Around what felt like at least an hour of waiting, our traumatized female seraphim had finally gotten word from the fearless hero to come downstairs so that they may continue their journey. During her wait, she had gone back and forth in her head regarding continuing to wait upstairs alone or to just suck it up and help him speed up the process. In the end though, all that time spent mulling it over had only resulted in him getting it done without her.

"That's..." She saw the job he had done, "You... Did you dig a tunnel straight through its body!?"

"Mm~hm!" He sang a tune, "With the fork!"

"I thought you were just gonna push it out of the doorway!" She shook her head, "Nonono, I am NOT going through a bug-bat monster's rotting body! Absolutely not!"

"Oh come on." He grabbed her wrist.

"No, lemme go!"

"It'll be fine. Over before y'know it typa' deal!"

"No, I'm seriously gonna slap you if you force me in there!"

"Vastoria..." He sighed, finally letting go of her hand, "Shoot, okay. You win."

"Phew... Fueh!?"

If her only issue with this plan was that she didn't wanna touch the yucky entrails, then all Energy had to do was lift her up and carry her through the manmade tunnel. It was a bit of a tight fit, but he made sure it was enough to easily pass through regardless.

"Nnngah! E-Energy, please don't make me do this!" She actually started crying, pleading him to stop.

"Better tuck your head in, female angels got a fuckton o' hair, and these guts are probably a bitch to clean off of it." He kept walking towards it, "Alright, ready?"

"NoooooooOOOOOOO~!"

She smushed herself as tightly as she could to avoid making contact with the fleshy tunnel as much as she could. Screaming at the top of her lungs from start to end as if she was getting stabbed to death, with closed Eyes and a weak heart, she somehow managed to survive the passage. Energy, however, was having fun teasing her after the fact.

"Oh, I left the fork upstairs." He looked down at the teary-Eyed girl he held in his hands with a smirk, "Guess we gotta go back-"

"Lemme go!!!!" She thrashed around, kicking her legs up and down to get him to drop her before that happened, "Wah!"

Of course, this was merely a light jest from the apocalypse man. The fork was hidden in his other palm to sell the joke, and though it was his intention to carefully put her back down on the ground, her panicking led to his hands slipping and dropping her flat on her face. Something that most definitely must have hurt, given where they were currently.

"Ptu!" She spat out the moss from the newly reached jungle layer, "Uguuu, I miss my tea and biscuits~!"

"Hey now, sunshine, look on the bright side!" He helped her up with an apologetic smile, "Faceplanting on some soft moss is better than the hard crystals just a few steps ago."

"Hmph!" She angrily pouted away from him, "Let go of my hand. I'm never trusting you again after this!"

"Aww, seriously? C'mon, I was just bringing some light into the situation." He wouldn't let himself leave her field of vision, "I'm sorry, sweetheart. I just wanted to fish out a smile on that face of yours."

"Mn..." She frowned even harder after hearing that.

"C'mon, one smile?" He kept pushing after seeing one start to form, "You're not the brooding, grudgeful type and we both know it. You're too damned sweet."

"Mm... Nyeh!" She somehow curbed the smile in the nick of time by sticking a devilish tongue out at him, "Idiot."

With their little dispute having been properly laid to rest, the two marched on into uncharted territory. After this long and arduous battle that mostly took so much time because of all the gut-digging, they finally felt like they were making progress. The ground felt softer to walk on, the Green and Yellow colors were bright and welcoming. Everything about the area felt good, but then there was the one anxious thought creeping about with every turn.

"There might be more of those things in here. Be on the lookout." Energy warned her.

"I swear, if we have to encounter even one more of those hideous things, or even any other equallt as gruesome monster for that matter..." Vastoria shivered, "I think I might just call it quits and head back."

"Head back where, exactly?" He raised an Eyebrow at that, "We can't leave the barrier outside the Shrine."

"There's gotta be a way out just as there was a way in." She refuted, "Once I leave, I'm not coming back. This was Throne's idea from the start, so he can finish it for all I care."

"Another seraphim?" Energy inquired.

"Ye-" She paused for a second, "Wait a second, how come you know I was a seraphim?"

Stolen story; please report.

While yes, he did get that fact about them right, it's not like she ever told him. Besides, she doesn't have her wings with her, so he couldn't have known no matter what. This little detail made Vastoria second guess everything she thought she knew about her newest alliance.

"..." He remained silent, "...How else could you have made it all the way outside the residential area, brain?"

"Eh?" The cogs turning in her brain stalled, "O-Oh, right."

"Angels always have a single cycle's length of a lifespan, so you could never have made it here in time without wings." He shrugged, "However long that may be..."

"36 hours." She replied offhandedly, "12 hours of the cycle are free, the next 24 are when the White Monsters are released."

"You counted?" He looked more so surprised than anything.

"I mean, when you're sitting far up in the isolated comfort of your floating island, you kinda get bored." She bashfully admitted.

"F-!?" He jolted, "Floating island!?"

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***

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"You have a floating island for a home!?" Energy began asking rapid fire questions, "How'd you make it float!?"

"Ah, I didn't." She giggled nervously from the sudden stage fright, "The Gods made my house like that."

"So how far up are we talking?"

"Well, it took me a good 5 minutes to fly up every time." She thought about it, "Ah, but my friend, Throne? He can make it in under a minute!"

"What the hell, lucky!?" He was practically salivatinf at the idea, "If that existed in the Living World... Damn, ain't no way A SINGLE rotted would've ever made it there!"

"Yeah, but the same goes for anyone without wings." She reasoned, "So really, you just want those."

"...Hm, I see where you're comin' from." He nodded, "Yes sirree, they were a real blessing when I got mine. Really opened up your possibilities in the afterlife, even without the timer removal."

Immediately, Vastoria's gaze was preoccupied with his back. Though he claimed to be a seraphim, and the logic he gave that claimed that only seraphim could afford to be in the Shrine, he too didn't have his wings either. Vastoria lost hers during the scuffle with all the White Monster Apostles, but what was his story?

"...Quit looking at me like that. I had them stolen from me." He couldn't even look her in the Eye from the embarrassment.

"Eh? Stolen, by who?" She cocked her head back, not even sure it was possible to take someone else's wings for yourself.

"Angels, who else?" He groaned, "See that's the issue with putting everyone throughout history in the same place at the same time, you get some real nasty barbarians in the bunch."

"Yikes, so what happened exactly?"

"Crazies called me over to help them with somethin'." He began explaining, "I swooped in to the rescue, fixing to fix if you get me. Turns out it was all a scheme to get me to lower my guard."

"Oof, so they took them from you while you weren't looking?" She asked.

"Pheh, I wish!" He shook his head all too calmly, "Nah, they saw the stitches under my hair and thought to capitalize on that with the swing of a metal pipe."

A metal pipe, the strongest weapon for giving people lifelong concussions. Few could survive the aftermath of that in the Living World, and so one could only imagine the sheer piercing pain that he must've endured with his sensitive golden brain. Of course, this is the price to pay for removing Hell—People like that are allowed to freely walk around terrorizing Heavenly Beings under the guise of being one of them...

"Eesh!" She scrunched up.

"After they knocked my brain straight out my head, they tore off the wings and left me to die." Even he disliked recalling the event, "I think... I think I was dead in Heaven for that time."

"Dead in Heaven? But isn't that impossible?" She asked.

"Well, I wasn't really dead. More like suspended." He explained it, "I only saw nothing, felt nothing, heard nothing and smelt nothing. It was only when I awoke to a fellow seraphim screwing my brain back in place did I realize what had happened."

"Thank goodness for them being there."

"Not them, him." Energy took offense to that, "He's my savior, and I'll be damned if he ever gets mislabed as just some generous bystander."

"Right, but who is he?"

"He called himself..." Energy dropped a chillingly familiar name, "The Dethroned."

The Dethroned, in other words, it's him. The person that saved her current savior's life was none other than Throne himself. Right, Energy did mention in his story that he was still new to being a seraphim, so it would make sense for someone with way more experience in the field to find and bring him back to life. Looking back, Vastoria did always feel Throne was the helpful old man type. The kind that guides the younglings until they can properly take care of themselves in the real world. Though, her mind was still occupied with the fact such a small world brought them together.

"T-That's Throne!" She smiled, hopping up and down excitedly, "My friend! The one waiting for me just outside the barrier!"

"Eh!? The savior is nearby!?" Even Energy got surprised by this, "You sure you're not confusing the two because they have similar names?"

"I'm positive, they're the same person!" She smiled, "Whoa, what a crazy coincidence."

"I'll bet." He agreed.

"So then, he helped you get the wings back, right?"

"...No." He looked away in a melancholy tone, "Those wings don't belong to me anymore. And since I got struck behind the head, I don't even have any way to identify who of the seraphim took them."

"W-What?" She felt her heart drop for a moment, "But, the reset? Surely you got them back then, right?"

"Huh?" He tilted his head back at her, "You didn't know? Once a seraphim loses their wings, that's it."

"That's... What?"

"Your wings, once they're gone... They're gone." He looked at her with sunken Eyes, "Vastoria, is The Dethroned... taking care of your wings up there?"

Her wings, the things she most needed of all in Heaven 2.0... They were lost for good somewhere on their path to the Shrine. It happened during the White Monster Apostles raid, they tore the wings off her.

"But... But Throne told me I'd be able to retrieve them next cycle..." She started hyperventilating, "I-I thought they'd just be put back on me again! I thought...!"

"Vastoria!" He shouted to calm her down, "...It's in the past now."

"In the... past?" She repeated in between sobs.

"Right now, we don't need our wings." He tried pointing out the positives of this, "They'd only get in the way. We should worry about the next few steps we take without focusing too much on the road we took."

These were wise words. Words of someone who most probably survived for a long time in the plague-ridden Living World. She didn't know for sure, but just going off of his tone and sincerity when he said that—He was most definitely speaking from experience.

"Sniffle... I understand." She wiped away the tears, "Then, let's get to the bottom of this Shrine. After that, we'll look for our wings with Throne."

"You know where he lives?" He raised an Eyebrow, "Heh, 'cause after he helped me put my noggin back together, he just kind of up and left."

"Yep, we're definitely talking about the same person, then." She giggled, imagining the situation in her head.