"Congrats! I really didn't expect your relationship to move so fast!" Alfreed said with surprise when he saw me and Adrian together.

Our friends, including Eleanora and Mike, came to say goodbye before we left. Even though we had to fight each other before, now everyone put down their weapons and made up.

During the battle at the tower top, my blue wing transformation caught all the enemies' attention. This allowed Adrian to secretly help them without attracting the attention of Fernando and Mirium. Without that help, the three of them wouldn't have been able to rescue Cyra later.

Actually, the city's shield disappeared suddenly for everyone to attack because Adrian messed with it on purpose. So nobody wanted Douglas to really take him back to the capital.

"Amazing! You really made us common folk proud. Keep it up in future!" Brennan slapped Adrian's shoulder hard and gave a thumbs up. But what did he mean by "keep it up"? I frowned a bit hearing this.

"Don't forget Adrian is actually from the royal family too. Even though the Loren royal family has fallen on hard times now, it still makes sense for him to marry a high-ranking angel. Ah, why didn't I think of this before..." Yulanda couldn't help laughing and correcting Brennan's mistakes. But hearing this made me feel a bit sad. If not for me, maybe the Loren royal family could have been restored.

After everything that happened, this young couple still planned to return to the capital Norvale as originally planned. Alfreed and the others would stay behind for a while. The main reason was related to the huge pile of ruins in front of us. The king cared a lot about what was left after the sky city collapsed, so he sent many royal magicians and other people to come check it out. They would probably arrive soon.

So we had to leave right away! The newcomers wouldn't be as easy to deal with as Douglas. If they saw Adrian, there might be trouble again. So he would naturally come with me to Crescent City.

"May you take care, Your Holiness Saint Angel. We look forward to your return to the holy city!" Eminem bowed deeply to Cyra, which made her unhappy as expected.

"I told you I'm not Saint Angel. You've got it wrong!"

The portal behind us had been open for a while already. The Sage Council opened it specially for us. After Cyra finished speaking, she went in without looking back. Adrian and I quickly followed her.

At the end of the portal was a whole new world...

The first thing we saw was an extremely grand and tall wizard tower!

"This feels so familiar!" Adrian couldn't help exclaiming when he saw the tower, even though it was his first time in Crescent City.

It looked just like a copy of the Chromos Tower! Although it wasn't as ridiculously tall as the real thing, it was already as impressive as the part of the tower that was above ground before the city took off.

No wonder people said the Sage Council came from Parristol. There were many towers like this all over the city! You could see them everywhere, densely packed...

I couldn't help spreading my wings and flying up a bit to count them. They were scattered all over Crescent City without any pattern, with one about every kilometer or two.

"A total of 48?!"

It was too much, I almost got dizzy counting them. The others also got different but similar results at the same time. No matter how you looked at it, Crescent City was much bigger than any other city we'd been to before!

"It's 50 towers. There are probably two more that we can't see because they're too far away," Meredith said with a smile, correcting us. Next to her stood an old man with a white beard. He was the earth mage who had opened the portal for us earlier.

Of course ordinary human mages can't open portals directly. Using magic circles to boost their power is a common method in all countries. The place where we were standing was clearly a restricted area belonging to the wizard tower, not open to the public. There was a large empty space around us with no other people, and the ground was covered in magic circle patterns we couldn't recognize.

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"Caw caw! Why did that useless angel come along too?"

We could tell from the voice that it was obviously that foul-mouthed blue bird. It flew over from somewhere, flapped its wings a few times, and landed right on Bloor's shoulder.

Actually, the reason we were able to come here so easily was thanks to this rude blue bird. Last night it flew all the way from the royal army camp to Crescent City and gave the earth mage the exact spatial coordinates of the camp. That's how they were able to successfully open the portal.

But the person he was talking about wasn't happy to hear it.

"Feliciana, it's been a long time since we had roasted squab, hasn't it? We can't find any pigeons now, so why don't we use this blue bird instead? Mmm... I suddenly miss that sizzling, crispy on the outside and tender on the inside deliciousness!"

Regardless of what the others thought, Bloor was genuinely scared when he heard this.

"Haha... please don't mind him, my bird just has a nasty mouth. I'll make sure to teach him a lesson when we get back!"

"That's too much! Master, it's just a useless..."

The rude blue bird wanted to argue, but before it could finish, Bloor grabbed its beak and ran off in a flash.

"It seems like there weren't this many wizard towers when I was here before. Looks like the council has gained quite a few new members!" Judith sighed a little as she stared at the building in front of us. She used to be a student in this wizard tower before. But since she had already come back once with Adonis, after sighing a bit she turned to look at me and said:

"You're probably looking for the Soul Research Institute. This is the Earth Magic Research Institute. It would take a long time to walk there, I think it's on the other side of the city?"

"Huh? Is there a map?"

I was dumbfounded. Crescent City was just too big. Angels can fly, sure, but leaving aside whether an angel is allowed to fly over the city, don't forget there are so many wizard towers here. Even if we knew which direction to go, it wouldn't be easy to spot which one was the Soul Research Institute from the air!

That's right, each wizard tower represents a different field of research! The Sage Council isn't a university, but following their grand ideal of seeking the truth of the world, they've set up research labs in Crescent City to explore how the world works! Not just the six elemental magic institutes of earth, wind, water, fire, light and dark, but also soul, matter, time, space, elements, mechanics, life, divination, and many more.

Since Meredith said there are 50 wizard towers in the city, that means there are 50 different fields! These 50 towers are scattered throughout the city's buildings like stars, forming the "stars" of Crescent City. As for the "moon", that refers to the crescent-shaped Sage Council building in the center of the city!

The head of each wizard tower is a high-level mage with great achievements in their research field. They can also be called deans, and are at least 6th rank or higher. Their other identity is as a councilor of the Sage Council. Besides managing the city area around their tower, they also have to regularly participate in council work and make administrative decisions for the whole alliance. The white-bearded old man who opened the teleportation array for us earlier was clearly the dean of this Earth Magic Research Institute.

"No need to rush, this is your first time here. You can look around the city district outside first. The Soul Research Institute is quite far from here. If you're not in a hurry, you can go tomorrow," Meredith suggested with a smile. Actually, not just the Soul Research Institute - given the friendly relationship between the angel race and the Sage Council, we could go to any research institute we wanted. But to figure out my situation, that one was the priority of course.

"Let's go tomorrow then. We do need to get some supplies in the city," Adrian nodded right away and then held my hand.

We had used up most of our travel necessities on the journey here. Let's not even mention other things - everyone's clothes were either damaged or dirty. Cyra and I didn't bring many changes of clothes, and after several big and small battles, we were still wearing the outfits from the sky city battle. Although we had managed to clean them last night with "laundry magic" plus the Water Abyss Sword, we couldn't fix the holes from fighting. Several places were close to showing skin!

So Adrian was right, it really was time for a big shopping trip. And we still had to wait for Nicola to meet up with us in the city, since we had agreed on that before!

After leaving the tower area of the Earth Magic Research Institute, the three of us headed straight for the shopping street, while Judith went to find her son at the council building and split up with us and Meredith for now.

The shopping street in Crescent City was extremely lively, stretching for several kilometers with all kinds of shops selling everything you could imagine!

"You guys..."

However, watching Cyra rush into a clothing store, grab several outfits she liked and buy multiple sets of each before declaring she was done shopping, Adrian couldn't help twitching his mouth a little and asking me again:

"Don't you want to look around more first?"

"Why bother looking at so many shops when this one is fine? Actually I think a lot of these clothes are pretty good. They seem sturdy!"

Even though I've become a girl now, it doesn't mean Cyra and I enjoy bouncing between different stores comparing things endlessly like some girls do, wasting time for no reason. Cyra has always cared most about value for money and efficiency in this area, though I'm not sure what she's in such a rush for...