A corpse... Hearing this, Angel stepped out of the cramped section of the Mirror World behind the half-length mirror and into reality, appearing before Tia.
Of course, this was not the Goddess of Calamity's true body. Otherwise, the barrier in the Astral World would once again lose the support of a deity, and the God of Knowledge and Wisdom, who controlled Lenburg, might react by descending as well, triggering a chain reaction.
What entered reality was still Angel's mirror projection, but part of her consciousness had already merged into it. It was effectively a false Divine Descent Vessel, an avatar possessing only an angel's power but a status higher than a deity's.
Ordinarily, when believers of the End Church prayed to their goddess, they received, at most, a formulaic reply from the mirror self Angel had placed in the Mirror World. Often, they received no reply at all. After all, she had become a true deity and no longer needed to handle everything personally and respond to her believers' prayers in real time as she had during the church's early days.
Only prayer lights she had specially marked-such as those belonging to the Demonesses and Hunters among the church's upper ranks, the members of the Tarot Club, and certain believers she had taken notice of very early on-received further responses. Sometimes, as today, she would even send an avatar to the scene.
Naturally, Tia was one of these special individuals. She had joined Angel's camp back when Angel was still the Golden Queen and had done quite a few things for her.
*Even so, I'm much more diligent than the other deities. The Evernight Goddess only gives any real response to her true Blessed, and the appearances of her Divine Descent Vessel, the Mother of the Sky-Antigonus's elder sister, Philanias-can