be conquered by other players as far as he could tell. It also meant that there was no option to create a Guild Weapon, but such a thing was not all that important in comparison.

He could have joined some guild ages ago and created some of the characters he wanted, but the fact was that he knew himself enough to know that he would pester anyone in the guild he joined to let him create all NPCs and he was sure problems would erupt from that. Essentially, he wanted to create all characters and places he possibly could, and reflecting on many of the players he had interacted with in all those years, well, he couldn't see that happening.

But now all that power was on his reach, for him and him alone.

He smirked madly, although his character didn't manifest it because imposed technical limitations.

"I'm going to have a good time" he thought.

And he had.

Now, in the twilight hours of YGGDRASIL, and long after finishing grinding like crazy to reach level one hundred, he leisurely wandered through his greatest creation. He counted in it all of its NPCs, all of the buildings he had placed. What once was a sad ruined excuse for a castle was practically completely re-made, adding extra towers and other minor buildings and changing its aesthetic from mildly norse to mostly gothic. He had already given up on maintaining a strictly-nordic setting, much like YGGDRASIL's devs.

The woods all around the castle were almost completely replaced with a massive sprawling city that also includes the pre-existing settlements, except for a rather sizable patch of land that was dedicated to farmland.

At the edge of the floating island, massive double walls similar in concept to the Theodosian Walls but with the same aesthetic as the castle enclosed the massive city.

There were many buildings, and many more NPCs – both POPs and manually created ones. In fact, from what information he had gathered about Guild Bases, the POPs in the floating island behaved a little differently. They increased in number weekly if there was any extra housing, and they had to be maintained with produce – which was the main reason behind the existence of the farmland in the first place. A percentage of the population automatically becomes a "guard" up to level thirty, with builds mostly random. There are three main species of POPs – human, elf and dwarf, each spawning from a different point, where before were the original villages. They weren't great by any stretch of the imagination, but at least they didn't count towards the level limit so they were essentially free cannon fodder. They also served to make the city feel lived in, which was an added bonus.

Sera had a difficult time naming it, but after a few months of building the metropolis – and not doing much of anything else really – he decided on Almha, the Celestial City and one of the most important cities on his new novel, which only had in common the name because the original Almha he had already written was a tad different – no floating island for instance.

From the entrance of Heavenscrown Castle, Sera glanced upon it all. In less than an hour, all this would be gone, forever. He couldn't say that it had been wasted time, as he had the most fun in his life creating this city, and it served very well on its purposes of being a source of almost endless inspiration – but damn if it didn't hurt.

Once more, he started to walk down the immaculate white stairs that lead to the castle from the biggest avenue in the metropolis. On the same road, south from the castle laid the Grand Cathedral, and according to his written lore, a place where the populace pray to the Goddess of Creation – in other words, Sera's own avatar. He even made a sculpture-like golem in the same image as his avatar – albeit considerably larger – stand guard in front of the cathedral's doors. Obviously, no NPC did pray at all, as such behaviour wasn't available. However that didn't mean that he couldn't make the religion's heads anyways. They weren't anything imposing – they were the High Priest, the Inquisitor and the Holy Maiden, of which none surpassed level fifty. Nonetheless, the High Priest was a job-wise high-level divine magic caster and thanks to special items able to summon 'holy creatures' up to tier eight; the Inquisitor was alike job-wise rather high level in the paladin branch, and the Holy Maiden had a build similar to Sera's own, and in fact was equipped a spellbow he had used previously. All of them, obviously, had their description tab full with lore about themselves and their relationship with other NPCs.

East down the avenue was where the Arcane University and the Great Library were located – the University had a few NPCs inspired by various wizards from different myths and pop culture, and the Library was full of books he had either bought, found or written himself. Needless to say, the great majority was written by him – as he could finish several of these 'books' in a week without even trying – and the ones that were not written by him were mostly related to magic spells. Honouring his perceived sacredness of the place, the Head Librarian was a level one hundred NPC that could take a beating and more importantly, give one. Sera has the personal opinion that more than enough libraries had been burnt down all throughout human history, and even if this one couldn't even really burn, it was the sentiment which mattered.

West down the road laid the Barracks of the Paladin's Order and the Griffin's nest. This is the first place any outsider would find themselves in if they weren't capable of flying, so it had accordingly an un-proportional amount of high level NPCs – and NPCs in general, not counting POPs. The Paladin's Order was full of, well, paladins – most built to be extremely durable tanks with a few in between who were actually DPS and other few who were more proficient with magic. There were five other knights present on this area also had the beast-tamer job and used Griffins from the nearby nest as mounts, leaving a pair of two level one hundred Elder Griffins in the nest without a rider.

As is tradition, every single character, including the five griffins and the two elder ones, had an extensively defined character description.

Looking at the time, Sera realized that there was less than ten minutes left until the shutdown. Using the common angelic trait to fly, he made way back towards Heavenscrown Castle. He had little time to sightsee anymore, no matter how captivating any and all visages he created turned out. Landing just in front of the fortress' great double doors, Sera walked at a quicker pace through the exquisitely decorated hallways until reaching the Throne Room, where five figures were standing and another one sat on the majestic golden throne at the end of the room.

The floor was decorated with an even higher quality carpet and more intricate embroidery than the one leading to this room. Rows of columns supporting gothic arches divided the room in three parts, being the centre the most important as it is where the throne was placed, and the two sides which were designed for the use of servants to do their duties without interfering any important business – not that it mattered in-game because no such thing happened . From the high vaulted ceiling a row of chandeliers hang, all of them of an extremely elegant design, and in the wall just behind the throne was what looked like a great window, though no light from outside passed through.

The five standing figures were the Five Generals, all level eighty, and the figure in the throne was the Hero-king Kainen, who was the NPC he had thought of the most, since Kainen was one of the main characters for at least a few important arcs. He was dressed on a set of heavy armour consisting of a decorated plated coat and covered by a highly decorated purple and golden surcoat, dark plated gauntlets and pauldrons, similar looking plated leg armour and sabatons, a great dark brown cape with a white fluffy-looking fur that rested on his shoulders, and a golden circlet-styled crown that decorated his forehead while apparently keeping his long scarlet hair out of his face. Each and every single item he wore was of divine class, his jewellery had enchantments that complimented his build perfectly, and on his hip rested a sheathed golden sword.

Although this Hero-king and the one he had written about in his drafts differed a little in context – this one, to explain why they are on a floating island, had 'lead his people under the guidance of the Goddess to a land that would be protected while the rest of the world was destroyed' basically. It was slightly ironic now, like he had written something foreboding of the future – the world going to end and now YGGDRASIL was shutting down.

Sera extended his arm towards the Hero-king at the same time sending the NPC an order to follow, then gave the Five Generals the order to kneel. Without looking back, he extended his angelic wings and flew towards the portal that was on the window, and he knew Kainen was right behind using the amulet that granted [Fly].

What awaited them beyond the portal was the only part of this place that would let it classify as a 'dungeon', and it wasn't because it was originally there, but because it functioned exactly the same as most dungeons in having floors that were different dimensions. It had been a gift from the devs' part for using so much money for cash items one particular month.

The room one is transported by going through the portal is a great hall with tables full of food and drink, very similar to Valhalla, in fact. But its inhabitants aren't exactly the souls of those fallen in battle – because that would need more levels than the level cap permits, and having a bunch of level one 'legendary heroes' would be anticlimactic and lame.

In contrast, to circumvent this problem, Sera created the "Five Hero Spirits" which were in actuality phantasms, the top tier of the ghost tree.

The ghost tree was treated by most players as a joke, as it is completely immune to physical damage but takes double damage from magic from the divine type, as well as being unable to deal physical damage. What many didn't know was the fact that from Spectre and onwards, they had the ability to not only possess enemies and deal direct damage disregarding resistances completely, but also the ability to possess allies, which added up half the phantasm's levels to the target for as long as the possession was active.

So, in a way, players using the ghost-branch were the ultimate support player. Not a thing many people liked, it seemed, because there hasn't been much information on the net about these classes.

What even less people seemed to know is that there is no limit of how many phantasms can possess a single allied character, meaning one could stack two level one hundred phantasm players on another level one hundred player and their combined might would equal to a level two hundred player, something that is an impossibility in-game.

Sera had discovered this accidentally, but that didn't mean that he wouldn't abuse it. Sadly, base-created NPCs couldn't leave the boundaries of the base. Sure, he could go and buy premium platforms to create a few NPC companions of this style, but he couldn't think of a reason for another, different character to be a phantasm. He valued his own worldbuilding too highly to create a character without good reason.

As it is, the Five Hero Spirits are what one could expect, they are the amalgamation of the souls of the fallen in battle that fill certain categories – all lore-wise only, obviously. There's the Priest, the Mage, the Ranger, the Paladin and the Strategist– although the list feels a little lacking compared to the many other roles available in-game, they make sense lore-wise.

In the hypothetical case of an enemy raid reaching the Throne Room and defeating the Five Generals, Sera had typed in a command for the five Spirits to pass through the portal and immediately possess Kainen to give him a ludicrously powerful power-up of plus two hundred and fifty levels, making the Hero-king one of the most powerful entities of the game, bar some Gods, some Dragons and the World-Eater itself.

Having this and only this purpose in mind, each phantasm had job classes that were repeated the least possible.

For example, the Priest not only was for Divine magic, but also for a myriad of other support spells and classes such as seer and anti-scrying while the Mage specialized mostly on other types of offensive magic.

The result was, however good on paper, never tested as there hadn't been many attempts to sack his sanctuary and all of those were stopped right on the entrance, so there hadn't been anyone to reach the Throne Room.

The spirits were standing on guard right at the sides of the portal, with the exception of the Strategist who was in front of it.

Sera bypassed them completely, and continued walking towards the far end of the hall, where another set of double doors were.

This time, instead of golden metal or metal in general, the doors were made of a rare type of wood that was, allegedly, resistant to magic and more durable than normal metals while still being lighter. This was also the most decorated set of doors he made, and with good reason – what lied beyond was 'the seat of the Goddess' after all, it needed to be on another level to anything else.

In the dark wood was ornamented with a bas-relief depicting a skeleton on the outer left side of the doors and an angel on the outer right of the doors, both reaching inwards towards a feminine figure which was perfectly cut in half when the doors opened. Said figures are no other than Daith, Drifa, and his own avatar, Sera. He was very proud of the artwork, he spent a good part of a month with this final design, and who knows how much time with all the failed attempts. The work was delicate, elegant yet not overcharged, and gave off the impression of the figures being real. Truly, a masterpiece.

Beyond these doors laid a rather small room with stepped floor, getting higher the further one went. The room itself was similarly decorated as the doors that led to it quality-wise, a pristine white carpeting decorating the floor while even higher-quality fabrics hanged from the sealing in inverted arches of cloth, the walls were also of pure colour with embellishments of gold, silver and gems, and in the zenith of the steps, a similarly white diwan with delicate and intricate golden decorations. From the high windows on the walls, light dimly entered the room from the great white void that lay beyond.

Two figures were kneeling one on each side of the sofa, on the left was Daith, now an Overlord Wiseman, and on the right was Drifa, now a Seraphim. Both were garbed on appropriate divine-class gear and, in Drifa's case, also sported a divine-class weapon and shield.

Daith, however good quality of equipment he had, always ended up resembling the grim reaper due to his race, but that was acceptable since he was supposed to be an analogue. Dressed on a fine black robe with embroidery of silver, a rather oversized hood covered his head and left his face on the dark. A total of six rings adorned his hands, each having an enchantment that either compensated for his racial weaknesses or granted a buff to a spell, beyond the obligatory anti-chronomancy ring.

Drifa, on the other hand, had changed her wardrobe quite noticeably. She sported now a set of silvery heavy plate with a white tabard on top, with her helmet unequipped right now, leaving her silver hair and eyes and carefully sculpted face in plain view. There wasn't much work to do with Daith appearance-wise, so the time to visually modify him went to Drifa instead.

Just like Kainan looked like a rather handsome young man with long scarlet hair and golden eyes, Drifa looked downright gorgeous, like a paradigm of beauty.

Sera continued walking towards the diwan, but just before he reached it he turned around and ordered the Hero-king to bend on a knee in front of the sofa, and then Sera reposed on said furniture.

His eyes barely left the corner of his HUD where the countdown was present, as if it was making fun of him and everything he built in all those years. He couldn't fault the developers though, no matter how much it stung.

His final moments on YGGDRASIL were plagued with recurrent thoughts and sadness. He really didn't want to see anything he made go just like that, but accepted the fact that there is nothing he could possibly do about it directly.

23:58:50

"Hmm… I guess it's time to go back to nonstop writing again. Maybe I will find something similar to YGGDRASIL out there, but I need to cement everything I created here on a story. Or several, however many it takes."

23:59:35

Sera closed his eyes. "Goodbye, my children" because that's what he felt about not only every single character he created, but also every single structure, every detail. It truly felt like his own magnum opus, one that only he had ever seen, and no one else could ever possibly fully envision.

23:59:58

23:59:59

00:00:00

…

00:00:01

…

Many things overloaded Sera's senses at the same time. The softness of the fabrics he was wearing and the diwan he was resting on, the pure air he breathed, unfamiliar weights both on his scalp and chest, and more importantly – when he opened his eyes again, expecting to see the boring dull grey paint of his apartment's ceiling, he saw instead the same he saw before closing his eyes, the Goddess' room.

Several conflicting thoughts assaulted his mind, "Am I still logged in on YGGDRASIL? Was the shutdown a prank? Had they prolonged the game? Why does my HUD not show up? Why can smell things and feel the world this well? I can't access the menus. I can't logoff. Emergency logoff doesn't work. GM? Doesn't work. Message? But message who? I don't know anyone that well." He reached for his face with his right hand, and was surprised to discover that his avatar was showing an emotion, like if he were his avatar.

"My Lady? Is something the matter?" A soft, melodic voice was carried through the room. Sera turned his head towards the source, and his surprise grew as he concluded that indeed, Drifa had asked that question, as she was looking at him with an expression of genuine concern, both that should be impossible for an NPC – heck, showing emotions should also be impossible for players like himself.

A pit at the bottom of his stomach started to grow. "It couldn't be that…"

The both of them maintained eye contact for a few moments, before Drifa hurriedly looked back down. "I'm sorry, Lady Sera, but I noticed your distress and wanted to be of use, please understand…"

Sera saw fit to calm her down, as Drifa didn't do anything serious, so he lifted an arm and said "Don't worry, Drifa. I was pondering…" his own voice sounded so strange, that he had to pause because he couldn't believe it was really his voice. Soft, almost velvety but also slightly commanding and demanding respect – what you would expect from a powerful Seraphim to have, like his avatar… his avatar? Himself? Or herself?

Dread continued to pool on his stomach.

"What is, then, the subject that brought you so much distress, my Lady?" Now it was Kainen who spoke up, his golden eyes seemed to glow brightly.

Sera took a moment to organize his, erm, her thoughts to form a believable reason – he-she doubted the NPCs would know about what she was stressing about.

It was also strange the fact that they could sense her distress even though she had barely done anything to demonstrate – which was also strange, her reaction didn't match with what she would expect herself to do in such a scenario – her distress, which amounted to slightly frown and touching his… her own face. "Damn this is going to be difficult."

"… I don't think we are on Midgard anymore. I thought the Ragnarok would end all of you." Both true, if you replace 'Ragnarok' with 'YGGDRASIL shutting its servers down'. It is true, after all, that the best lies are the ones who have a sprinkling of truth in them.

The other three occupants of the room visibly tensed to that statement, to which she continued.

"… Mighty Hero, it would be best if you went back. Your Kingdom surely is in the need of their King given these uncertain events."

The redhead complied with reverence, and swiftly left the room. At least, by being the one who wrote all of them, Sera exactly how should she act to stay in character – because if one thing was certain was the uncertainty of the situation. Sera created all of them to venerate *herself* as a goddess, but if they became real like they seemed, how they acted became unpredictable.

The 'goddess' turned her head to address the other two that had stayed in the room.
"Rise – Daith, Drifa. I would have to ask of you to leave me to my thoughts for a while." Sera said trying her best to speak in such a way that didn't break character – just to be on the safe side.

Both got to their feet, but hesitated to follow the rest of the order.

Drifa in particular sported a visible expression of uncertainty – although the Overlord may also be having similar thoughts as her, but given the racial trait of having a clean skull, it was difficult to deduct. Sera addressed the other seraphim "Do you have a question for me, Drifa?" to which the Valkyrie tensed slightly, but answered with little more inquiry.

"No… I mean, yes, my Lady. It's just… I thought…" she trailed off, trying not to make any visual contact.

"Yes?"

"Is this like with the Old Kingdom again?" the silver-headed woman asked. She was referencing a specific piece of lore that was part only of the in-game world, which explained why the Almha was a massive metropolis in the sky. According to what was written, the Celestial City had not been part of Midgard in its origin, but was transported there after the world it was native to ended. In-game none of it was true, as Sera could testify because it had been himself – as the author and player – who found the island in Midgard and then added all other NPCs and buildings.

Sera blinked, not expecting the NPC to ask her something based off the lore she wrote as if it was truth. Going by the tone Drifa asked the question, could it be that the descriptions the player wrote were translated as fabricated memories? If so, had every NPC experienced the same as Drifa, then?

Sera briefly looked towards the Overlord at her right, as her thoughts ran wildly. "Perhaps… it is a similar occurrence… indeed." Sera moved her eyes again to meet the Valkyrie's, and noted that Drifa still had a thought visibly bothering her, if her expression was anything to go by.

"You have another question." This time, Sera didn't ask in as much as plainly stated.

The seraphim gulped, taking a moment to strengthen her resolve to say whatever was pestering her mind.

"No, it's… it's only that it's the first time I've ever heard your voice, my Lady." She said while her expression morphed to unrestrained awe. "I was simply mesmerized by it."

Now it was time for the magic archer to take a moment to process what the other seraphim said – while trying to find in her memories where in the lore it was said that Sera, as the character, hadn't ever muttered a word. A few seconds passed until she realized that the Valkyrie was not referencing lore from her character summary, but how Sera hadn't ever spoken during the game because writing was that much faster.

So the NPC not only had fabricated memories, but also really remembered at least parts of the times they went on journeys on YGGDRASIL.

"Hmm… I saw it fitting for a… new era." Sera had trouble trying to find words to express what was in her mind in such a way to still appear as the magnanimous Goddess her character was supposed to be – because she was playing with way too many uncertain factors, and she didn't think she would survive if the NPCs turned on her.

This whole development, the more she thought about it, reeked of isekai more and more.

Sera, as the author, hated the genre in general because of stories belonging to it were, generally speaking, lazily written, planned, and thought of; plagued with a myriad of horrendous clichés and recurrent plot holes, and the only reason behind their popularity is because the main character generally is a 'normal person' that abuses one or another mechanic on the world they find themselves to become overpowered and get all the bishoujos, or bishonen. Or both. In essence, a mindless wish-fulfilment for the masses.

And now, occupying the avatar he had lovingly created throughout several years, alongside the rest of his creations, he finds himself in an eerily similar development as those novels he bashed so much.

Was this a punishment, or a reward? Sera couldn't decide.

"Does that mean…?" Daith's voice, an imposing smooth tenor, snapped Sera from his-her thoughts. "that we are yet in another world? Which is it, my Lady? Is it Helheim? Vanaheim? Alfheim?"

"I know for fact that Midgard alongside the other Eight Worlds have fallen to the Ragnarok. I doubt we are on any world we have knowledge of." Which was another way to say, a DMMO-RPG shut down its servers so it's unlikely that they'll find themselves in any of the worlds found therein.

This seemed to answer the Overlord's question, as he merely nodded and made to excuse himself from the room. After a moment, Drifa followed after him, leaving Sera alone in the room.

There was a very simple reason why the Seraphim wanted to have privacy, and that was to try to understand what was going on by freaking out as much as possible. Which was, again, less than what she had expected. She felt an inexplicable calmness blanketing over her every thought, making it easier to think, at least.

First thing she tried was to summon her HUD again, not discarding the possibility of a tech failure of some kind completely. Then the forced logout system. Then the GM system. Heck, she even tried to reach players she interacted once with [Message], but there was nothing. She then tried to bring up the Base's management tab, and for her relief, it did show up – with slight changes, but it was there nonetheless. But the moment she left the diwan she was resting on, it disappeared without her dismissing it, and she tried desperately to bring it up, but nothing she did helped, until she sat on the decorated sofa again. It seemed that its function was restricted to use only when in contact to the diwan, for some bizarre reason.

Next thing she tried was to equip her spellbow, which was stored on her inventory. She didn't know how could she possibly access her inventory without the interface, but was surprised when the gesture came naturally to her, as a small black portal opened just centimetres in front of her fingers, and she thrust her hand into it with no hint of hesitation.

From within she took her weapon, [Herald's Reverence], a divine-class magic bow made from Star Silver with magic channelers made from a special golden alchemic alloy snaking around the main body of prismatic ore. When she held the handle, it glowed a dim white light, giving the impression of the classic 'holiness' common in holy weapons in games.

A small gasp escaped her lips at the touch of the spellbow, the handle being softer than anything Sera has ever held, and it was way lighter than what it looked.

Sera had carefully designed it to compliment the avatar's outfit, which was admittedly more inclined to aesthetic than usefulness, at least appearance-wise – because in true MMO fashion, there was equipment in YGGDRASIL such as normal clothes that could be better at protecting than a full suit of plate armour, for absolutely no reason.

In that sense, Sera's outfit that consisted on a camisole of white fabric with a golden trim just below her chest that exposed her midsection, accompanied with a rather short skirt of similar appearance – the golden trim in this case being in the upper part of the garment – an overly decorated with golden embroidery white cloak that reached past her knees, and a myriad of golden bracelets, anklets, rings and a tiara – although looking like it wouldn't protect her even from a paper cut, was actually one of the best armours in the entire Celestial City behind Drifa's and Kainen's. It was not, however, a very efficient PvP outfit – but as was stated before, it was chosen mostly out of looks than anything else.

Each piece of equipment was of divine-class and enchanted with different effects, heightening resistances to many common ailments, granting a boost of stats, granting her the ability to cast certain spells with the spellbow, or giving her access to a closed-off part of the realm.

To define Sera's look concisely, one could simply say "white and gold" and be mostly correct. Her skin was pale but not unhealthily so, and to compliment her outfit her hair was a cascade of gold that reached her shoulders. The only thing that didn't enter the category of either colour was her eyes, which were of a crystalline blue shade. The look one would automatically associate with a divine existence, maybe a little too much cliché.

Next thing she looked for in her inventory were potions. Then her daggers. And so on and so forth, scrutinizing her inventory in its entirety, looking for an irregularity – maybe a devs' message or something like that, but she found nothing out of the norm.

There was nothing that indicated a bug on YGGDRASIL's side, nothing pointing at maybe a tech upgrade or even a potential beta test of a sequel – everything even felt real, which should have been an impossibility given the laws regulating virtual reality.

As any other option was discarded, Sera prepared for a final, desperate way to log out and prove that this was still a game. It didn't really matter if his account was temporarily banned from indecency, as the game should have ended anyway.

Sera raised her arms and looked at them for a moment, before moving her head to the side as her hands groped her breasts. With this, the devs should get a warning of that improper action and be forcefully disconnected.

But after seconds of molesting herself, nothing happened. A small moan escaped her lips when she stopped self-groping – goddamn the things were sensitive. But there were more important things to think about in that moment.

Just as she was trying to figure out her next move, her thoughts were interrupted by a [Message].

"…"

["My Lady, our sentinels on the walls confirm that we are indeed in a completely different environment than back on Midgard, the terrain is utterly foreign from what they reported, I have..."] the Hero-king's voice, she recognized for the small exchange they had a moment ago, resonated in her mind.

Scene change: a few moments before.

The Five Generals stood on reverence as their King returned from the Hall of Heroes – a feat normally found on fairytales, but the Hero was not a normal human being. Guided since childhood by the Goddess to lead their people so they survived the end of the world, he had long since transcended humanity and gained resistance to the passage of time.

The imposing figure of the King slowly descended from the gates to the Beyond, and then calmly walked towards his throne.

"Rise, my friends. We have many things to discuss." Kainen said as he sat on the ornamented seat.

The Generals did as told, standing formally as characters of their position typically do. One of them, Phyra the Crimson General, couldn't resist to inquiry on their King's visit to the Goddess' Realm. "Your Majesty, if I may, what was the reason our Lady invited you to her domain?" Her voice was tinted with an obvious tone of jealously underneath, but for different reasons one would imagine.

Phyra was a young woman with very similar features as the King, from the red hair, skin colour, facial structure, and even skills – the things that differenced one from another were their different genders and the fact that Phyra had burning scarlet-coloured eyes. She was, in fact, Kainen's sister – who also had an adoration which went well beyond pious worship for their Goddess.

The King chuckled at his sister's antics, but chose to graciously answer despite the graceless way she worded her question and speaking out of turn, but there was not much which could be done, as she could not act proper in a meeting even if her life depended on it.

"I am not completely sure why my presence was required, as I did not do much on the other side. But what appears to have happened, the world we were in suffered the same fate as the world of the Old Kingdom, so we must have been transported to yet another world." The Generals widened their eyes; they hadn't felt anything different about their surroundings to suggest something in the likes of the end of the world. But surely, their kind Goddess had saved them yet again from certain doom, and sent them to a New World. "Our Lady did not tell me the nature of this world; she simply informed me of what happened and suggested me to go back to my people." The King looked pointedly at the Azure General, the responsible for the Griffin corps "Lyn, order a wing to scout around the city. Tell them to not engage hostiles, only to be on the lookout. If they meet heavy resistance, they are to retreat – we need to know what we are dealing with, if anything at all. Look for any sign of civilization, but don't enter contact yet." The Azure nodded in acceptance of the orders and excused himself.

Not long after he left, a courier entered the hall and kneeled before stating his business.

"My King, I was chosen by the Guard to tell… ehmm…" The poor man was out of breath and visibly agitated, like he ran all the way here form the Walls to the Castle at max speed without pause.

Kainen raised his right hand to appease the messenger. "Calm down, soldier. Tell me, is something the matter?" The king had an inkling on the reason behind the man's agitation, but wanted to be certain.

"I-It's the landscape, my King. B-beyond the walls… it's completely different! There are no more steep mountains around the city; the only elevations are small hills that don't even reach the bottom of the island. And there's a thick cover of vegetation, mostly trees, as far as the eye can see. We can't make head or tails of our situation; it seems that we've been transported to somewhere else!"

The Hero-king made a movement to appease the soldier again "We are aware of recent events. Rest assured we are trying to bring normalcy to the lives of the people – in fact, there will be an official announcement addressing current circumstances shortly. However, I need you to go back to the Walls and alert your commander to tighten the level of security for the time being. Now go, but please, don't overexert yourself." He dismissed the courier, whom excused himself and left the room.

The rest of the Generals turned again towards their King, to which he raised a brow and stated simply, "Well? Are you waiting for a direct order? We need to be prepared in case something pounces on us, you are dismissed. Go back to your troops and prepare them for action. Now, move." The Generals saluted and got to their assignments.

Kainen exhaled, various scenarios running through his mind. Hopefully they are either in presence of non-hostiles, or even alone, in the best cases. He breathed in again before resting the fingers of his left hand on his temple to communicate with the Goddess via [Message].

["… and it would be appropriate to let the people know of this, lest unrest brews over uncertainty, my Lady. It would be best if they hear it from you. That way, most of their worries would vanish. I know I'm being unreasonable, but please at least consider it."]

["Thank you for your report, Hero. I will consider your proposition. Please, keep me updated on your findings; I wouldn't want disgrace to befell any of you – you all my children, after all.]

Kainen was deeply moved by his Lady's caring words, and promised to do as she said.

Now, he had other people to address in a meeting, the heads of the Noble Houses were here practically demanding to see him seeking answers.

He loved his Lady deeply, like all devotees, but he seriously wondered the reason behind the need of the nobles, those ginormous headaches that constantly pestered him like if they were designed to make him suffer. But surely, that wasn't the case. No, it couldn't possibly be.

Scene change : The Grand Cathedral

The one and only house of worship in the entire metropolis of Almha was an impressive and colossal structure made of stones too big for any normal mortal to move around, let alone use to build – which denotes the divine nature behind its construction.

High reaching vaulted ceilings adorned with the tale of Creation and the Departure, alongside the foretelling of the tale of the Voidance, were sustained by similarly decorated pillars and walls, the latter also bearing several enormous windows of coloured glass, lighting the extremely spacious interior perfectly without any kind of penumbra setting inside.

Several depictions of Griffins were scattered all throughout of the building, from paints and bas-reliefs resting at the top of columns to the sculpture of giant griffin wings at the far side of the chamber, in the altar where the people of the faith stood.

High Priest Clement Verstand was concerned. Many people had come to him or his colleagues in the past few moments, many of them visibly distraught. It appears that the Scutum Range that surrounded the city disappeared without anyone noticing, and some had noted that the air had changed somewhat – those were mostly from the elven population. He had honestly not known what to think, some have asked if the armageddon was nigh, to which he had no concrete answer.

But then a divine connection had reached him – the Goddess herself had spoken to him! She had requested he did everything he could so the most people possible entered the sacred hall to hear an announcement.

There had been no records of anything similar ever happening, no-one else had ever heard the voice of the Goddess and he was the first mortal to ever do! He was so happy he could die peacefully in that very moment! But the Lady had make request to him, and he would be damned if he failed. Instantly, he told his colleagues to pass on the news to pedestrians passing in front of the Cathedral, and ordered for the Silver Bells to be rung thrice.

In the span of less than half an hour the hall was bursting with people, very few souls hadn't come – mostly the ones who had the job to protect them, Guards, Knights, Paladins and the like.

Everyone looked at least slightly troubled, no doubt the news had reached most if not all of them, but everyone was respectful of the place so no one muttered a word.

The next second, a blinding light appeared in the ceiling, to which everyone lifted their heads to look at the new occurrence until they realized what, or more accurately, who they were looking at. Like a human wave, everyone – from the most important noble to the most humble plebeian – adopted a praying position, their faces facing the floor.

Sera knew that she herself had designed everything in here, down to how the NPCs would act in the presence of 'the Goddess', but it still felt strange how everyone acted towards her. It sounded stupid as all hell, but it really felt uncomfortable, even if her interactions with other NPCs that had gained sentience amounted to a grand total of four.

The Seraphim looked at the crowd and sighed, a part of her mind wondered why she wasn't feeling as nervous as she thought she should be – her audience was practically the whole population of Almha cramped on a hall, with barely any more space to fit one more soul.

She was surprised to see that even the POPs had gained sentience, alongside with names and families, like if they always had been real people. She had certainly not created any of them, so it was in question why they worshipped her at all.

This was a risky move – if the NPCs really turned against her, now would be a good time to attack her. To prepare for such, she had continued holding her [Herald's Reverence] , activated many racial skills, and was prepared to teleport with the only ring that let anyone using it to move to predetermined parts of the island in an instant.

But seeing as no one in the multitude made a move indicating aggression, she continued to her secondary objective, to calm the populace. It was still strange to refer to them as living, breathing people, as less than an hour before they hadn't been anything more than just a piece of code.

She saw in there people so varied, she wasn't sure they were there as POPs back on YGGDRASIL, or at least, not like that. Elderly, youngsters, adults, children, the sick, the healthy, pregnant women, and so many much more. Elves and humans and dwarves, all praying to who an hour before was a rather mediocre author and a massive geek.

"Rise your heads, children." As one, everyone whipped their heads up so fast that they might as well have broken the sound barrier. All of them had an expression of open adoration and many were visibly crying tears of joy, to which Sera sweatdropped but no one else saw that because the bright glowing she had on her skin impeded them. "I have heard of your worries, and I am here to assure you that the world isn't going to end." At that many of the public sighed on relief. "Because it already ended." And now everyone got tense again. "Midgard, the world we were previously, had met its end. But fret not, for we are not on Midgard anymore, this is a brand New World, and its end is unlikely to be anytime soon." And now everyone relaxed again.

"So worry not, my children, and continue your lives as you have done before." The Seraphim concluded before vanishing again, teleporting to the Goddess' chambers.

People walked out of the Cathedral with an excited murmur, and the worry that had been visible on them evaporated as if it had not been in the first place.

Verstand could understand their relief, so he chose not to chastise them on the rules of the faith. Not too much, at least.

Scene change: the Barracks.

In the westernmost part of the Celestial City, just a scant few metres away from the main entrance to the metropolis, stood a fortress complex that consisted of two main buildings and several minor ones, which overall defensive capabilities were only overshadowed by the Royal Castle itself.

Consisting of the Headquarters of the Paladin's Order and the Griffin Knight's Quarters – both of them different entities nominally, but in reality it was difficult to discern one from the other most of the time –, together with a small building dedicated to the normal Garrison, plus the Armoury, the respective Treasuries, a hospital, a dining hall, latrines, storage rooms and such, all of them imposing buildings made from fine stonework where one could not fit even the thinnest blade between the stones, and all of them an easily defensible building by themselves, but in conjunction it was nothing short of undefeatable by normal methods. Dragons and other flying creatures would have a much easier time, if they could surpass their own air defence consisting of five Griffins – normally each accompanied by their respective Knight – and the two Elder Griffins, but still it wouldn't be easy as the top of the towers of each Headquarters held ballistae capable of firing bolts that could cut through most Dragons' scales like butter, at a speed that was faster than most flying creatures could fly.

In the atrium leading towards the Griffin Knights' Headquarters, the Azure General was finishing giving the wing their assignment.

"… and remember, Captain. First sign of things going sour, you are to retreat and report on the enemies' composition." Lyn said sternly, not leaving room for disagreement. "No heroics, we don't need you to be buried before we know what we are dealing with."

He was slightly regretting recommending the boy to the position – yes, the Captain was an exceedingly good fighter and field officer, and got along nicely with his partner, but the younger man was rash in the least opportune moments and with a penchant for stupid stunts he called 'heroical'. The General blamed the Captain's upbringing on a noble family with almost no martial records on the Captain's… misguided views on warfare.

But helpfully the younger man sensed his attitude and acted accordingly.

"Yes, sir!" Captain Aelfgar saluted, face serious and posture firm. He made a silent order for his two escorts to prepare for the mission with haste, and left the room to find his partner.

Aelfgar was part of an elven Noble House, usually dedicated to commerce rather than war, but ever since little he wanted to be part of the elite units of the metropolis. Discovering a latent talent for combat and strategy, he quickly went up the ranks until he was the right hand man of Lyn the Azure himself – being in such a position younger than what was considered normal not only by elven but even by human standards.

Now, his time to shine has come, and he had to actively restrain himself from acting all giddy and overall unbecoming of his position.

His wing this time consisted of another elf, a good friend of his from childhood and a superb shot with a bow, and a human who was originally part of the Paladin's Order but had a good affinity with one of the Griffins, and also was well versed with divine magic, able to tend to wounds on the field. The composition was sound in case of heavy resistance, having a long range fighter, a healer and a dedicated short range fighter, while the other two were also capable of holding their own. All in all, he felt a little confident that their mission would be completed with no problems; the only thing that could possibly give them trouble is to tango with an Elder Dragon or something stronger, which isn't particularly common. That or an army of Liches, but that was as unlikely.

Putting on his helmet, he saddled on his partner, a majestic male Griffin who had the largest wingspan among all his peers, only dwarfed by the Elder Griffins. He was a calm soul, but could be ruthless when the circumstances demanded. He could also outmanoeuvre most Dragons with ease, and although not being as resistant as one, he could take plenty of damage and still be able to land with minimum problems.

His two squadmates did the same and in short order they were searing through the sky. He always felt a sense of liberation when up in the air, he felt as he could take on the whole world. It helped that his ride could shoot rather high-tier lightning spells like a child could throw pebbles.

As ordered, the three of them circled around the city to inspect the surroundings, but besides being obviously on another placement, there was nothing strange about the landscape. He didn't see nor feel any enemy closing in, the sky did not turn dark when getting away from the city, there was nothing.

The surroundings had a few hills here and there covered with a rather thick forest, that presumably was home to a varied population of wildlife, but other than that there wasn't any sign of civilization of any kind in the area of immediate proximity.

They slowed down their flight so he could more easily cast the [Message] spell to communicate with the General.

[Proceed as ordered, circle around the city until you can't see it anymore and if you don't see anything go back.] The Azure said, cutting off the communication.

The following hours passed with them doing just that – and falling slightly into boredom after the first hour passed.

As he was about to issue the order to go back, as Almha was but a tiny speck on the horizon, Aelfgar saw in not that far a distance a thin column of smoke, not unlike one would see from a small settlement. Smiling, he turned to his teammates, "Is any of you fluent on other languages besides the kyrsian? I myself know elven and a bit of midgardian. Just in case."

"Hmm, I don't know about being fluent, but I know a bit of asgardian and vanir." One of them said while the other shook his head on the negative.

Before he did anything else, he informed his superior about this new finding, and asked for further orders.

[Scout the place and take note of its inhabitants. If they are proven to be non-hostile, you may make contact – see if you can understand them, and if so, ask about further civilization, if any.]

The mental connection was cut again, and he followed his orders.

The settlement was not that far away, and at first pass it was clear it was a simple village at the edge of the great forest he had been flying over of. Even without Elwyn's prodigious sight he could see that the villagers were humanoid in form – although size was subject to discussion, at least at that distance, the inhabitants couldn't be much bigger than a human or an elf.

Deciding it was worth a shot, he ordered the other two to come with him and land at the outskirts of the settlement, to indicate their peaceful intentions.

The majestic Griffins made touch down gracefully, and he and the other two dismounted in short order.

An elderly man accompanied by a small group of men armed with pitchforks and other such tools made their way towards them – clearly eyeing the three Knights, and more importantly, their rides, with open suspicion.

To appease them a little, Aelfgar took off his helmet so they could see his face, to which the majority of them relaxed moderately.

All of them were human, a bit shorter than Aelfgar himself, but with stout build clearly developed from working the fields. They still looked at the Griffins with suspicion, to which the beasts appeared to take offense as they turned their heads to the side, deciding to ignore the villagers.

"Greetings, strangers." The old man started, thankfully in kyrsian, which would make the exchange that much easier. "I am the elder of this village. I don't think I've ever seen that coat of arms or the winged creatures you've just dismounted, and judging by your actions, you are not here to pillage. Tell me then; what could knights such as yourselves want from this humble village?"

"Good day to you, elder. To be honest, we are from a nation to the west of here, somewhere in the heart of the forest your village is in the border of. We are here because this village is the first settlement we found – it's the first time we've made contact with anyone outside" Aelfgar said, stating their business. For some reason, this made the men look at them with suspicion again – the Captain couldn't discern behind the reason. The old man inspected his face with more scrutiny, the elder's expression morphing to a frown.

"Nonsense, the only ones alive in the heart of that forest are the beastmen from their barbaric kingdom. And seeing that the three of you are human, those beasts would have feasted with your flesh long ago if you really came from there– do you take me for a fool?" every farmer present tensed at the mention of the so-called beastmen, as if the mere mention of the word would make them appear. "Except, of course, if you are working with them – as unlikely that proposition would be." The old man finished.

Aelfgar frowned slightly, rotating his head to the side. He hadn't seen anything even remotely similar to a nation of ravenous man-eating beasts during his flight – granted, they could have been hiding under the leaves of the trees, but he didn't feel any hostile aura all the while. He looked towards his companions, but both shook their heads on the negative; they also hadn't seen anything of the sort.

"I fear we don't know what you are talking about, good man." Aelfgar warily said, not getting the complete picture behind their reactions. "We haven't seen anything of the like while on our way to here. We were flying on our Griffins the whole time, and I think something like that dangerous would not have escaped our reconnaissance."

Just as the man was about to reply, a frantic shout was heard from the other side of the village, "It's the beastmen! We were hunting and we encountered a large party of them, they were marching here! Gus stayed back so he could distract them, but I don't think that would give us much time!" the desperate cries of a small group of men echoed throughout the village, and for a few seconds, every resident froze still. Then the despair ensued.

The group that had went to receive them grabbed their weapons even more tightly than they had been, ready to jump to action at the minimum sign of hostility.

"I knew it! You three lead them here, to kill us and for them to eat us like if we were delicacies! Wh-!" the village elder was cut off from his ranting by Aelfgar

"Whoa, whoa! We don't have any idea what is happening, calm down!" he tried to calm down the crowd, putting his hands of front of himself in what was intended to be a calming motion.

The men were about to shout at him when a war horn was heard, everyone experiencing shivers running through their spines at its sound.

Aelfgar took this opportunity to say something that may appease them. "Listen, if you don't believe us that's fine, if you need proof of our un-involvement we could try to mediate between you and these beastmen you are so afraid of."

"You don't understand then! There is no negotiating with them, they want us in their bellies and they are not going to stop because a trio of unknown men wearing fancy armour asked them to!"

Aelfgar looked at his comrades. Technically, this already counted as a sign to bail out – a possible battle with an opposition of man-eating beasts, with apparent numerical inferiority, on any other case he would already given the order to retreat. But if the villager's words were true, leaving them here meant leaving them to be slaughtered, something his sense of honour couldn't accept, and by the looks of it, neither could his subordinates.

He wasn't about to order anyone to help strangers and possibly die doing so, but both of them seemed that would stay and defend the civilians without his orders. The three of them nodded, and then got to position. Elwyn mounted his Griffin and in moments he was searing through the sky again, patrolling around the settlement, while Aelfgar shouted at the petrified villagers.

"Calm down! Everyone that is not combat-able, follow my comrade here, he will protect them to his last breath!" The knight in question nodded and made his way towards a big building, likely a granary or a storage of some kind, to where the civilians started entering in almost-panic. "And whoever who can and will take up arms, follow me! I know that I'm an unknown factor, and if it's to ease your minds, I will myself take point! But I am not going to let any innocent be killed for no reason today, or ever!" The group of villagers who until that point were prepared to pounce on him felt a strange sensation pass through them at his speech, and suddenly felt stronger than ever and followed his commands with little resistance.

The other two griffins also took flight, following Elwyn for now, and were to attack any straggler that passed through the cracks and ran towards where the non-combatants took refuge.

Aelfgar did his best to put the villagers on a combat formation in chokepoints on the village's roads, towards from where the war horn was heard – but as they weren't trained soldiers, their formation would likely fall with a very small push.

To keep up with his word, the Griffin Captain stood a little further out, waiting for the war party to enter his sight. Not a lot of time passed until the first silhouettes of something vaguely resembling humanoid beings with many animal characteristics exited the forest, each carrying some kind of weapon or another, and some wearing crude-looking armours. And more and more poured out by the minute – there must have been way over a hundred, possibly even two hundred of them, all of them walking unhurriedly towards the village, their every movement bleeding confidence, borderline arrogance, and hunger, not the kind of a starved beast, but one who had been playing with their food.

As the odd group made its way to the settlement, Aelfgar unsheathed his sword and pointed it at them – interestingly enough, they did stop at that gesture, but if he read them correctly, none of them looked particularly concerned with him.

"State your business! What does a warband such as yours want from a small hamlet such as this one?" the elf asked with his best commander-voice, trying to appear as imposing as possible.

A big bear-like being that was mostly scars at this point laughed out loud, before replying to him with a mocking tone. "What do you think, human? How many times do we have to do the same thing until you all finally learn and get into the frying pot the moment we arrive?" the group of beastmen laughed as one for a moment at what looked to be their leader's taunt, before they all started shouting "MEAT!" and charged.

Before the beasts could do more than three steps, many of them hit the ground as arrows flew through the air at an impressive speed, most of them piercing through vital points – courtesy of Elwyn –, and several thunderbolts did the same – courtesy of the Griffins – but there were way too many enemies for them to mow down to do any significant difference on the numbers that were still charging towards them.

Under moments, he alongside the villagers were engaged in heated combat against the hulking attackers, with Aelfgar having a noticeable easier time doing so than the peasants, even strangely so. He quickly noted that he could overpower most of the assailants with not much effort, but again, they were heavily outnumbered so no matter how many enemies he fell, there was another one to take its place. In a battle of attrition he doubted he could last much longer, and slowly but surely, the combat moved more and more inwards, towards the storage building the rest of the villagers were sheltered.

The Griffins had to stop their magical attacks as they were running low on mana, so they switched to a more barbaric but effective nonetheless tactic of grabbing an enemy with their front talons and letting them fall from a high altitude. Not many of those who suffered that fate stood up again, most likely either dead or dying from having several bones pulverized.

As he was on the frontlines, he saw first-hand the brutality of their adversaries, when someone fell to their wounds, the beasts took no time to rip the poor bastard's arm or heart off and started to chew on it immediately. Let's just say, as time went on, he started to feel less badly about killing them outright.

But as the battle progressed, fatigue started to settle in, and even if each knight was individually superior to the beastmen, the enemy still held a sizable numerical advantage. He was still, however, not going to leave these people to a cruel fate. He could already hear his superior berating him for doing something so stupid, and chuckled at the image. Not long after, he took one hit too many and was about to pass out.

"I don't regret my decision. What I regret is not being able to protect these people and my subordinates. Oh, my Lady, be kind with them on the beyond." Aelfgar thought as he closed his eyes, waiting for a finishing blow – one that didn't come. Opening his eyes again, what he saw filled him with awe, as all the attackers fell at the same time, and a radiant figure floated above their heads.

Scene change, a few hours prior

Sera was still trying to figure what the hell was going on, sitting on the overly decorated and extremely confortable diwan she herself had designed. Viewing and re-viewing the different tabs dedicated to the base's management, she had basically a big brother-esque power of being able to see everything within the city. And with everything, she meant everything. It took only a few tries of using that feature to be certain that this couldn't have been a game, because the few couples she spied on doing… couple's things. Some highly detailed and breaking every single law on restricting what could be shown on DMMOs.

As she was looking over the city, she passed over the entrance and saw a group of three being given orders by one of the Generals. It was interesting seeing the NPCs act all alive, it was like the sensation she felt when she first created them in-game, which gave off almost limitless amount of inspiration.

Without thinking, she reached for her inventory and grabbed an empty book – one of many she had on her avatar, that way in the game she could write on the spot and afterwards could export it – and placed her palm on its blank pages. Before she noticed, black characters started appearing on the paper, appearing as if someone had written it with ink a long time ago.

Snapping out of her thoughts, she looked at the newly written book with a sense of amazement – she hadn't known she could still do that even when her HUD was unavailable. Perusing through newly-written pages for a moment, she then closed the book and stored it back in her inventory.

The three Griffin Knights took flight and started doing rounds around the city, but as soon as they left the sky above the floating island she couldn't follow them anymore.

There were so many unknowns about this world, like, what was out there? Were there other players? Was even any sentient being outside? Sera didn't know, and she certainly didn't know how powerful would she be – maybe level one hundred was a small fry, maybe not – and she was sure she didn't want to die for doing something stupid, as she didn't know if resurrection magic even worked in here.

Many divination items worked best if one knew what they wanted to see, and the three Griffin Knights worked perfectly as a beacon for just that. She reached again for her inventory and drew out a highly decorated floating mirror, a magic item called [Mirror of Remote Viewing], which was fairly low level but should do the work. If it reacted with anti-scrying measures, at least she would know there were other players out there.

Getting it to work took more time than what she would've thought, but after half an hour or so she was again looking at the three riders flying through the sky. However, her attention was mostly on their surroundings – a veritable sea of trees the likes she had only seen on Alfheim, and certainly not on the Earth she knew. So the real world was out, or at least the real world she knew.

She spent an indeterminate amount of time there, trying to figure how to move the focus for the mirror, until the Knights saw signs of civilization in their proximity.

Anxiety started to build in her stomach – as the knights descended upon the settlement, the truth would be shortly seen. Those knights were all around level mid-thirty to forty, if they were considered strong or weak she would have some sort of measurement scale on this world.

However, the meeting between the knights and the natives was cut short by something she couldn't figure out yet, and a few moments later the three separated, one started patrolling the skies with a bow on hand while another led children, women and the elderly towards a storage building, and the captain rallied the rest of the villagers on a combat formation.

Minutes later, a horde of were-creatures came out of the forest, the sight of many similar to some races of demi-humans from YGGDRASIL but some others were utterly bizarre. And they obviously didn't have the friendliest purposes in mind, seeing as they all had weapons drawn and were openly salivating.

She couldn't measure their individual power from where she was, so she decided to let the knights fight them and see how they fared. By the looks of the villagers, they would not survive for long, but she found that she really didn't care all that much.

She let out a sigh of relief she didn't know she was holding when the beastmen started to fall like flies with only arrows from a low level NPC and from rather low-tier magic like [Thunderbolt] – certainly these enemies were on the level of trash by endgame standards if that was all it took to bring them down, so even if a thousand of those were to attack her they quite literally could not deal any damage to her.

As the battle progressed, she grew more and more disgusted by these demi-humans, and when she saw that the knights were starting to tire she began making preparations to teleport them out. She didn't want to lose NPCs if she could help it – resurrecting them cost quite a bit of coin that she wasn't sure she could her hands on as easily anymore. Also, if the NPCs acted as how their character backgrounds were written, and as far as she saw they did, it was borderline impossible for them to turn against her.

But seeing them desperately trying to defend the helpless villagers made her not follow with that plan – instead, at the last second she changed one of her equipped bracelets for the one which allowed her to use [Gate] when equipped alongside [Herald's Reverence] and teleported herself to the village – a rip in time and space in the form of an oval of pure darkness opening in the air a few dozen metres over the battle as she prepared a spell of homing magic arrows to finish the opposition.

The rays of white and gold light flew upwards for a moment before falling to their intended targets, turning them to ash in an instant. It was a rather mediocre tier six spell and one of the few crowd control ones she had, but it was rendered useless if the target had a little resistance to divine magic, something that obviously these demi-humans didn't have.

Slightly flapping her wings – and what a strange sensation that was – she descended upon the now silent crowd that was gaping at her entrance. Maybe she overdid it? She honestly didn't think so, in fact from her perspective she held back quite significantly. She tried her best to ignore the looks directed at her, and looked at her three creations that were panting and wheezing on the floor, obviously exhausted. The three griffins looked like they were in way better shape, but it was no wonder as they were higher level.

She took from her inventory three small potions and threw them at the knights. When the bottles cracked and the contents were poured on them, their fatigue dramatically receded and their wounds started to heal at an astonishing rate – from the natives' perspective –, and they took a moment to find their bearings before kneeling in a praying position towards her.

Maybe she hadn't thought her actions thoroughly enough, as she had momentarily forgotten her deity status she herself had written on her creations, and such an apparition should be strange to happen.

She finally noted that the look she was getting from the villagers was one of absolute stupefaction, as if they couldn't quite believe what their eyes were seeing. Were seraphim a rare sight? Because there wasn't much else she could think of that could have possibly shocked the peasants that much. "Is it the outfit? I mean, there were people that wore more skimpy-looking equipment back in the game, so this much shouldn't be that strange"

Moving her attention back to the praying knights, "Raise your head, captain." She commanded, and the one in question did as told. He had hastily removed his helmet after being healed, making a mess out of his jaw-long auburn hair, which now didn't cover his very obviously elfin ears. "Don't you have a mission to complete? People back home count on you to report on your findings, you can't die and leave your brethren still on the dark of what has happened." She said softly, trying to not be heard by any bystander. The captain did not verbally answer; he clenched his jaw tightly before dropping his head low again while closing his eyelids, then got to his feet.

The situation had gone to hell almost as soon as he made land fall, but at least many innocent lives were saved, and more incredibly of all, the Goddess had answered his prayers. For a moment, he had thought that she was there to take him to the Hall of Heroes, but alas it looked like it was not his turn yet. Not that he complained, he liked still being alive, and there were many years to look forward to, but who would deny access to blissful afterlife?

But it was true that he couldn't let himself be finished off in the current situation of his Kingdom, as he had been given a very important task and now even more important as it seemed that the Celestial City was directly above a heat zone full to the brim of enemies that wanted to see his fellow man on a silver plate.

As he sheathed his sword, which he had been using to lean on to stand, his thoughts were cut short as the unmistakable sound of many horses quickly approaching from the north. Soon enough, the riders entered the village – a group of knights by the looks of it, with an aging commander taking point. Old, yes, but that man had a quick mind and was a veteran of the battlefield, Aelfgar could tell with a single glance at the newcomer's eyes.

"What happened here?"

The frontline had been broken. Commander Marcus Ervarius of the Draconic Kingdom had been dispatched to evacuate the small villages and towns in the area in an attempt to keep casualties low – manpower was a resource growing ever more precious each passing day, both in the battlefield and the regular fields, after all. He had also the authority to conscript anyone he deemed useful for battle – namely the young men. He wasn't versed on magic, so he couldn't judge potential on that field, as much as it could be useful, but what he could judge was whether a man was strong enough for the army and with enough coordination to wield a weapon.

As he approached his next destination alongside his small detachment, he couldn't help but see the enormous winged beasts flying just above Veage village, together with telltale columns of smoke from destroyed buildings. Were those new types of beastmen? They certainly didn't seem like anything he had ever seen, the closest thing would be a depiction of a dragon he had seen when he was a boy, only that these beasts didn't appear reptilian in nature, not in the slightest.

He hardened his resolve and made the march to fasten their pace, if there was anyone there alive he would do his best to defend them.

As he got closer, a different picture started to form on his mind. The fallen bodies of beastmen and huge piles of ash were a dominant sight, with very few bodies of the peasants that lived here mutilated in the typical brutality beastmen were known for – something completely out of the norm happened here.

As he reached the village's centre, the beastmen corpses gradually became less and less until only those piles of ash were present – and if those weren't testimony of the use of some kind of magic he would eat his boots –, but more importantly he noted the presence of four humanoid beings, surrounded by those giant flying creatures he had seen from afar, that he could now discern their features. The beasts looked like a strange mix of an eagle and a lion, then given the size of several men. Their heads and front paws – claws? – were like an eagle's, alongside their majestic wings, while the rest of their bodies were just like a lion's. All in all, their appearance was somewhat similar to the Empire's Hippogriffs. The beasts didn't appear hostile, but cautious of him and his men, studying their every move. He reciprocated their attitude, both sides entering on a momentaneous stalemate before the beasts seemed to scoff at them and turn their heads to ignore them.

He then took note of the four very obviously foreign entities – three of them being Knights wearing very expensive-looking armour, and the last being the most beautiful woman he had ever laid his eyes on, wearing one of the most scandalous outfits he had ever seen. She was also holding some sort of metal contraption that going by the light it radiated was certainly a magical item, and most importantly of all, she had pure white wings growing from her back. And was glowing.

Had he fallen to an ambush and now an agent of the gods have come to take his soul to their divine realm? He recognized an angel when he saw one, even if never before he had seen one – depictions of them all throughout history had been consistent, and this being in front of him checked all of them. Beauty to the point of perfection, powerful to the point even the magically stunted could feel their magic, holding weapons no mortal could even begin to understand their making, and having wings of pure white.

One of the foreign Knights rose, breaking him from his momentary stupor. Looking around, he saw the rest of the villagers sporting expressions that were similar to the one he had just a moment prior. Looking back, he saw that the men on his detachment were the same.

However astonishing these people's appearance was, he still had a job to do.

"What happened here?"

The knight that raised first, seemingly an officer comparing his surcoat to the other two, was the one to reply while he approached.

"Hello, sir. My name is Aelfgar from House Eileifr, Captain of the Griffin Knights; faithful servant to our Lady and loyal subject to His Majesty the Hero-King Kainen. May I know to whom I'm talking to?"

Ervarius didn't physically react to anything the now named Aelfgar said, for absolutely none of it ringed any bells on his mind. "I'm Marcus Ervarius, Commander on the army of Her Majesty's Draudillon Oriculus, ruler of the Draconic Kingdom." His voice did not carry any inflection as he blandly made his statement. Judging whether or not he was telling the truth was difficult, but then again, so was on the inverse.

The foreigner minutely narrowed his eyes at the name of the Kingdom, almost imperceptibly so. In fact, only the Commander caught it, and it was gone as soon as it came. The knight morphed his expression again to the polite one he used to introduce himself.

"Well, it's good to meet you, Sir Marcus." Both of them nodded at the same time, both apparently having similar customs. "As for what me and my subordinates are doing here; we've been dispatched on a mission to scout the surroundings of our great city in search of other civilizations – we find ourselves…" all throughout his explanation, Sera couldn't help to feel slightly embarrassed on the thoughtless way the elf was throwing information like if it were candy. He was her creation, after all, and when it comes to it it's ultimately her fault how the NPCs act. "… on a unique circumstance, shall we say…" Well at least he could think, sometimes, before opening his mouth. "… and we are on the dark when it comes to the outside world. My companions and I found this hamlet, and when we were about to ask for directions to a city or where we could talk with an official, a marauding group of beastmen attacked the village. I and the others decided to defend the people from certain death – and the result is as you see."

Ervarius examined the supposed noble in front of him – an Elf, by the looks of it, and not a Dark Elf or a Wood Elf, either. Myth says that once existed a race of fair skinned elves which were the most populous of their kind, but were hunted down to extinction by the Eight Greed Kings, like so many others. Like any normal human, he wasn't knowledgeable on traditional elvish faith, so he chose to ignore it for now – if they find common enemies with the beastmen, he wouldn't give a rat's ass about their beliefs as long as they helped each other overcome doom.

Judging by the information the 'Griffin Knight' Captain gave him – which became patchier and patchier as it went on, they were part of a city-state monarchy that had no connections to the outside world, possibly somewhere in the middle of that woodland hell-hole. The title of Hero-King was the most telling part, it meant that this Kainen led his people and saved them from certain ruin – which aligned with his thoughts about the elves from myths. Maybe they are a remnant group from when the Eight Greed Kings scorched the lands? Surely hiding deep in the Great Forest of Asdra could shield them from being found by outsiders – at the cost of possibly being found and hunted down by the roaming beastmen. It did not look like they were all that concerned with the ravenous monsters, though, if their demeanour was anything to go by – could they even possibly hunt them for sport? It was an unlikely thought.

First and foremost, Marcus Ervarius was a military man, not a politician. He couldn't care less about international and even internal politics, and such a mindset often made opportunities pass by. He decided to believe the elf for now, feeling the same kind of feeling nobles give off and more importantly for Ervarius, the feeling of a powerful warrior. The aura around Aelfgar was what he would expect from people like Gazef Stronoff, who had many a tale of heroics and superhuman feats under his name. Maybe he is talking to a Stronoff equivalent, and wasn't that food for thought.

"Very well then, but we need to evacuate the population to the closest walled city first. We could accompany you there – or more accurately," The old Commander said while moving his eyes to look at the giant flying beasts "… you could accompany us there. I could introduce you to the local governor in such case, to make the first appearance of your people as smooth as possible. You would have to excuse the restlessness in most of my countrymen's minds – as you can see, we find ourselves in a quite… dire situation." He finished his proposition. Another reason he wanted them to accompany the group, beyond being seemingly powerful individuals each, was to keep an eye of them – one could not be too careful in these trying times. At least in this way, they couldn't be attacked from a blind spot even if any confrontation with these elves ultimately resulted in defeat.

The elf seemed to think about it for a second before amiably agreeing.

When Marcus made to finally address the angel, he found that she was not there, as if she never existed. He hadn't realized she had vanished… it couldn't be, had he hallucinated? Had been she a trick of light?

…

At the end, it didn't matter anyway, so he didn't spare a second thought on it. What was important was getting the people out of here as soon as possible, as this zone was no longer safe for habitation.

Just before the caravan departed, one of the foreign Knights asked if anyone had spare arrows – he had emptied his quiver on the recent fight. Every one of his men looked at the elf strangely, because what kind of Knight used a bow? These elves were so strange.

Perspective change, back with Sera.

That had been so stupid. The stunt she pulled was completely unnecessary and had exposed her to potential danger, and she had barely prepared – heck, she didn't even activate her [Ring of Greater Invisibility]. Not that it would help much against someone who knew what to look for and was prepared, but she is dealing with too many unknowns to be carefree.

She was flying over the enormous forest while invisible, trying to clear her head with the almost magical visage of an unspoiled green world when a sudden [Message] interrupted her thoughts.

["Sera-sama! Where are you, I felt you disappeared and I almost died from a heart attack! You can't leave like that!] Drifa's almost hysterical voice echoed on Sera's mind, almost physically beating down her brain.

[Calm down, Drifa. There was… an incident that required my attention. I'm currently on my way back, don't worry.]

[What?! No, wait! Stay there, I'll be there in a second! Daith, teleport me to our Lady at once!]

Sera sweatdropped at the last part, "You didn't have to say that through [Message] though."

Under a moment, Sera was suddenly in the company of a very flustered silver-haired angel who was fully equipped for battle. The seraphim took less than a second to register her surroundings before turning towards the golden-haired angel and started scolding her.

"My Lady, you can't go out like that! What would happen if you were to be ambushed by an enemy that you couldn't best? What about your people, would you abandon them without a second thought!? I-!"

"Calm. Down. Drifa!" Sera said, accentuating every word so the Valkyrie heeded her words. "I was not abandoning anyone! As I said, there was a situation that required my attention – but we can't continue this here. Let us go back for now, but first, here," She said as she withdrew from her inventory another [Ring of Greater Invisibility] "Put this on and activate it."

The silver-headed woman looked like she still had plenty to say, but swallowed her words for now and did as told. She wondered as of why they didn't go back instantly via teleportation, as it would be a faster and safer way than flying all the way over an unknown and possibly dangerous area.

Midway back however, Sera abruptly stopped, and Drifa was quick to follow. Before she could ask any question, her eyes saw a picture she had somehow overlooked, of several animal-like biped beings stalking under the leaves of the trees below. And there were many of them, possibly several hundred.

The Valkyrie turned her head towards Sera in inquiry, to which the golden-haired angel answered, "Those are apparently called beastmen, and they prey upon humans native to this world, who are not all dissimilar to the people living in Almha. I went to a human village to deal with one of such groups, because our scouts were also there and they were being overwhelmed." as she looked at the demi-humans pass below with disdain in her eyes.

Turning around at a 'yip'-like sound, Sera saw Drifa weeping heavily for some reason, which made her wave her arms in the air in a futile attempt to calm the seraph, or understand why she was crying on the first place, or something – she wasn't sure – but stopped as the Valkyrie sniffed and cleared her eyes. "I'm sorry, my Lady – I-I thought that you grew bored of us and wanted to go away… I didn't know that you were actually more caring than I would have thought, going as far as to save your followers… you have my most sincere apologies!" Drifa said as she managed to make a dogeza whilst in mid-air.

Sera did not know how to react to that, so she nodded once nervously and turned her head again towards their destination. The floating island where the Celestial City sat was already in full view at that point, and it took another fifteen to twenty minutes at full speed until they reached Heavenscrown Castle.

Scene change: Strategy room.

Six figures sat alone in a rather dark room – which only had a single chandelier enchanted with a [Continual Light] spell, as its walls had no windows to let natural light in – all around an enormous oval-shaped table that had an equally large map planted on it. Not that such map was of any use anymore, but they hadn't had enough time to replace it yet. They hadn't had much time for do anything yet, to be honest – it had been less than half a day since they were transported to a brand new world since the last one was also destroyed.

One of the figures, a handsome if aging man with short dark hair and equally short beard with quite a few white hairs here and there, wearing fine clothes if utilitarian in design and a sky-blue mantle over his left shoulder, was currently reporting to the other five individuals present.

This was Lyn, the Azure General. Earlier he had received a [Message] from the reconnaissance group, detailing their recent experience, which he deemed important enough to call for a meeting with the rest of High Command and the King.

He also made sure to make clear to the boy he sent on the errand that if it weren't for their Lady's kindness, he would be food for the crows. As much as Lyn didn't like the thought, he needed to berate the Captain for his short-sightedness and kind bleeding heart. Almost dying trying to protect strangers from an unknown foe? If a foe at all? What the Eileifr did was pure foolishness, what if those 'beastmen' were actually at war with this so-called 'Draconic Kingdom' that village was part of, and with his actions he made Almha enemies that would otherwise have left them alone?

"… From what he reported, the locals have told Captain Eileifr that these beastmen prey on humanoid beings, humans and elves alike, with no remorse or restraint. There is no evidence on them preying on dwarves but it's the same in the negative, so they should be considered a hazard to all our citizens." Lyn moved the discussion towards the demi-human topic.

"And you are saying that we are right above their territory?" The Emerald questioned, being careful with all the details, trying to form the best strategy possible to deal with the situation, most likely.

"Bah, I wouldn't worry too much, if only three wet-behind-the-ears knights were enough to keep up with a group of a few hundred of them 'beastmen'." The Onyx grumbled, fondling his thick beard with his right hand as he hit the table with his other hand's fingers in a rhythmic fashion. "Heh, I bet if their entire forces were to clash with my Paladins, we wouldn't suffer a single casualty."

"You are forgetting something Tvor, those knights were being aided by our Lady's sacred beasts, and they still were going to lose if not for divine intervention." The Emerald remarked, watching at the Onyx with disapproval.

"Tch. I know. What I mean, is that three of my soldiers" The dwarf shot a provoking glance at the Azure, "would have not have any problems dealing with these sacs of fur. I bet that they wouldn't even need the help from the sacred beasts."

Lyn however didn't take the bait, "To inform you, one of the knights involved was previously part of the Paladin's Order" he said dryly.

"See! You turn 'em soft, old man." said Tvor before closing his mouth when everyone else on the room sighed exasperatedly. This wasn't an appropriate moment for their usual bickering.

"…"

"The question is, what measures should we take towards these beastmen, a preemptive strike? Or should we wait and see? We don't know their full capabilities, we don't know if they are capable of levitation magic or if they can fly naturally to be assured that just by being suspended on the air we could relax. And what about this 'Draconic Kingdom'? I mean, if their ruler is called Dragon Queen, should we expect the presence of dragons out there? Because they certainly would not find being suspended in the sky a great deterrent to attack us."

"What I think we should do," Started the Emerald, "is patrol the surface with a force strong enough to not being overwhelmed by an attack of such a scale. I propose around twenty Paladins or a force of similar strength to be on a single patrol, given how the Captain handled these demi-humans." At the Onyx's move to argue, the Emerald raised a hand, "We don't know for sure the enemies' strength, so even if it feels a little excessive, it's better to have too many combatants than too few. Remember, if we lose soldiers, we don't only lose their lives but we put the lives of the rest of the citizenry in danger." The dwarf's protests died on his throat as he grumbled, but ultimately agreed with the logic.

"I say if anyone is a problem, we just need to burn 'em to a crisp and be done with it. It'll serve as a good example and everything too!" the Crimson said, boredom clearly starting to seep into her expression.

"Khm." The King coughed, "Phyra, we got over this already. Strategy does not mean 'oh well, just burn it', as I've told you many times." he said as he massaged his temple with his right hand.

"Well, it should!" she retorted.

Everyone else in the room sighed, again.

Scene change: back with Aelfgar

"Reported everything?" Asked Elwyn as he approached a seemingly just-waking-up Aelfgar who was lying down on the floor of one of the emptier carts. They had been given the privilege to rest on here on their way to the nearby city thanks to their heroic deeds of protecting innocent citizens.

"Yeah, I think I got it all." He sat up, faking a yawn that ended up becoming real.

Elwyn smirked "Tired?"

"Like if I fought an army alone and barehanded. The adrenaline crash is killing me, man." The captain said, falling back to old habits without noticing. His long-time friend chuckled, "I think I can imagine." He said, still grinning. "C'mon, pal, it's my turn to rest a bit." Aelfgar groaned but did so, grumbling "jackass" as he got to his feet – but Elwyn was already out cold before he finished badmouthing him.

Jumping out of the cart, he started walking while keeping pace with the rest of the caravan as he stretched. Suddenly, something nudged him on the shoulder, and when turning his head he realized it was been the giant beak of his partner, who was now looking at him with concern. Smiling faintly, he patted the Griffin's beak, "It's alright. I'm not wounded or anythin'" he said, but the Griffin did not look all that convinced. "I swear!" he finished while holding in front of his face a pendant that normally clung from his neck. His partner had the gall to snort at him, which caused him to cry in indignation. However, this small banter was interrupted by the laughs of a child, who was on one of the nearby carts that carried the villagers. The youngster was giggling, eyes sparkling at the sight, utterly unaware of the severity of the situation.

That last thought made Aelfgar sober up.

A few moments later, Commander Marcus approached him, "We should get sight of the city shortly. With luck, we won't encounter any more of those savages, but keep on your toes. I imagine he, " He said while signalling with his head at the only knight that was still in the sky, doubling as a scout, " would notice if any group starts following us, or if there's an ambush ahead. And hopefully tell us if he does"

"You would be correct. He is in fact also a rather good magic caster, so even enemies using normal means to get around undetected would be spotted by him." Aelfgar said offhandedly, not perceiving the look of confusion the older man sent him.

"A magic caster? Excuse me, but I thought you were Knights?" Marcus inquired. It isn't as much as there can't be a good fighter who can also use magic, but is more about efficiency. Normal people dedicated to a single career, a knight to the sword, a magic caster to magic, an archer to the bow. Sure, there are people like the Holy Kingdom's Paladins who were also magic casters – even if their magical prowess didn't match up to their physical might – but people like those were few and far in between, to the point that for many they might as well never happen. This group of foreign knights did come off as very powerful, but Marcus had accredited that feeling to their swordsmanship, that even if he didn't see first-hand, he saw the results, plus the way the three of them moved indicated experienced warriors.

Maybe that is the result of living on isolation for who knows how many hundred years being surrounded by man-eating savages.

"Oh, yeah. He was gifted by our Lady's blessing in the art of divine magic. He can cast up to tier four without breaking a sweat in combat, quite a feat for someone his calibre actually. He was previously a Paladin but after it was discovered that he had an affinity with one of the Griffins he was transferred to my unit." The Knight Captain said flippantly, as if talking about people who could do such heroic feats was utterly normal. Sure, tier four wasn't Fluder Paradyne's legendary tier six level of magic, but that didn't mean that it was normal in any stretch of the imagination. This little hint was worth a lot of information if it were to be true – a hypothetical military that had several people on such level was a great threat. If any of the things Aelfgar said was true, it painted a both hope and dread-inducing picture. Hope that with their help they could survive the current onslaught, and dread to be weak enough as to be easily conquered by them afterwards.

When it came to it, he preferred alive but conquered by the newcomers than dead and eaten by the beastmen. None of his thoughts were reflected on his face however, and the Knight Captain did not seem to catch on any of them.

"Interesting…" Ervarius trailed off, "oh, look. We can already see the walls of Arxtu, one of our main cities." …that hadn't been conquered yet, but the elves didn't need to know of that detail yet.

Aelfgar looked at the slowly nearing city, but didn't visibly react.

Inside his mind, he recognized it for what it was, a city. It had fortified walls surrounding it, certainly, but even from this far he could pick up the defensive weaknesses that came from a place where the main concern was not its defence. In some parts of the wall, the construction seemed to be in a bad state of disrepair and in others there were parts that looked like temporary patches that ended being permanent.

But if the city could last however long those walls were standing, it must have been for some reason so he decided not to comment.

The rest of the travel was met with no setbacks beyond some guards approaching the group and being visibly on edge at the sight of the three Griffins, even when their own comrades told them that there was no danger.

As they got at the feet of the walls, the three Knights and especially their mounts had to stay out the city for the time being as Commander Marcus went to talk with the Governor.

There wasn't much they could do, so Aelfgar agreed without kicking up much of a fuss, and the Knights and Griffins went a little away from the main road, under the shade of a large tree.

"But don't you think it's a little strange that they didn't warn in advance that we were coming? I mean, we were traveling for hours, surely in such amount of time they could have prepared themselves to receive us." Said Aelfgar, wondering on one glaring problem he couldn't understand it even existed. "I mean, [Message] and bam, they'll instantly know what to expect."

The archer of the group disagreed. "Remember that not everyone is magically attuned. I would not be surprised if no one who we travelled with could use the most basic of magics. I certainly didn't feel anything magical coming off them." He said, to which the third knight nodded in agreement.

"Huh. I guess you could be right." He said as he petted his partner's side.

The Griffins hadn't rested at all since departure and promptly threw themselves at the ground to do just that, even if they had stamina that could be compared to an army's each.

Not much later a small figure approached, it was the child from before, who was looking at the snoring beasts with an expression of open wonder as he got closer and closer.

The three knights looked at the kid and then between themselves amusedly, but otherwise they did nothing to stop him. He stretched his tiny arm towards Aelfgar's partner, but before he touched the beast, the kid turned his head towards them, looking for permission.

Taking this opportunity for some harmless fun, Aelfgar said with a polite smile on his face "Go ahead kid, but be aware…" at this his smile turned dark, and the child's eyes shot open in surprise "that he may decide to have you for an after-nap snack- Oof!" he couldn't finish scaring the kid as Elwyn hit him in the back of the head with the flat of his hand. "Don't spook children, idiot." Was all the archer had to say, and the other knight again nodded in agreement.

"Hey, what's the worst thing that could happen, anyway? It's not as if this overgrown chicken would actually do that, and you know it!" At that, the Griffin in question opened his eyes and squawked indignantly. "And what's this, is that a proper way to talk to your superiors?"

Elwyn, completely unimpressed, answered with the least amount of energy he could muster. "No, Sir Idiot, sir. I shall properly address you from now onwards, Sir Idiot, sir." He said with a monotone voice. Internally however, he was cackling madly – it had always been so easy to rile up Aelfgar, and it always was funny.

"No, not that! Argh!..." their captain started to get more and more flustered, and he could hear the clinks his armour made as he tried his best to contain his laughter. The child, however, did not have such reservations as he was on the ground laughing madly at the expense of the 'respected' Griffin Knight Captain. The kid's laughter caused a chain reaction, first the two knights joined in, then the (newly awoken) griffins, and finally even Aelfgar himself started chuckling.

Their laughter stopped when a nervous looking woman approached them, "Ysa, there you are, come here!" she ran towards the kid on the floor and held her tightly in her arms. "Excuse us, milords, Ysa didn't know what she was doing, she is a child after all. Please…" She was one of the villagers that they had accompanied on the trek to the city, a young woman with dirty blonde hair tied up in a bun and clothed in a classic village-girl outfit. She had overheard some parts of the conversations the soldiers had during the journey, and from the few snippets she caught, she understood that these elves were Knights –a title only reserved for nobility, so she didn't want to risk upsetting them, because no one would put themselves between an angry noble and a simple peasant. As one of the elves raised a hand, she flinched but didn't loosen the hold she had on her little sister – but her predictions of punishment were proven to be mistaken as she felt no pain, she cautiously looked at the knight in front of her. He was flailing his hands in front of her, his face morphed to an expression of unsureness as if he didn't fully know what was happening and didn't know what to do. Finally, a sound escaped his voice "I-It's nothing, don't worry about it! It's nothing, I won't do anything! I didn't do anything!" and continued mumbling similar lines.

The two knights at his back started chuckling again, to which he turned and threw at their heads a loose pommel he withdrew from a small satchel. The three of them started bickering back and forth, seemingly ignoring both of the sisters, an opportunity she took advantage of and quickly made to sneak away. Her plans were foiled, however, when the one with cerulean hair tapped her on the shoulder, making her yelp in surprise. Turning her head around, she found that the other two were still squabbling, and the one who poke her was holding his index finger over his mouth while closing one eye. "Sorry about that, girl. I understand why would you worry, but the captain isn't that kind of man." He whispered so only she could hear him, and made a motion to tell her she could go. She didn't fully comprehend what he had said until she was far away from the group of knights.

Not long after the young woman with her sister departed, a guard approached them to tell them they could go inside the city, but that their… mounts would cause too much of an uproar so he asked kindly to left them there. No one objected to it and followed the guard through the gates. All the while, Aelfgar was being updated on his orders via [Message].

Scene change: somewhere near the Great Forest of Asdra

"My King! We've seen! We've seen!" A small beastman that had come from patrol, yelling that he had encountered something very intereting. However, the Beast King was seriously considering snapping the pipsqueak's neck so he ended his insufferable prattling – who had accepted this squirt into his grand army?

"An enormous rock, in the sky! Floating, floating, like a boat, but in the air! With high walls made of strange stones!" That was more interesting "not much else could we see, you see, they see! Walls too high! Only a castle on sight! But we could smell prey, much, much prey!"

Hmm, so the cattle had gotten themselves on some sort of floating island to escape his advance? Did they honestly thought that just being temporarily out of reach meant he wouldn't hunt them there?

"Mhh… where did you say you saw this place?" the Beast King asked, his strong, commanding voice could be heard all throughout his war tent. He took another bite of the delicious steak he had in his claws.

"Yes, yes! Deep in your forest my king, close to the great, great lake!" the small creature continued with a high-noted laugh of pure glee. "I must say, my lord, its smell of prey was! MHH! Just on a whole new level! I couldn't stop salivating! But! BUT! The spoils go to you first, my lord, and I know! I obey! but please give this one a small! Just the smallest bite! Of the one whose scent was just! SUBLIME!"

The Beast King clenched his jaws with more force than necessary. The cattle, settling on his territory? No, that could not be left alone, it will tarnish his reputation and some would start to wonder his ability as a leader. Also, a great city in the sky would be perfect for the capital city of his new Empire, his new order. He threw away his almost-finished steak, which the pipsqueak expertly snatched from the air and started munching on.

"There is not much left in this place anyhow, we need to find a new place to secure food. Tell everyone we are leaving within a day. We have a new target, and this time it seems it's going to be the most delicious one yet." He chuckled darkly at the end.

In the background, destroyed city walls were uselessly resting on the ground while most of the buildings within burned or were already turned to ash. Red painted the grounds around the encampment, but the screams for mercy finished long ago. This is what the world was going to look in the future; the Beast King would make sure of it.

Scene change: The Floating Metropolis of Almha, the Goddess' realm.

Sera rested on the diwan in the room while her eyes went from perusing the Base Management tabs to making eye contact with Drifa, and back to looking at the management tabs.

It had been a great luck that her creations – at least the great majority of them – didn't need her to guide them constantly, as she had made a very in-depth description of how Almha worked as a society in one of those books she wrote a few years back. The exception being, of course, the two 'supernatural' beings that were the left and right hands of 'the Goddess'. If she were to have to deal with the same looks that she got from Drifa from every other NPC, she would most likely go mad with anxiety. As things are, the 'mortal' creations were mostly independent and the Hero-King with his advisors handled all problems, with none to this point being given to her to task. Seeing Kainen on the desk of his office, almost drowning in paperwork, made her wonder how anyone sane could handle such a heavy responsibility. Somewhere else in the world, deep underground, a skeletal being felt a chill run down his spine for the briefest of moments.

Sera turned the camera to spy on other parts of the city, each time being more and more fascinated by how well her written descriptions translated to this reality. Characters that she only had referenced in books because she couldn't create them due to reaching the level cap – and not being important enough to warrant the use of the premium item to create a companion NPC – were there, living and walking around as if they always had done so. Many questions invaded her thoughts, "Will the population grow by the end of the week, like in the game, or will it grow naturally like normal human beings? If at all?" She studied one of the tomes she had written some time ago, wondering how the hell could a few thousand words imprinted on a digital paper could make things exist. Beyond the whole thing of being transported to the New World alongside all her personally created NPCs, how come that the POPs were changed by the whims of a piece of lore that wasn't even written on their character backgrounds – back on YGGDRASIL, one couldn't do that to a POP –, so it was an enigma. And one that made her feel most uncomfortable.

Whole Noble Families that had only a few key characters originally were populated with NPCs that she had only described. Did she still possess that power? In this world? She didn't want to test it yet, the concept of bringing a whole being to life with mere words weirded her out too much.

Moving her eyes towards the floating mirror in the room, she tried for the umpteenth time to make it show anything else than that particular patch of trees. No luck.

"Sera-sama, what are you going to do about the situation?" The silver-headed woman that refused to leave her side finally asked.

"Hm? What do you mean?" Sera asked back, turning her head towards the woman, but still swinging her arms around the mirror in a vain attempt at making it work.

"Your city, milady. And your followers. They are on the middle of enemy territory, are they not? In peril of possible annihilation by these beastmen." The Valkyrie said while looking at the 'surveillance windows' that shown different parts of Almha.

Sera waved her hand dismissing the topic. "I wouldn't worry too much about it. These demi-humans weren't all that strong, they likely would not be able to injure me even if I did nothing. And the Hero is dealing with the situation, so there is little need for me to meddle in right now. If I were to protect them from every problem, they will not grow and learn from their experiences. If I were to disappear then, they would be left helpless in this world."

"I knew it! My Lady, you are thinking of abandoning us!" Drifa cried, her voice becoming wobbly.

"No, Drifa, I do not. I was talking on the hypothetical. I never would tire of my creations, but I am not infallible and there might be a point in the future we find an enemy that is powerful enough to… kill me." If the logic of MMOs applied to this world, then they would run into one such ex-player or something similar sooner rather than later… if any other player had even come to this world.

Drifa's eyes widened at her Lady's blunt statement, before moving her head downwards, obscuring her face. Sera coughed, steering the conversation back to the demi-humans.

"Well, if they prove to be more of a threat than I imagined, we might need to mobilize and fight them ourselves. If it comes to that, I'll count on you, just like in the past."

At these words, Drifa seemed to cheer up, thinking on accompanying her Lady into the battlefield like so many times before. She immediately was lost in thought, reminiscing old battles fought against many different enemies during the Dawn Era, before her Lady created her own mortal realm, though her memories are quite fuzzy. Still, it had been a while since they fought a worthy adversary; the last one had been a Primordial Dragon and that was before The Departure. These beastmen will probably measure up to such an enemy, but they may at least give her some entertainment.

She wouldn't let those monsters trample on her Lady's beautiful creation, as she was its shield. Just like Daith would take their when their rightful end came, Drifa would defend the lives of the innocent that were not ready yet – it was her role in the grand scheme of the world. As long as they were devout followers of Sera-sama, she would defend them from any outside menace.

The 'Goddess' was ignoring her again however, giving her full attention to the aggravating magic item. Thankfully, after so many attempts, something clicked on Sera's mind and she understood what to do to make the [Mirror of Remote Viewing]'s field of view to change.

What she saw next was… another patch of trees, unsurprisingly. Trying to remember more or less where the village she visited earlier was, she finally caught it on the feed. The place was abandoned and some buildings have been destroyed, and there were no corpses littering the ground anymore – but the blood and the ashes stayed. Sera hummed, speculating. "Something or someone removed the corpses. It couldn't have been the knights because they were on a hurry, so who else? The beastmen?" Following such train of thought, she realized that her sources of information – as limited as they were – were from a single perspective. The perspective of the apparent victims, true, but she knew next to nothing about these Dem-humans beyond their appetite for human flesh and their war on the Draconic Kingdom. No intel on hierarchy, tactics or customs – and behind such a large horde there should be a figurehead leading, because if it weren't the case they would have descended to infighting quite rapidly.

But how could she gather intelligence on the beasts if they attack humanoids in sight? Most of her creations are humanoid, with few exceptions, and none of those were particularly optimal for infiltration. The [Mirror of Remote Viewing] was only so useful, but it didn't have audio feed so what she saw through it could be subject to interpretation.

Making sweeping motions to change the mirror's view quickly. Within minutes she found an encampment of these beings… which sight only served to make her disdain for them grow.

"Drifa, look at this" Sera beckoned her fellow seraphim to watch what the [Mirror of Remote Viewing] was spying.

Said silver-headed woman frowned slightly, "Such savages." But made no other motion or comment. She pitied the poor souls, but she wouldn't move a finger for someone who wasn't her Lady's follower. That is the way of the world.

"You were right to ask for an action against these," Sera said with an unimpressed face "barbarians. We should look into their political structure, for if they were to turn against us, it would be more efficient to cut off their heads and let the body fall. Less possible casualties this way, too."

"But what if they continue attacking either way? What if they don't have leaders at all?" Drifa asked, joining in the strategizing.

"They would just prove that they are not even sentient, not different from a simple bear or tiger. Putting them down would not be a problem, then." Her words were so cold even Sera herself was rather surprised by them. She had thought about these beastmen like if they were one of those olden cannibalistic tribes back in Earth, but she did not feel an ounce of pity at the thought of eradicating them… was she trying to demonize them to make it easier to kill? Yes. No. Maybe?

Well, she had never been much on sympathy anyways. Even seeing a live action human slaughterhouse and she didn't feel that much for the ones being dismembered, only slight pity, if even that.

She tried to picture the same happening to her children, her creations, but a quickly growing scalding rage at the thought made her stop.

This new body, beyond the trivialities of gender, had its own distinctive psychological differences that were becoming more and more notorious as time went on. Before, Sera had looked up stuff like this while searching for information for a story he had been working on. He hadn't felt much beyond morbid curiosity, and hadn't thought much about the victims then. Now, he heard a faint voice in the back of her head whispering something she could not yet recognize.

Now, her senses didn't really change all that much, but only when talking about strangers. When talking about the denizens of Almha, she felt a powerful drive to make sure they were alright, one she couldn't say if came from her attachment as their creator, or something else.

She needed to take Daith with her sometime in the near future, to see if resurrection magic still worked as in the game. Checking again the location of the encampment she saw through the mirror, she grinned as an idea came to her mind.

Reaching for her temple with her right hand, she contacted via [Message] one of the few people she could lore-wise communicate with without it being seen as strange.

Scene change: the Draconic Kingdom's Capital, Royal Palace.

Dragon Queen Draudillon Oriculus massaged her brow in a futile attempt to make her headache recede. It hadn't helped before and it wouldn't help now, but she did it more out of taxis at this point than in a genuine hope of tuning it down.

She had already done today's session for Cerabrate, which added to her migraine. As much as she despised the man, the help Crystal Tear provided to her country was indisputable, so if she had to swallow her pride for a while so her people continued living, she would do so in a heartbeat.

Then she read the report, and she felt her heart start crawling up her throat. It said that the south-eastern front was no more, and the majority of the forces were either routed or completely annihilated. Luckily, the commander present had made the right decision and called for an evacuation of the nearby towns and villages. The next report stated that most of the civilians made it out safely, apart from two unfortunate groups.

Then was a report that made her to blink repeatedly, and then read it again. And again. It was a message from Governor Dialtaren Arcarius, saying that some interesting foreigners had come in with a group of evacuated civilians, a small group of three knights who allegedly fought off a beastman war party with only their three mounts. As baffling and unbelievable that statement was, it had the backing of one Marcus Ervarius, so they had considered it true.

What was even more baffling, however, was that these three knights had come on a 'reconnaissance mission' looking for other civilizations. They claimed that the country they came from was located deep in the forest – which should have been impossible since it was beastman territory – and willing to establish international relations… but not specified which kind. They also said that they were no diplomats, and one would make its way to Arxtu whenever it was acceptable. How did these elves contact with someone far away without moving? Because it would be stupid of them to use methods such as [Message] in these scenarios, as conversation could be easily hijacked. No, it had to be something else.

But if what they said was true, and these three warriors were worth more than a hundred beastmen, then it may be worth a shot to get into a deal with them. From both sides, they might be able to finally punch back, and an amiable nation to the east would permit farther-reaching commerce, which would be a boon to their mostly emptied out coffers.

Who knows, if everything goes better than she expects, the Draconic Kingdom may not need to 'rent' soldiers from the Theocracy anymore. In a perfect world, she also wouldn't have to degrade herself anymore to gain favours from a perverted (if powerful) man. But Draudillon was far from a deluded child hoping for the best. With luck, these newcomers will reduce even a bit the weight on her treasury.

She looked at the map of her Kingdom, specifically where Arxtu was located. It'll take around a day to reach the city going at full speed, and a courier wouldn't reach that much earlier to make it worth it.

The Dragon Queen sighed. "Let's hope something comes off this."

"What!?" A figure dressed on priestly attire shouted in surprise, which was a strange reaction coming from his normally calm and rational demeanour. He was a man somewhere in his mid-forties with short hair and keen eyes, and the youngest in the conclave of the Theocracy, Cardinal of Earth Raymond Zarg Lauransan and commander of the Six Scriptures. He received news from his agents and moles in the Draconic Kingdom, and he expected some of it, but other developments came out of the blue that left him honestly gobsmacked.

Continuing reading, he tried to make sure he wasn't hallucinating when he passed on a few lines. Finally the frontline between the forces of Oriculus and the beasts was broken, as he had predicted would happen, and the beasts didn't take long to start ravaging the countryside. That was fine; it wasn't that what he was concerned with. Apparently, three elves had come to the rescue of one village that was being raided by a force of about half a thousand beastmen and won. That meant that these elves were strong enough to be equivalent to members of the Sunlight Scripture or, Gods forbid, the Black Scripture; and that meant one thing and only one thing – they were dealing with elven godkin. From what his insiders could gather, they came from a powerful kingdom somewhere beyond the Great Forest of Asdra, and were not knowledgeable on this part of the world.

This was going to be a nightmare. On one side, there was using the Draconic Kingdom as a meatshield against the beastmen's onslaught – which fortunately or unfortunately meant they needed to 'provide assistance' so the country didn't fall automatically and left the Theocracy in a tight spot. Having the Draconic Kingdom in the middle also helped in the way that they gained a good payment for their services while also being a good way to train field experience for their soldiers, so it was a win for the Slane Theocracy. But now these new elves appeared and were perhaps powerful enough to stop the beastmen – in such case, that income would disappear, which wasn't that much of a deal, but also raised the questions on how they became so powerful, and how will they react to the Elven Kingdom the Theocracy was at war with. Will they be neutral? Will they ally with the Elven King? In such a case, Draudillon would likely just let them march through her territory without kicking up a fuss – as her nation would be too tired for her to oppose them. If they don't conquer the Draconic Kingdom outright while it still was weakened – one could not discard such actions from an elf, much less from an elven nation.

A hand tightly grasping his shoulder snapped out of his contemplation. Raymond turned towards the one in question, and saw that it was Ginedine. "You are overthinking something again." The older man stated while scrutinizing his fellow Cardinal's face. He then turned to the documents on the table, seemed to think for a second, and looked at Raymond again. "What were on these reports?"

Raymond proceeded to tell the man a shortened version of the report, which information also seemed to surprise him, before the Cardinal of Water demanded to be given the paper. Raymond complied, and watched closely how the other Cardinal's face morphed into worry as he read through the document.

Giendine looked up, "This might be a problem." Which was an understatement in Raymond's view, but he did not comment on that.

"There is also the appearance of an inhumanly strong adventurer in E-Rantel, a possible godkin. Momon, was his name?" Raymond pondered as he rubbed his jaw, slightly on edge with the events unfolding. "Do you think he has any connection with the newcomers?" He asked Giendine, to which the old Cardinal tilted his head faintly to the side.

"I don't know, but by the locals' recount, he alongside his partner came to the city from the west, not east. And his companion's ears could be easily seen and she wasn't an elf, so Momon being one is unlikely." He sighed, "But I wouldn't rule the possibility out, at least not yet."

Both of them stood on silence for a moment.

"You don't think it's like with the Evil Dieties, do you?" The younger Cardinal asked. It could be even worse, like with the Eight Greed Kings. Both times the Theocracy was taken by surprise, and if these new people where anything like them, the Slane country would be caught off guard again.

"I don't know, Raymond. I don't know."

Scene change: Great Forest of Asdra, about ten kilometres away from the Celestial City.

Sounds coming from two different sources clashed and mixed into a cacophony of sounds from a heavily armed and armoured group approaching another group that was busy eviscerating and gutting their next meal, with the shouts of despair and pain of those suffering that fate.

The camp was stained red with blood, and some extremities were haphazardly thrown about in the ground, forgotten.

As the armoured group got closer, an alarm signal sounded throughout the encampment, making its inhabitants momentarily stop their fleshy indulgences until their brains caught up with what was happening. They hastily left their tents and grabbed their weapons, still confused as to what was happening.

When they saw a group of cattle approaching them slowly, most were confused, and some even started cheering at the sight of 'fresh food!' but they dared not move yet, as their captain hadn't give the order yet, and he usually executed on the spot whoever that did not follow his orders.

The hulking height of the Beastman Captain almost doubled the size of the apparent leader of the human party, who looked laughably puny in comparison.

"What's the occasion, have someone ordered fresh food?" The enormous beastman roared, looking at the newcomers hungrily. Normally, just the sight of him would have made the human soldiers run in despair – which made chasing them more entertaining – but these didn't even flinch. "Hmmm, sturdy, these ones." He said, studying them, before showing all his fangs in a manic grin. "I will cherish the taste"

"So crass." A woman in the soldiers' group said. She was dressed differently than the rest of the humans, wearing only a loose robe and some sort of silver headgear that completely covered the upper-part of her head, including her eyes, and outfitted in a variety of silvery jewellery. In her hands, some sort of twisted metal stick rested, but it looked different than what the shaman's stave was, so it couldn't be that.

"Bite me, prey. Because I certainly will bite you." Said the beastman, still grinning madly. He loved to see their horror-stricken faces before he killed them, and that was the reason why he still didn't give the order for his men to rip them apart.

This seemed to not affect the woman, however, as she continued talking without a hint of fear. "I will only say this once. You and your kind are not welcome here, leave. Our Lady's mercy had spared you from being eradicated, be smart and follow my warning." She said without any inflexion, truly not caring whether these barbarians did or did not do as told. She had divine protection, she could tell, so her victory was assured even if her escort were to be overwhelmed.

The beasts seemed to find her warning as a hilarious jest, as they laughed uncontrollably at divine command. She should have them executed on the spot, but that wasn't what her Lady wanted of her… for now.

"Ahh, that was a good laugh. What's better than a full belly and a good laugh, right men?" the beastmen cheered at his words, "but I grow tired of you. You came from that flying rock I presume? Well, know this before you become stew and beef. The King himself is coming here to take that rock from you and feast on anyone is in there, together with the rest of his mighty army! But I will be the one to savour your people's blood first." He said, licking his upper row of teeth. "I will cherish the taste." And he motioned to his men to start the assault.

However, what he expected to happen did not occur, as the group of human soldiers opened ranks and the woman with the strange metal stick sighed. "Very well. Know this is divine punishment." She stated as she drew from the stick like if it were a bow, and a magical glow appeared on the magic item.

In the span of a second, seven rings of yellowish white light appeared around her hand holding the strange bow, as if shielding her from the attacks. "[Holy Smite]" she said on a low voice, but strangely reverberated throughout the forest.

The last thing Aag, the Beastman Captain saw, was a bright light before his body was vaporized instantly alongside many of his men that were close enough to him.

The beastmen assault stopped on its tracks, as they stood there frozen watching the scene in complete disbelief. They didn't have enough time to comprehend what had they witnessed before the human warriors started their attack.

Many of the beastmen fought back, if only on pure instinct – retreat wasn't a thing in beastmen culture, after all – but quickly found themselves outmatched by the humans that they had been hunting for so many years.

While the battle was ongoing, three figures were passing through the encampment, inspecting the prisoners that had been on there. In past sense, as only a single one was still alive, a boy who in the moment his captors went out to see what was going on, break out of his confinement and ran directly towards the inert corpse of a woman and hugged it tightly as he wept.

He couldn't see the three new figures as they were under a spell of invisibility, but still felt that something extremely powerful was nearby, but it wasn't the beastmen.

The three figures were Daith, Drifa and Sera, who were trying to find if resurrection magic still worked as it did before. There were not many bodies in good enough condition to be confident that it'll work, the body in best shape was the one the boy was clinging to, and it still lacked an arm and parts of its viscera.

It was better than a single torso or a lone leg, but it still wasn't optimal. Deciding that they wouldn't lose anything even if it failed, Sera gave Daith the order to try to resurrect the woman.

While the Overlord was preparing the appropriate spell, the boy, between sobs, begged for anyone to give his mother back.

Suddenly something grabbed him and tore the body from his grasp, and before he could protest, the corpse started glowing. He had heard stories about priests being able to resurrect people, but most villagers had told him that those were mere stories and nothing else.

But now, without the presence of a priest, he saw something miraculous happen. His mother's body began healing, as if rejecting all those wounds, and even her arm grew back as if those barbarians hadn't ripped it off and eaten it right in front of him. Astonished, he watched as not a single blemish was left, and his eyes watered even more as he saw her began breathing again.

Whatever force that was keeping him in place dissipated, and he jumped at her again, to make sure he wasn't hallucinating.

The woman opened her eyes as if he was suddenly woken from deep sleep, and felt as her son crashed into her, his tears dampening her shirt. However, what her eyes were drawn to was a faint image a little further away of two angels and a figure covered in a black robe, whose only visible feature was a skeletal hand that was pointed towards her. She couldn't think about it much as extreme exhaustion crashed on her mind and she succumbed to sleep.

Meanwhile, the Holy Maiden felt the use of high-grade magic come from one of the tents, and was witness of the miracle when she made her way there. Surely, it must be for some reason that Lord Daith denied the woman her pass to the beyond, and she will respect that.

Approaching the two, she placed a hand on the child's shoulder, to which he turned his head. "It's alright, child. The Guide of the dead decided that it wasn't her time yet. Be at peace, for you will not suffer at the hands of these savages anymore." The mental and physical fatigue catched up to the boy as he heard what she said and he fell unconscious almost instantly.

The next moment, one of her escorts opened the entrance of the tent a tad violently, "Electra-sama!"

She turned around, and even if no one could see her eyes, the soldier felt how she was looking at him to calm down. The soldier straightened in worry, "I'm sorry, Electra-sama, but we can't let our Holy Maiden to wander about without guards, especially on enemy territory." He said hurriedly, before coughing and continuing, "We have finished with the last stragglers, and we haven't seen any prisoners…" and then he noticed the state of the interior of the tent. "Well, that answers that."

The Holy Maiden hummed. "These are the only two survivors." She said as she motioned towards the woman and child "Task someone to take them with us back to the city. Tell the rest to prepare a mass grave for the bodies." She said, before thinking about it. "Say, have we lost anyone?"

"No, ma'am. There have been a few with wounds, but nothing life-threatening. The worse ones are being or have already been healed." The soldier informed her. She nodded and gestured him to get on with his orders, to which he saluted and got to it.

A little distance away, three invisible beings were watching the results of the battle.

"Well, that answers that." Said Sera, referring to the woman that was resurrected. It wasn't anything conclusive, but seeing it work with a local made some of her worries lessen. She didn't know however if it affected like in the game, reducing levels each time one was resurrected, or if it behaved differently.

"Indeed." Said the personification of Death. Drifa simply nodded in agreement, but her eyes were trained on the remains of the of the three was impressed by the beastmen's capabilities, and even if she knew that they weren't anything strong – seeing them being obliterated by a simple [Holy Smite], she couldn't help but think that they were puny, pitiful beings. But they opposed the Goddess' will, and to add insult to injury, it seemed that Almha – her Lady's holy city, no less – was about to be attacked by an 'army' of these barbarians, and so, they deserved no mercy.

It said much about the normal humans on this world, however, if such weak demi-humans were considered 'strong'. Or were they heteromorphs? Well, they appeared to be weak to divine magic, so it could be.

Seeing that there was nothing else to do there, the three 'godly' beings teleported out, as they had more important matters to attend to elsewhere.

Scene change: Heavenscrown Castle, Throne Room.

In an exquisitely decorated throne made of gold and dragon ivory, the Hero-King of the Celestial City sat while reading a document his chamberlain brought him, particularly concerning the Draconic Kingdom – specifically that their Queen would be ready to host an envoy within a day. In normal circumstances it wouldn't be a problem, but not fifteen minutes before the Holy Maiden had informed him that apparently a beastman army was making its way towards his city with the intention of desecrating it. He couldn't leave when a threat loomed on the horizon; certainly not when said army's size was not determined – they may have not been very strong individually, at least the ones who clashed with his people, but what if their numbers were so large that they could offset that? He was the greatest fighter in this city bar the divine themselves; he needed to stay back to make sure he did his best to defend it.

Which meant having to pick a representative who was a good at diplomacy – preferably one who wouldn't be missed on the battlefield. Two of his Generals were good diplomats, but as their title indicated, they would be needed on the field. The other three were so bad at statecraft that it would be better to send a golem instead, so they wouldn't even be considered on normal circumstances.

Important figures of the Faith were also out – the Holy Maiden would also assist in combat, and the clergymen would be needed to tend to the wounded. Also, it wouldn't be the best of ideas to have the Inquisitor as a diplomatic envoy, considering his job. As he was contemplating on who to send, a woman entered the room, walking slowly but steadily, gracefulness in her every move. She was clothed on fine academic garb, a pair of glasses adorned her face, hovering over her deep amethyst-coloured eyes.

"My King, let me go in your stead." She calmly said as she continued approaching.

This was Historia, the Head Librarian and one of the most powerful beings this side of divinity. It was a strange sight encountering her outside the Great Library, and it was even stranger to hear her asking to go away from it. The woman was the very definition of bookworm – it is said that she had read every page of every book within the walls of the Great Library, and so having the deepest understanding to their Lady's mind.

Indeed, for such a feat, many consider her closer to the Goddess than Kainen himself.

The King didn't bother to mask his surprise, "I wouldn't have thought that I would see the day that I'd hear you volunteering to leave the Library. I'd whether the world's going to end, but it has already done so twice." He said, turning his head slightly to the side as his brows twitched denoting his perplexity.

"It is a rather simple matter, Kainen. I know that even if I am not in the Library, no one would dare to do anything to our Lady's sacred scripts. And in the off chance these beastmen break their way here, they would have to pass through you first. If they do, I don't think I would fare any better." She said, before her serious expression morphed to one of delight, "And I am greatly interested on this new world. Especially their books, no matter which kind." She finished as a trail of drool ran down the side of her mouth.

The king arched a brow at her, making her realize she was making an unsightly expression – to which she cleaned her face and coughed, and then raised her brow in kind. "What? You have people hearing for you, I have people hearing for me. Information flows, you should expect such a thing happening."

Kainen sighed, quickly deliberating in his mind before reaching the conclusion that yes; she was one of the best candidates to be a diplomat. If she could restrain her book-lust, that is, but she was a professional. Most of the time.

He nodded in the affirmative. "Very well. You'll have to leave in a few hours, the Dragon Queen expects an ambassador before tomorrow. Will you take any bodyguards? If so, I ask you to not take too many, we don't know whether we will need the manpower."

The Head Librarian smiled mysteriously, but didn't say anything more. She nodded politely before taking her leave, going to her chambers to prepare for the journey. The city of Arxtu was a fair distance away, but by flying there she could reach it within two hours.

Scene change

Having such a massive lack on information about the world was getting heavier and heavier on Sera's mind. She knew little beyond their immediate neighbours, and even then, there was much that was unknown. Going by what she had seen, it appeared that the average inhabitant was much, much weaker than her, and even than NPCs around level thirty.

But there was nothing that said that there couldn't also be something out there that posed a threat to Almha, and so her anxiety grew. Barely, if at all; back when she was a simple author he had experienced much more anxiety over much more mundane things than she does now. If it were to be a more appropriate word, uneasiness would be a better choice, maybe.

They might now find out more about the Draconic Kingdom and maybe even possibly about some other nations out there, but by heavily altered channels such as politics and she knew they couldn't take it at face value. Mix in with the populace would be the best way to gain information, even if it often was distorted when passing from mouth to mouth. The best course of action that she could think of, however, is by abusing invisibility and try to gather information that way.

There are mercenary NPCs that fitted that classification down to a T, but summoning them costs gold, and she still doesn't know if she can get it as easily as back in the game. And she isn't even sure they would be loyal at all, it could be just a massive waste.

What she decided to at the end was to go to undercover alongside Drifa, try to learn as much as she could, find out about the rest of the world. Find out if there are similarities with YGGDRASIL or the real world that may indicate the presence of players, present or past.

The Draconic Kingdom, while maybe a good place to start at first glance – since it's the only nation they are in the know of – would not do, however. Given that a 'new nation' has come in contact with them, unknown travellers would be easy to link with Almha, even without proof.

But the problem that they know not about the rest of the world beyond the location of a single city and an abandoned village, so where to start would be difficult to decide.

The beastmen didn't have any way to detect them under invisibility, but it could be different with the human nations, if there is one besides the Draconic Kingdom. Their knights in Arxtu hadn't heard much about the world either, as they were being kept from getting in contact with the commoners.

That was where a [Message] from the Holy Maiden reached her, in a sort of prayer. Apparently, the expedition had brought back the woman Daith had successfully resurrected, alongside a kid… and then it hit her, they have a perfectly good source of information right here, on Almha! It may be not much, as is only a single peasant, but it was at least something without coming off as suspicious somewhere a player might be.

Then there was the matter of players, and what to do about them… if they are not hostile, they might even be worth allying with depending on the circumstances.

She snapped out of her thoughts and gave the Holy Maiden the task to pry information out of their guests about the world. She gave her permission to explain their current situation to the woman if it was deemed necessary; maybe telling about the whole world-hopping may help to loosen lips.

It's not like they would let them leave anyway.

Evnie felt as someone tried to gently wake her up, probably some servant under the orders of her mother. She should get up and prepare for the day, but her bed felt so comfortable today, that she didn't want to yet. It had been so long since she got such a good sleep, her mother will surely understand… she hadn't sleep on a such comfortable bed since… her father… the soldiers…

She took in abruptly as she opened her eyes and sat up, trying to discern her surroundings. She hadn't had that dream since years ago, and she had found a new life and was happy with it. If a little modest, but she couldn't be picky while she had been fleeing for her life.

And in her modest life she certainly would not be able to afford such an expensive bed. Because she was no longer Evnie, she was Tessa, a normal housewife to a hard-working farmer on the village of Svar.

As the world reshaped in her eyes, she could now see that the room she was now in was of unfamiliar architecture and decoration, and exhaled the breath she hadn't noticed she was withholding. Trying to remember how she ended up here, horrible memories began flooding her mind. How the village was attacked, how her neighbours were dragged from their houses screaming, how they were driven like slaves or cattle, how her new happy life crashed down. How her husband was dismembered and gutted right in front of her, and how the monsters ate his corpse while she held her boy tightly on her chest so he wouldn't be able to see.

How the same happened to her not long after.

Is this afterlife?

"I would take it calmly if I were you." She heard a soft, melodic voice say. Turning her head towards the voice, she saw it belonged to the same person who was holding her shoulder, presumably to wake her up.

A woman clothed with priestly looking robes and a curious headgear that covered all her upper head, including her eyes, stood there.

Tessa then remembered the last thing she saw before unconsciousness took her, the image of two angels and the strange skeletal figure. Was this woman one of the angels?

The woman in question smiled, and then gently pulled Tessa so she laid down back on the bed. "No, I am not an angel" she said. Tessa looked at the woman in surprise, but after she thought about it a little, "I said that out loud, didn't I?" the priestess-looking woman nodded.

"As I said, take it slowly. Even if by a servant of our Lady, being resurrected would surely make you feel weak." Tessa squirmed a little, "You don't need to worry, we won't do anything to you, well, beyond giving you a place to recover." But that wasn't what she was concerned with.

"My son, my boy, where is he?" Tessa asked with a growingly sobbing voice, expecting even more bad news.

The priestess-looking woman gestured to a bundle in the bed that was next to her body. Removing the blanket, Tessa saw that her son was placidly sleeping beside her, and she couldn't contain herself as she moved closer to him and pulled him into a hug.

The boy seemed to wake up from this, and when he looked at her, "K-kaa-san?" he timidly asked. She pulled away slightly so she could see his face, and couldn't help it when tears flooded her eyes. And his did too. Both started crying messily with plenty of snot to spare as their new situation permitted it.

The other woman on the room left the mother-son duo cry on peace, as she could understand they needed a moment.

After a moment, Tessa looked back to the woman, still sobbing but trying to calm down. "I… I saw angels a-and a figure clothed in black. B-but I… I know I… died, before. You said something a-about resurrection?" she asked.

The woman nodded, "That's right. I was dispatched to clear the beastmen from our proverbial garden by my Lady, and you were resurrected right in front of my eyes by one of her servants in the beastmen's camp."

"T-then I need to give my thanks to whoever did it." She said, thankful from the bottom of her heart to resurrected her. "But I have to say, I-I don't have the money to pay for it. But if you need payment, I could work for you until the debt is paid…" She was stopped from continuing her ranting by the woman.

"Now, now, take it easy and calm. You are weak right now, so don't worry too much about it." She said before she walked a few paces away to where an exquisitely decorated chair was, and then sat on it. "To answer your first inquiry, praying would be the best way to reach him. Forgive me, I am not aware of your religion, but in ours he is the one who guides the souls of the dead to the Beyond." That explanation seemed to confuse Tessa in more ways than one, but the woman hadn't stopped her speech. "And don't worry about payment. We don't normally resurrect people, but when we do, we don't charge for the service. However… I would like you to answer some questions." The woman requested.

Tessa gulped, but nodded nonetheless. She had learned to not act like a bratty noble long ago, after all, and she understood that her situation depended on the goodwill of these people.

"First of all, does the name Almha sound familiar?" She thought about it for a second, rolling the name on her tongue, but had to shake her head in the negative. "Not that I expected you to. That's the name of where we are now, the Celestial City." She had never heard of it, not even back when she…

"This leaves us to the next topic," the woman said, sighing… "To be frank, we don't know a whole lot about the world, and would like you to tell us everything you know about it"

Tessa blinked, having not expected this turn in the conversation. "Can I ask… how do you not know about the rest of the world?... if it is not too much."

The woman nodded, as if she had anticipated such a question. "Well, it is simple really. We are the remnants of a world that ended. We were just recently transported to yours, and so we know little of it. But as we see, there are also humans such as you in this new world, so we might be able to reach amicable relations with other human nations and similar."

Tessa felt her brows rise to her hairline at the explanation, being something very hard to believe, but at the same time, there was no reason for them to lie to her. And they could be like the Theocracy's Six Gods or the Eight Greed Kings – if the legends were true, those two groups also came from another world.

She had never been a very pious individual, but thought those myths had some truth to it. And now, she had apparently had been resurrected by one of their deities… well, at least they are not malevolent like the Evil Deities were.

"I… I understand. But even if you ask me, I wouldn't know where to start…"

"Then let's start with something simple. Tell me about the religion on this world, are there many, or is there a unified religion?"

Tessa thought about it for a second "The majority of the human nations worship the Four Gods, the exception being the Slane Theocracy and their Six Great Gods… which are the Four Gods plus their God of Life and the God of Death. If we talk about places like the Argland Council State, then I don't know much about their beliefs." She started.

Their talk spanned a few hours, but Electra could gather a good amount of information out of it, that her Lady had asked her for.

In another part of the Celestial City, the so-called Goddess alongside her closest companions was listening in with great care to every word.

"She's no common peasant." Sera said, examining the image of the woman on the screen. "She knows way too much for someone who supposedly stayed all her life in a tiny village with little connexion to the rest of the world. Honestly, I thought that the best we would get were a few names and not much else."

"See how she hesitates for a moment when that nation comes up? I might imagine she is from there. Maybe a criminal, or an expulsed noble. Maybe even a royal." Chimed in Drifa, spotting some details similar to those throughout the conversation.

"This Theocracy might prove to be a problem in the future with their radical beliefs. They are right next to the Draconic Kingdom, so they aren't that far away. But what intrigues me is why they hadn't helped the Draconic Kingdom with the beastmen, after all, if the Draconic Kingdom falls, they would be next on the menu."

"We'll have to be cautious about these Dragon Lords, apparently they are in the same level of their Gods, so we don't really have something to compare them to."

"This 'Adventurer's Guild' sounds more like a mercenary group to me"

"Their coinage is utterly ridiculous."

Sera could confidently say that they gathered good amount of information from this woman. It had been a stroke of pure luck that they happened to resurrect her out of all people, but it paid off handsomely.

The fact that the new worlders used Tier magic was telling evidence that players from YGGDRASIL had passed through these lands, but these so called [Martial Arts] were foreign to Sera, so it could be coincidence that the Tier magic system that they used was identical to the one from YGGDRASIL, except for the existence of Tier Zero magic that didn't exist back in the game.

Figures of history like the Six Gods and the Eight Greed Kings could have been players that were transported to this world hundreds of years ago much like Sera had been recently… if so, the possibility of encountering one exists, if any of them still live to this day or if in the future more are transported to this world.

Having a rough understanding on where's what, they came to the decision to pose in as adventurers in either the Re-Estize Kingdom or the Baharuth Empire, as none of the other nations even had the Adventurer's Guild, or in the case of the Draconic Kingdom, their arrival could be easily tracked back to Almha, drawing in too much attention.

Sera was doing this for two reasons: one reason was actually to dig information about the world, and the second was to look the world, and maybe something out there or an adventure will inspire her to write some new stories. She still hadn't written anything besides that thing she did just when she was transported to this world, for fear of her word becoming reality. But it seemed that nothing she wrote after being transported actually influenced the POPs, so she decided she could write peacefully again. She might even find a publisher or a similar agency to one to sell her works to the rest of the world.

Deciding between Re-Estize and Baharuth was difficult. Job prospect-wise, the Kingdom seemed to be a better option, but the Empire offered its own interesting perks. Their Imperial Ministry of Magic being one of them, maybe they'll see something worthwhile if they visited it. The fact that the Empire also had a 'legendary magic caster' who apparently could rival entire armies by himself was also intriguing. Was this Fluder Paradyne an ex-player? Sera couldn't be sure, as his capabilities were unknown by Tessa, who could only say that Paradyne was able to cast 'legendary magic' without specifics. Was it Super-Tier magic? More, or less? It was up in the air.

The downside to the Empire was that because the diligence on the Imperial Army's part, there were not many jobs available for Adventurers, so it was a slowly declining occupation.

Not that payment concerned Sera too much – after all, what examples were rescued from the encampment that they attacked earlier demonstrated that these coins were next to useless to her. They didn't work with magic that required money, and for the most part didn't convert all too well in the Exchange Box. There were several copper and bronze coins, and a single gold one, but none of them exchanged for even a single YGGDRASIL gold coin. She hadn't known if it was because the Exchange Box didn't work anymore, so she tried throwing in a small [Healing Potion] and it converted flawlessly. So the worth of the coins didn't match to even one of YGGDRASIL's coins, or the box couldn't convert New World items into gold – which would be a problem. NPC resurrection cost a hefty sum, maintaining defences do also. In the game, part of the defence's price was automatically paid by the "tax system", but she didn't know if it worked like that anymore.

Throwing in some produce that had been stocked, it exchanged for a few coins, so if anything, she could make her followers to plant more YGGDRASIL crops and use it to convert into gold.

Finally deciding on the Baharuth Empire, since even if working on the Kingdom would result in a more consistent payment, her primary objective was collecting information, and the Empire's capital Arwintar seemed the best candidate to do so. Also, it was slightly closer to Almha than the Kingdom was – not that it mattered much since if something happened she could just teleport back and it would take the same amount of time.

For going undercover, they had to change their attire as to not stand out too much. Changing her clothing for light armour of wyvern-hide and plated with mythril in vital parts, a pair of knee-high boots of similar make, and a circlet also made out of myhril. It was a fairly good outfit for a mid-tier rouge-type like an archer, but it was next to trash for a level one hundred player. The reason why she still had it was because… she didn't like to throw away things, even if they weren't useful and were occupying space needlessly. Sue her. At least she left all those obsolete outfits and weapons on the treasury, because if not she would have maxed out the capacity of her inventory long ago.

Also, she had to leave aside the use of the spellbow as the new worlders apparently didn't have knowledge of it and would be too recognizable. So back to being a regular archer, it seemed, as acting as a magic caster with her current job as Magic Archer would be stupid with the amount of penalties she has when not equipping a spellbow.

Drifa, on her part, changed her outfit to a full plate and a halberd both also made of mythril, as apparently spears were looked down upon as 'weapons of plebeians' that were conscripted, and she had to go without a shield because using a halberd with one was cumbersome at best.

Both of them had data crystals for fast swapping their equipment back to their Divine-class one if the need arose, because if a level one hundred opponent attacked them with their current gear, they might as well go naked.

Making sure everything was in order first, they departed under the cover of the night. They would fly west while also using [Greater Invisibility] as a precaution, until they reached Arxtu and then head north, as the Baharuth Empire's capital was roughly in that direction.

Searing through the sky, seeing the trees rapidly pass under her as her now heightened vision permitted her to, Sera found the journey oddly pleasant. They reached their waypoint in a little less than an hour, watched their surroundings – noting that for a so-called city, Arxtu was fairly small – and then moving northwards.

They had to pass over a small mountainous region, but they had been flying higher than what these mountains reached so it wasn't as it was an obstacle.

Slowly but surely, the war-torn terrain of the Draconic Kingdom gave place to the obviously flourishing one of the Empire, as its limits began with a rather impressive-looking frontier fortress. She could see the roads were well-maintained, groups of soldiers patrolling them at regular intervals, and a few caravans making their way on the late hours of the night.

If she were to describe it with a word, she would say that life for the common populace appeared "peaceful". For all his reputation as the "Bloody Emperor", Jircniv appeared to be concerned with his people's wellbeing. That, or with efficiency, but either suited Sera just fine.

They had to land somewhere in the middle to look at a signpost to make sure which way the Imperial Capital was, they had to continue flying following that road afterwards.

Arriving at Arwintar as the sun was just getting up from the horizon, they overpassed the city and flew a few ways westward before landing. They had to make sure they couldn't be easily traced back to Almha, after all.

They made touchdown on a small clearing, a few hundred metres away from a village at the other side of the woods.

The angels made sure to hide their wings before undoing the invisibility spell they were under. Before starting their way back to the Imperial Capital, Sera turned to Drifa "Remember. I am Diana, no honorifics. You are Athena. We came from the mountains off to the West, from a small city – but we tell that if we are pressured to say so." Sera- no, Diana said as she adjusted the longbow on her back.

Athena nodded, "Yes, Diana-sama"

Diana looked at her again, incredulous. "I just told you, no honorifics." She said, emphasizing the no.

The other woman blinked, apparently not realizing that she had done the very thing her Lady had told not to do. "I'm sorry, Diana-san, it's a force of habit." She said, but looked highly uncomfortable while doing so. "I must say though… refer to your Divine self in such an uncouth manner feels heretical to me. Must I ask, is it necessary for me to talk to you this way, my Lady?"

Diana pinched her nose bridge while she sighed. "Yes, D-Athena, it is. Otherwise we might attract the wrong kind of attention. Also, no 'my Lady' while we are undercover."

Athena seemed to cringe at the prospect of not being able to refer to her Lady as proper, but it was an order given by her Lady. She was conflicted over the matter, but decided to follow the orders. "As you will, my- Diana-san."

Diana's mouth formed a forced smile. At least it's some progress.

They made their way to getting out of the small forest. Once they were on the road, they started to walk towards Arwintar, Diana estimated that they'd get there before noon.

As the Imperial countryside is well known for, they came across no setback besides a small patrol who asked what their destination was.

When reaching the city walls, Diana made an appreciative sound. "Mmh, not bad. I'd guess this city is about half the size of Almha?"

Athena did not seem to share her admiration for the Imperial Capital, however. "It's nothing impressive, compared to my Lady's Holy City." She thought herself so smart, as long as she didn't call 'Diana' her Lady directly, she could refer to her in a third person and not break the rules.

But Diana didn't put up with her cheekiness, and smacked Athena in the back of her head. "You can't make references to Almha in public, or all our preparations would go down the drain if you do." She said, already regretting accepting having the other angel as a companion for the journey.

Athena rubbed the back of her head and bit her lower lip, but nodded in acceptance nonetheless. 'But, my Lady, isn't that what you just did?' was a thought that she dared not to say out loud.

As both of them passed through Arwintar's western gates, Diana could not help but notice the guards and a few pedestrians' gaze on both of them. Were they discovered? Or did they looked suspicious, she thought that these disguises were actually pretty good and wouldn't stand out too much, which did not seem to be the case.

In fact, she was correct, at least mostly. But there were other reasons why the two disguised angels were attracting so much attention.

The citizens of the Imperial Capital were captivated with them. When they saw them enter the city, everyone, no matter age or gender, felt their eyes forcefully pulled towards the sight of the two women. Black hair was rather rare to come by, after all, but they were completely and utterly mesmerized by their beauty, and the grace which they walked.

Their equipment, for those who had a good eye for such a thing, was also very eye-catching. The one with a low ponytail wore a full plate of some metal different than the common steel most adventurers would wear, and was engraved with golden embellishments, something that only the wealthiest of nobles or merchants would be able to afford without bankrupting themselves, and her weapon, a halberd completely made of metal, with all its ornamentation looked like a national treasure than anything else.

The one with a braid didn't fall short either, her light armour was of such a high quality that it would not be strange to think that it could protect her more than a normal suit of heavy armour, while her enormous bow, not made of wood as common sense would dictate, seemed to have been built for a user far taller and stronger than a normal human, possibly even a weapon of the Gods themselves or the Eight Greed Kings of legend.

Muttered conversations started whenever someone saw them, wondering who they were, where were they going, and the like. Gossip followed them as they tried to find the Adventurer's Guild, a fact that kept Diana on the edge. If they were normal people with normal senses, they would have not noticed most of it, but as they were actually the highest level of angels, their senses were way more refined than a human and they had no problem hearing and understanding such a low voice.

Entering the Guild Hall, however, turned to be even worse. The adventurers in there all turned to the newcomers, and she could feel their eyes scan the both of them with different thoughts in mind.

Curiosity. Suspicion. Greed. Lust. Antipathy. Amusement.

She chose to ignore their gazes.

Approaching a free counter, she coughed to snap the receptionist out of her deep thoughts, "Hello, I am Diana and this is my companion Athena." She said with a smile while gesturing with a hand towards the heavily armoured woman. "We are here to register in the Guild."

The murmurs stopped. All present stared at the two in bafflement, carefully scrutinizing their equipment and the way they moved. The fact that they weren't already registered meant that they weren't battered veterans, so the level of threat of these two women posed automatically lowered in their eyes.

Scorn filled the gazes of most.

These girls were little spoiled princesses that didn't take a no for an answer. Their equipment was probably bought by their doting parents, and they probably can't really fight.

Specifically the girl with the bow, people scoffed when looking at her rather thin-looking arms. Yeah, right. She can't even draw that bow with those muscles. Many amongst the crowd thought.

Were they mocking their profession, thinking it was easy to be an Adventurer? Tch. They'll have another thing coming.

After all, people like them could use that expensive-looking equipment far better than these girls, and besides that, weren't they pretty things?

Maybe they'll pay these girls a visit tonight, let them see why making fun of a hard profession like theirs was a bad idea.

"Eeh… Uhm… Right. The signup fee cost is five silvers, and the literacy test is another five coppers. There is also a set of rules you have to read and accept before you can sign up." The receptionist said, quickly putting up her professional mask. She was unaccustomed to new people actually signing up however, as not many people did that anymore in the Empire, even less in the Capital. Looking at the very obviously high-born women, "Royals and Imperials have an exchange rate of one to one, so either is fine. Dracos are a little less valuable, seven silver Dracos make five silver Imperials." She had to make sure she didn't anger them, so she announced the exchange rates for the most commonly seen currency within the Empire so they didn't claim that she was ripping them off. She had bad experiences with nobility in the past.

The two women looked at each other, and then the archer grabbed a small bag from a pouch resting at her hips. From the small bag, she withdrew only Dracos, which was… unusual, if anything. They didn't look like nobility from the Draconic Kingdom, as they certainly wouldn't have the resources to spare for anything right now. It must have been that they wanted to use all the Dracos they had before the Draconic Kingdom collapsed and its coin lost any worth left it had.

Diana placed on the counter seven silver Dracos for the signup fee and was about to search for the copper coins, before freezing and looking at the clerk again. "How many copper Dracos would that be?"

The receptionist wanted to avert her eyes from the woman's piercing gaze, but she had a job to do and that wouldn't be professional. "I-It would be nine copper Dracos" the clerk felt her heart crawl up her throat as Diana narrowed her eyes. But the woman simply nodded after a second, withdrawing from the bag said amount of coins and placing them alongside the silvers on the counter. "R-right. Now, you'll have to fill in these documents to be officially registered on our archive." She said as she handed both girls said papers.

The one who had done all the talking, Diana, gracefully accepted the documents, "Thank you" she said with a curt nod. The clerk was dumbstruck, never had she interacted with a noble that was even slightly well-mannered towards commoners.

Diana walked up to a free table, Athena just a step behind her. She was deeply aware that the gazes had multiplied in intensity, but tried her best to ignore them. The same could not be said about her companion, however.

"Athena, stop staring back." She whispered, "we are not here to start a fight with the locals." It was true that she didn't like to interact with people too much, and especially not with people openly hostile to her, but for now she didn't need things escalating senselessly.

Athena snarled equally low, "these infidels should be put on their places, looking at my Lady with such eyes…"

Diana sighed.

When looking at the document she had in front of her… yeah, she couldn't read a speck of it. This script used in the New World was weirder than any language in use back on Earth, and she couldn't distinguish where a character ended and where it started. Completing it would be a real challenge, if not for the existence of a particular item.

The item in question was a special set of glasses that one could obtain from a gacha machine on YGGDRASIL, though it was fairly useless in the game. For an item with less than one percent chance of getting, it was essentially a crappy trophy dedicated to the player's rotten luck. But now on the New World, it proved to be most useful. It was a pair of glasses that gave the user the ability to read any script, an auto-translator if you will.

She didn't think they would work on this world's scripts, but to her surprise when she tried to read sign posts with them, she found that these pair of glasses did indeed work.

Now her test was if it let her write the language. Swiftly taking them out of their highly ornamented case, she put them on and began reading.

The more she read, the less impressed she was with the system. It was full of flaws and some people had meddled in there, sanctioning what things adventurers could and couldn't do seemingly arbitrarily.

Nevertheless, being an adventurer was one of the fastest ways to gain information without drawing too much attention. Too much bad attention. She briefly glanced around the room. 'Well, it seems there is going to be a fair amount of it anyways'.

Setting her focus back on the paper, she reached for the quill. "Well, here goes nothing."

After a few setbacks, Diana and Athena exited the Guild Hall sporting new shiny copper tags. Diana was still trying to wrap her head around the tasks her rank could take. After so many years on YGGDRASIL hunting creatures of legend and divine creatures, looking at these 'quests', they were so… mundane.

Eliminate a giant rat infestation. A blacksmith wants someone to deliver some tools to an associate. An old lady wants help looking for a pan!? Really, is that what being a copper plate meant?

They did them anyways – the rats were flicked to death, no need for weapons; the tools were delivered, and the pan was found. The requests for copper plates apparently were even lamer than in other countries because most interesting tasks were dealt with by the Imperial Army.

At the end, they finished the day with a few more coppers and little more. The blacksmith had wanted to buy Athena's armour, but he war refused. Several times. He even offered up to thirty golds, but again, they weren't really concerned with money, so they declined. Plus, the impression was already made, it would be strange if the very next day the one who had been seen wearing a full plate didn't have it anymore.

Entering at an inn that looked acceptable, the interior that awaited them wasn't as good. There were several stains on the floors and walls and furniture, there were very few sources of light, and the place reeked of alcohol.

Being under constant scrutiny for the better half of a day had made it so it was easier for Diana to deal with, but it was by no means easy. There were some of the people that had been on the Guild Hall previously, and the moment the angels entered, the grins of those men grew darkly.

The barkeeper looked at Diana and Athena with delight blatantly plastered on his face, before he saw their copper plates to which he arched his eyebrows in disbelief.

The man could have been easily mistaken for a bear, as he was one of – if not the – tallest locals Diana met. She didn't know how the hell could a bartender maintain so much muscle as he likely didn't go to fight monsters anymore – for what the receptionist at the Guild told them, inns for adventurers were normally ran by former adventurers, and the man had plenty of scars to testify for a lifetime of combat.

"We'll rent a room." Said Diana as she kept her eyes trained on the man, trying her best to not give any mind to the other adventurers.

The man didn't immediately reply, but after a moment he grunted, "'Tis two coppers fa' a common room, ya'll have to get ta know others and ma'be a roommate'll show ya the ropes. Food will cost another five coppers fer ya." He said as he resumed cleaning a mug.

The two women frowned, "Don't you have a private rooms?"

The man didn't stop cleaning, "Ye, I do. But yer new, right? I don't know an' I don't care how ya got yer hands on such a good equipment, but yer faces say 'nough. Believe me when I say that ya'll need the help for other adventurers. The Empire might be calmer than other lands, but when ya encounter a strong monster, if ya don't know what'yer doing, no matter yer equipment, ya end up food for crows."

This didn't faze Diana or her companion, however. "I don't particularly care. I'd prefer a private room. Now, how much is it?"

The innkeeper frowned, but didn't persist. He had seen his fair share of overly confident newbies on their first days as adventurers, and they didn't last for more than a month.

But before he could reply the price, one of the other customers approached the ladies, placing one of his arms over the archer's shoulders. "Now, don't be so harsh sweetheart. Why don't you give us the chance and get to know us first before dismissing us so cruelly?" His apparent comrades sat a little further away, looking at the scene with grins while their eyes glinted dangerously. "You know, me and my mates over there could use your… abilities - oompf!" The man couldn't finish talking because Athena separated him from her Lady with what for her was almost a gentle tap, but for anyone else it looked like the man had been rammed with full force by a golem.

"Like I said," Diana had her eyes still on the bartender, "I don't particularly care for forming a party here. I want a private room, two beds if possible. How much?"

The innkeeper looked at her, then at the woman in heavy armour, then at the man that had approached them who was now face-planted in the wall across the room. "It'll be five coppers." He said while holding a key, "But I'm warning ya, even if yer are pretty strong, keeping that arrogance will get ya to an early grave."

Diana grabbed the key, leaving nine copper Dracos on the counter. "Noted."

The man counted the coins and grunted, "It's up the stairs, to the left, third door."

As the two women got to their room, they could hear the innkeeper say, "An' yer going to pay for this mess, Ingur!"

"WHAT?! WHY? I wasn't the one to send myself flying across the room! If you want someone to pay for this, ask that armoured chick!"

"I ain't goin' to risk being punched by some superstrong lady, and yer are still responsible for 'er reaction anyways. If ya want 'er to pay, go talk to 'er about it yerself. I say that about a gold will suffice."

"That's extortion!"

Diana felt the corners of her mouth rise up in amusement.

Scene change: Draconic Kingdom, city of Arxtu.

"My Queen, it's good to see you in good health." Said the city's governor as Draudillon entered the room.

"Cut off the pleasantries, Dialtaren. We don't have time for those." The Queen said, waving her hand to dismiss the guards from the room. The soldiers saluted, and exited in an orderly fashion, leaving the two important figures alone inside.

"I assume you have read the reports." Stated Draudillon, looking through the window down on to the courtyard where soldiers were having mock battles.

Dialtaren nodded gravely. "Yes, with the apparition of these elves, the beastmen seemed to withdraw most of their forces in our territory. Initial scouts reported that the cities that were occupied are all in a state of complete disrepair and not able to function as cities for the time being. A few castles are in good enough condition to be used as vanguard points, but I don't think that's what you are really concerned, however."

Draudillon shook her head, "The beastmen army appears to be concentrating, and the arrival of the elves, we can't say for sure what is their next objective. The beastmen might assault their city, or they might attack us en force. If such a large army were to assault us, I don't think even the Capital would be able to resist the assault." She sighed, and she turned again to look at the courtyard below. "Say, what's your estimate about those three? Are they really as strong as Ervarius said?"

The governor joined the Queen at the window, "I am not sure of their full capabilities, but they had battled against the entire garrison and even some adventurers who wanted to test their strength against them. They won all battles without breaking a sweat, even when the archer had to fight with swords, he was more dexterous than our own swordmasters, but he said that he preferred to use daggers in melee. They are practically fighting machines."

The Queen scrutinized the foreign knight currently engaged in combat as he quickly overwhelmed his opponent. Mastery over so many weapons should be borderline impossible, with the amount of time required to learn even one – most couldn't master one weapon in their entire lives, let alone how many weapons these knights fought with. But again, elves are known by legends to be very long-lived, some even saying that their lifespans was comparable with a Dragon, so it is likely that behind those youthful faces they were like Draudillon herself and a couple centuries old. "Say, have any seen that one's face?" she said, referring to the one who still had his helmet on.

"No, my Queen, he had not taken that helmet off ever, not even Commander Marcus had seen him take it off. He also doesn't talk much, but when he does, the soldiers say his voice has the same quality as the other two if slightly older, so it wouldn't be much of a stretch to assume he is also an elf." The governor replied, adjusting the glasses over his eyes.

Suddenly, the one who had been fighting stopped on his tracks and passed a hand through his jaw-long auburn hair, before saying something to his comrades and making his way towards the keep. A few moments later, an assistant gently knocked the door, "Sir, it's the Knight Captain. He says it's important."

Before Dialtaren could say anything, Draudillon ordered to let the elf in. A second later, the door opened and through it the man walked in, with no trace that he had been fighting just a moment before indicating exertion. It was one thing reading about it in a report, and another seeing it in real life. It was intimidating how easily he could fight for hours on end and still come out as the winner against experienced veterans one after the other, without even trying. Draudillon had dismissed the claim that these three men had halted a force of hundreds of beastmen by themselves as mere exaggeration at first, but now she was inclined to believe it.

The Knight Captain looked at the two other people in the room, before dropping his head in signal of courtesy. "Sir Dialtaren, ma'am, forgive me if I interrupted something important. It's that I've been notified that an envoy from my nation is on her way here, she should get here within half an hour. I ask for permission for one of us to go and escort her here."

The governor shifted uncomfortably. "I assume by riding on one of your mounts? Griffins, were they called?"

The elf nodded. "Yes, naturally. She is also flying, so I'll need to meet up with her in the air and I am not able to use levitation magic." This shouldn't even need to be said, as no one short of Fluder Paradyne would be capable of such a feat.

The Dragon Queen was also highly interested in these flying creatures reports described as something similar to a dragon. She had seen a full-blown dragon, a Dragon Lord even, so she would be judge to that statement.

The governor looked at the Queen from the corner of his eyes, in such a way to let her have the final decision. This was not lost on the elf, as he assessed the apparently young-looking woman again. After interacting with members of his household for years, he could discern more or less the age of people that looked young but in actuality weren't. If he was correct, this woman was about as old as his mother.

"Very well, one of you may go with your mount. But if you allow me to ask…" said Draudillon in slight perplexity at the end, "… Why did you refer to me as ma'am?"

"Oh, was I wrong? Forgive me, then, but I thought that you were of one of those long lived races – you feel similar to the other elves I know, you see." He said with an apologetic tone.

"No, you aren't wrong. It's the first time someone who doesn't know who I am deducts the fact that I am older than I look, honestly. But where are my modals, I haven't yet introduced myself; I am Draudillon Oriculus, the Queen of the Draconic Kingdom."

The elf only opened his eyes a little wider to show his surprise but courteously replied in kind, "It is a pleasure to meet you, ma'am. I am Aelfgar of House Eileifr, at your service." He introduced himself, "But if you excuse me, I need to get going."

-Line Break-

When the Knight Captain came back with the ambassador, they expected to see two figures flying on those griffins, not the envoy to fly by herself as if obeying the laws of gravity was optional and the Captain trying to keep up with her while riding his mount, which Draudillon had to admit, was fast.

And the envoy was flying even faster.

When she landed, the envoy didn't look like she had just flew for who knows how long at such a speed. Her clothes, a set of fine academic robes, looked pristine with not a single wrinkle, while her hair was in perfect condition. She was a world-class beauty with long, silky-looking light violet hair tied in a high ponytail and deep amethyst coloured eyes covered by a pair of eyeglasses that looked more like exquisite pieces of art than something to use to see daily.

And, more notoriously, her ears were clearly rounded; in contrast to what the Dragon Queen had expected, the envoy was a human. Or some race that resembled them even more closely than elves do.

The other two knights that had stayed in the city quickly appeared before the woman and saluted. "Historia-sama! It's good to see you! We will be your guards while you stay in here. I must say, I'm surprised to see you here, ma'am."

Historia smiled softly, "It's good to see you too, Captain, you two." she said, nodding each time towards the knights. "Now, I have much to do, so take me to the Governor's Office. I hope I didn't make the Queen wait too much, we did say" Her voice had turned a bit forceful at that, "that we would send a representative at the Dragon Queen's convenience" her tone betrayed how dumb she thought the person behind that decision was.

A few moments passed before the envoy was in the room with the Queen and the governor, the three seated as they knew they would take a while.

"Greetings, I am Draudillon Oriculus, the Dragon Queen, and sovereign of the nation currently suffering from the beastmen's onslaught."

"And I am Dialtaren Arcarius, Governor of this city in the name of the Queen."

"Greetings for you too, your Highness, governor. I am Historia, the chosen representative by Hero-King Kainen in this occasion. But most importantly, I am the Head Librarian of the Great Library of the Celestial City."

Again, a second passed before Draudillon could process what the other party had said. Then looked at her with bafflement. This person in front of her wasn't a statesman, or a dedicated diplomat, or anything of the sort. No, what this Kainen sent to represent his country was a librarian, and she didn't know how to react to this fact. Should she feel insulted that her country apparently wasn't worth sending an actual diplomat for negotiations?

The violet-haired woman stopped her thoughts on its tracks, however, "I can see that you don't understand why a person such as I am here on this position right now, and by judging for the few things I know of your country you are very similar with a Kingdom we interacted with in the past. In your society, a position like mine is not really important, isn't it?" She asked, but felt more like it was rhetorical than anything. The Queen nevertheless nodded in the affirmative, to which Historia turned her head to the side and gave a faint smile. "See, that's where we greatly differ. The position of Head Librarian was given to me by our Lady, with the task to protect all books that had ever existed, to protect the knowledge they hold and to not let her followers fall to obscurity. In a way, I am yet another head of the Faith, as within the halls of my Library even scripts written by our Lady herself are housed."

Draudillon narrowed her eyes at her explanation in clear mistrust, "That answers that, but there is something else; I was under the impression your country or city-state or however you want to call it was one of elves, but you are clearly not."

This seemed to throw the other woman off a little – enough for her smile to drop and a small frown appear on her brow. "I don't know where you would draw that conclusion. There are three major races under his Majesty's banner, the elves are just some of his subjects."

The Queen and the governor looked at each other at that information, but Historia couldn't understand why it would be important. The governor coughed before he started speaking, "I am sorry, we seemed to draw the wrong conclusion from looking at the three Knights of yours, and the fact that elves we know of all are very isolationist and don't like strangers very much."

The Librarian moved her head to the other side, "But Sigmund, one of the three, is human." She said, not really following what they were talking about. How could someone conclude that a nation was of elves if one of the soldiers they got to know wasn't even one?

The governor blinked, not recognizing the name before realizing he never got the name of the third knight, who also didn't remove his helmet all the while. "I'm guessing Sigmund is the one with the permanent helmet on?"

Historia thought about it for a moment, before nodding. He had been the only one that met her in the courtyard who had his helmet on. "Yes, it must have been him. Well, I can at least understand now why you thought we were all elves now."

"You said there were three races within your King's domain. The elves are one, and the humans apparently another. Which is the third then?" the Queen interjected, various possible scenarios running through her head.

Historia didn't consider this information – or any she stated – vital, so she answered truthfully "The dwarves, your Majesty. It is a people of similar appearance to a human but rather short in stature and–" but she was interrupted by Draudillon again, "Yes, I know what dwarves are; you need not to explain them to me." This information, for the Draconic Kingdom, no, the world at large, could mean many things. One thing is to have a nation of one race, another of two, but more than that, and they might have the next Argland Council State right on their borders. For one thing is certain for the people of the New Word, and that is that to have a nation with different races coexisting peacefully, they who control said nation had to be overwhelmingly mighty. Like, Dragon Lord-level of strength – the more little details she fished about this Hero-King, Draudillon felt that he was an increasingly bigger threat.

The Dragon Queen gulped, and then with all seriousness she could muster she looked at the Librarian in the eyes. "There is a major piece on this puzzle that I can't seem to figure out. We have been under attack by the beastmen for years now, which live in the very same forest your city located in. A city we didn't know even existed – or could possibly exist – in there, and for the looks of it, neither did the beastmen until your knights fought them off protecting my citizens. And I've been living for far more years than my looks might suggest, as much as it irritates me, I'm old enough to have great-great-grandchildren, and for all those years, never had I heard about a city existing in there. If you were, you would have been assaulted by the beastmen already and one or the other would have come victorious. Please, can you enlighten me why should I believe that your nation even exists?" She asked, partly because she really couldn't decide if she liked the notion of such a powerful new player. In one hand, they also seemed to be in conflict with the beastmen, but on the other, they were a wild card, at best.

Historia appeared to ponder about it for a moment, before starting, "It's rather simple, your Majesty. We aren't native to this world." At Draudillon's dumbfounded look, she continued, "I should inform of our circumstances first, before we can reach any sort of agreement." The Queen motioned for her to proceed. "To be upfront, this is not the first time such a thing has happened. Our original world, to put it simply, ended. For us to escape calamity, our fair Lady built the Celestial City from the wreckage of the dying lands, and with her we were transported to a world where time passed strangely. I honestly can't be certain for how long we were in that world, but it was long enough for it to end, and our Lady did the same as the last time, and our City was transported to the forest where it is now located."

"Who is this Lady you keep talking about?" the governor asked, an expression of deep concern setting on his face. If anything, that "Lady" sounded like the Six Gods and other otherworldly beings that had visited the New World in the past.

"Why, no other than our Goddess, our creator." Historia stated.

A sense of dread grew in the bottom of the stomach of the two. That almost confirmed what they feared. Forget the Argland Council State; they might have the next Eight Greed Kings or Evil Deities right at their gates! No wonder those knights had been outrageously powerful, they might have come from the world of the Gods!

Their conversation turned out to be longer than Draudillon had predicted it to be, and she couldn't simply dismiss what the Librarian told them as fabrications because what she told them was way too complicated to come up with on the spot, and there were not any inconsistencies. But the Dragon Queen couldn't help but feel that Historia was keeping much more information to herself – a fact that, to be honest, scared her greatly.

The Theocracy's higher echelons were on a state of uproar. Many things had been going south in the last couple of months, and the last days it even got worse. Between the revival of the Catastrophe Dragon Lord as foreseen by the Thousand Mile Astrologer, the stalemate with the Elven Kingdom, the redoubled beastmen invasion on their neighbour the Draconic Kingdom, the disappearance of their entire Sunlight Scripture – as even the Eleventh Seat of the Black Scripture was cut off from being able to observe what happened to them as something interfered with her vision –, and now, not a nation of elves, but of humans and dwarves too, was transported to the New World alongside their alleged deity, it seemed that bad news kept piling up.

"Are you sure about this? Weren't you fooled by your 'informants'?"

"Yes, I'm sure they wouldn't turn their backs on us. They are very devout people, well, for the most part. The others don't care for much beyond coin, and coin we provide, so their reports aren't likely to be false."

"This is concerning. We are, after all, on times to expect beings of such calibre descend into the world once again. More than two hundred years have passed since the Evil Deities, so lets us hope that scenario isn't going to repeat itself."

"Moreover, the Thousand Mile Astrologer seems to have the same problem she had with the disappearance of the Sunlight Scripture, on the Great Forest of Asdra. There's something impeding her sight to pass a few kilometres into the forest. We should be wary of these newcomers, and maybe let the Clearwater Scripture to take stock of the situation there. Chances are, the Sunlight Scripture was captured by them."

"But the disappearance of the Scripture was on the other side of the continent, how could they have done so in such a short span of time?"

"I say to recon the place, and assassinate their leaders if possible. Or make them fight each other. Or poison their source of food. If they are as strong as the reports claim them to be, we need to weaken them so we are not at risk. We can't let demi-humans have that sort of power over us; we have more than enough with the Dragon Lords."

"What about the humans within their population?"

"That's what they'll get for befriending enemies of humanity, in my eyes."

"I don't know, this Lady of them sound similar to our own Lord Alah Alaf. If they came from the same realm, maybe she is related to Him."

"You are aware that what you are saying is borderline blasphemy, right?"

"I see it as a rightful concern."

"There's also the matter with the newly seen potential god-kin on E-Rantel and Arwintar. In both cases, the women's looks are similar, so it wouldn't be much of a stretch to say that they come from the same lands. We don't know much about them beyond they are abnormally strong and that both groups appeared from the west."

"Do you think these four would grow to be like the Thirteen Heroes of old?"

"It is a possibility that we can't discard."

"Indeed, but that does not mean that we can rest on our laurels. Humanity needs us to keep it safe from the monsters of the world, we can't let ourselves grow placid and be destroyed for it."

"Such are the teachings of the Six."

After days on end doing menial tasks, Diana was ready to snap. But thankfully, a more interesting task appeared on the board one day when entering the Guild Hall to look for quests.

It was a rather strange one, too. It was by the Imperial Army itself, they wanted any adventurers to help them to 'make a routine cleaning' on the Katze Plains. Asking about it to a receptionist, it appeared that it was something the Imperial Army did regularly around this time of the year in preparation to their yearly skirmishes with their neighbouring country, the Re-Estize Kingdom.

It appeared that after countless battles taking place on the plains, it began crawling up with undead, that if left unchecked would spawn even more undead until they began to be so powerful and numerous as to be a hazard to any living thing.

In the ears of Diana, it sounded more like a proper mission to her. After ranking up to Iron and still not seeing the menial tasks go away, this quest seemed like a god send to keep her annoyed boredom away.

She had seriously considered going to other cities more than once, but when thinking more about it, she always drew the conclusion that the Imperial Capital was her best choice. She had learned plenty of things from the library on the city, but there is so much she could read in the span of a few days. Sure, she could write half of what's there in the same time, but writing and reading, especially something she didn't write, were two very different things.

When accepting the request to join the army on their mission to vanquish the undead, she was warned by the clerk that given their plates, they would be likely be relegated to carry supplies for the most part, and if things started to get ugly, get used as meatshields.

Diana was surprised by such honesty, normally one would not say things like those in such a blunt manner, but it seemed that the receptionist had taken a liking to both of them and really didn't want them to go to the Katze Plains and be potentially slain.

Diana had smiled softly and then said that they weren't going to be killed that easily, and proceeded to accept the quest.

It wasn't until she went out through the door that she realized she put a red flag on her head without noticing. God damn it.

General Natel Inyem Dale Carvain of the Second Legion was in charge of cleaning up the amassed undead on the Katze Plains in preparations for the Empire's yearly battle against the Kingdom.

He had been on charge of one such expedition before which had gone less than optimal, encountering more high-level undead than had been expected, and the number losses had been absolutely unacceptable; they had to rotate his legion out of the battle in favour of the fifth while the second replenished manpower. After such an experience, he took the routine of contracting adventurers to accompany his men. Fighting undead wasn't partaking on human conflicts, and the Adventurer's Guild rules did not impede the Army to ask for adventurers for such a task.

Many adventurers in the Empire, especially on the Imperial Capital, longed for action since there weren't many threats that the Army didn't neutralize, and such there was scarcity of quests of that nature. Guaranteeing that they'll see combat, many veteran adventurers and the most enthusiastic rookies took up the request, bolstering up the number the combatants by about two hundred. He didn't really care for their real combat ability, he puts that quest mostly to take a little of the burnt out of his own men, and the total cost isn't very high as overall it isn't considered very dangerous job, since the adventurers would be travelling with the Emperor's soldiers.

He knew that most of his peers would never consider such an option. They'll think that it would tarnish their reputation. They hadn't lost half a legion to a single undead, one so powerful that Fluder Paradyne himself had to be deployed to deal with.

And the Emperor agreed with Natel on his use of Adventurers, as it would serve to preserve soldiers for their clash with Re-Estize later that year.

He glanced at the ragtag group of mercenaries. Beyond the regular veterans within their ranks, he saw that the majority of them weren't prepared for an encounter with the undead, and if it weren't because they wouldn't be fighting alongside his Legion, they would suffer heavy losses.

But a pair of newbies caught his eyes. Both iron-plated, so nothing exceptional in that regard, but their equipment was of higher grade than the Army's standard, and even than the veteran adventurers'. He recognized Mythril when he saw it, and one of the two women was covered by it in the form of a full-plate suit of armour, but that was not all, her weapon – a highly ornamented halberd – was made of this metal too. Her attire must've cost more than the other adventurers' gear combined, and she was of a measly iron plate? Something was fishy about it.

The other woman was not behind by much in terms of mind-boggling costly equipment – the great bow she carried was also made of Mythril, which raised the question, how the hell could she even draw it? And her set of light armour was made of some material he didn't know of, because it certainly wasn't of common leather.

"If they wanted to pass under the radar, they aren't doing a good job." A man said from Natel's right. He was also looking at the same adventurers, but he was scrutinizing them in a way the General couldn't decipher.

This was Nimble Arc Dale Anoch, one of the Four Imperial Knights.

Natel turned to the Imperial Knight. "You know them?" he asked, moving his head towards the two women. Were they acquaintances with him? That might explain their equipment, as nothing short of an Adamantine ranked adventurer or a very wealthy family could afford such an expense.

"No, I don't have a clue who they are, or where they came from. And I don't like the sound of it." Nimble shook his head, crossing his arms over his chest while doing so. He was one of the few people in the Empire right now that were aware of the apparition of a new nation in the Great Forest of Asdra, and he wondered if those two had come from there. There had been no reports of someone so eye-catching until they appeared out of thin air close to a village not far from Arwintar, but westwards instead of southwards.

If they indeed came from the new Kingdom, that might suggest these newcomers are capable of teleportation magic, something that not even Paradyne was capable of, even if there are records of beings able to do such feats in the past.

The whole thing gave him a bad feeling.

With any sort of luck, he'll see what they're capable of in the expedition, and hopefully they aren't as strong as he feared.

Marching through the Empire's countryside making use of their well-maintained roads made the journey faster than one could expect when thinking of going all the way towards the Katze Plains from the Imperial Capital on foot.

Adventurers were expected to carry their own weight for the most part, so they had to prepare accordingly. That meant, Diana and Athena had to carry around a bag, if just to keep appearances since using Item Box appeared to not even exist in legends. All in all, it had been a pretty eventless endeavour. March, camp, 'sleep', march again until the landscape started turning dark. At least, the whole thing had given Diana an insight of how the Imperial Army's logistics were dealt with, an interesting bit of information for her next… current story.

There had been plenty of other adventurer groups that had approached them since the both of them had joined in, but unfortunately for these teams, the angel's hearing was acute enough to overhear their schemes before they even spoke with Diana. No one really dared to speak with Athena after a few people had to be un-stuck from walls.

Diana made sure to chastise her, but Athena kept doing it whenever any of those… pathetic mortals dared to touch her Lady.

So in turn, not many had tried to approach them during the journey, and the few that did weren't or at least didn't appear to be scheming something. There were other groups that weren't called adventurers, but 'workers'. These weren't called adventurers mostly because they weren't affiliated with the Guild, and dedicated to do jobs that the Guild didn't permit. So in essence, workers were true mercenaries.

Not many workers had joined in, and the few that did were in need for any sort of income in the near future.

One such worker group was called 'Foresight', consisting of four people that in contrast stereotype of 'worker' that Diana had overheard from other adventurers, weren't all that crazy for the gold. Not that they didn't care about it, but it was more on the likes of what they wanted or needed to do with it, rather than the mindless greed of the most notorious workers were known for.

"So… Diana-san, if you don't mind telling me, where do you two come from?" Asked the leader of Foresight, Hekkeran, while the elven-looking woman of the group glared daggers at his back.

"That's private, Hekkeran-san." She quickly replied while hitting Athena on the shoulder with the back of her hand to calm her down. Athena kept glaring at him either way. "I don't go around asking people I just met where they are from, do I? Or why are you a worker, for example."

The swordsman presented his hands as if in mock surrender. "Okay, sorry if it is… you know." He said apologetically, "I just wanted to more or less know what to expect from you. People from the Empire and the Kingdom fight slightly different, you see, and the same thing goes for other nations. I think I am a good judge of character, and I like you two- " He couldn't finish what he was saying as he was hit on the back of his head harshly by the violet-haired elf.

"What are you saying, stupid!?" She shouted at him, anger and frustration clear on her face.

"Ow, I didn't mean it like that, you know it!" Hekkeran protested while he rubbed his abused head.

Diana kept note on the group, as they amused her greatly. They would later be used as the foundation for some characters, she decided.

She found that by speaking the least possible and keeping her ears open, much important information simply fell to her lap.

"But I must say, you being able to keep up while donning that armour is impressive, Athena-san" said Roberdyck, the priest of the group. He was so far one of the few people that hadn't annoyed the Valkyrie after interacting with him for a prolonged time. His calm and kind temperament settled well with Athena, as he was respectful enough to both her and more importantly, her Lady. If it weren't that he was an infidel, she would have commended him for acting appropriate to his profession of priest.

"Hmm, this is nothing." She replied with a single nod. It wasn't as much as she didn't want to talk and more she controlled herself so she don't spill out something she shouldn't, which would disappoint her Lady.

"Soo… Diana-saaan, I can't help but notice your bow." Said Imina, as the archer of the group introduced herself. "I don't mean anything bad! It's that… its craftsmanship looks gorgeous, but at the same time, isn't it a little too hard to draw? I mean, it's the first time I've seen a bow made completely out of metal, plus yours is way bigger than any other I've ever seen. Is it a family relic? Or some treasure you found on a ruin?" her speech became more and more excited. For a self-proclaimed lazy bum, she really got interested whenever bows were concerned.

Diana chuckled while her mouth morphed to a genuine smile, something rare in the last few days. "I guess, you could say that it's like a family heirloom, in a way…" she nodded. "Is it strange? I mean, from where I come from, a longbow like this isn't all that uncommon a sight. I feel like it's easier to use than it looks, want to try?"

Imina's eyes started shining at the opportunity. "Can I? Can I?" her voice carried almost childish glee.

As a reply, Diana simply withdrew her longbow from her back and gave it to Imina, whose hands quivered a little before taking hold of the handle. Immediately after Diana stopped supporting the weapon, the half-elf huffed as she had to put up more strength to lift the bow than she had anticipated. "O-Oh! D-Diana-san, how can y-you carry this thing around so easily?! It weighs a ton!" she said, but didn't motion for the other archer to retrieve her weapon just yet. She had to try firing it, even if it weighted half her own weight! "S-seriously, how strong a-are you?!" that didn't mean she couldn't protest about it.

During their small break, Hekkeran, Roberdyck and Athena went a little ways away to have a mock battle, as the two males kept nagging the Valkyrie about it. Arche had stayed with Imina and Diana, her eyes monitored the surroundings and occasionally setting on the ornamented longbow currently on the half-elf's hands, and each time a contemplative look appeared on her face. There appeared to be something more behind the young magic caster, but Diana wasn't going to intrude, nor that she particularly cared either.

"Well? I'm not seeing you trying, Imina-san. I'm only hearing your bellyaching." taunted Diana. She was having fun watching the other archer trying her best to keep the bow steady, but at the same time, she was starting to think that she might overestimated the inhabitants of the New World, as even what she considers essentially trash equipment was seen as powerful relics.

She had based her disguise more or less after the old commander she saw in that village she saved. She thought that he mustn't have been anyone particularly important, maybe strong but not by much. In fact, her gear is only slightly better than the Griffin Knights' that had been almost defeated if not for her interference, so she thought it wouldn't stand too much.

Imina finally achieved to keep the bow steady on her hands, withdrew an arrow from her quiver, and pulled the string with all her might.

It didn't budge. Not one bit. It felt as if the string was actually a firm steel bar, rather than a twisted string.

"Haa…" She tried again. And again. Her arms quickly became tired, and the muscles all throughout her body started screaming at the exertion. Finally, she gave up, letting the bow fall from her grasp, but Diana was fast enough to snatch from the the air.

Imina inhaled deeply, bending forwards while holding her knees. "You're kidding me… haa… if you say that thing is a bow… haa… then I guess I am a man." She continued wheezing.

"Well, giving how flat you are, you might as well be one!" Hekkeran, who overheard her from his position as a spectator, interjected.

Imina flipped him off, but he wasn't looking at her, his eyes were trained in how Athena was swatting around Roberdyck like if he were a mere child.

Diana grinned at this picture.

When Imina more or less recovered her breath, she motioned Diana to demonstrate the use of that outrageously heavy bow, a challenge Diana eagerly accepted.

It was a funny thing, really. Back in Japan, he hadn't ever even touched a bow, and he didn't know the first thing about archery. But now, it all felt natural. Everything fell in place without conscious input.

Diana raised the longbow, pulled an arrow from her quiver, aimed at a tree, and drew. Imina felt her eyes widen at how Diana's thin arms bent the string that for her felt like a solid chunk of metal like if it was nothing.

Then Diana loosed the arrow. The shot easily broke the sound barrier, making a bang that was completely unfamiliar to any native, and before anyone could even blink, the arrow had destroyed a complete row of trees.

Arche, who hadn't really been paying much attention to what the others were doing, jumped in surprise at the sound, and her mouth fell open at the sight of complete destruction a single arrow caused – an expression she shared with Imina.

Thunk! "Pay attention to your adversary, Roderyck-san." And apparently with their priest too.

"See! It wasn't that difficult, wasn't it!" cheerfully said Diana, a face-splitting grin manifesting on her face at their reactions.

It took a second until Imina's brain rebooted. "That's not normal, Diana-san! How strong are you!?"

Hekkeran was the most composed of the four. "Do you need to use a special [Martial Art] to use the bow, I wonder?" he said while his eyes studied the bow, Diana's arms, and the destruction they created when combined. His reasoning was sound, after all, only by using a [Martial Art] do people that are not magic casters create such devastation. Granted, [Martial Arts] are most common with melee weapons, but that didn't mean there weren't any for ranged weapons. It could even have something to do with her Talent, for all he knew. The two foreign beauties hadn't told Foresight much about themselves – not that Hekkeran faulted them, he had done the same.

Diana just smiled mysteriously at him instead of outright answering his question.

"Oi! What happened here!?" A Centurion approached with a dozen soldiers, and started surveying the surroundings, expecting to find monsters or maybe even undead – they were rather close to the Katze Plains already, so it wouldn't be too strange to come across a wandering group of the dead.

But instead there were only six adventurers and no battle ongoing. He directed his glance at Hekkeran, a rather well known leader of a worker group.

Said man waved his hand. "It's nothing, one of our acquaintances here showed us one of her special moves, I'm sorry if it caused a ruckus. It was my fault; I nagged her to show us." He said while dropping his head slightly.

The Centurion looked at Diana who still had her bow on her hand suspiciously, but made no other comment and went back to the camp.

Diana frowned a little while looking at Hekkeran. "You didn't need to do that, you know." She said, dubious of his motives.

The leader of Foresight shrugged and then crossed his arms over his chest. "I know. I just felt like it."

Imina approached him and kicked him in the shin.

"Ow! What gives!?" He yowled, jumping on one foot while holding his leg.

The archer harrumphed and proceeded to ignore him. "Idiot."

Diana found again this scene amusing.

Hundreds upon hundreds of feet stamped on rhythmic intervals on the forest floor, quickly rendering it almost barren. Howls of both war horns and of the soldiers marching flooded the air, scaring off any wildlife that considered these woods their home. On the sky, a massive island floated, as if gravity meant nothing to it. And on that island, the walls of a massive city could be seen, easily topping any building the beastmen have ever seen. Beyond the walls, the only thing visible of the metropolis was a fortified palace, where people of importance typically reside in, as the horde had found out after razing so many cities.

"It is a more impressive sight than I imagined it to be." A calm, strong and commanding voice said.

"Indeed it is, my lord." One of his most trusted advisers and best generals replied. "But soon, that city will be yours, and its inhabitants will feed our bellies. This will be just the start of your domination!"

"But – there is something that feels off. I have been living on this forest for decades, like you, like most of our brethren. Never have I seen this flying rock in here" Said the Beast King, while keeping his eyes on the floating city from his war tent. "Have any of you?"

All present motioned in the negative.

His adviser started again. "It is no big matter, my liege. We have them surrounded, and they'll run out of supplies sooner or later. If they want to survive, they'll have to chase us off. A task impossible to complete for a weak race like theirs." He said with complete confidence. "They may be many, but as we know, the number of fighters is lesser than their population, and even then, it's impossible for them to win against your grand army."

For indeed, the assembled beastmen currently besieging the floating city count over a hundred thousand, and probably even more. Only the most populated cities get even close to those numbers, and still, not even ten percent of it are able warriors.

Many tribes heeded the call their King made, and so many soldiers were sent to subjugate the prey that had grown too cocky. In the minds of every attacker was the bloodbath that would surely follow, awaiting it with excitement.

To maintain such a great amount of mouths, cattle in great number had to be brought – but enough for a few days, because there was more waiting for them just beyond the walls.

"The Sages will have everything prepared by tomorrow afternoon. Then, warriors in groups of hundreds will be able to pass over the walls, and it will be over."

The Beast King nodded. "Keep bombarding them with the siege engines then. They need the reminders to what they'll become for defying me."

"As you wish, my lord."

"And Urm, did Aag report in? He had been the closest one here, but he has yet to present himself."

"No, my Lord. I haven't heard word of him yet."

The Beast King's jaws clenched. "Then when he does appear, he is to be executed on the spot. I will not tolerate insubordination."

Urm could only lower his head in acceptance. Once upon a time, he, Aag and the Beast King himself had been childhood friends. He doesn't want such a fate to befall on his longtime friend, but he is loyal to his Liege. He will see it done personally.

"Well, they are more than I have expected." Said Lyn the Azure from atop of the walls. He had been notified of a great number of beastmen advancing towards Almha, but he hadn't expected they could amass such quantity of soldiers. They must've had brought in most of their population to besiege the Celestial City, yet Lyn didn't feel threatened. With his keen eyes he surveyed the beastmen camp, which extends all around Almha for hundreds of metres.

If anything, they seemed even weaker than he expected them to be. The type of weak beings that no matter how many pile up, could never match up with the most powerful warriors on his Lady's domain.

These beastmen were like ants compared with a star like one of the Generals.

As any good strategist could say, the battle is decided before it begins. He could see the amount of inaccurate assumptions the enemy made when they besieged the city.

They made the assumption that Almha would run out of supplies. If they waited until the city started starving out, they'll have to wait until a few more generations are born, and by then the attackers would have been long starved out themselves.

They assumed that measly trebuchets could make on the holy walls, only for the projectiles thrown simply to impact the walls and then fall uselessly into the ground, on their own troops no less. Such stupidity.

And more importantly, they assumed that the defenders couldn't fight back.

"So, this is the live target practice you told us about?" Asked an old man on academic robes. He was a very tall elf, if slightly thin, and sported a trimmed beard and amber eyes. He was one of the Professors on the Arcane University, and one of the few able to use some of the most powerful arcane elemental magics. "I can see why you'll call them that, hmm." He said while stroking his chin. "What about those over there?" he asked, pointing towards a large tent tinted red.

"I don't care much about them, but the Faith insists that if we can, we save as many of them as possible, so they can convert them." Stated plainly the General. "And the King agrees that it would be better to leave some alive, for diplomatic reasons if nothing else." He finished with a shrug.

The warlock hummed. "I see. So anything should be fine as long as nothing too destructive lands near that area. Got it."

"But refrain from doing so for now. I want to see what tricks they have under their sleeves, for example, how do they want to even get to the walls?" ordered the Azure.

"Don't worry too much, General. I won't start anything until you give the order. Now, I think this will be a perfect live experience for my intermediate to advanced students, so if you excuse me, I have a field day to prepare."

"Enthusiastic, isn't he?" asked the woman besides him.

Lyn looked at her from the corner of his eye. "Like you are one to talk." He stated blandly. "You had your hand on the grip of your sword all the while, and your face just screams you want violence."

The redhead didn't deny any of it. "Heh. That obvious?" she said while grinning even wider.

Lyn stared at their enemies again, but nodded. "Indeed."

A [Gate] appeared on the wall close to them in that moment, from which Anrous, the Professor of Support Magics, Historia, the Head Librarian, and a child-looking woman with a group of guards donning foreign crests walked out of.

The Generals stood to attention and saluted, "Lady Historia, it's good to see you. May you introduce us to our guests?" Lyn, the more diplomatic of the two present Generals asked. He looked at the General besides him again, with a look that demanded her to stay silent. They may have the same rank, but he was her ex-teacher, and old habits die hard.

"Of course. Your Majesty Draudillon Oriculus, the Dragon Queen, these are Lyn, the Azure General and Phyra, the Crimson General." The soft voice of the Head Librarian was heard as the parties were introduced.

"It's a pleasure, Your Majesty." Lyn said while extending a hand. He wasn't all that surprised to see an individual as old as the Dragon Queen being stuck in a childish form, because he had seen similar happenings within the elven population. Not that they were many, but they existed.

Draudillon took a moment to inspect her surroundings, apparently dazzled by what her eyes saw. "N-No, the pleasure is all mine." Then she looked out of the walls and her eyes widened to an almost impossible degree. She quickly turned around towards the Generals, and looked outwards again. Her features were highly trained, but a keen eye could discern many emotions passing through her mind, from disbelief, to horror, to bafflement, to despair – and a whole other myriad of mostly negative thoughts.

The Queen and her guards were quickly led towards the city, taking the scenic route. Lyn chuckled at Historia's antics, shook his head once, and got to plan his strategy.

May the Heroes of Strategy smile upon him, just to be safe.

There had been very heavy casualties on the Kingdom's side in the last skirmish, so the Katze Plains had more undead than speculated, but their overall level was very low. They outnumbered the living forces, but it wasn't that big of a deal for the seasoned warriors and soldiers. Some of the more novice adventurers had to bail out of the fight as they had suffered too many injuries or were too tired, but the total number of casualties was under ten after a good two hours of cleaning up the undead.

What was frightening about a group of walking skeletons wasn't their individual or even group skill, but their ability to create more undead as they concentrated. And more undead meant more powerful undead being created.

It was a macabre vicious cycle that if left unchecked, could grow until it had the power to wipe out the world.

And such great amount of undead as like they were currently facing put General Natel on his toes. He was surveying the field every so often, looking for any sign of a high-level undead being present. He didn't want to repeat the same tragedy.

Nimble approached him, dark grime clinging on his blade and some parts of his armour, but he looked otherwise fine.

"No sights of a Lich or anything of the sort?" The General asked with a hopeful tone.

The Imperial Knight shook his head on the negative. "No, but there are more undead than I feel comfortable with." He said while swinging his sword, trying to get the dead flesh out of the steel.

Natel turned towards the third cohort, where the fighting was heavier, and chuckled nervously. "Glad I'm not the only one feeling unnerved." He sent an auxiliary cohort earlier to back up the legionaries, but they were still getting pushed back. The men put down one of the dead, and five more appeared on its place – the walking corpses were that numerous.

"So, how are our little mysteries?" he inquired as he looked towards the left flank, where the majority of adventurers and workers were fighting. Giving the undisciplined nature of the mercenaries, their formations were sloppy and many gaps appeared and closed throughout the skirmish – if they were facing a smarter foe, they would have been already surrounded into small pockets and finished off.

"What Centurion Triv reported seemed to be true, after all. The woman's bow causes an explosion each time she shoots it, and files upon files of undead get demolished by it." As he was speaking, another boom was heard; bones and pieces of highly corroded gear started falling from the sky shortly after. "I wouldn't be surprised if she can seriously injure a Dragon Lord with that bow." Natel nodded, he had been wondering what caused the bone rain – he had his suspicions, but from his position he couldn't really see what caused it. He wouldn't say he was glad that his suspicions were confirmed, because that woman started to terrify him. In fact, the threat she potentially posed was second only to a legendary undead in his mind. He coughed, trying to get his mind back into the field.

"What about the other?" He asked, as the woman wearing full Mythril armour had been considered possibly more dangerous originally.

"I think I saw her in the fray with the other adventurers, but I didn't see anything really eye-catching like the use of a powerful [Martial Art], so I can't really judge her. But if anything, seeing her last this long in battle without taking a break surely means that she has plenty of battle experience." Nimble answered, before turning his horse to the right flank. "I think I saw something in the right flank, I'll be right back."

That did nothing to calm the General's growing anxiety.

Thunk. Thunk.

Heavy steps started being heard over the sounds of battle, as if a building started walking on its own. From the mist a few hundred metres away from the frontline, the silhouette of a hulking creature could be seen, slowly but surely making its way towards the battle.

Natel felt his blood run cold. He started sweating heavily, his breathing became erratic, and his eyes widened on absolute terror.

"S-Sound the horn to fall back! Fall back!" He ordered fearfully.

He had seen a silhouette similar before – the spikes, the distinctive horns, and the sheer size… it was evident what undead had spawned, ready to rip him and his soldiers to shreds.

Carnage given form was a foe he didn't want even his enemies experience. For what meant behind those thundering steps, was nothing short of it.

The mist in front of it cleared, leaving in plain sight its form. The creature howled at the sight of the living – its antithesis, the beings his very existence was meant to eradicate –, and all living combatants froze. The other undead, however, weren't fazed with the appearance of the incarnation of slaughter, and continued attacking with mindless abandon.

Soldiers, normally trained to deal with such petty creatures, couldn't fight back from the fright that had frozen them in place. More and more experienced soldiers started falling to the dead's swords, making the panic of those who were still alive grow even more at their agonized cries.

Then the horns started sounding.

Instead of the orderly formation the Imperial Army was well known for, the legionaries started running in a stampede, not caring for anything beyond saving their own lives. It was truly a "each man on his own" scenario.

As the formation broke in mass pandemonium, the forces of the dead took advantage of it and continued picking the living one by one.

"Retreat! Retreat!" A Centurion started shouting, waving his hand for his men to follow – not that they needed the order. Suddenly, an enormous undulated sword was sticking all the way through the officer's torso, and the legendary undead twisted his sword to get the body out of it.

The officer stood back up, but as an undead, and started attacking his own comrades – who could only watch in horror as the situation kept crashing down.

The hulking form of the undead howled again.

This was a Death Knight, a creature that not even Fluder Paradyne could defeat on his own.

But before it could unleash any more slaughter, a greenish blur blocked its next swing of its sword, halting it on its tracks. The haft of a halberd fully made of metal defiantly clashed with the Death Knight's flamberge, battling for dominance.

Their momentary saviour was one of the adventurers they had been travelling with, a woman who many had quickly dismissed as her iron-plate was nothing impressive, even if her equipment was.

But now, this very woman was facing on even terms with an undead no mere mortal could even hope to best.

And she didn't just block its attack, but continued battling it with complete confidence on her face. At this sight, many of the until then terrified soldiers found their second wind, and began fighting back the undead that had been killing them off one by one in their mindless retreat. They wouldn't go anywhere close to the battle that looked straight off a tale of legend, but they could still battle the other undead.

Suddenly, another explosion was heard followed by a sharp clang of an arrow violently clashing with the creature's enormous tower shield, making it lose its footing – an opening the woman with the halberd took full advantage of and swung at the creature's torso with the blade of her weapon, leaving behind a deep gash and making it fly backwards a good ten metres. But it wasn't enough to finish the creature off, as it blocked with its shield the follow up stab and the rest of attacks the woman in the plate armour executed that were too fast for any normal legionary to follow with their eyes.

It was as if an unstoppable force had met with an unmovable object, a really awe inspiring sight.

The legendary undead was on its guard, expertly parrying or blocking the woman's onslaught, until the adventurer did something different than trying to get through its shield. After a swing of her weapon, she used the halberd as a hook and pulled the shield, leaving the creature open, but she couldn't take advantage of because her weapon was being used to keep the shield in place.

But that wasn't what she was planning in the first place. The moment the turtle was opened, another loud bang was heard, and the next thing they saw was the Death Knight's head being devastated by what must have been an arrow shot by the other woman.

The towering creature stood there for a moment, before falling uselessly to the ground.

The battle was still ongoing around them, but that didn't mean that the soldiers and adventurers that were still there couldn't loudly cheer in clear euphoria as the sight of the legendary creature being slain, redoubling their efforts to fight the rest of the undead.

The General, who had been still paralyzed in place, looked at how the situation resolved with bewilderment, unable to believe what his eyes just saw.

Half an hour later, the deadlands of the Katze Plains were littered with the bodies of the slain undead and warriors alike, painting a truly gruesome picture. The living had turned out victorious, but the Second Legion had lost a full cohort worth of legionaries and the adventurers' and workers' numbers had been reduced by a third.

But considering what sort of enemy they had faced that day, General Natel had considered the casualties within an acceptable range.

He still couldn't believe what his eyes had witnessed, and by the looks of it, neither could the Imperial Knight at his side.

"I think this is even worse than we feared."

"No, I think this is actually better."

The room was in a comfortable silence. From the slightly opened windows entered the faint light of the morning sun, a few hours away from noon yet, while birds chirped cheerfully and the sounds of pedestrians leisurely walking through the streets outside could be heard.

Suddenly, the wooden door leading to the room was opened, from which a man in priestly garb entered and pointedly watched the woman sitting on a chair with its back to the window.

"Excuse me, Electra-sama" the priest said, then proceeded to motion with his hand towards the hall outside the room. "But it's important." He finished speaking, his eyes indicating the seriousness of whatever he had to inform the Holy Maiden.

Said woman nodded and proceeded to get to her feet gracefully, like every movement she did. "I'll be there in a second."

The man nodded and left the room.

The Holy Maiden turned her head towards the woman sitting on the bed. "I will be right back, Tessa-san."

Tessa closed her eyes while she smiled. "Don't worry about me, I can wait, Electra-sama. I won't go anywhere."

Electra smiled in kind – even if Tessa didn't understand how the Holy Maiden even saw at all – and started walking towards the door. "Just Electra is fine, Tessa-san." She said before stepping out of the room, not giving the woman time to answer only to have the same conversation again.

Tessa only patted her son's head while waiting, smiling at his sleeping face, so innocent-looking, but she knew that he saw things so gruesome at his age already. Her smile fell from her face. She didn't know how he could not have constant nightmares, like she had when she tried to sleep most of the times since being rescued.

She shook her head, trying to clear her mind from the thought. Her son was strong. Stronger than her, even, and that's everything that there was to it.

A second later, Electra walked into the room again, but didn't sit on her chair again; instead she approached the bed and stood there. "Remember when I told you they wouldn't get you again?" the Holy Maiden said softly, almost inaudibly.

Tessa took in a deep breath and nodded, not knowing in what direction the conversation was going.

Electra grinned, almost savagely so. "Well, we are going to make sure it will never happen, to you or anyone else for that matter."

Tessa didn't know how to react.

After the battle, adventurers and workers were free to go back at their own pace if they didn't want to accompany the Second Legion all the way back. The adventurers on the most part took the offer and began the journey to Arwintar by themselves – because they would reach the city faster that way, and the General sent an eagle stating that those who partook in the fighting to be given their according payment.

Workers, in their majority, stayed with the army as they had not an agency like the Adventurers Guild to guarantee them and didn't want to be ripped off.

"You know, you never told us you were also a priest, Athena-san. It surprised me almost as much as how you fought with that monster." Said Roberdyck after he had finished tending to the wounds of the members of his team, and a few other acquaintances he had.

"Yes, she is. However, can I ask you to keep that information to yourselves? Healing magic is highly regulated in the guild after all, I don't want us to get in trouble for it." Interjected Diana, looking accusingly at Athena, who kept her eyes on the floor. She had suffered a minor cut during the fight with the Death Knight, and thoughtlessly used a small healing spell to deal with it. It wasn't anything impressive, but the others recognized it as a "high-level spell for priests". It was of the Second Tier.

Diana thought that she had overestimated them before, and now she realized she had overestimated them even then.

Their keen senses had picked up how these people had reacted to the Death Knight during the fight, calling it a 'Legendary Undead'.

She had almost choked on her saliva at that. True, a Death Knight had a very good defence for its level, but its attack sucked big time. In fact, Athena's wound hadn't even been dealt by the undead, as it wasn't strong enough to even scratch her, but by the arrow that had finished the Death Knight.

She had ordered Athena to hold back when facing the creature to make a spectacle – if they called this low-mid level trash 'Legendary', then they could exploit it to get a rank up. She had at least Orichalcum rank in mind, because then more interesting parts of the city would be open to them. Like, the important section of the Library, or getting to enter the Ministry of Magic – something they hadn't been able to do when they first tried.

"Sure, our mouths are shut. Don't worry about it." Hekkeran said while rubbing his shoulder, where a rusty sword had been lodged not long ago. It happened because he wasn't paying attention, so he didn't protest much about it. It still had hurt like a bitch though, and he hadn't yet gotten used to the ghostly feeling of freshly magic-healed wounds.

"Yes, I understand. It was one reason why I stopped being an adventurer, after all." Added Roberdyck. "Not being able to help even if one had the ability to." He shook his head.

The more she learned of this world, the more disappointed Diana got. Not only because she saw things resembling the honestly nightmarish world she was original to, but also the strength scale.

Asking Arche about magic, for example, she discovered that the amount of people who could cast spells of the Third Tier and up became exponentially less and less. Arche herself could cast only a few Third Tier spells and that made her a formidable magic caster by the standards of this world.

Diana thought back on the first offensive spell she used in this world, [Seeker Bolt], and how she used it to test the beastmen with its measly Sixth Tier. She didn't even expect it to work very well, but when it did, she had thought it was because the beastmen were vulnerable to holy damage.

Apparently, only the famous Court Wizard of the Baharuth Empire was able to cast spells of similar calibre, and after preparing thoroughly with a ritual.

And she could spam them almost endlessly. It certainly helped to put things into perspective.

On their way back to Arwintar, Diana- no, Sera, got a [Message] – again in the form of a prayer, a thing that she still didn't know how to feel about – from the Holy Maiden. Apparently the beastmen had made their move and were sieging her city.

[Rest assured, child. If it comes to it, I will personally deal with them, and they will know not to attack what's mine.] Keeping in character was something difficult, but after thinking about lines Sera – the character – said in the novels, she could think up rather quickly how to act like she was supposed to. It didn't mean that she liked to act that way – and in fact, she could act like herself without much repercussion – but she was still on an interesting part and needed some more inspiration, which she quickly found she could get easily acting magnanimously like her character would.

After she finishes it, she'll act however. Who knows, she might stumble upon some new interesting development to use as a starting point this way.

Shaking her head to disperse her thoughts – right now she couldn't get lost on her thoughts as taking a blank book from absolute nowhere and instantly write something was something decidedly not normal, and something she found herself doing without noticing more than once – she looked towards Drifa- Athena, and the Valkyrie understood her look.

Moving her eyes towards the group of workers, Diana excused herself. "Sorry, guys. It's been fun to travel with you, but we part way here. Athena and I have to do something before going to the Imperial Capital." She said as she started walking away, Athena right behind her.

The members of Foresight nodded and waved their hands in different levels of enthusiasm.

"Hmm, I wonder if they would accept an invitation to join us."

"Why, do you want to have those two pretty ladies accompany you so badly, Hekkeran?" Scornfully asked Imina, still haven't forgiven their leader.

"I told you, it's not that!"

"Well, either way it's bad news for you. I saw the looks Athena-san gave Diana-san. If they aren't on a relationship, then at least Athena-san has very strong feelings for Diana-san, so I don't think they would be interested on anyone."

"What? Oh, man…" surprisingly, who said that wasn't Hekkeran, but Roberdyck.

The other three turned at him, their faces with open disbelief. "W-what?" He asked nervously.

Hekkeran and Imina started laughing at their priest, while Arche simply sighed and shook her head on her team's antics.

A/N: Could have I split this thing in chapters? Probably, but I couldn't figure out where, so you get this monstrosity. I reckon this arc may have one or two parts like this.

If anyone is interested, it's about 45k words per part, more or less.

Don't take it too seriously either, if anything, this is like the WN and only a draft. Also, fun facts: I tried to ignore this story, but it kept nagging me to write it. Also, the working title for this was the ever so inspired "somethingsomething". And I had a concept like this swimming through my mind since as back as 2014.

Ehm, Thanks for Reading. Share your thoughts, if you like.

See ya.