As soon as the words rang out, the Malevolent Dragon's three enormous, sharply distinct heads all turned toward the source of the voice.
Its self-awareness, restored as the City of Calamity's Dao Integrators returned to its body, no longer acted on instinct alone. Yet the shock of having joy turn to disaster still filled every one of its minds.
Angel, equally enormous yet still radiating a charm that transcended race, gender, and even life and death, had somehow appeared beside it. She looked at it with a smile.
Then she extended an arm, its skin delicate and its movements supple, and pressed her hand against the expressionless face formed by the Chaos Vortex in the middle of the Malevolent Dragon's heads.
Angel had not truly died in the universe's most powerful "calamity," unleashed moments earlier by the birth of the Original Creator.
For one thing, the symbolism of the "Original Creator" itself came from the Mirrored Original Creator's feminine and masculine aspects, which Angel had accommodated and controlled. Although Cheek and Tudor, who had merged into it, possessed some sense of self, they were still essentially parts of Angel-mental imprints that existed through their dependence on her and Gray. As a result, the Calamity of Destruction unleashed within the consciousness space by the fusion of those four had destroyed the Malevolent Dragon first, rather than Angel, who was closer.
For another, even if she had died in the explosion, she would not truly have perished. Unlike the normal process of accommodating a sefirah, she had not made direct physical contact with the City of Calamity and merged her consciousness into it to contend with the Malevolent Dragon. Instead, she had begun accommodating the sefirah while her divine body remained outside the seal, with only her mind and spirit body reaching