Chapter 815: The Matriarch's Former Self

And how could the Self-Binding Angel not know about his wicked little thoughts? But she paid them no mind. After giving him a minor lesson, her face once again regained that holy expression, and a small smile curved at the corner of her lips. Looking at the fellow who, having been struck with a hard knock, was still lying across her lap like a lap pillow while wisps of smoke rose from his head, she said with a slight upturn of her lips:

"So, is there anything you want to tell the Matriarch?"

Lynn tilted his head slightly, his gaze passing through that indescribable "holiness" to look at the flawless face beneath those long golden locks.

In a daze.

As if a fleeting image flashed through his mind, that gentle and serene face overlapped with the cold face of the black-haired Fallen Angel, appearing and disappearing in an instant.

Though they were identical angelic visages.

They were like two extremes formed—one so sacred, the other so depraved.

So this was the Matriarch...

Twin-born angels, pure justice and pure evil, separated by a blurred boundary line, like reflections in water—hazy yet real.

"Of course I do!"

Lynn flipped over and sat up, flashing his gleaming white teeth and adjusting his monocle.

"If you'd like to hear it, I can tell you all about my experiences during this period, one by one. It's absolutely more thrilling than you could ever imagine—the Colossus's Brain, the Flesh and Blood Dominator, the God of All Machines, and that final great battle was incredibly spectacular too..."

The Self-Binding Angel merely watched him with a smile.

She listened quietly as he rattled on endlessly about his experiences in the Cursed City.

From just following White Night to the Cursed City, to the Colossus's Brain's ascension, to the hunting of the God of All Machines—it was as if he had lived through a legend that others wouldn't experience in a lifetime. Yet what remained unchanged was that he was still the same youth who had just joined Nightfall City back then.

"Sir Aiwen, the Colossus's Brain, my father-in-law's family—nine Roots clashing all at once. Honestly, when I think about it now, it really was bizarre. I never imagined that little Cursed City could simultaneously gather so many Roots and erupt into such a massive war."

Lynn adjusted his monocle, a hint of emotion in his voice.

But the Self-Binding Angel still watched him with that same smile, as if supplementing something he had deliberately overlooked, and said:

"Isn't one missing?"

Lynn was startled.

Then the Self-Binding Angel's lips curled up slightly as she said: "That fallen angel—not only did she cause you great trouble within the Leviathan, but she even nearly overturned the entire Nightfall City, didn't she?"

At these words, Lynn found himself momentarily at a loss for how to respond.

He simply sat motionless, gazing at the Matriarch before him, her flawless face reflected in his eyes.

Her Twelve Wings slowly unfurled, and the Self-Binding Angel smiled, gently shaking her head: "No need to keep hiding it from me. From the moment you awakened me, I have already remembered everything I had once forgotten. I also know why you didn't come to see me—you didn't know how to tell me the truth, did you?"

"So all along, those Plague Doctors who have fought against our entire Night Doctor Alignment like bone-gnawing maggots were actually right here within our ranks. So the angel who was regarded as the Matriarch by the people was actually the root cause of all this strife. I am both the Matriarch of the Night Doctors and... the Mother Goddess of the Plague Doctors."

She spoke softly, her gaze growing ever gentler, yet it was all so absurd.

Yes.

A conflict that had lasted for thousands of years.

One that had even caused a great schism within the entire Night Doctor Alignment from very early on. And now, suddenly being told that you were the originator of all of this, that you were the source of the turmoil.

What an immense irony that was.

Lynn sat cross-legged before her, looking at her and asking: "So you already knew everything?"

The Self-Binding Angel raised her head and said: "Yes. In fact, Aiwen had reminded me of this long ago, but I simply never considered it in that direction. Because I had always believed that she had already been eradicated by me long ago. But now that I think about it, perhaps I never truly separated her from my soul in the first place... so how could I speak of eradicating her?"

A faint glow flickered in her eyes—something Lynn couldn't quite decipher.

And Lynn instantly recalled.

Before he had fallen unconscious, during that omen preceding the Matriarch's revival, that fallen angel had indeed spoken such words.

It seemed that long, long ago.

Before the fall, in an even more ancient past, she had already existed.

She was not, as he had always assumed, a curse of the Matriarch, a shadow born from this hell.

"So who exactly is she..."

Lynn looked seriously at the Matriarch before him, but then shook his head and said: "Of course, if you don't want to talk about it, there's no need to tell me. I'm just a bit curious."

The Self-Binding Angel smiled and shook her head: "There's nothing that can't be said. It's just that the memories I had sealed away have only recently resurfaced, leaving my thoughts somewhat scattered."

She raised her head, a glimmer of reminiscence flickering in her gaze.

Because it truly was far too long ago.

So long that thinking about it now felt as unreal as a dream.

"But actually, she was right."

"I am not a Sacred Angel in the truest sense. At least, before I attained my divine throne, my former self was actually a Monarch of the Abyss. I was the Seventh Monarch of the Abyss, commanding countless demonic legions. In those days, they all called me... Lucifer's Archangel."

In an instant.

Lynn was profoundly shaken.

Although he had indeed vaguely speculated about the connection between that fallen angel and the Matriarch, he never imagined it would be something like this...

"Lucifer's... Archangel?"

Lynn unconsciously murmured those words.

He was certainly no stranger to the name Lucifer.

Because in certain religious legends on Earth, the name Lucifer referred to "Satan," the embodiment of the Devil. And it seemed that not only on Earth—even on Earth's parallel counterpart, in many of the texts he had dug up from hell—this name was vaguely mentioned.

And without a doubt.

No matter what texts or what worlds it appeared in, this name represented utter depravity and chaos.

She nodded faintly, her eyelashes trembling slightly, her voice growing ever more ethereal as if adrift upon the river of time.

She gazed into the distance with vacant eyes and said:

"That was a story from very, very long ago. Back then, what people feared was not hell, because very few creatures ever emerged from it. So in those days, the chaotic Abyssal World shouldered the infamy of being what people conventionally understood as 'hell.'"

"And I was a being born in that chaotic world. But the Abyssal World was not a world as people ordinarily understood it. Rather, it was more like a cursed land where countless planes chaotically intertwined. Because the environment was extremely harsh and the rules were far more chaotic than those of the main universe, the beings that could be born there all possessed every characteristic of evil and terror that existed within human consciousness."