Although they had prepared themselves mentally, when they followed Fang Zheng into the tower and saw the scene before them, Misaka Mikoto and Shirai Kuroko could not help but pale.
"This is..."
Looking at the densely packed glass jars and the mangled corpses inside them, both girls' faces turned deathly white.
"Are all of these Holy War Angels?"
"That's right..."
Fang Zheng reached out and gently stroked one of the glass jars, then made a gesture.
Soon, the surroundings before the three of them began to change. Time rewound, and everything started flowing like a film.
They saw the construction of Edel Garden, a paradise built so humans and Holy War Angels could communicate and live peacefully together. Yet amid that apocalypse, even paradise was far too weak. It could not survive before the monsters, so to protect it, they needed greater power.
And so, the Holy War Angels who had come to Edel Garden made a decision.
They offered up their bodies for Edel Garden's research.
"Th-This is...!"
Misaka Mikoto trembled all over at the sight. Shirai Kuroko remained silent. At first, they had thought Edel Garden had merely deceived these Holy War Angels, but they had never expected things to be so much more complicated. In fact, the proposal had originally come from the Holy War Angels themselves!
The original Edel Garden had rescued quite a few Holy War Angels, but those Holy War Angels had long suffered under human enslavement. Some had already become neither human nor ghost. Rather than continue living in agony, they believed it was more worthwhile to fall into eternal sleep and offer themselves up for the future of both Holy War Angels and humanity—such were the thoughts of those Holy War Angels at the time.
"How could this be?!"
Misaka Mikoto angrily