Karandiel was relieved that she had already restarted her source of strength less than a day after she was cast down from the realm of gods. When her fate had first been decided, she had expected to go through a relatively arduous journey to find meaning in her existence again. But here she was, already having found a clue and something to spin off of, thanks to Ackster.
She just didn't know what to make of her first chapter's ability.
Before and while writing the first chapter of her Book of Convictions, Karandiel knew she was dragging Ackster down due to her uselessness and that he was insistent on protecting her. The goal of the first chapter was to stop that.
But where did the golden, see-through egg around her come from? It was like a smaller, less spacious version of the shuttle that had protected her during her fall that also let her see and hear what was on the other side. Though, the sounds were muted like they were on the other side of a thick glass wall.
But it blocked the ants' attacks and trampling legs as they ran over her, deciding to focus on Ackster instead. Since the ants just ran over her, they pushed her golden egg down into the ground instead of pushing and knocking it around, as they had done at first.
Karandiel lay curled up in her golden egg and watched Ackster through the endless forest of ant legs. It had taken a few minutes, but he eventually made his way over to her and stood in front of her protective spheroid.
Ackster stood right in front of her and split apart the incoming avalanche of ants with seeming relative ease.
Karandiel once again realized how powerless she was as she could do nothing but watch Ackster fight, kill, and eat the ants with frantic fervor. At least she wasn't going to die or bring him down with her now that she was inside her golden egg.
However, she could sense that as she had just made her first chapter, she didn't have much energy, and the golden egg wouldn't last forever. If the ants had been free to trample all over it and attack it with reckless abandon, it would have cracked before long.
Karandiel's heart, which had been cold after she chose to pursue solitude after what happened in the divine realm, found Ackster's wide, muscular, bloody, and torn back incredibly reliable. Just watching him move around and pummel ants was calming, and her remaining anxiety from before she wrote the third volume's first chapter seeped out of her.
She didn't know what strange twist of fate had brought them together, what had put Ackster in the right position to find her after her fall, but she was thankful for it.
Although she had lost a lot of hope when the god she believed in, the god she worshipped, the god she had dedicated her life to, turned out not to be as great as she believed, that he wasn't as worthy of worship, there was no reason to lose all hope. In the first place, the reason she had argued with her god, the god of light, Yillister, was because she believed in the good of humans.
She had questioned why the gods just watched Millmeria and the mortals go through the Calamitous Cycles for eternity without doing anything. Each Cycle brought with it more than enough suffering for their believers. Yet, the gods remained idle.
She could have understood if it was for a greater cause, such as the suffering of the last generation of each cycle granted prosperity, joy, and blessings to the next cycle.
But that wasn't why the gods didn't interfere.
Some couldn't since they were too weak to act in the mortal realm.
But the others, the ruling gods, didn't want to. They thrived on the despair of people, on the hope they held at the end of times. Why would they even try to get rid of or stop the Cycles when that would let society flourish and lessen the worship and faith they prospered off of?
The gods willingly let humanity, elves, dwarves, fairies, and all the other intelligent native races of Millmeria suffer for their own greed.
Karandiel thought she was doing good work as Yillister's angel as she helped him bestow blessings upon believers all over the world. But all she had done was stoke the flames of worship in a selfish god.
That was what had destroyed her Book of Convictions, Second Volume.
The belief she had held all her life and her angelhood was shattered by the sudden revelation and insight that gods weren't good.
She spoke up for her beliefs that the gods would reign in eternal gratitude if they could end this eternal cycle of destruction and rebirth. But the gods wouldn't listen. And she was powerless to resist when they decided Karandiel had done her part. She was more trouble than necessary in the peaceful divine realm, free from the torments of mortality.
Even with her Second Volume, she wouldn't have been able to do anything to the gods and the other angels as they stripped her of her angelic status and sent her down to the mortal realm.
They didn't kill her, but it wasn't out of mercy. Since she spoke up for the pitiable humans and their miserable fate, she should join them.
After that, Karandiel, who had lost all she believed in, had been empty. She still had the mental strength and fortitude from life before angelhood and from spending all that time in the divine realm. But even that easily cracked as soon as she was put in a dire situation.
However, thanks to Ackster, Karandiel had been able to use to cracks to sow the seeds of her new strength.
She also had no reason to shield her heart from other humans and inhabitants of the mortal Millmeria. She might have lost hope, but she wasn't foolish enough to take it out on the innocent.
Karandiel felt her sense of powerlessness wash away as she continued to watch Ackster, more than a little curious about where all these ants came from.