The Holy Angel Queen looked at the frenzy of the old friend before her, and at those words.
A tangle of feelings showed in her eyes.
In a certain sense, she pitied Renee as she was now.
But wrong, in the end, was wrong.
"Renee… you… have made the most mistaken choice," the Holy Angel Queen said, somewhat sorrowfully.
"Mistaken? What is mistaken? Is it you who define this mistake? No! I do not think I was wrong. My choice is the one that is truly right. I shall become a being of eternal life. I shall gain the true faith. And you are nothing but a pack of heretics! The Great Existence will destroy you in the end! Even that so-called Owl Dragon Interstellar Empire cannot stop the footsteps of the Great Existence's descent," the Judgment Angel Queen mocked without the least restraint.
"I do not know whether we can later overcome this Great Existence you speak of. But at least… you will not live to see it." The Holy Angel Queen gazed at the other with eyes of pity.
"Don't look at me with eyes like that! Do you think you have truly won? Heh-heh-heh, I would never be so naive as to come here in person!" The Judgment Angel Queen suddenly snatched up the laser pistol at her waist, leveled it at her own head, and bared a savage grin. "Farewell, Angelia."
With that,
she fired.
In one burst of blood-mist after another, every one of the angel traitors who had come with the Judgment Angel Queen killed themselves.
The Holy Angel Queen looked at the scene, her brows faintly knit.
The electromagnetic cage came down at once.
Several angel soldiers who had been ready long since stepped forward to examine the Judgment Angel Queen's body.
"Your Highness the Angel Queen. This body looks full-grown, but in truth its material cells have existed for under seven days. It is only a clone body. And then, by some means we do not know, the will of Renee, the Judgment Angel Queen, was injected into it," a subordinate said after the examination.
"I see." The Holy Angel Queen did not much mind this result.
For she had foreseen it long since.
In the original plan she had not even needed to show herself here.
Only, she had wanted to see this one-time Angel Queen with her own eyes, and try to talk her round.
The Holy Angel Queen looked to the several Angel Race high officials standing meekly to one side.
"Your Highness the Angel Queen! We were only muddled for a moment, bewitched by the traitors. We never had the least thought of betraying the Angel Race or the Owl Dragon Empire! We know we were wrong!" These people knelt on the floor one after another, begging for mercy.
The Holy Angel Queen fixed her eyes on them and said coldly, "Every person who has had contact with the Judgment Angel Queen is to be imprisoned. As for the families behind you, we will not pursue their responsibility in this."
On hearing this ruling,
though they knew they would not die, they would likely be imprisoned somewhere for the rest of their lives.
But at least their families would not be dragged down with them.
It left these angel high officials full of gratitude.
The angel soldiers led all of them away under guard.
"Your Highness, are we truly… not to deal with the families behind this lot?" a subordinate asked quietly, coming to the Holy Angel Queen's side.
In times past, matters of this kind had been the charge of the Judgment Angel Queen's branch.
In a matter like this, most likely the whole clan would have been brought to judgment.
"The families involved are not to be punished directly. But from now on there is to be no dealing of any kind in interstellar trade with these family powers. Anyone connected with these families who holds office within our Angel Race or the Owl Dragon Empire is to be strictly investigated, and not engaged if there is the least problem, unless they have special skills," the Holy Angel Queen said.
"Yes."
The subordinate understood now: these several families would decline swiftly over the decades to come.
Though on the face of it they had not been punished,
both the Angel Race and the Owl Dragon Empire would deal with them 'coldly'.
The other family powers would naturally know what it meant as well, and the clever among them would draw a clear line between themselves and these families.
And henceforth the bar for these families to enter the upper ranks of the Angel Race and the Owl Dragon Empire had been raised, which meant they would stand farther still from the center of power.
Family powers such as these would lose their families.
Within thirty years, most likely, they would vanish without a trace.
"Only it is a pity we did not catch the real Judgment Angel Queen, Renee." The subordinate looked at the clone's corpse and spoke somewhat dejectedly.
"Who says we have not caught her?" the Holy Angel Queen said suddenly just then, a somewhat baffling remark.
The subordinate was taken aback.
In another stretch of starry expanse, one that no one ever visited.
Renee, the Judgment Angel Queen, opened her eyes.
Just now she had used a black technology Order had given her, one that let her control her clone body remotely.
Naturally she could not have gone to the banquet in person on the say-so of a few families.
Yet neither could she be sure whether the other side was truly joining her in good faith.
So this way was naturally the most suitable.
"Who would have thought they would be so careful; they had even this little move of mine figured out," Renee, the Judgment Angel Queen, said coldly.
"Then, Your Highness, what do we do next?" the secretary officer asked, somewhat worried, on learning of this.
"I never meant to lean on this pack of rotten fish and rotten shrimp in the first place.[1] Do not forget: we have a fleet of our own. These years of swallowing my anger, I did not wait them out for nothing. Some things we must do ourselves, in person." The Judgment Angel Queen raised her head and looked out the bridge viewport at the interstellar warships, one after another.
They were many, a full 3,000 of them.
This was the hand the Judgment Angel Queen held.
Half of them were the remnants that had escaped from her own faction's fleets back then; the rest were interstellar warships built with the resources and technology Order had given.
For want of resources and industrial production, the years had turned out only this many interstellar warships.
But every one of them, without exception, was an interstellar warship of grade T4 or T5.
In any star system at all, they would have been a force able to lord it over the rest.
"Carry out our Plan B. Strike the important strategic hubs everywhere within the Angel Race's borders, and throw them into chaos…" Just as Renee, the Judgment Angel Queen, began to lay out her strategic deployment.
A video window, of all things, popped up right in front of her.
Renee, the Judgment Angel Queen, looked at it in astonishment.
On the other side of the video window she saw an Angel Race woman general.
Somewhat familiar, too.
It seemed she was one of the Holy Angel Queen's Angel Guards.
Tilia.
Yes!
It was she!
"Renee. I, commander of the Holy Dragon Angel Legion, have come at the command of the Holy Angel Queen to wipe out this rebel army of yours!" The angel Tilia glared at her.