France – City of Évry.
In a graveyard, the final resting place for the bodies of the deceased, the atmosphere was as gloomy as ever, accompanied by the sobs of families grieving over their lost loved ones.
In one quiet corner of the graveyard, two girls were staring at a grave that had been there for a few weeks.
The two girls were Zhuge Liang and Jeanne.
The members of the Hero Faction whom Michael hadn't had the chance to meet during his previous introduction.
But perhaps it was for the best that he hadn't met Jeanne right now, because nine out of ten times, he might have ended up dead pierced by her sword which was currently brimming with resentment and rage.
"Do you know that your husband is a serial killer?"
Zhuge gazed at Jeanne who was placing a bouquet of flowers on the grave of her adoptive father.
"I had some suspicions. And once again, that bastard... is not my husband!"
Jeanne glared at the girl beside her with dark eyes filled with fresh resentment and fury.
During the time she had been confined for over half a year by that man, she did have some suspicions about the possibility of that bastard's identity as the serial killer known as the Inverted Cross.
Those suspicions arose during the wedding reception that the bastard held in his basement, where an Inverted Cross was mounted on the wall.
But she never imagined that her long-held suspicions were true... and that the bastard had the audacity to kill her father!
How dare that bastard come to her that night with his gentle smile after murdering her father... and do indecent things to her with his filthy hands still stained with her father's blood...
Jeanne gripped the sheathed sword at her waist tightly... her Sacred Gear would remain sheathed forever until the moment came to decapitate that bastard's head.
She didn't care if it was Devils, Angels, or even Gods who might stand in her way of chopping off that man's head... she would sever his head and drink his blood from his skull.
That bastard's skull would always be with her, adorning the remainder of her days filled with vengeance against him... she swore it!
She glanced across from where she stood, at a spot crowded with people holding a funeral ceremony.
This was the first time she had seen a funeral ceremony attended by so many people... but she knew the only reason for this was that the ceremony wasn't for just one deceased person... but six.
From the conversations she overheard among the victims' families and the newspapers she read when she first arrived in her hometown, she learned that these six deaths were suspected to be the work of the infamous serial killer, the Inverted Cross.
Even though there were no Inverted Cross marks adorning the victims' surroundings, the type of knife used to end their lives and the method of the killings were said to match those identified by the investigators.
So it was certain that the killer of these six was the Inverted Cross.
It was this news that brought Jeanne here after being at the Hero Faction headquarters for so long... Cao Cao had mentioned that her cheap husband had struck again.
Which meant that bastard had emerged from the Underworld and was in this city...
"Your mouth may reject him as your husband, but your heart and body might still consider that man as your husband."
Zhuge covered half of her pitying smile with her feathered hand fan.
She truly felt sorry for the girl in front of her. If only she knew that all this time, she had been deceived by Cao Cao.
And the husband she had been searching for was right there at their headquarters...
She was genuinely curious about what was going through Cao Cao's mind for bringing time bombs like them into their group.
Was it to maximize their value for their faction's goals? She didn't know. But one thing she did know... whatever plan that man had for the two of them, it wasn't the best strategic move in any sense, they were both ticking time bombs just waiting to explode.
"Your mouth really doesn't match your cute appearance."
Jeanne ignored the taunt she always heard from the girl beside her and walked away from her adoptive father's grave.
"Lets go. My sword is getting impatient to be unsheathed."
"You've really become boring, Little Jeanne."
Ignoring the other taunt that escaped from the cursed mouth of the cute girl, Jeanne walked away from the graveyard, gripping her sword tightly.
As she got closer to the exit, she suddenly felt a strange sensation after passing by a blonde woman wearing only a simple white robe that covered her incredibly voluptuous body.
The woman's presence was utterly out of place; Jeanne even noticed that, aside from herself, no one else in the graveyard seemed to register her existence.
Was it just her imagination?
As she wanted to turn back and gaze more closely at the alluring woman and examine her tantalizing body...
'Don't turn around.'
Zhuge's warning voice echoed in her head, snapping her out of her thoughts that were slowly losing control...
"W-What?"
"We need to leave. Now."
She was truly stunned by the strength of the pull from Zhuge's small hand as it dragged her quickly out of the graveyard.
After ensuring no one was around, Zhuge pulled her into a hole that appeared in the air from a wave of her feathered hand fan.
After entering the teleportation hole that transported them both, Jeanne now stared at Zhuge who was frantically scanning their surroundings as if making sure that strange woman from before wasn't there.
"Damn it. Why is that creature here?"
Zhuge wiped the cold sweat from her forehead with the sleeve of her traditional robe while regaining her composure.
"W-What strange creature was that?"
Jeanne would have to be a fool not to notice how her mind had started to feel off after sensing that woman's presence earlier and Zhuge's panicked escape.
"Damn, did you really ignore the book I gave you?"
"Book? Oh yeah... I might have forgotten it after skimming through it."
"Fuck your brain that's filled with revenge and your husband!"
Zhuge stared at Jeanne like she was an idiot for not knowing what kind of creature they had just passed.
She had clearly instructed her to read and memorize every illustration of the powerful beings in the world recorded in that book.
But... sigh... she let out a sigh, realizing this might be expected from the girl currently furious at her husband...
"Listen carefully with those thick ears of yours... The creature we just passed was Gabriel."
"Gabriel? The Archangel from the Bible?"
"You goddamn right! And one thing you need to know after crossing paths with a being like that is to flee from this cursed city!"
Zhuge tried to maintain her composure while lecturing the stubborn girl in front of her.
She was doing her utmost to suppress the trembling in her hands... She was truly trying to hold back the fear she felt after encountering that Angel.
Even though this was her first time meeting that Angel, she was extremely cautious about any potential dire consequences...
She couldn't be blamed for her vigilance and fear toward that Angel... She had heard and read stories of that Angel's feats recorded in their headquarters' library.
The only thought she had after reading those recorded achievements was... as expected from the Power of God.
That Angel's feats during the Great War were outrageous... She had even doubted the authenticity of the recorded history at one point, but after confirming that several history books also documented similar events... she had to admit that Angel was truly overwhelmingly powerful back when their late Father was still around.
And the only thing on her mind right now was to escape this cursed city, which for some unknown reason was harboring that Angel's presence.
But as she expected... the stubborn and vengeance-filled girl in front of her flatly refused her suggestion to flee.
"No! I'm too close to my goal right now. If you want to run away with your tail between your legs, be my guest."
"You're really going to be the reason I die today."
Zhuge covered half of her twitching, annoyed face with her feathered hand fan while staring at the simple house in front of them.
There was a reason she had teleported them here, she had fully anticipated that Jeanne would refuse to flee.
"Come on in."
"Huh? Why are we breaking into some random person's house?"
Damn it. Holding back the curse on the tip of her tongue, Zhuge stared at Jeanne like she was an idiot.
"What else, besides searching for traces of the bastard whose head you want to chop off, from his old house?"
"This is that bastard's house?"
"What else? Hurry up and get in! I really want to leave this cursed city as soon as possible."
Ignoring Jeanne's dumbfounded stare for not realizing the house where she had been confined for half a year, Zhuge dragged the girl inside, unaware that they had been watched all this time by a twelve-winged being hovering in the sky.
If Zhuge had noticed the creature flying in the sky, she would have cursed the luck of nine generations of her family for attracting the attention of a being like Gabriel.
Gabriel frowned as she watched the two girls enter the house of that disgusting man who had escaped her Judgment earlier.
She hadn't expected a surprise like this after following her curiosity upon sensing spatial fluctuations around her earlier at the graveyard and hearing her name mentioned by them.
Did they have some connection to that disgusting man?
She had observed them after they teleported here, and she realized that both were Sacred Gear wielders, and one of them was a magician.
The lingering aura and presence of her Father from the creation of those Sacred Gears was impossible for her to ignore.
Was the little girl she identified as a magician perhaps the one who had cast the curse magic on that disgusting man?
There was no reason for the two girls to come to that disgusting man's house if they had no connection to him at all... and if what she overheard was true, then the girl she sensed as very familiar likely harbored a grudge against that disgusting man for wanting to decapitate his head.
And why did she feel such a familiar sensation toward that girl?
Was that girl the reincarnation of one of the humans she had liked in the past?
But that was clearly impossible because all the human souls who had ever been connected to her were now in the Third Heaven.
So what was the reason she felt familiarity from that girl's face?
No matter how much she pondered the reasons, she always felt they were impossible because all her speculations could be refuted, Heaven had no reincarnation system, and all the human souls she liked rested eternally in the Third Heaven.
She watched the two girls searching for traces of that disgusting man in his house, just as she had done before.
Previously, she had conducted the same search for several days, but it only left her disappointed because she found not a single trace left by that disgusting man who escaped her Judgment.
The only things she found during her search were six lifeless bodies that had undergone the same fate as the five lifeless bodies she had discovered before...
Souls lost without a trace.
She knew those six innocent humans must have suffered the same fate at the hands of that disgusting man because she detected no interference from the Death Gods or their minions...
She was the reason those six bodies were found by the investigators so quickly, she had whispered the locations of all the corpses into their ears.
If she hadn't done that, those six bodies might have rotted away undiscovered by their families.
The only other thing she discovered during her several days of searching was the possibility that the disgusting man had deliberately chosen victims who had no faith to their Father or other Gods.
That was the speculation pondered by Michael and her other siblings after hearing her information about the victims' lives and environments.
None of them had faith or religion in their lives... except one.
The old man who had abandoned his faith for the last 33 years... and that was one of the reasons they became aware of this strange incident.
And if that disgusting man deliberately chose victims without faith or religion, it meant there was a chance he was aware of the supernatural world and intentionally selected them to avoid drawing attention, perhaps anticipating the reaction they might have if they realized he was stealing souls from under their noses.
But no plan is perfect... because of his misjudgment, that disgusting man didn't realize that one of his victims had secretly retained his faith all this time and decided to pray one last time before death claimed him... which caused his brother Michael to notice the anomaly.
Perhaps this was the remnant of their Father's Will aiding them in erasing that disgusting man from the face of the Earth.
She looked back at the two girls who had now exited the disgusting man's house.
"It seems they've found a trace?"
Gabriel furrowed her brow... how could they find a trace of that disgusting man when she hadn't during her thorough search of the house?
Was there a trace she had overlooked?
That was impossible... she had ransacked the entire house down to the smallest detail she could perceive...
Ignoring the strange and suspicious feeling that arose, she watched as one of the girls waved her feathered hand fan and creating a small hole connected to... a forest not far from the city?
Was the trace they found leading to that forest?
She observed the spatial teleportation channel in the hole more closely... After confirming that the forest was indeed their destination, she followed them with her own teleportation after they both entered the portal.
She decided to tail them for now. Hopefully, these two girls had truly found a clue she had missed.
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A/N: Jeanne and Zhuge are really unlucky for catching Gabriel's attention lol.
I really enjoyed writing their interactions, maybe the next few chapters will focus on them while, on the other side, Michael trains magic with Le Fay (if there's no change in my writing plans).
Adios.
Btw, if you like this story and want to support me while reading the next few chapters, feel free to visit my patron: patr eon . com /XElenea (remove space)