Michael, Season 5118: Furious
"Ugh... what a brute, just raw muscle."
"You expect a mage to tank a berserker's damage? That's completely insane."
Sandalphon, who'd taken two hammer strikes the moment he woke up, scratched at his gray hair while Uriel merely shrugged.
Uriel was the highest-Strength member among the Seven Archangels.
Hardly anyone could withstand a single blow from her—not even among the other Archangels, unless they possessed some special quality like Michael's.
Sandalphon drew a gray cloud around himself and shut his mouth with a smack.
"I'm not just any mage, for your information."
"A regular mage, a hidden mage—same difference."
"So? What's your read on Lily?"
Michael asked.
"Honestly? The Seven Archangels have my full blessing. She meshes well with me, and her skill is obviously top-tier."
Though that alone wouldn't be enough.
The Seven Archangels were never appointed simply for raw combat superiority.
Ordinary guild members could join without any special restrictions once they reached a certain level, but the Archangels were different.
"They need to have trust with us. That's the only reason the Angel Guild stays the strongest guild in DeoEn while still feeling like a family."
"That part, I'll grant."
"True enough. Shame Mom and Dad keep fighting and sleeping in separate rooms."
"...Uriel."
Uriel snickered and gave her hammer another lazy spin.
"Kidding. Kidding. I'm not about to strong-arm anyone into this."
The strong are a dime a dozen.
DeoEn was crawling with rankers, and quite a few of them could break into the top 100 overnight with nothing but the Angel Guild's blessing.
The top 100, needless to say, was an even lower bar.
And yet the reason the Angel Guild maintained exactly seven elites was that they looked beyond stats.
Would this person truly never harm the guild?
Would they gel with the existing Seven Archangels?
Was their temperament and character sound? Things like that.
Take Raguel, who'd joined only a few months ago—her ranking sat around 500th, nothing special compared to other rankers.
Just another run-of-the-mill top-1000 ranker.
Even so, Michael and the Archangels hadn't hesitated to recruit her into the Seven.
Under the guild's blessing and support, Raguel had skyrocketed from 500th to 37th, and she was now a high ranker impossible to ignore—a rising star in the making.
"Guel-ie earning her spot, that's a given."
"Our little one's adorable. Sharp as a tack, fun to be around. And above all, she's a pretty one, isn't she?"
Sandalphon and Uriel shared a chuckle.
After laughing for a good while, Sandalphon sat up straight and spoke.
"Though honestly, Lily seems like a solid pick, doesn't she?"
"Can't argue. I've watched her for a while now—good personality, and a blade when it counts."
The Seven Archangels didn't simply recruit good people.
They had to know how to coldly cut someone down if it meant protecting what they belonged to.
And every one of the Seven was capable of exactly that.
"Alright. Then let's move forward with the recruitment... Uriel, where's Lily right now? I heard Raguel was showing her around."
Lily had briefly met up with Uriel for a chat mid-tour, then continued on under Raguel's guidance, making the rounds through the kingdoms.
Uriel, who had accompanied them for a short stretch, had returned just before the final kingdom.
Heh.
The moment Uriel flashed a devil-child grin, an unease settled over Michael.
He already knew the answer without asking.
Michael pressed a hand to his forehead and shook his head.
"...Don't say it."
"You're meeting your ex-girlfriend right now, aren't you."
"Hey!"
"Incredible, Michael! Truly! Champion of the family atmosphere, and you're planning to date the Angel Guild's one and only 'Saintess.' Is workplace romance allowed for the boss these days?"
"It's a family atmosphere, Uriel. He was probably just thinking of literally becoming family. He isn't the guild's Dad for nothing..."
KWAAANG!
Light flared across the round table.
"Whoa."
"Michael, Season 5118, Episode: Fury. Let's bolt."
"Metatron would lose it laughing if he heard about this."
"He'd probably flip the whole table. Then laugh himself to death."
The two ejected Archangels cackled as they scrambled away from the table.
Left alone, Michael let the light fade and slumped into his chair.
"This guild is a damn circus..."
Under Raguel's guidance, we arrived at the capital of the Kingdom of Shabeth—the last of the seven kingdoms.
The one who greeted me was a woman with snow-white hair that fell to her waist and eyes of the very same color.
Her gentle smile alone was strangely calming, and the quiet, settled air around her said she was far from weak.
And above all—her outfit looked remarkably familiar.
'A Saintess?'
"You must be Lily. I've heard a great deal about you."
One of the Seven Archangels, dressed much like me, gave a polite bow of the head.
So this woman was that 'Saintess,' then.
Back when I first started DeoEn, people had told me over and over that the Angel Guild's Saintess felt eerily familiar.
Granted, it wasn't her face that resembled anyone—it was her presence, and the flowing white robes.
"I'm Gabriel, one of the Seven Archangels of the Angel Guild. My class, embarrassing as it is to admit, is Saintess."
"A Saintess..."
The second Saintess I'd met in DeoEn, after the Empire's bespectacled Saintess, Nea.
'...She's not a Revelatio, though.'
Unlike the past, she hadn't received her power as a mutation from a celestial—she possessed a strength and ability entirely her own.
But there was one thing that set her apart from the bespectacled Saintess...
I extended my hand, and Gabriel took it with a smile.
'So she does have divinity. Humans can't wield raw divinity—did the system weaken it to make it usable?'
Where the bespectacled Saintess had used the raw product, so to speak, Gabriel wielded divinity refined by the system.
Infinitely weaker than true divinity, but a power that didn't trigger a crushing penalty.
In a way, it might be directly connected to celestials...
But calling the system a celestial outright had its problems.
Look at Sgaredo's case—the system was already handling mana far beyond any reasonable measure.
Either way, whichever side of the line it fell on, it belonged to a very high tier of existence indeed.
"Ah, um..."
"Oh my, I've been holding your hand far too long."
I let go.
Gabriel gazed at our shaken hands as if something struck her as vaguely profound, then quickly turned her eyes aside.
"Raguel. Well done, truly. Touring all seven kingdoms must have been exhausting."
"Oh, no, not at all. You've had it far harder, unnie. You're the one healing all these people."
"Hehe. This much is hardly worth mentioning."
Raguel, who'd glared at Uriel and found her a nuisance, showed a slightly flustered, deferential side around Gabriel.
'A penalty... or not, I guess?'
It went a touch beyond her natural personality.
Still, compared to Leo or Devil in their full meltdown states, it was nothing.
Gabriel asked with a gracious smile.
"Now that you've seen everything, where will you head next? We have a little time left, so I'll come along."
"You didn't have to—"
"It's fine. I was getting a bit bored anyway."
Raguel seemed oddly reluctant to say it outright.
What was it this time?
"Why? Is there a problem there?"
"Ah, it's not a problem for you, Lily-nim, it's just..."
Raguel denied it first, then let out a sigh and glanced at Gabriel.
"The last stop is back to the Kingdom of Mirdas, to the round table where Michael-oppa is..."
"Ah. That bastard."
"?"
Huh?
"Let's go."
Something that felt a lot like killing intent trailed behind Gabriel as she strode ahead.
Given her complete about-face from moments ago, I had a rough idea what was between the two of them, and I nodded along with a face full of regret.
'...If I could film this, how many views would it pull?'
It was a genuine tragedy that I couldn't turn my stream on.
"...Why are the three of you here together?"
Michael was flustered.
Why was the person who was supposed to be diligently helping with healings in the Kingdom of Shabeth standing here of all places?
When Michael asked with a bewildered face, Gabriel twisted her features into something demon-like, then instantly smoothed them back into a saintly expression, pulled out a chair for me, and turned my way.
"You may sit there, Lily-nim."
"Thank you."
Once I'd taken my seat courtesy of Gabriel's consideration, she settled gracefully into her own, then asked me to wait just a moment longer before pinning Michael with a stare.
"Do Archangels simply fail to attend their own Archangel round table now?"
"No, that's not what I—"
"And where are Uriel and Sandalphon? They said they were coming."
"...Well."
Unable to admit he'd flung them out in a fit of rage when they brought the subject up, Michael shook his head.
"They're hardly models of punctual attendance anyway. It's routine at this point."
"Routine, is it?"
"Routine..."
This is hilarious.
'What are you doing, Lily-nim?'
Raguel, who'd somehow seated herself beside me, asked in a whisper.
To any casual observer I looked perfectly still, but from right next to me, my behavior was more than a little off.
'Popcorn.'
'Pardon?'
'I'm eating popcorn.'
I was, in fact, eating popcorn.
All of it—the popcorn and the munching alike—rendered invisible through perception dampening, of course.
"...?"
Raguel's expression warped in several strange directions at once.
"Didn't you say you'd be devoting yourself to healing?"
"If you're going to do something, do it properly."
"...Did you not?"
"I did. And my coming here isn't causing any problems, is it?"
"......"
"You. You were cussing me out in your head just now, weren't you."
"No, I wasn't."
"You were."
"I really, honestly was not."
"You so were?!"
"Oh, please. Nobody on this planet knows how your mind works better than I do. Want me to recite the entire highlight reel of what you've pulled over the years?!"
"Ah, unnie!"
WHACK.
This is riveting.
"......"
Raguel, who had drifted into spectating the drama without meaning to, shot Lily a sidelong glance and squeezed her eyes shut.
'...Not a single normal one among them.'
The count of strange people in her life had gone up by one more.