President Emas of France suppressed news of the mad angel incident, treating it as a simple monster sighting. Korea operated under the same logic, fearing massive chaos if it became known that the monster had burst out of an Awakened.

The ironic part was that the creature stunned everyone with its howling, so there were no major witnesses, which turned out to be a relief.

Although they pretended it was a joint research effort, the foreign researchers could barely figure anything out.

On the other hand, Davey's side succeeded in gathering some information about the Awakened individual who turned into the monster and the premonitory signs.

He knew the other side probably felt bitter as they had confidently barged in but were now flustered, finding it much harder to gather information than they expected.

“So, any new findings?”

“If I had, I wouldn't be dragging it out like this.”

He opened the maw of the giant-winged monster, revealing grotesque tentacles writhing inside.

“Ew...”

Perserque recoiled in disgust.

“Tentacles!”

“Don't even think about it!”

“I didn't say anything.”

Hearing his provocation, her face flushed, and she kicked his leg.

“Absolutely. Don't you dare bring that disgusting thing back home.”

She trembled, leveling the Transcendence’s Demise she had pulled out who knows when.

Perserque had an unusual, extreme aversion and disgust toward tentacles.

‘There must’ve been quite a few demonic beasts with tentacles that the demons commanded.’

A sudden curiosity struck Davey. He asked, “If you hate them so much, how do you command demonic beasts so well?”

“I never went near them.” Her expression soured slightly, recalling the past. “Stop messing around. If Willow’s right, these things aren't causing this rampage because they want to.”

They hadn't even managed to rescue the S-rank Awakened individual that the mad angel had swallowed.

The French side tried to rescue the individual first and then find the cause, but Davey's focus was more on the entity of the mad angel itself than the individual.

“So... what is this? KYAAA!!!”

Davey pulled one of the shriveled tentacles from inside its mouth and shoved it toward her face. She let out a sharp shriek and collapsed to the floor.

“I wonder if the demons know how you really are.”

Perserque, who glared silently at Davey, quickly stood up and beat him mercilessly.

“Ow! Ow! Owww!!”

“Die! Die! It’d be great if you'd just die already!”

As if fists and feet weren't enough, she started wildly beating him with the Transcendence’s Demise. She kept swinging it like a club, her face pale. The fact that she freaked out just from something touching her, let alone seeing it, was really strange to him.

‘The Perserque I know is supposed to be a surprisingly terrifying person.’

“Seeing you like this is kind of cute, though.”

“You sure just say what’s on your mind! Don’t you?!”

Pow! Pow! Pow!!

With her strength added to the heavy staff, the weight was beyond words.

As she kept mercilessly beating Davey on the ground, the French researchers, who were conducting their investigation, looked at the two with rather satisfied faces.

“Ahem. Cough!”

Perserque, feeling embarrassed, drew in the Transcendence’s Demise and stepped back.

They soon heard chuckling. “Ahaha. At first, I was actually a little scared and nervous.”

“But now that we see you two, you’re just like newlyweds. Maybe it's because you two are young.”

In their eyes, the two had been nothing more than a mischievous newlywed husband and a wife flustered by his prank.

Of course, they couldn't laugh openly, so they pretended to look away, but their reaction was one of pure endearment.

“You... wait until we get back.”

“Haha. Here's a tentacle!”

“Aaaah! You deserve to die!”

Pow! Pow!!

Even amidst all this, his teasing made her scream again.

It was then.

“Dad...” Willow, who had arrived unnoticed, kept her gaze coolly fixed on Davey.

“Wil... Willow?”

“While someone was grinding their teeth doing research to help you, you two are really having a lovey-dovey moment, aren't you?”

“Ahem...” Davey looked away awkwardly.

Perserque, eager to change the atmosphere, pulled Willow into a hug and spoke in a loving voice, “Did you have a good trip?”

“Yes. But... was it good?”

Perserque's face was beet red.

“Your daughter nearly died from working, and you're over here having a good time?”

“That... that’s...”

“I’m kidding!!”

Her sudden intrusion had caused a bit of confusion, but it seemed she couldn’t care less.

“You must’ve found something, but I also have something I confirmed. Let's step outside for a moment.”

Willow took the hands of Davey and Perserque, lightly manifested her divine power, and leapt through space.

* * *

Willow showed them an iridescent lump she had retrieved from who knows where.

“What’s this?”

“I tried several methods to investigate, but I couldn't find anything, so I turned Neltarid's sanctuary upside down.”

Davey couldn’t help but smile as she casually explained how she had done something that others would deem impossible.

“I accidentally found it inside a dimensional rift they created.”

Davey and Perserque's expressions hardened simultaneously. That was because the energy emanating from the iridescent lump was unusual.

“It's similar, right?”

The superficial feeling was different, but the fundamental energy was similar to what they felt when they confronted the mad angel.

“It was inside a dimensional rift Neltarid created, eh? Anything else?”

“I couldn't find anything else. It's hard to enter or interfere with that place at all. I barely even managed to find this.” With that, she made the lump disappear. “If it's exposed outside for too long, it becomes unstable.”

“So that's how it is.”

“But there's something that's bothering me a little.” Willow frowned and clapped her hands.

The surrounding sounds were forcibly suppressed.

“It talks to me. That thing.”

“Talks?” They didn't understand what she meant.

“Yes. It asks me to kill it.”

“What kind of...” Perserque's eyes widened at her explanation.

“I thought it was an angel at first. But, for an angel...”

“It's too powerful,” Davey finished for her.

“Exactly. Which led me to think that it's a being superior to an angel. Dad, does anything come to mind?”

“It must be a divinity like you.”

“Yes. Which makes it even stranger,” Willow said with a frown. “A god with such deep fragments of emotion doesn't exist other than me, as you well know.”

Even if the mad angels were divinities, it made no sense for them to express emotions so strongly.

Perserque thought they were jumping to conclusions. “Wait a minute, Davey. There's no guarantee that it's really a god...”

“The authority of sacrifice. The authority of sacrifice is deeply ingrained within them.”

Her eyes opened wide at Willow's explanation.

The authority of sacrifice was a massive power that could even create Lasting Embers. However, this power had a clear precedent. It was what made Willow a goddess.

“That means...”

“Goddess Freyja tried to create a god with emotions a long time ago, so Neltarid took the failed ones from that process and implanted them into the bodies of Awakened individuals. That’s what we can assume.”

It was a complicated matter.

“The important thing is that they are pleading for salvation. They are gods who have fallen into a hideous abyss.”

“Willow...”

“I don't understand it. She's the Goddess of Mercy... Why did Goddess Freyja do something so cruel?” As a fellow divinity, she seemed especially troubled, and tears welled up in her eyes.

“For now, there's nothing certain. I can't meet the Goddess and ask her myself, but it's too problematic to confirm anything right now.”

“Right? There must have been a reason, right?” Her body trembled. “Dad... I keep having strange thoughts lately.”

“Willow...?”

“This world demands such terrible things... I felt it before with Bae Seung-Woo, but this world’s truly full of things that make me angry.”

As she muttered to herself, Perserque seemed to sense something amiss and reached out her hand, then hesitated.

It was as if Willow was confronting the terrible hidden truth of the world itself, and gradually breaking down.

Davey even had the illusion that the sacred, pure white aura radiating from her was turning gray.

Before he could step forward, Perserque rushed over and embraced her. “It's okay. Everything's okay.”

“Mom... Hic...”

Because she was a goddess, she saw more, and as a result, she grieved more.

At that moment, Davey wasn't the only one who felt that if they just left her alone, Willow would suffer a terrible fate.

* * *

“Davey, what are you thinking about so deeply?”

After finishing a sparring session with Illyna, he was quietly looking down at his sword.

Illyna, drenched in sweat, slowly approached him. “You couldn't concentrate even during the spar.”

“Illyna, do you remember when Abel came to us before?”

“Huh? Uh, yeah.”

“He told us many stories back then.”

She nodded calmly. “He did.”

“But... Why did Abel never mention Willow?”

Illyna froze. “Davey, you're not saying...”

“You heard what happened today, right?”

Davey and Perserque had also told Illyna and Aeria about how Willow realized the world was more terrible than she thought and cried.

Him mentioning that was even more alarming to hear at a time when they were already worried.

“Maybe... just maybe, Willow didn't exist in that other future Abel came from.”

“What nonsense! What are you talking about?!”

“Abel’s still young. He wouldn't remember anyone who was by his side as an infant.”

She didn't have a response.

“I don’t know if Willow was resurrected as a goddess in that place, or just vanished. I think Willow was at least resurrected in that timeline too.”

Yet, Abel didn't know Willow. In other words, it meant that Willow, who had become a goddess, disappeared before Abel grew up.

“What are you saying... Are you saying you killed Willow?!” Illyna grabbed his arm forcefully and shouted, “Tell me! You were the one who grieved the most for her! And now you're saying you killed her?! Does that even make sense?!”

“Stop.”

It was then. Perserque, who had arrived unnoticed, lightly grabbed Illyna and made her let go.

“Sister, did you know too?”

“I was having that thought as well...” Perserque admitted. Her and Davey had both witnessed Willow's change today. That was why they were even more worried.

“A being with emotions is volatile. Goddess Freyja and Neltarid only have a tiny fraction of emotion, if at all. They mostly regulate the world like efficient machines, but Willow’s a goddess who can experience the full range of joy and sorrow.”

When Willow learned more of the terrible truth of the world, she would break down. When she fell into a state beyond saving, she’d be completely destroyed, and in the end... she’d vanish.

“Haaah.” Illyna collapsed onto the ground and spoke in a dazed voice.

“Is there a way?” She muttered as if clutching at a lifeline.

Even if Willow wasn't her biological child, Illyna had an unusually strong attachment to the children.

It was so much so that the joke that she didn't want to have a child of her own, because she was afraid she'd favor her biological child over the others, felt true.

“She’ll be fine. That place and this place are different. So, I’ll do whatever it takes to prevent that future from happening.”

It had become certain that the problem was not just the mad angel.

The important thing was that these phenomena were making Willow unstable.

* * *

At the same time, Willow was in her sanctuary, reverse-tracing the power of the mad angel with a tired expression.

It was a funny thing for a goddess to become tired, but, at that moment, she just wanted to rest a little. As she delved deeper, she faced more truths that greatly shook her core.

She loved Davey, and she loved the world he tried to protect. She’d believed she could handle any terrible things in the world that she hadn’t learned about yet.

However, as those efforts resonated with Neltarid's traces, it twisted everything in her mind.

“What... is this?” Her eyes widened. “Is this... true? Is it really true?!”

Pale with shock, she let out a cry into the open.

“Meow!”

“Meow!”

Her apostles, the zenoen, who were affected by her emotional change, cried sadly.

However, she couldn't maintain her sanity.

“Why... why are they... so... so cruel, doing everything based only on their damned efficiency?!” she muttered, then retched.

A terrible hatred for mortals instantly surged up.

“For the sake of life, what an awful thing...”

At the same time, a black light began to gather around her.

“Aaaargh!”

Black wings sprouted endlessly from her back as rings of light rapidly appeared and disappeared around her. 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

She showed similar characteristics to the mad angel she had purified, and the mad angel Davey had suppressed.

“Ugh!”

She retched in pain, but she shed a single tear and gritted her teeth.

Her will burst forth as she muttered, as if making a solemn vow to herself, “I won't... I’ll never become like that.”

The wings and rings that had surrounded her began to scatter.

“Don't underestimate me. I won't be broken by something like this.”

She pressed on her eye, which had turned a cloudy blue, and unleashed a massive pulse of divine power.

The cloudy blue pupil that had been encroaching slowly began to return to its original state. Her scattered black hair returned to normal, and soon everything settled down completely.

However, she instinctively felt that the being she called the mad angel was something she herself could easily become. She was that unstable, and she couldn’t easily calm her trembling emotions.

Even as a divinity, she could never tell this to anyone else. As she struggled alone, she felt her mind slowly being engulfed in darkness.

It was then.

“It's okay. It's okay.”

“Dad?” Surprised, she opened her eyes wide and looked back at the person who was suddenly embracing her.

“It's okay. I’m here for you.”

“Dad...” Willow clung to Davey, her voice choked with tears. She sobbed loudly, like a child.

“Whatever you saw, I’ll make sure nothing bad happens and will protect you to the end.”

As he quietly soothed her, the things that had been turning black inside her miraculously began to return to their original form.

“Really? You won't leave me alone?”

“Yes.”

“You'll make sure... I don't change?”

“Nothing will go wrong.”

As a goddess, she shouldn't have felt tired, but she felt a strong sense of mental exhaustion. “Save them please...”

Davey just held her close.

As she fell silent, he left the sanctuary and brought her to Heins Territory, where she felt the most mentally stable.

He laid the silently sleeping Willow in her bed and gently stroked her forehead.

“It's definitely a divinity...”

The mad angel wasn’t just a concept like the Celestial race.

It was not yet known to the world, but the mad angels, unlike Thanatos or Neltarid, were divinities who possessed emotions but became broken,

“Though I have no clue how many there are...”