Aperria slowly opened her eyes. The first thing she saw was the figure most familiar to her.
It was a massive transparent red crystal. Sealed within it was an "elder sister" who looked exactly like her, eternally scorched by flames.
"Am I still alive?" Aperria asked.
"You are." Aperlia replied. "Two girls brought you back."
Aperria sat up in a daze. Seeing that her body was completely unharmed, she sighed in relief, then said to her "elder sister" inside the crystal, "I almost destroyed this body. Do you want to take it back?"
Aperlia shook her head within the crystal. "Little sister, not yet."
Aperria continued, "Sister, I met the Lord. He really has descended."
Aperlia hesitated slightly. "The Lord... what is He like?"
Aperria blushed. "Very handsome, very warm, and He smells wonderful too. It makes you want to pounce on Him, makes you want to do anything for Him. Anything."
Aperlia could not help frowning. "He is a man?"
Aperria nodded. "He descended in human form."
Aperlia pressed her lips together. After a long silence, she finally said, "The old you would never have said such things. Do you think the thoughts you have toward the 'Lord' are normal?"
Aperria immediately retorted, "Of course... Sister, what do you mean?"
Aperlia sighed. "Forget I said anything..."
At first, Aperlia had not believed that the "Creator God" spoken of by the Shadow Race was their Lord.
But after seeing her "little sister" looking as though she had been bewitched, Aperlia dismissed her doubts.
The Creator God had truly descended.
Before her younger sister Aperria awoke, she had already met another saintess of the Creator God: a Beast-Ear Race girl named Aer. In her memories, they had been comrades in the Salvation Army eight hundred years ago.
Saintesses did not age.
But to become a god's saintess required the most sincere and purest faith.
And that power came with a price.
Once one became a god's saintess, one became that god's spokesperson in the mortal world.
They could bear divine power, but they could never defy their god.
When facing the god they believed in, they would become mindless puppets on strings, just like her younger sister.
Back in the era when the gods had not yet been completely corrupted, Aperlia had seen the saintesses of other gods. She knew what fate saintesses were destined to bear.
Only after steeling herself sufficiently had she chosen, in her despair, to offer everything she had to the Creator God and guide the Salvation Army onward.
Yet after enduring so many years of burning, Aperlia could not help wondering: who had caused this world's corruption? Had the Creator God, who had never shown Himself, been corrupted from the very beginning? Or was He actually the true culprit behind it all?
What should she do?
Aperlia closed her eyes and began imagining it—if the Creator God were the true culprit behind everything, if she had a chance now to abandon her status as a saintess, would she do it?
No...
Since she had chosen to become the Creator God's saintess at her most desperate moment, she had to take responsibility for that choice, even if it meant destroying the world.
Aperlia opened her eyes and looked once more toward her younger sister.
"I want to meet the Lord too. Can you help me, little sister?"
After leaving the village's sacred ground, Aperria looked at the village where she had lived since childhood and suddenly felt as though a lifetime had passed.
Clearly, her final memory before losing consciousness had been of the Divine Bird in the sky, blocking out the sun's radiance.
Yet when she opened her eyes again, she had somehow returned to her sister's side... It had to be the Lord's protection that had allowed her to survive.
Aperria once again praised the Lord's greatness in her heart.
"Lady Saintess, over here, over here!" Two female elf Chosen Ones waved as they skipped toward her.
Those two girls who had brought her back to the village must have been them... Aperria removed her helmet, tucked it beneath her arm, and asked the two elves:
"You two, were you the ones who rescued me in my time of need?"
One of the female elves nodded vigorously.
"Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm! We worked so hard. We were only level eleven, yet we brought you through the Misty Forest. The road was full of level forty and fifty monsters, plus plenty of nasty people eyeing us hungrily. We stopped them all."
"Then, according to the Lord's instructions, I should offer you my gratitude." Aperria removed her knight's glove and held out her hand to the two female elves. "Allow me to reward you with Experience Points."
Aperria had accumulated around 120,000 Experience Points by leveling up players.
Originally, she had intended to save those Experience Points until she met the Lord again, then return them to Him through physical contact.
But the Lord had instructed her that if Chosen Ones took the initiative to do good deeds, she had to reward them with Experience Points.
So she did not hesitate, assigning 50,000 Experience Points to each of them.
The two elves' expressions shifted from initial anticipation to undisguised disappointment.
They had spent four days traveling in the game, and in reality, they had fought continuously for an entire day and night. For this NPC, they had even ignored the damage staying up late would do to their skin.
And this was it?
"I'm sorry, I only have this much Experience Points. But if you two do not mind, I can ask the village blacksmith to forge a custom set of equipment for you. I hope you will not refuse." Aperria said.
"Really?!"
"No, no custom stuff. Give us a set of Gold Rank equipment. Don't worry about whether we can use it."
"Yeah, yeah, listen to her!"
Smiles returned to the two female players' faces.
After confirming the reward, Aperria led the two female players toward the village blacksmith shop.
Crystal Seal Village's Geothermal Furnace had allowed the village to pass down techniques related to fire.
Though Aperria did not know the standards elsewhere, she still believed that the village's blacksmiths and cooks were the best in the world.
I really want to bring the Lord here to see it.
Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!
Inside the blacksmith shop, a vaguely familiar but unknown man with a strange hairstyle sat at the blacksmith's station, hammering a red-hot chunk of iron again and again.
The village's best blacksmith stood behind him, looking utterly exasperated as she scolded him outright, "You idiot, that is not how you forge iron! How many times have I taught you? Are you a pighead or something?!"
The strange-haired man being scolded bristled. "You're so noisy, you stinking hag!"
"Completely useless!" The moment the village's best blacksmith saw Aperria arrive, she immediately hurried over, hugged Aperria, and said, "Aperria, it's good that you're all right."
"How have things been lately?" Aperria freed herself from the blacksmith's embrace.
"I took on a few apprentices. The Chosen Ones you brought back are real geniuses; they learn everything after being taught once." As she spoke, the blacksmith cocked her head toward the strange-haired man. "Except for this pighead, of course."