After Jasmine fell asleep, Elina went downstairs to find Rachael; however, she quickly noticed that the baby’s map-marker had swiftly left the house. She ‘Whispered’ “Inari! Where do you think you’re taking my daughter?!” as she flapped her wings and flew out the front door.

Once outside, the naked woman decided to equip all of her gear, except for her battlestaff, and soar up into the moonlit sky. The beautiful angel glowed brightly and released an intense burst of ‘Illumination’ out of irritation, as she traveled over the mountaintop and dove down towards the rapidly sprinting tiger-sized Seven-Tailed Fox.

“Training!” was the response that she received from Inari, and even Sarah was there, riding on the vixen’s back. A luminous, golden-scaled infantile Lamia was giggling happily, while playing with the magical fang-covered collar.

Elina’s maximum speed wasn’t nearly high enough to catch up, but it wasn’t long before she noticed something strange less than a mile away. There was an enormous, one-hundred meter tall and ten-meter thick stone wall. It wasn’t until then that she remembered that the walls which had been surrounding Luxiana, simply vanished.

Glancing at the map, she realized that the ‘city’ called Luxiana, had expanded to a ridiculous degree. Several towns and villages had been ‘trapped’ within the territorial and physical barriers which Michael had ‘designed’.

She muttered “Ugh, why would you do that? Ummm~, at least there aren’t any enemies within the smallest circle… I should really learn some sort of teleportation technique, or I’ll never be able to catch up with that adorable doggy.”

Elina’s flying speed was roughly sixty-miles per hour, but Inari was casually striding at seventy-five. When they reached the wall, the vixen didn’t even jump, but merely kept running up the ninety-degree angle.

The angelic woman was able to nearly catch up, but then the dark-green fox jumped off of the ramparts and picked up even more speed. Inari happily barked, as she turned her head back and yelled “Elly, so slow!” To her, it was just like the game ‘tag’ that Jasmine had taught her about.

Considering that she only weighed around fifteen or so pounds, those giant wings didn’t require too much effort to make her fly, but she also wasn’t very aerodynamic. Thus, anything more than sixty miles per hour was difficult to achieve without some sort of ‘magical’ support.

She eventually let out a long sigh and started slowing down dramatically, ‘Whispering’ “I’m not playing with you Inari… Either stop and let me ride on your back, or just ‘summon’ me when you get to wherever you’re going. I don’t have the energy to keep chasing you guys like this…”

When she made it to the top of that giant wall, Elina landed on the side of the rampart and sat down on the stone railing. The fox just kept sprinting off into the distance and replied “Awoo~ woo~… Yes.”

As that ethereal angel was breathing heavily, she suddenly felt a familiar and eerie sensation all around her. Then a small, elven girl, with glowing porcelain skin, silver irises, long golden hair and an overpowering aura, sat down next to her.

The child-like body was covered by a gown of what appeared to be platinum-colored silk, but the entire form was likely just another Avatar either way. Luxia giggled casually rested the left side of her face upon the startled cat-woman’s arm.

“Before I was so rudely interrupted last time, I was about to tell you something pretty important. It’s better off this way though, outside of that annoying Player-Home… This is a story about my husband, who abandoned me a few thousand years ago; his name was Luke, and he was kind of like Michael in a couple ways.” As the little girl began speaking, Elina felt as if she were entering into a dreamworld, or perhaps just watching a three-dimensional movie.

“He was much different though… Luke actually had a sense of morality and decency, he was a ‘Hero’. Literally, he even had the Class called ‘Hero’, because he loved to help people and save them. When he arrived in this world, he was in pretty terrible shape; both of his legs were missing, several organs were failing and he was actually in a coma. All nine of us were required to summon him from his original world, ‘Earth’. To be honest, Michael’s circumstances were a bit strange, cause of all the time-travel and umm, other problems, but we normally bring the ‘VIP’, very important Players, directly into the Grand Temple of Arcana. They are usually given pretty amazing treatment, special starting items, unique Passives, Favor, lots of gold, but most importantly, we teach them what they ‘need’ to do.

“You probably realized this by now, and if you haven’t, I’ll just say it outright; there are several types of ‘souls’ in this universe. Mama might know a lot more about the finer details, but I can at least tell you that I was responsible for ‘creating’ you. At least, I was the one who brought you into this world. Whether your soul was actually ‘made’ by me, I honestly don’t have the answer to that question. However, you were a blank slate when I placed your soul into your tiny fetus brain. No memories needed to be erased and there was no ‘reincarnation’ or ‘recycling’ involved. We’re only really allowed to do that every few hundred years, though it’s also possible to ‘save up’, in case we want to have a few kids at the same time.”

Elina honestly had no idea what the Goddess of Light was talking about anymore, but she was afraid to interrupt her speech, so she just remained silent. Lux giggled, continuing “You are what we like to call a ‘Pristine NPC’, cause you’re super-young compared to many of the others. Jasmine is kind of the same, but I wasn’t the one who brought her into this world. Alice is a second-reincarnation, Talia is one of Aeris’ kids, Sarah was obviously one of my sister’s little monsters, and the fox is one of my daughter’s cute brats. The point is that, you’re all pretty important and ‘new’, but you were each made for a specific purpose.”

It was then that the angelic cat-girl finally asked “Wait, are you saying that we were just tools that you created to manipulate Michael?”

The little Goddess sighed, casually hugging the relatively huge woman and whispering “Of course not…” After a few moments of awkward silence, she said “So anyway, the problem with ‘Pristine NPCs’ is that their souls have practically no inherent memories or saved-up power. All NPCs are basically like parasites and need to feed off of Players or the world itself, in order to grow more powerful. Players are the opposite, in fact, they’re more like ummm… customers? Yeah, that sounds much better than what I was going to say, hehehe~. The Players come here to enjoy themselves and eventually leave, because they either can’t afford to stay or get tired of living here. Some of them become NPCs eventually, but the majority simply leave.”

Elina frowned, “What does any of this have to do with Michael and Luke? Wait, is Michael going to leave me?!”

Luxia giggled, “Oh, yeah, you probably don’t care about all that complicated stuff anyway. Back to the amazingly romantic story of my life and love with Luke~! He was apparently a soldier back on Earth, he was killed by a little boy who had a bomb strapped to his chest, or something like that. None of that really matters though, the important part was that when he arrived in this world, I had to fix his broken body. At first he thought I was a child, but after I took a more ‘mature’ form, he was unable to resist my… Well, he was actually pretty adamant about returning to his original world for a while and treated me pretty coldly.

“It was even worse once he found out that I was worshipped as a Goddess by loads of people on various planets, but he got over it once I explained that I actually help them and stuff. Hmmm, so yeah, he was an awesome ‘Hero’ who eventually became a level three-hundred, rank-Z, Demigod and we had a bunch of kids together… I thought everything was great, but when it finally came time for him to do what he was summoned for, he failed! Hmph~, the others all think that he simply abandoned me, but that’s a lie! He definitely loved me, and we were in love with each other for six-hundred years! There’s no way that he would just leave me… So listen, this is the important mission that I created you to accomplish! It will probably be really hard, but I know you can do it! I want you to find Luke for me… If he didn’t abandon me, then I need you to bring him back! If he did, then I hope that you can convince your husband to make that bastard suffer… As for the rewards, hehehe~, I’m sure that you’ll be satisfied with what I have to offer.” After hugging Elina tightly, Lux turned into a beam of light and seemed to fly up into the Moon.

The angelic cat-girl just sat there for a few moments, in complete silence, with a confused expression on her flawless face. She blinked her golden eyes a few times and then let out a long, overdramatic sigh. “Michael~, why do you have to be sleeping right now~!”

After releasing that anguished cry, Elina heard a quiet snickered in her left ear, followed by a familiar voice. An invisible, pitch-black wisp muttered “I very rarely sleep anymore, ya know? Well, it’s more like, even though my body is unconscious, my mind is still wandering around and peeping on people. I wonder if Lux knew I was there?”