"Hngh! Gyah! Damn!" Sab shouted with each swing at the cloudy ground below, "This is... Hoo boy!"

"Woooow~!" Nerys praised him with a cheery smile, "Ye' arms be poppin' veins, matey! Rarr' are thee men that be carryin' gons like thoose!"

"Eheheh, y-yeah..." Sab quickly resumed in spite of his fatigue, "It's a real workout, but nothing to a guy like me!"

The hole he had spent so long digging was barely even up to their waists. He originally wanted to make it a spiral staircase, thus allowing them to bring the bed back up the way they came, but due to the extra work required for that to happen, he had to stick to the basics. Regardless, so long as he had this pirate girl perched on his shoulder and singing his praises, he was more than willing to keep going.

"He sure is weak to girls..." Sheep pointed out.

"Ay, euwe'd be surprised by the amounta' men willin' ta' risk tharr' loives justa' get a praise outta me." Nerys chuckled, "So wot's yuure deal, lad? Not into women?"

"Not into you." Sheep scoffed.

"Pish! Loik there's any lass better!"

Well, Sheep could think of a few girls better than her, especially when it came to personality. Nonetheless, this womanly charm of hers was sadly working way too slow for them to even make a dent in their vertical journey. Sab was a gamer, not a miner, so it was obvious that they'd have to switch things up if they wanted to progress.

"Sigh, gimme that." Sheep yanked the pick from him.

"Oi, I need that to dig!"

"I'd die of old age by the time you hit the fourth floor!"

"We're immortal, jackass! We can't die of old age!"

As the two men fought over who got to dig the hole, Nerys quickly grew sick of their squabble and intervened.

"Oi, laddy. Give Mutton 'ere tha' pick." She said, "Rest up, no need ta' cause a stir."

"Grr... Hrmph, alright." Sab crossed his arms, begrudgingly passing the pick over to Sheep, "Just FYI, it's not as easy as it looks."

"Unlike you, I never underestimate a job." He groaned back, "Now step aside."

One swing, two swings, three even. In just under ten whole swings that exercised a beautiful full range of motion, Sheep had nearly double the size of the hole it took Sab an entire half hour to dig out. He only had one hand to clutch the pickaxe with, but even that was enough to beat out the bedbug that is Sab. Clouds in general were very fluffy and easy to dig through, to the point where Hats and Elegy earlier managed to even claw their way through them while they dug under the border. Sab was just extremely weak, so to him even that much was asking for a lot.

"Pssh, I did all the heavy lifting." Sab rolled his Eyes, "You're just shifting the leftover bits around, that's all."

"An' we be prouda' ya' fer' that, matey!" Nerys hugged him over the shoulder.

Sab enjoyed the touchy feely nature of a female pirate. In his head, he silently cursed the fact he wasn't born a few hundred years earlier.

"Muhehe... A-Ahem." He fixed himself up, "So, you gonna tell us how you lost that wing?"

"Hngh!" Sheep added mid-swing, "Or how you got ahold of this pickaxe?"

"Oi vey! Too much thinkin' is bad fer' me helf!" She grabbed her head, "Thankfully Oi can answer bofa' ye' queschins with bot a single ansah!"

A rather surprising, that is to say, unsurprising twist. The two cases were interconnected, yet Sheep and Sab already could have guessed as much. Verily, there was barely even a need for her to say it.

"Oi took off me roight wing n' chipped it into a pick sheip!" She proudly grinned, "Poked it thru' a stick and tharr' ye' haffit!"

"So you would even go so far as to give up your flight..." Sab disagreed with it, "Nope, ain't no way I'd be able to do that."

"Oi dun' loike floyin' anyways, so t'is oll klir!"

Sheep was for a moment reminded of her crying and screaming as she tightly held onto his hand.

"Well, that much I can verify." He sighed.

"Mph-!" She blushed, "N-Nay! T'was jus' me jestin' witcha', Mutton! A-Actually, it be me newest shanty Oi've inventid!"

"Huh? Pirates actually sing sea shanties?" Sab cocked his head back, "I thought that was a myth."

"Oi'm not a poirrate!" She fussed.

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"Alright then, sing the song again." Sheep turned back with a very smug grin, "Your voice was really something, y'know?"

Before she realized it, she had cornered herself with her own web of lies. Sheep was rarely one to tease, but she in particular made his sadistic side brim with pride.

"A-Ah, no, that be..." She bit her tongue.

"I wanna hear a real sea shanty!" Sab encouraged her, "Ohhh, this is gonna be so awesome! You can't get more authentic than this! Nerys, you got this!"

Whilst Sheep was obviously just teasing her a bit, Sab was fully convinced she was actually a star singer of the fleet. Her demeanor was rough, yet when backed into a corner, she would turn surprisingly docile. Merely by extending this logic, Sab had somehow come to the conclusion that hers was the voice of a mermaid adrift in the sea.

"D-Don't laff, Oi'ven't the toim tah practis..." She twiddled her fingertips abashedly, "A-Ahem!"

Nails on a chalkboard, the forbidden lovechild between a fork and a plate. Neither of the sounds produced from these could even begin to describe the bone-shivering, ear-piercing screeches she wailed as she let her voice roam free throughout the hole. It got so bad Sheep actually had to toss the pickaxe away just to plug up his ears, but even that wasn't enough to abate the damaging effects. The song lasted an entire minute before even her own throat gave up on her, leading her to finish the performance with a nasty cough.

"S-So..." She whispered, her vocal chords barely functional by now, "That good inoff fo' ya'?"

"What is this feeling...?" Sab demanded an answer, "My ears... They're not golden, so they should be numb to any and all pain...!"

"So why...!?" Sheep desperately asked as well, "Why do my ears hurt regardless!?"

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The awkward silence between this uneasy alliance lasted all the way until Sheep finally reached the end of the cloud layer. Indeed, below the clouds, one could recall there was a layer of smooth stone which even Hats' fists or Elegy's serrated sword couldn't break. Whether or not this entire plan of theirs would even work would rest on whether or not they could even cause a dent in it.

"Then, with all my might." Sheep took a deep breath, "Hya! ...Eh?"

"Go easy on tha' poor stoon, laddie." Nerys fake sobbed, "It moight look sturrdy, bot's nu excuuse ta' decimaetit."

"N-No way..." Sab blinked once, "But that rock... Even Elegy couldn't...!"

"Hm? You've thought of digging down once before?" Sheep immediately caught on.

"To sneak past the border control." He nodded, "Though we could ever only go deep enough until we hit this rock layer. We had to stop and go horizontally after that. Elegy used his serrated blade to dig."

A new enigma, with clues to go along with it. The stone layer is present all across Heaven 2.0, just underneath the initial surface cloud layer. It was flat and smooth, as if someone had poured malter evenly to bury something underneath.

"So the pickaxe can dig through it with ease, but anything else won't work?" Sheep pondered, "Granted, swords aren't exactly meant to be used for such purposes, even with his blade's specific bulky build."

"T'is me wing's gold, Oi tell ya'!" Nerys jumped in with her own theory on the matter, "Tha' material be the key!"

It was a reasonable assumption, and so far the only one that made sense. Obviously, the pickaxe would be better at mining than a bulky serrated sword, but if it was really just that, then even the blade should have been able to at least chip the surface a bit. That didn't happen, however, as Sab clearly recalled the blade merely bouncing off.

"The blade didn't even graze it even with Elegy's impossibly deadly swing." He shook his head, "So there's no reason why Sab's dainty arm could decimate it so badly in comparison."

"Maybe the stone layer there was harder somehow?" Sheep figured, "I mean, if Heaven 2.0 is so Vast, then there are bound to be spots the Gods had to spread thin, right?"

"Blasphemy begone!" Nerys got offended, "Tha' Gods a' this 'ere land and the previous arr' spotless and perrfect! Somethin' loike a laya' o' stoon ein't gon' end up nuthin' bot equal!"

"Eh? Where did this come from?" Sab raised his guard, "Suddenly defending the Gods so much, why are you...?"

"Huh?" She tilted her head, "Tha' Gods be arr' creators! All of ye' an' me, an' that be no lye! So dun' be doubtin' them fer' even a second, y'hear!?"

Once again, a gap between her demeanor, personality, and now her belief as well. When you think of the word pirate, or in Nerys' case, a seafarer, you would rarely think to combine it with the word believer. Given the nature of her daily dealings, it was quite odd to imagine her in a habit.

"To think you of all people were religious, Nerys." Sheep chuckled.

"An' that be fonny whoi, exacly?" She put her arms on her hips.

"Yeah, she's right man." Sab cracked his knuckles, slowly spreading his wings behind him, "This shit ain't funny at all..."

Someone this uncharacteristically close to the Gods should already be setting off some alarms, but given how their group is already in quite serious kahoots with them, any person who so vehemently defended the Gods in their name should be a pretty clear suspect. She never showed any signs of posing a threat to them, not to mention she was even outright helping them disobey the Gods by aiming for the Shrine's bottom most layer, albeit unknowingly. That being the case, the same could have been said for Energy...

"Sab-!" Sheep shouted.

"Oi! Let go a' me!" Nerys struggled as the wary seraphim grabbed her and flew straight up, "Laddie, this ain't the toime fer' a quick shag!"

"Quit with the jokes." Sab wasn't having it, "Y'know, there's a chance you're not even sent by the Gods to kill us, and if that's the case I'm truly sorry."

"Sab!" Sheep lagged behind them.

"Laddie, wot're euwe...!"

"I'm sorry, but I'm afraid we can't take risks anymore." Sab closed his Eyes, taking a deep breath before rolling back into a suplex dive, "Goodbye."

He had no weapons to dispose of her, but the force of such an impact would surely cause fatal damage if it struck a golden part. The genius behind this play was hidden in the fact that Sab only had two golden rings going around his waist, whereas Nerys' entire left half of her body was pure gold. Merely tilting slightly midair would make her entire left side squish flat, and all Sab had to focus on was sucking in his stomach.

"Sab!?" Sheep saw them falling back down for just a second, "Crap, no!"

"Lemme go, lemme go!" Nerys begged, "Tch! Oi feckin' heit hoights so baad~...!"

At this point, there was absolutely no saving her. Sheep was too slow to react to Sab's sudden turnaround, so he couldn't ever even hope to reach them before they hit the ground. As for Nerys, even if she could theoretically break free of Sab's clutches, she still wouldn't be able to land safely without any serious injuries. At best, only her golden leg would get broken off, and she disliked those odds heavily.

"Laddie..." She smirked, "Did ye' mum nevah teach ya' ta' not provook a woman...!!?"