Ethereal Ascendance: A Journey of Transformation

"Oh right, didn't Claudia knock me into the water? Where's Nicola?"

Everyone was in front of me, yet Nicola was nowhere to be seen. I couldn't help but feel nervous.

"I'm here. I'm fine," a voice suddenly called out from above. I looked up to find myself lying in Nicola's arms again. This situation seemed oddly familiar, as if something like this had happened not long ago.

"Uh..." I quickly sat up and looked around at everyone surrounding me. Nicola didn't seem injured; she was just completely drenched as if she had just been fished out of the water. Everyone else looked unharmed as well.

As for Claudia and the others, there wasn't a single creature or monster to be seen in the sky. Alfreed was standing right in front of me, meaning his battle with the dark elf must have ended too. It was as if all the enemies had vanished all of a sudden.

"Can someone tell me what happened?" This whole situation felt really bizarre. It seemed many things had occurred while I was passed out, and now everyone was silent, looking at me strangely.

My back felt heavy. I glanced behind and saw that my feathers were all drenched from the water.

I froze in surprise. Somehow I had mysteriously grown another pair of wings. I now had six wings!

"What's going on? Did I rank up again?" I shouted at Nicola, not knowing whether to feel delighted or panicked.

"Why does this keep happening while I'm asleep?"

"Looks like she doesn't know anything..." Selene murmured to Alfreed.

"Doesn't know what?" I keenly caught their conversation and anxiously asked.

"Oh, don't keep me in suspense!"

"Well...Feliciana." Adrian was the first to speak up. He thought for a bit before carefully explaining, "You fell unconscious just now... or I guess you can't call it unconsciousness. You suddenly went on a rampage and wiped out all the enemies..."

"Huh?" I was dumbfounded upon hearing this. They didn't look like they were joking. Just what had happened?

"It went like this..."

"I think it's better if I explain from the beginning," Nicola cut in before Adrian could elaborate.

"That Claudia was much more powerful than we imagined. If her hand hadn't been crippled first, things could have been far worse..."

In her brief account, I finally began to understand the full picture.

It turned out that before I had fallen into the lake, Nicola had already been knocked into the water by the gradually recovering Claudia. At first, the two seemed evenly matched, largely due to the heavy injuries Claudia had sustained right from the start. In terms of actual strength, Nicola was probably weaker than her opponent.

"That black-winged angel had at least 7th rank strength. I wouldn't have lasted a move against her," was Alfreed's evaluation of Claudia. Though he added the caveat,

"Truthfully, her own power probably wasn't above the 5th level. She mainly relied on various weird tricks."

"Weird tricks?" I asked, puzzled.

"The holy light bullets I fired out, she was able to freely manipulate them to attack me instead," Selene complained indignantly.

"Yes, the same with my water arrows," Eleanora chimed in, having suffered as well.

I could sort of understand the water arrows, but the holy light bullets seemed like a stretch. I definitely hadn't seen wrongly - Claudia was a pure dark elemental being. How could such a creature control light elemental magic like holy light bullets? It was unbelievable.

But Eleanora and Selene's encounters were child's play. Not long after I had fallen into the water, upon seeing everyone attacking her from the ground, Claudia first waved her left hand, reflecting the interspersed magical attacks. Then she waved in the opposite direction, sending Alfreed, who was battling the dark elf, flying backwards. Finally, she made a grabbing motion in the air, directly lifting Adrian by the neck as if wanting to strangle him to death.

"And you all still survived?" Hearing all these godly feats, I was speechless. Sure enough, I could still see the deep red marks around Adrian's neck now.

"Because that was when you appeared," said Hayden, who had the lowest presence. With his sword borrowed by me, all he had left was a shield so he couldn't attack at all and had just been watching from the sidelines.

"Yes, when I resurfaced, I saw you fly out from the water into the air..." Nicola continued recounting.

"You already had three pairs of wings, and the color had changed to blue - the same color as your hair."

"My hair?" Glancing at the locks dangling over my chest, I seemed to vaguely recall something.

In the dream I'd had before waking up, I'd caught a glimpse of that color. But I couldn't remember any specifics now, just a rough impression.

"Then a weapon that looked exactly like my Condensation Sword appeared in your hand..."

"Condensation Sword? Are you sure I made that too?" I asked excitedly, unable to believe it. That was a totally OP celestial weapon that I'd always coveted. If I had my own Condensation Sword, I wouldn't have to fear that succubus anymore.

"No, there was a slight difference," Nicola said. She thought for a bit before passing me her Condensation Sword and continuing, "While the style looks similar, the color wasn't this grayish-white like mine. The sword you created was blue, matching the color of your wings then."

"You then waved the sword once, splitting it into countless copies that stabbed through all the monsters around. Almost none survived, except for Claudia..."

"...Are you sure you aren't making up a story?" I finally managed after a long pause.

That period of unconsciousness was simply chaotic - first Claudia showcasing telekinetic powers, then my sword banquet spectacle, what next? C4 explosion? Firestorm?

Moreover, wasn't that a little overpowered? While Nicola's Condensation Sword was sharp, it could only attack individuals. This sounded clearly like an AOE bombarding attack.

"Wait, almost none survived..." I immediately looked towards the lake's opposite shore, remembering the hordes of monsters that had gathered there earlier.

Yet all I now saw were countless densely-packed corpses starting from the path to the island, stretching to the other side.

"This is..." Seeing such a sight, I couldn't help feeling a chill down my spine.

"You said Claudia was still alive, right? Where is she?"

"She died in the end, just before you woke up," Adrian responded. He added, "Although she didn't die immediately, that blow still greatly injured her. She fell straight from the sky. By the time she swam to shore, she barely resisted when the Captain rushed over to finish her off."

"What about her corpse?" I quickly asked.

Alfreed just shook his head. "There's no corpse. Once she died, her body dissipated into black smoke and completely disappeared. That's somewhat similar to you angels."

Having personally killed Claudia himself, he had witnessed everything clearly.

"But if you want to see a corpse, that dark elf's body is still around. Quite bizarre too, so brace yourself mentally first."

He pointed behind him at the ground, where a body lay.

"This is the dark elf?" As I walked over and saw the face, I was shocked and didn't know what to say.

This was clearly a mummy! His skin was completely shriveled and dehydrated. His entire body seemed to be just skin and bones. His eye sockets were sunken, his mouth agape as if he had died screaming - he looked almost exactly like those freshly unearthed mummies.

"It's definitely him! I've checked the cause - dehydration," said Eleanora, coming to stand beside me.

"I sensed strong water elemental energy from the swords you summoned then. Although they pierced his chest, they didn't seem to leave obvious wounds yet resulted in dehydration somehow. That's why he became like this..."

"Water elemental?" The water-based healing magic I'd seen gave off a similar light blue color. Could there be some relation? But why dehydration instead of the expected rehydration?

"Have any other angels' wings ever turned blue before?" Seeing such a horrifying sight, I couldn't help feeling uneasy.

This dark elf probably wasn't an isolated case. With so many monster bodies on the opposite shore, the situation was unlikely to differ.

"No, never heard of blue-winged angels before. But black-winged angels on the other hand..." Selene trailed off suddenly. I roughly grasped why.

Judging from their earlier reaction upon first seeing Claudia, their Church's scriptures likely contained records about fallen angels too, though they'd never actually seen any in person.

"So what happened after that? What else?" Since Nicola hadn't spoken for some time, I couldn't wait to ask.

"Afterwards, your wings reverted to white and you fell back into the water. So I quickly swam over to pull you ashore," Nicola seemed lost in recollection for a long while before finishing the full account.

"Um..." After listening, I couldn't resist asking rather anxiously,

"Are you sure that was me?"

From my perspective, it was like I had simply slept and dreamed in between. But based on their descriptions, that didn't seem to be the case at all. The whole experience was somewhat creepy, almost like mythological sleepwalking.

"Can't be sure!" Hayden leaned over jokingly, "You didn't say a single word the entire time. Just stopped as soon as the fight finished, quick and clean. Leaving the rest of us utterly confused."

"Hey! Don't kid around like that!" I protested, a little exasperated. But his teasing lightened up the atmosphere, with everyone relaxing into their usual selves. The tension seemed to have dissipated significantly too.

Still, this was my first time since crossing over into this world experiencing such OP cheats. Unfortunately, I had absolutely no tangible impressions of it at all. What a waste.