The Demon Lord Is An Angel
Chapter 189: Dining With Angels

Chapter 189: Dining With Angels

Rainier cleaned his teeth. He brushed his sky-blue hair and trimmed his eyebrows. He scrubbed his face until it was rosy, and then used some of the lotion the servants restocked every week. Luxuries he’d never even conceived of on Ayther were everyday occurrences, and he often would discover something about his situation that made him either flinch at the excess or wonder why Heaven couldn’t just give or sell such things to Aytherians.

Like the tablets. Sure, according to Cassie they were new, and almost everything on them was written in Angelic but there had been some texts that he’d found in Common and it seemed every day Ozzy or Cassie had some new picture or video to show him. Surely there would be people with the mana to maintain such amazing devices.

His tablet was currently telling him it was time to prepare for the dinner occurring in half an hour. It had taken him ages just to turn the thing off when it alerted him at first, but now he did so with quick ease, having learned just enough Angelic to navigate the "menus" in a basic sense.

Angels were always quite punctual, and he needed to be fifteen minutes early to situate himself, so after lightly waxing his hair, he slipped into his formal greys. The uniforms were high-collared and felt loose at the back - a concession to wings he did not have, but they weren’t about to change the uniform for him.

For a moment, he contemplated wearing his ’training wings’, but this was just dinner... Right?

He was wondering if he should leave his sword in the room instead of keeping it in his storage when Cassie opened his door with a smile.

"Well ain’t you looking good," she winked. "Ready to go?"

"I’m ready," Rain said.

The trainees normally took their meals in the nearby dining hall, but this time Cassie led him and Ozzy across the entire mansion to the Flight Wing.

It was the largest building, but not the tallest. An open oval decorated on the outside like a bird’s nest, with arcing, crisscrossing lines of magic-wrought steel instead of twigs and branches. How the structure could bulge out from its pedestal-like base without collapsing was beyond Rainier’s understanding, but architectural wonders were amongst the first things he’d had to get used to, so he simply took the sight of the building in stride as he remembered his initial, gawking reactions during his first tour.

As soon as he entered, he regretted not bringing his artificial wings.

All the food was gathered at a series of tables, whose tops were filled with food that glowed in manasight even at the very edges of his range.

He’d grown so used to keeping it on just to navigate and interact with angelic magic, that turning it off would now disorient him. Food that rich in mana had to have been harvested from monsters, both flora and fauna, and there was enough of it on the table to break the budget of an entire kingdom...

The actual sitting areas were on stepped tiers, with the Executioners gathering on the lowest tier and the higher-ranked angels on the next two tiers above.

Only one table was centered in the distance on the fourth tier, and those who would dine there were people Rainier would never meet, except Caleb. No one was seated there presently, but there were guards, including Zariel, who may or may not have briefly flicked her eyes to Rainier before stoically returning to her carefully neutral gaze.

"Our table’s right there," Cassie said, pointing far in the distance. "I’d like to arrive together, so let’s fly."

Rain grimaced. "I... didn’t bring my wings," he admitted.

"Why not? Didn’t you read the itinerary?" Ozzy asked.

"It was... a bit complicated for me," Rain said. "I can go back for them-"

"That would be even more embarrassing!" Cassie touched her forehead as she thought. "Okay, let’s all just walk. Rain, you can take the right side. Ozzy, stay on my left. We’ll make it look like we’re saying hello to all the early Executioners."

In that formation, they walked up the nearest stairs, and received questioning glances from the servants who were presently transporting appetizers. One story up, they stepped onto their dining tier and proceeded along the length of the slightly arced space, Rain and Cassie wearing big smiles as they greeted and greeted, with slight bows at intervals Rain watched Cassie carefully to match. It would not be due to bow to a team in a lesser position.

Rank was very important to angels, and Cassie’s squad was currently ranked at the low end of the top performers. Ozzy was swift and capable, but average outside of combat. Cassie had some issues with tactical decision-making. And Rain... while he exceeded most of his peers in overall combat, his glaring weaknesses in flight and defense on the move weighed on the team’s performance.

The things the team had going for them were Ozzy’s maven ability to absorb or project light - which could either make him invisible or brighter than the sun -, Cassie’s seemingly boundless mana - which enabled her to continuously heal at a slow rate -, and Rain’s combat ability and Manifest Arms - the latter of which, when pulled off successfully, generated an Aytherbound-squad’s worth of blades for him to control.

But the squads doing even better than theirs, the ones who were a year or further ahead, sat one tier above.

"Cassiel!" One voice called out from above, a male Executioner who shared her white wings, but had black hair. "What are you doing taking the stairs? Did you sleep with the wrong boy again?" He gave a fake pout, as the tables nearest him started to laugh. "Or have they finally ordered you to walk off all that fat?"

Cassiel bit back her fury, but her face reddened from the treatment. Then, in a breath, she calmed herself and replied, "Why no, Jasiel, my dear squadmates and I simply thought to greet our peers before dining."

"Better work on those greetings then, because you and your squad are staying down there," he glared down at them, but his eyes flicked over to Rainier for a long second.

"Perhaps that will be so, senior," Cassiel replied, then slightly bowed and pushed on, grinding her teeth.

Rainier had been aware, in a casual sense, of the petty rivalries amongst the new squads, but he did not think such behaviors would extend downward. Theoretically, any squad could prove themselves and move up in tier, but in practice, things were practically stratified by years, at least from all that Rainier had been able to gather. Most of that information had come from Malzkael, and she could be a bit bitter when it came to discussing large groups of people...

And speaking of her, as they started to pass her table, Rain got to identify her squadmates for the first time. As if matched with her on the basis of wing color, all of them had black wings, though one of them sported undercut hair that was black on the bottom and red on top. Rain realized it was dyed, but for a moment it reminded him of Kir because their haircuts were similar. The other had long, greasy black hair worn scraped to one side like a blade-shaped waterfall, with the other side shaved.

Both seemed to be of elvish descent before their elevation, and they each had an arm replaced by godflesh, opposite arms. Based on their strong mana auras, the whole squad specialized in magic. Their entire vibe, coupled with the fact Malky was wearing her ever-present skull hairclip, was one of darkness and gloom.

"Hey Rain," Malzkael greeted in her usual undertone, but with a slight hint of gladness. Rain had a privilege few possessed, the right to call her by her preferred nickname.

"Hi Malz."

Cassie cleared her throat loudly. "Malky," she greeted. "You’re still in the program? I thought you’d died in a bookslide."

"Oh, hey Cassiel. I didn’t see you behind those," Malz said. "I thought you’d suffocated yourself with your tits while sleeping."

"Bitch," Cassie hissed.

"I’m flattered you think so," Malz smirked.

Rain cleared his throat awkwardly. "It’s good to see you out of the library, Malz."

"Good to see you breaking the rules, Wing Scout," she extended her smirk crookedly, which was as close to a smile as she ever got.

"I’m not-" Rain didn’t know what a ’Wing Scout’ was, but Cassiel had already started walking off. "Gotta go."

Rain finally caught up right as Cassie sat down heavily at the center of their rectangular table for three, with Ozzie taking her left side.

As Rain hurried to sit, he was about to look at who else was fluttering in when Cassie tugged his arm.

"Is she your type?" she asked.

"What? I don’t have a type," Rain blurted.

Ozzy leaned over, "You know, she has a..." Ozzy poked one of his fingers into a little circle made by his other hand’s thumb and forefinger.

"Why would I care about that?" Rain asked. "We’re just friends."

Cassie seemed a little pouty, but hopeful. "Wait... so all those times you go to the library...?"

"I told you, the tablets hurt my eyes. I like physical books. I can be friends with someone without wanting to sleep with them," Rain said, wondering why in Heaven he was talking like they were in a relationship when they weren’t in a relationship. "We’re just friends."

Finally, Cassie seemed to accept this answer. "Oh good. Just don’t get too close to Malky. We’re competing, remember?" she scooted her chair just a bit closer to Rain.

"I know that," Rain sighed.

Then Cassie leaned in and practically stood up to whisper, "Ever had Heavenberry spirits?" Her breath was hot on his ear and he could feel her body heat through her tightly-fitted uniform.

It was going to be a long night.

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