"Thank the Lord for sending His messengers down to me in person, to grant us protection!"
Even though she had already seen a legendary angel with her own eyes, Adrian's mother couldn't take in another word—Adrian hadn't even finished introducing the relationship between me and him—when she suddenly rushed a few steps forward, threw herself down in front of Cyrae, and knelt.
It happened so abruptly that Adrian didn't have time to stop her. Even I hadn't expected things to suddenly turn out like this. What's more, among the other hostages present, there were quite a few believers of the God-faith as well. The moment they saw it, they all followed suit, kneeling down and expressing their gratitude to Cyrae.
"Mm. You may all stand up now," Cyrae said. She unfurled the six wings on her back, and like a true messenger descending to the mortal world, she adopted the posture of someone in authority and gave a guiding nod to the kneeling believers. "The Lord appreciates your devout hearts, which is why He sent us to assist you. All you need to do now is return home and rest. As for what happened today, it's best not to spread it everywhere, because the Lord does not wish for a casual act of His to be deliberately exaggerated by the world."
This "performance" was clearly more effective than any amount of people tugging and coaxing. Sure enough, most of the faithful on the scene obediently stood up on their own, and order quickly recovered from the earlier panic.
Only Adrian's mother remained kneeling on the ground, motionless, for a long time.
"Even the angel said you can get up—why are you still being so stubborn?" Adrian quickly echoed Cyrae's tone and tried to go with the flow, but when he nudged his mother, she still didn't react at all.
When the three of us finally sensed something was wrong and moved around to stand directly in front of Adrian's mother, we discovered that her face wore a blank, bewildered expression. Her eyes were open, but her gaze was utterly empty—she looked as though her soul had been pulled out of her.
"What's going on? What happened to her?" Adrian panicked at once. "Did she faint?"
He was at a complete loss. He'd thought the enemy had been wiped out and the rescue was a complete success—only for something like this to happen immediately afterward, and to his own mother no less. Of course he was terrified.
"Don't panic yet," Cyrae said. She stepped forward, pressed a hand to Adrian's shoulder, and forced him to calm down. Then she observed Adrian's mother for several seconds, before nodding with certainty. "I think I recognize this. If I'm not mistaken, it's not serious."
"Elara once happened to see something like this," Cyrae continued. "It's a meditative state that occurs during the process of communicating with a god. It usually appears only among high-ranking followers of the 'Ancient God Religion.' In that state, a human's mind and soul can, in theory, communicate with a deity to some extent."
"Of course, it's very difficult for ordinary believers to succeed. But the concentration of light-element around your mother has clearly increased somewhat, so we can't rule out that she actually managed it."
Only then did I notice the light-element in the air nearby. A portion of it really had gathered, silently, around Adrian's mother's body. It wasn't very obvious—but it was enough to prove that Cyrae understood the light element far better than I did.
Normally, a low-level concentration of light element like this wouldn't cause any harm to the human body. Since it fell under "communing with a god," it would naturally end with her waking on her own—
And sure enough, less than a minute later, Adrian's mother shuddered violently, snapped fully out of the meditative state, and collapsed to the ground.
"Mom—what just happened to you?" Adrian hurried forward to help her up. As he asked anxiously, his eyes flicked instinctively toward Cyrae and me.
"The Lord—It was the Lord's summons!" Adrian's mother said, trembling with emotion. "All these years… I-I finally… I finally got to encounter the Lord myself!"
It matched Cyrae's guess almost exactly. According to Adrian's mother, during that minute of vacancy, she seemed to be in total darkness, and she heard a voice speaking to her. But although she said she had "seen" the Lord, in reality she had only heard a voice from start to finish—she hadn't seen what the other side looked like at all.
"So what exactly did the Lord say to you?" The other believers on the scene couldn't hold back. An opportunity to "have an audience with the Lord" was not something just anyone got. They crowded around at once, talking over each other as they asked about the divine message.
"I'm sorry…" Adrian's mother shook her head weakly. "Maybe… maybe I'm too dull. The Lord's voice was so quiet—I could barely hear it at all…"
Unfortunately, she could only say she didn't know the details. And she didn't look like she was lying. The whole process seemed to have drained her badly; after explaining that much, she didn't have the strength to say more.
The ending left everyone disappointed, yet many devout believers still tried to press her with question after question—until Adrian, as her strong-willed son, blocked them firmly and drove them back.
"Alright, alright!" Brennan raised his voice and rescued us from the situation. "Everyone just barely got saved—don't hang around any longer. Leave this place and get back to town!"
Only then did the hostages remember that they were still inside the bandits' lair. Under the redhead's guidance, they began withdrawing toward the cave entrance in a panicked rush.
Cyrae, Adrian, his mother, and I fell behind at the rear.
"Do you really think she didn't hear anything at all?" I asked quietly.
My chest felt tight the whole way. Adrian stayed right beside his mother, supporting her with both hands, not daring to let anything happen again. So I moved closer to Cyrae and, once we had a bit of distance, asked her in a low voice.
"Logically, your world shouldn't even have the Ancient God Religion—nor the 'true god' they worship, 'Sprin.' So it's worth thinking about who that voice could really belong to. Was it truly the deity behind the 'True Church' appearing? But didn't you tell me before that it might be fake? To figure out whether she really heard something, don't we at least need to confirm that first?"
Cyrae heard me and only smiled faintly—then, instead of answering, tossed the key question right back at me.
That sudden boomerang left me stuck.
Up to now, I truly didn't believe that the True Church's "Yehehua" actually existed. And yet there was something that had been lodged in my mind, something I didn't know how to say out loud:
When Adrian's mother stood up just now, I had a strong feeling her eyes had flicked, involuntarily, and lingered on me for a moment.
Adrian still hadn't directly told his mother about my relationship with him, because he was afraid of overstimulating her. That made it even clearer that her odd attention toward me wasn't as simple as it looked on the surface.
My first instinct back then was that the way she looked at me might have something to do with the voice she heard during that meditative "communion with the divine"—in other words, she might be concealing something.
"You could say what you two just went through counts as meeting the parents," Cyrae said, her words suddenly carrying a strange, meaningful weight. "But how things develop from here… will probably depend on the two of you."
Seeing that I remained silent, she offered that reminder as if her decades of extra life experience—experience I didn't have—had allowed her to sense something unusual as well, even though she didn't spell it out.
"But we're angels," I said, deeply conflicted. "For someone who believes in God, that should be an advantage, shouldn't it?"
I genuinely couldn't figure out what the real problem was. Honestly, when I decided to accompany Adrian back to his hometown, I never expected so many surprises to happen. No wonder people always said meeting the parents was never easy…
…
After that, everything went very smoothly.
Once we rescued the hostages from the bandits' lair, the mayor of Boyak Town received the news and immediately climbed out of bed in the middle of the night. He personally led people to the town entrance to welcome our triumphant return.
And by normal procedure, the town was bound to hold an unprecedentedly grand celebration banquet. As the main force of the rescue operation, Cyrae, Adrian, and I naturally received extremely formal invitations.
"What? You're leaving right away?" the mayor exclaimed. "How can that be allowed? You're the great benefactors of our town! No matter what, you must stay until tomorrow night's victory banquet before departing—otherwise it'll look like Boyak Town is kicking you out the moment you've done the work. That would be utterly improper!"
Angels had always been treated with the highest respect in the Kingdom of Astralrealm. Back in Norvale's royal city, we were honored as the most distinguished guests. For the mayor of a remote mountain town—one that had almost never hosted angels before—there was no way he would miss this rare chance to receive us. He did everything he could to keep us, pleading again and again.
"Adrian, since you know them, and since you're a resident under my jurisdiction, you should act as host on my behalf—no matter what! Right, Ms. Heidilun, you should persuade your son too…"
Our original plan had been to escort Adrian's mother straight back to Dasan Village, settle everything properly, and then stay with her for a few days. By then, the other villagers of Dasan should have returned home as well, and we would be able to continue our journey without worry.
But the mayor of Boyak Town refused to give up. He tried every possible way to keep us—going so far as to spend lavishly and personally invite us to stay as guests in his own luxurious residence. On top of that, even Adrian's mother softened and joined in the persuasion.
In the end, under all that "pressure," we had no choice but to change our minds and remain for the time being.