Chapter 181: Cherubim: Estasia (4)
A convenience store that had become a ruin with no sign of human presence.
In a creepy place where it seemed like a corpse could pop out at any moment, I was looking around the inside with Estasia.
Maybe it was because a lot of time had passed since the disaster.
Most of the food that was easy to preserve or had a long shelf life was gone.
The company’s scavenging activities must have contributed to the disappearance of the convenience store’s goods.
Of course, it wasn’t a big problem for us, since we were looking for rotten and spoiled food.
“Triangle kimbap. Chicken breast. Pig’s feet.”
Rather, my stomach was more of an issue.
I tried not to look at the shape of the collapsed food as much as possible, and put one food item after another into the plastic bag I brought.
It was harder than I thought to collect rotten food.
The smell was bad enough, but the appearance was also quite unpleasant.
The only good thing was that Estasia, who used purification magic, was more helpful than I expected.
“Fi-five… Ugh…”
“…”
Thud.
The food that Estasia put in went into the plastic bag.
She had a subtle expression on her face, but she kept moving the food.
It must have been hard for her too, as an angel in front of me.
I asked Estasia, who was struggling.
“Estasia. Are you okay?”
“YesI’mnotokayIwanttogohomeIcan’ttakeitanymore.”
As expected, Estasia answered me right away.
I nodded to her with a calm face.
I believed she would answer like that.
But I had no intention of sending her home.
“You’re so hardworking that you want to do everything by yourself, even my share. You really have an angelic heart.”
“Huh?”
“Can’t leave such a kind angel alone to suffer. I’ll help you at least as far as I can reach.”
Estasia’s face turned pale as she heard my words.
She seemed to be shocked by what I said earlier.
Estasia quickly shook her head and said to me in a desperate voice.
“I didn’t say that.”
“Yeah. I know. Your devotion to serving God is really admirable.”
“You’re a liar.”
“Indeed, the faith that can serve God deeply is not given to anyone.”
I denied everything she said and spouted nonsense that had nothing to do with reality.
As I kept teasing her, Estasia soon started to blink her halo.
The flickering halo that lit up the convenience store reminded me of a faulty light bulb.
Estasia, who was fluttering her wings, stuffed the food she was holding in her other hand into a bag.
Then she added a word with a dissatisfied expression.
“You are an evil god.”
“Yeah, I am…”
My hand that was reaching for the shampoo stopped in mid-air.
An evil god.
It was not something I could deny at this point.
I had lost count of how many people had died by my will.
But the one who spoke rudely to her master deserved a punishment.
“I am an evil god, of course.”
I swung the shampoo bottle that I held upside down lightly on Estasia’s head.
Estasia created a shield of light to block the incoming shampoo bottle.
But the shampoo bottle I swung ignored it completely and flew towards its target.
Thud.
It hit Estasia’s crown lightly, and she fell to her knees, holding her head.
“Ouch.”
“It’s the wrath of the evil god.”
I put the shampoo bottle that hit its mark accurately into a plastic bag.
I was running out of shampoo at home.
I thought it would be fine to take one home with me.
As I looked around with the plastic bag containing the shampoo, I saw something reflected in the glass window.
It was something that others had not taken for a long time because of its overly complicated storage method.
“Ice cream…”
I could see the piles of ice cream behind the glass of the ice cream freezer.
It was a snack that cooled me down in the summer.
The ice cream bars were in a shape that was hard to pick up.
So my eyes naturally moved to the pint ice cream next to them.
It was a lot of food and easy to eat.
“Maybe I should take some ice cream too.”
Of course, I didn’t expect the contents to be intact just because it was a pint.
But it seemed to work somewhat when I took it to the divine realm, so I planned to take it back with the other groceries.
I thought the angel who was kneeling in front of me, holding her head, would like some ice cream too.
I opened the freezer and put three pints of ice cream into a bag.
Then I spoke to Estasia, who was still kneeling.
“Estasia. Let’s get out of here.”
“…Are we going home now?”
Estasia looked up at me with teary eyes and asked.
That was her question, whether we were going home right away.
She seemed to want to go home very badly.
But it wasn’t time to go back yet.
Unfortunately, there was one more place we had to visit before we could go back.
Because I had left all my food and regrets in that place.
“Not yet.”
“…?”
“There’s a place we have to go before we go home.”
I turned my head and looked in a certain direction.
It was the place that felt most familiar to me in this ruined world.
The company.
The old headquarters of our group that had disappeared, leaving only traces behind.
I had to go there and say goodbye to my past self.
“It’s time to quit my job.”
It was time to part ways with my past self.
***
The southern part of the empire.
In a forest in the Centurion region.
There, Pluto looked at the front with a displeased face.
In front of Pluto’s eyes, there was a cage made of light.
The cage made of divine power was a nauseating sight just by looking at it.
It was very annoying for Pluto, who was a vampire.
“What a troublesome kid.”
Beyond the cage, he could see two people who were trapped.
One of them was Eileen, the saintess of order who Pluto had subjugated himself.
She was crawling on the floor with a pale face.
And from the other one, he smelled something that was not human.
He guessed it was probably a dragonkin who had gained spiritual power.
“Could it be a dragon?”
Pluto, who was looking at the back of the fallen dragon, shook his head and stepped back slightly.
He only wanted to save Eileen anyway.
It didn’t matter much who or what the other one was.
Besides, the discomfort that the holy relic emitted was not small when he observed it too closely.
He felt like he would vomit if he endured it any longer.
“…Is it because it’s a holy relic? It looks really poisonous.”
Pluto spat out his complaint, covering his mouth with one hand.
The mediocre divine power did not have much influence on Pluto.
But the cage made by the power of the holy relic was not something he could take lightly.
The holy relics scattered around the continent were objects that possessed transcendent power.
Even Pluto could not ignore and overcome the cage made by a holy relic.
Pluto, who had stepped back a few steps, waved his hand in the air.
“Death Scythe.”
Swoosh.
The divine weapon, Death Scythe, popped out of thin air and landed in Pluto’s hand.
Pluto’s eyes looked at the blue aura that swirled around Death Scythe.
Maybe it was because he was affected by the cage, but Death Scythe’s aura was also shaking slightly.
“…”.
Normally, he would have cut down anyone with this Death Scythe, but unfortunately, the cage in front of him was not included in that list.
However, the divine weapon served as a link between him and his god.
It acted as the most suitable medium for borrowing the power of god.
As Pluto aimed his Death Scythe at the cage.
Eileen, who had woken up from a deep sleep, lifted her body from her seat with half-closed eyes.
“Uh, um…”
Blink. Blink.
Eileen slowly blinked her eyes and looked at Pluto.
Was it because she still had some drowsiness left?
She rubbed her eyes while staggering, and then widened her eyes as she looked at Pluto.
Eileen, who was soaked in surprise, asked Pluto with a doubtful voice.
“Ma… Master…?”
“Eileen.”
“Master! Did you come to save me!”
She understood why Pluto had come and approached the cage with joy.
She had felt very sorry when Pluto said he would hand her over to the hero for a deal.
So it was natural that she was happy that Pluto had come to get her himself.
“Yes, I came to save you.”
“I knew it, Master wouldn’t abandon me.”
“…Yeah.”
Pluto watched Eileen, who was excited for a moment, and then moved his eyes to the dragonkin who was lying on the floor.
Swoosh.
He pointed at it with his Death Scythe, which had an aura flowing around it, and asked.
“Eileen. Is this person the hero?”
“Yes! He’s Naias, the hero of harmony. According to the rumors I heard, he’s a dragon who gained spiritual power.”
“I see. So that’s what it was.”
As Pluto had guessed, the identity of the doll that was lying down was a dragon.
But it was surprising that a dragon had been given the title of a hero.
Since he had handed over Eileen to the hero for a trade, Eileen’s words that the dragon in front of him was a hero seemed to be true.
The hero of harmony, Naias.
Pluto repeated the name of the hero who was lying in front of him and lifted his scythe.
“He seems to have been abandoned by the holy land from what I heard from the hero of hunting.”
“What happened?”
“It seems that there was a friction between the holy land and the temple of harmony.”
“Trouble between temples… That’s an interesting story.”
Snicker.
Pluto smiled briefly and put more strength into his hand that aimed his Death Scythe.
Whirr——.
The aura that wrapped around Death Scythe rose more intensely.
With a blue aura covering him, Pluto flashed his eyes and said to Eileen.
“I’ll get you out now. Wait.”
It was interesting that there was a conflict between the temples belonging to the holy land, and that the hero had been abandoned by the holy land.
But he had to peel off this cage first if he wanted to hear more details.
He reassured Eileen and grabbed the thread of Death Scythe that connected him and his god.
“Master… I believed in you.”
“Yeah.”
Holy relic, Belzer’s Dream Labyrinth.
It was a holy relic that was difficult to deal with for non-human races, but it was not a hard task for Pluto, who had the power of an apostle.
All holy relics would lose their power under the influence of a great being.
Hoo. Pluto exhaled a short breath and declared to the world.
“Holy Sanctuary.”
It started with darkness.
The area around Pluto began to be engulfed in darkness.
Then it was the turn of thick shadows.
Countless shadows spread on the ground and eroded the earth.
Pluto’s scythe slashed down on the cage in the dark area where the light disappeared.
“——Logration.”
Light and darkness.
And more shadows than both.
The shadow of the god that Pluto called in the scattered darkness descended on the world.
A larger darkness revealed itself in the oxidizing light.
When the domain of shadows that Pluto continued was completely settled in reality.
“…!”
Crack. Bang—!
The cage that wrapped around the two people collapsed completely.
