Nexus Awakened (An Isekai LitRPG Gender Bender Story)

823. The Birth of The Angels

Uriel’s life did not always revolve around conflict and blood. A pristine pallid garden welcomed her with open arms. The winter wonderland twinkled in her eyes like stars as she remembered her first steps into the pale world.

Held in her arms, much like many of the Angels who too awakened in that wonderful garden, were fluffy chunks taken from their cocoon.

“There were no adults to teach or guide us. We were free in the fullest sense. Just born into a world and left to survive. But the fruits in that garden were bountiful. The trees provided for us. Thinking about it now – we were just like those fruits.”

Uriel was known as the third Angel of the Arbiter. The first was an unnamed Angel that she could not bring herself to remember no matter how hard she tried. But she knew who the second was. That was Gabriella, though she was often seen as Michaela’s first Angel.

Yet despite this, there were thousands of Angels born from the Light of the Captured Star.

So many innocent souls roamed the pale forest, not knowing how or why they were here. They were curious beings, each possessing an infant tail and appearing no older than a 10-year-old.

“GEN-01 was a tree that had yet to form. We were its living fruits. We didn’t roll far from the tree. The garden was a perfect sanctuary. It had everything a child could ask for. Everything to sustain them for generations to come. And yet, no matter where I looked, all I saw were the same faces. There were no adults in this paradise.”

Hidden away in the depths of the pallid gardens were crimson pools reminiscent of the Nascent Pools Scarlet Logic used to replicate their own. The principle behind these pools was vastly different to the point where they were incomparable.

Because their process tapped into the recreation of one’s soul, whereas this – GEN-06: The Red Sea – attempted to create life, using the essence of the Captured Star and a Star itself. The lifeforms that were born from the experimental version of GEN-06 were the Angels.

“Abiogenesis. That was the name of the Advent of Wrath, but it changed after the devastation it caused. Which was why… you created us, Michaela.”

A minute of heavy silence responded to her disembodied voice.

The tiny Uriel, whose hair and feathers were as pale wore curious looks as they wandered the garden. Mixed between expressions of fascination and curiosity was joy. Uriel remembered that happiness even though she didn’t show it on her face. She remembered the taste of the fruits in that garden.

Uriel reached up to pluck a low-hanging apple, her eyes shimmering like stars shone in her eyes. But before those tiny hands could reach that apple, red stars began to flash in those innocent eyes.

“Our moment of innocence was short lived.”

Suddenly, the sound of a blaring alarm caught their attention. Their avian ears fell flush against their heads in a futile attempt to block out the sound. Red lights flashed across the garden, revealing metal frameworks and the entirety of an artificial structure beyond the illusion of the Garden.

Then, a voice spoke through an unseen intercom.

“The final soul has descended. Batch 1752 is now complete. 14,241 sisters. A 15% increase from Batch 1751.”

The Angels were guided by the voice. They didn’t understand a word that was spoken, let alone who it belonged to. Still, the newly born Angels followed it. They marched past the pale forest and reached the shell of the Garden.

A grey wall stood before them. It lacked the same majesty as the Garden, for it was inspired by brutalist architecture.

Dozens of enormous tunnels called for their entry. They were like industrial oil pipes, only scaled to a tremendous size. Hundreds were able to walk through shoulder to shoulder with ease.

Written above each tunnel was a number printed in white. There were 26 tunnels in total, each lit by the same light that painted their garden red. Nothing but stagnant, pungent air filled these tunnels. The stench grew stronger as they were led deeper into the tunnel.

Streaks of red marks could be found along the walls and floors further in. Serrated grates bit into their bare feet as mechanical groans echoed around them. It was as though they were within the belly of a slumbering beast.

“We didn’t know any better at the time. What those red marks were. Why the air smelt so rich with iron. We were like birds that had hatched away from the nest. We were looking for the person who brought us into this world.”

They eventually arrived at a world identical to the pale garden. Everything from the position of the trees to the rivers that ran through were present.

“But unbeknownst to us was that there were no fruits to feed on. There were no other creatures born from the Advent of Amalgamation. We were alone there.”

As half of the Angels passed the hazard lines, a mechanical rumble stirred above. The hazard line separated the Garden from the tunnels, clearing over 30 meters between them.

Uriel – tiny and tense – stood at the very edge of the exit, her back turned to the flashing lights within the tunnel.

Then, in the blink of an eye –  

*Thunk*

*Crunch*

*Squelch*

– A series of visceral impacts shattered the silence. Stagnant air instant surge forward in a violent gust, throwing the Angels off balance as a warm spray drenched them from head to toe.

The very entrance of the false Garden was stained with crimson fluids, all the while ribbons of torn flesh clung to the bodies of the shaken angels.

Uriel couldn’t comprehend what had just happened, or why she was staring at the insides of those who had walked beside her moments before.

Trembling, she took a step back in a desperate attempt to escape the horror. But something prevented her from retreating.

A wall had appeared behind her. The solid, immovable object perfectly aligned where the hazard lines ended. Her back pressed against it, and her bloody feathers left a faint, ghostly imprint of her silhouette. Beneath, a dark pool of fresh blood trickles past her heels. It carried the remnants of who had been just moments ago, flattened and crushed into bite-sized chunks.

One could imagine how a satchel of sauce would explode if one squeezed one end too hard. That was ultimately what occurred to hundreds of Angels across each of the 26 doors.

Countless hands reached out from beneath the doors. They were severed cleanly from their crushed owners, cauterized by the immense trauma. The door had acted as a guillotine, executing swaths of Angels in the blink of an eye.

“30-meter thick walls contained us in this hell. A 56-kilometer square compound kept thousands of Angels with no instructions to guide them. We were to learn how to survive.”

Uriel recalled the seven years she spent in that hell. Leftovers from the previous batch remained within the battlefields and instigated the violence, tearing the heads from the Angels all just to sate their hunger.

“When so many Angels begin to starve after having tasted the fruit of paradise, then there will only be one outcome.”

Violence. The innocence of the Angels broke down only days after their starvation persisted. Tongues lapped on bloody rocks, as the fresh water from the rivers had dried up in the first few days.

“It didn’t take long for the garden to become a caldera of blood. Circumstance changed us from the start. There were persistent Angels that chose to abdicate the violence. But they only made for our next meal.”

Uriel did not start off as the most violent. But as she said – circumstances changed her. Gradually, with each lap of blood and flesh of a common kin she sunk her teeth into, the more she realized her purpose in this world.

“Only one of us could live. That much I knew. Whoever had put us through this trial was searching for something. As a child I could only fathom impressing those who were higher up. Who possibly observed the hell they made to find precisely what they were looking for.”

Each slain Angel only strengthened Uriel. It reached a point where blood could be manipulated and transformed into weapons under extreme emotional stress. She was not the only one capable of this, but she was certainly the most proficient.

While others could only create nails with hammers, or large stakes; Uriel could flick her blood in a single direction and riddle an entire section of the Garden with crimson rods. One snap of her fingers and the blood of her fallen sisters could rise to skewer them from toe to head.