She looked a little frightening, but it was still plain enough to see: this was only a small child who knew nothing at all.
An angel child.
【But... why would she end up looking like this?】
While Seraphia was still thinking, the filthy little thing pushed itself up off the floor and came stumbling towards her.
As her eyes met those four asymmetrical ones, the shifts in the child's emotions carried across to her just as clearly.
Relief. Ease. The ache of being wronged...
【Is this my... ability?】
The closer she came, the clearer those emotions grew.
Seraphia crouched down without thinking about it. She had dealt with children a great many times in her previous life, and she knew perfectly well how to talk to these little ones.
"It isn't a monster, is it... this..."
Shu's grip on his hilt slowly loosened. Even with such obviously grotesque features, he was finding it hard to treat the being in front of him as a monster.
The reason was quite simple.
Monsters, so called, were things that moved on instinct like beasts, with no possibility of communication under any circumstances, and their forms were nothing like a human's.
To Shu, the little girl in front of him was only an ordinary little girl whose soul had been eaten into by the 【Corruption Sickness】.
"Mm...?"
Something came flying from behind them.
Seraphia's senses had caught the thing long before, but it was only as it swept past her shoulder that she saw with her own eyes what it was—
A platinum arrow, some manner of magic attached to it, giving off a faint glow.
And the target that arrow was aimed at was that small body.
【Eh?】
Miss Angel's pale gold eyes flew wide as the strange little thing stumbling towards her was run through in an instant.
Before the emotions she was sensing had time to change over, the arrow burst into a dazzling white light that wrapped the small existence up inside it and reduced it to ash, leaving only the platinum arrow lying on the floor. There was not even a trace of blood on it.
A strong, barely controllable grief erupted in her chest, for reasons she could not name.
【Is this... the body's reaction...?】
Her pale gold pupils trembled faintly.
What had happened in that extremely short span of time was so uncanny that Seraphia had no idea what response to give.
"Who's there!"
Shu, at once, drew his sword towards the place the arrow had come from, his body pulling tight into a combat stance.
When Seraphia used her own senses to fix on the direction the arrow had flown from, she quickly picked up a person walking briskly this way.
To her senses, the feel of him was very much like the clergy she had seen at the church.
"Thank you for your work, Lady Holy Wing, Lord Hero Candidate."
As the footsteps drew in, the man who appeared before them was a brown-haired figure of middle age in a dark mantle, wearing a smile that sat somewhat unpleasantly as he greeted the two of them.
【A smiling tiger...】
Beneath the dark mantle, through the gaps, one could catch sight of armour of some kind, and in his hands he held a platinum heavy crossbow. That was what had loosed the arrow just now.
Shu saw the Church's holy emblem on the man's clothing and, with some hesitation, put his weapon away.
"May I ask... what exactly is..."
"That was a monster, Lord Hero Candidate."
The answer was flat and final.
"...Is that so?"
"It is a blasphemous image the Enemy of God fashions after the likeness of the Holy Wings, and unlike other monsters it possesses a certain intelligence, making it closer to the demon race. Ah, forgive me, I have neglected to introduce myself. This is Konova, Executor of the Inquisition." The man holding the crossbow introduced himself as though it were a first meeting between neighbours. "You saw it yourself just now, did you not, Lord Hero Candidate? Once that monster was struck by the Church's sacred arrow, it was purified on the instant. That is proof absolute that it was a monster. You must not let a shape so near to a human's deceive you."
"...Very well."
Some hesitation remained on Shu's face, but he did not press the question further.
He was no fanatic, yet all the efforts the Church of the Holy Name made to save the people of the world led him to choose to believe the explanation it gave.
"Lady Holy Wing thinks so too, surely? Otherwise you would certainly have intercepted my arrow outright."
The man let his gaze fall on Seraphia, who had risen to her feet again, and in those lake-green eyes Miss Angel saw a measure of scrutiny.
【Important information, and it came far sooner than I expected.】
She worked to press down that grief welling up in her from nowhere, forcing herself quickly into a mode of rational thought, analysing the present situation at speed.
【First: the Church holds that this strange kind of angel is a monster. Second: to my senses, that little one was... one of my own kind. Third: that man came from the direction we came from ourselves. Did he follow us the whole way? Fourth: why did he presume I would save it... was that a test? Fifth: the timing of the attack. Why the exact moment before contact.】
"I detected something approaching from behind, but its trajectory was not directed at me or at the Hero Candidate."
Seraphia glanced at the arrow lying on the ground.
"As the arrow drew near I sensed the sacred mana upon it. I simply did not expect it to be aimed straight at that child..."
"Lady Holy Wing. That was a monster."
Konova cut her off mildly.
"I have only just become a Holy Wing, and I am not yet familiar with this kind of monster. It approached me of its own accord just now, so I believed there was still room to observe."
She lowered her eyes, keeping in her tone a little of the hesitation proper to a newcomer.
"Should I meet a similar situation next time, I will first confirm whether it holds any intent to attack."
"A very prudent judgement. Next time, however, simply strike at once. Human as its shape may be, in the final reckoning it is a monster, and being annihilated on the instant by sacred power is the finest proof of that. Lord Hero Candidate, please bear this in mind as well."
He emphasized the demand to kill on sight a second time and, although he was speaking to Shu, his gaze stayed on Miss Angel.
"In any case, congratulations to you both on completing your first commission."
Konova put away the heavy crossbow and applauded with a smile.
His gaze rested on the ashes for a moment, then went back to Seraphia's wings.
"The residue left after purification is handled by the Inquisition. There is no need for either of you to approach it, and you are not to investigate the target on your own initiative."
"Understood."
The commission ended on a whimper.
On the way back, Miss Angel could not shake the feeling that this so-called commission to test the Hero Candidate had been rather more a test of her.
To see whether she was a true angel, or the same sort of existence as that child.
【So the days ahead are more dangerous than I imagined... and given the ending where I inevitably turn on the protagonist, don't tell me the script I've been handed is Infernal Affairs?】
Grumbling internally to take the edge off her own stress, Miss Angel found herself wanting to grumble at whoever wrote the script for this game, too. Why a harem work needed to drag in this much complicated nonsense was anyone's guess.
How many copies it sold in the end, no one knew, but the people cursing it on forums and message boards were a dime a dozen.
Back at the church, Shu, as a Hero Candidate, apparently still had adventurer business of some kind to attend to, and so for the time being she parted from the protagonist of this story as well.
For Seraphia, not having to stay with him was unquestionably a good thing.
"Lady Holy Wing, welcome back. Is there anything you need?"
Nora, the little sister assigned to look after her, came up to meet her, watching her with a smile.
For now there was nothing to do but take it one step at a time.
The thoughtful little sister led her to the bedroom actually allotted to her within the church, and a short while later brought in a dinner splendid in colour, scent and flavour, then withdrew from the room at once after a single 'do call me again if you need anything'.
A stretch of peaceful solitude had arrived.
Seraphia had only just settled lazily onto the bench in the room, relaxing into the sitting posture her original male body had been used to, when she felt a subtle sensation.
Then, in the next instant, her shadow churned up bubbles like boiling liquid, and a pale, clean hand reached slowly out of it.
【Mm...?】
Not an enemy.
That was the information this body offered.
So then, was this someone the original Seraphia knew?
【It really would be nice to know a bit more about the source material...】
"I'm sorry, Big Sister Seraphia... I arrived too late. I couldn't save that one of our kin..."
Malformed wings probed out from the shadow, and a dim halo rose slowly after them.
Seraphia did not approach at once.
The features were identical to those of the child they had met in the abandoned church, the one the Church had judged a monster.
【She turns up inside the church itself, as brazenly as that?】
Seraphia looked the other over carefully.
The face of a girl of sixteen or seventeen. Beautiful as it was, the abnormalities in her face and body were far too conspicuous. Her eyes were of a type unlike an ordinary person's: the eyeballs were mostly black, while the pupils at their centres were, inversely, white.
A sense of the inhuman.
"Big Sister...?" Perhaps because she had received no answer, the girl who had come out of the shadow asked again, cautiously, "Are you angry... or..."
The halo above her head slowly gave off a faint golden light, gone again in an instant.
"Eh... why are you confused?"
【Mm...?】
The other girl's words made Seraphia's pupils contract slightly.