God is high above, and even when kneeling in the temple where He dwells, the archangels below could not see His true form. In this, even Lucifel was no exception.
Because He was a god, merely looking up at Him was already deeply moving, and no angel would try to get closer to Him.
Michael, hands at his sides, looked at the “person” in front of him.
He had seen God’s appearance. It was when he was a soul from another world; as an unbound existence who posed no harm to God, the rules that protected this world’s god did not resist his approach.
Only later, when the soul was stuffed into the body called Michael, and because he had a human’s common sense and could not learn the angels’ language, he broke down and discarded the human part of his soul.
After that, he no longer remembered anything about his time as a human, and so naturally did not remember having seen God.
The god standing opposite him had not come alone.
Gabriel and Uriel had been told by God to come to this level in advance. Although they did not understand what was going on, they obeyed.
In the temple, God had sent the golden-haired human now before them to their side and told them to follow his instructions.
How to put it, though they were shocked by this, they were after all not as proud as Lucifel, and they were not being humiliated by being made to kneel to this person, so the two archangels thought… fine, they were both people who took things as they came anyway.
Because of the new task assigned on short notice, Gabriel could only have his deputy general follow Lucifer to fight on the Third Heaven, while he himself guarded this level.
Before this black-haired young man appeared in front of them, neither thought that waiting like this would have any result. They thought simply: Lucifer is on the Third Heaven, so there should be no way anyone could get past him to this level.
Until the barrier, which should have had no flaws, was pierced without a sound and a person walked out of it, and the two archangels were left speechless.
It was a human.
Yes, not one of those fallen angels, and not a great demon of Hell, but a real human.
The newcomer had no wings behind him and no aura of darkness on him; from any angle, he looked like the kind of person Adam was.
Even so, they didn’t dare step back.
The black-haired, red-eyed young man glanced at them, then fixed his gaze on the golden-haired human, and smiled lightly.
“I’m really surprised, I thought the first one I’d see would be Lucifer.”
Gabriel crossed his arms over his chest and lowered his voice: “It looks like he was supposed to be staying with Lucifer, and somehow he ended up on this level.”
Uriel nodded and muttered: “More than that, don’t you find this human’s feel very familiar?”
“You mean the pure aura?”
Uriel nodded: “It clearly has the scent of warm light, yet it’s not an angel.”
Gabriel also found it strange: “Our God never said that any human would come to Heaven. There shouldn’t be any other humans here.”
Adam and Eve had already paid the price for their mistake, and the human race had therefore been banished forever to the human world below, not allowed to set foot in Heaven again.
In other words, the two who were the ancestors of humankind were already despised by God, so God could not possibly make an exception for other humans.
Oh, except for the golden-haired one in front of them.
No, this one only looked like a human; whether he was really one was hard to say.
What Gabriel and Uriel found strangest was nothing else, but how a human had appeared in Heaven in wartime.
While they were wary of the newcomer and observing the leader on their side, the black-haired young man opposite spoke again.
“If you don’t plan to talk, can you just let me leave? I really have no intention of being your enemy.”
The golden-haired human slowly said: “By ‘no intention of being our enemy’, thou meanest that while the great demons tangle with Luci, thou usest their chaotic fight to slip into this level?”
The young man raised an eyebrow: “More or less. I’ve already given orders, so they won’t go too far.”
No, even if angels in Heaven really died, as long as the Abyss existed, those who died could live again, only in a different world.
The golden-haired human’s expression turned very cold: “I know not what thou thinkest, but at this moment thou shalt not pass.”
The young man pursed his lips, looking defeated: “I say, you can’t be this unreasonable, can you? I’ve already guaranteed your angels won’t come to harm, so why do you have to be so annoying?”
If the two archangels had had doubts before about the golden-haired human’s identity, hearing this familiar way of speaking, they were immediately certain who this person was.
Uriel: “To see our God in my lifetime, I could die with no regrets?”
Gabriel mocked him: “Calm down, angels are different from humans, and there’s no possibility of a natural death.”
Only then did Uriel react.
Oh right, either die in battle or live on forever; there was no third choice.
Not long after working this out, he noticed something strange.
“If that is our God, then the human standing opposite him… who on earth is that?”
God: “…”
Seeming somewhat speechless at His angel’s slowness, He had no choice but to speak: “He is Michael.”
The two archangels were startled: “Michael?”
If they remembered correctly, Michael was supposed to be the type who didn’t like to smile much, was often expressionless, and, though not rare to speak, didn’t talk much either… right?
But the one in front of them, in both the feeling he gave them and his overly gentle expression, was far from the Michael they knew.
Michael was also a bit speechless at this moment.
He thought that Heaven should have an angel who would notice the true reason for Raziel’s coma, but he couldn’t guarantee whether the other would think of it.
When he had used Bael and the other demons and fallen angels as decoys and gone alone to the heights of Heaven, he had already prepared himself, he might run into obstacles.
But however he calculated, he never thought that what would stop him was not one of the other archangels, but the God who should have been sitting on the divine throne.
He sighed lightly and tilted his head: “I just don’t understand. Back when Lucifer led Hell’s enemies up here, You had no intention of showing Yourself, and now You come down from Your seat on purpose to stop me?”
The golden-haired god: “Thou understandest.”
Understand what? Understand that an archangel must fall?
Even now, Michael still disliked this about this god: there was always sufficient reason for whatever He did, but He never explained.
—Come to think of it, the gods who had made trouble back then seemed to have this same personality?
Michael, who had been human and thought himself human to the bone, didn’t understand; he supposed this was probably the gods’ trademark.
Hearing this, Gabriel was truly certain that it was Michael.
“Michael, why did you fall?”
This doubt had coiled in his heart for a long time, and now that he was seeing the person concerned, he of course wouldn’t avoid the matter.
As commander of the angel armies, Gabriel actually respected Lucifer and Michael very much, which was why he could not understand what the two successive archangels had betrayed Heaven for.
Michael: “…Well, you could understand it as balancing light and dark?”
Gabriel: “Huh? What does that mean?”
Michael thought for a while and mused: “It’s hard to explain, though Lucifer understood it from the start.”
Gabriel felt he was being looked down on by the person in front of him, but they had no evidence.
“Michael, the one who should fall is Luci, not thee.”
The voice was too ethereal; Michael found it hard to ignore it.
He looked again at the person in front of him, trying to find some clue on the expressionless face opposite.
Unfortunately, there was still nothing.
Perhaps because he was used to speaking with a god who had a self, he was still quite unaccustomed to facing this god again, one who knew only its mission and had no other feelings.
Of course, he had no intention of indulging it either.
With a finger against his own forehead and a faint smile on his face, he said: “It’s the same whoever falls, isn’t it? After all, we are both light. And you also know that, compared with Lucifel, I fit the conditions for falling better.”
Uriel had fully switched on watching-the-drama mode: “This is the first time I’ve seen people fighting over who gets to fall.”
Because the two of them had quarreled constantly since their school days, Michael glared at him as soon as he heard: “Shut up, Uri.”
Uriel: “If you can, please call me by my full name, thanks.”
What was Uri? Dropping just one syllable and already slacking off, is that it?
This Michael had never been seen by the archangels, nor even by God, who had been the one to first seal him. Glib, overly lively in personality, the whole person was vivid.
Don’t be fooled by Gabriel looking like he was merely watching; in fact he was ready at any moment to surround Michael. Their God had said to take this newly promoted Demon King alive, so that order was absolute.
As for how Michael would be punished afterward, that was something to consider only after he was captured.
He gave Uriel a hand signal, and the latter silently said in his heart “don’t blame me, Michael” and agreed to the other’s arrangement.
On the surface Michael was facing off against God, but in fact he was using his senses to probe the road leading upward. Rather than a road, it was more of a passage. Perhaps because he had been designated a “traitor” of Heaven, the spatial passages that had once been open to him were all suddenly sealed, and he could not reach the Eighth Heaven at once.
He had only altered the barrier a little and Raziel had fallen into a coma, so he naturally didn’t dare do more to the barriers, since he didn’t really want the barrier angel to die.
Even if this was only a shadow, that feeling would not change.
Suddenly, a golden light lit up in the sky.
Countless swords, points downward, stopped above the top of Michael’s head.
“Michael, I told thee thou shalt not leave today.”
Michael: …No need to be this enthusiastic.