Artificial Angel

Three pairs of massive wings covered Theron's entire body, though it was purely made out of machinery, it's texture and movement were identical to that of actual wings. A golden halo manifested above Theron's head, it shined brightly and illuminated the area around him, the rain that had fallen down to his head was repelled away by an invisible force.

[There you go, you successfully turned the ship into an armor.]

As the wings covered Theron's body, he tried to adjust to it and tried to move it around. Due to the massive size of the wings, it bumped against the trees and plants around him, Theron could barely move due to the wings' bumping everything around him.

"This is a bit annoying, is there a way to retract them?"

[There is, it will hide the wings.]

After Theron heard what Demian had told him, he immediately tried to retract the wings but to no avail. Theron stared at the wings that were causing him trouble.

"How do you hide these wings!?"

[Just say "Angel, Standby".]

After Theron heard how to retract the wings, he shouted as loud as he can, "Angel, standby!". After he had shouted the command, the wings retracted into his back. Though the halo above him still retained and didn't went away.

[Right, your halo is permanent. You'll have to get used to that, it's for protection since the halo acts as the first line of protection. Make no mistake, the halo can only repel potentially harmful substances away from your head, it's also similar to that of a solar panel. It's where the machine gets its energy every day, though not as great as perfect energy substitutes.]

"May I ask what are these 'Perfect energy substitutes' you keep talking about? Can we find them on Terra?"

[What I mean by "Perfect energy substitutes", I mean masses of energy that produces a constant supply of energy for our technology. The perfect example is if we can just harvest 1% of the sun's total energy, it's absolute.]

 "Even just 1% of the sun's energy is enough to power the ship?"

[Of course, it actually exceeds the amount needed. That 1% can actually power the entire your planet for a long, long time. This is why she considers solar energy to be the very best energy substitute, besides harvesting the full power of stars. And they…]

Theron listened to Demian ramble about how the 1% of the sun's energy can change humanity's advancement rapidly. Theron then realized that he had sneaked out of his family's protection and they might have woken up and thought that Theron had gone missing.

"Hey, Demian. I'm going back to my family in the cave, when you talk does it go in my head?"

[No, the ring uses a speaker to communicate. So, I can't telepathically converse with you, I guess I'll be quiet for now?]

"Yeah, please. I don't want my parents to freak out when they suddenly hear a voice when they are afraid right now."

[Right… what about that halo of yours?]

"I'll just say I found an artifact in a meteor; I can probably convince them."

[Right… sure. Well then, just call my name if you need any help, I'll be in maintenance mode.]

"Thanks." Theron thanked Demian as he slowly walked towards his parents through the dense forest, he couldn't help but feel anxious since his halo illuminated light. Which attracted attention from the beasts, as he could feel their eyes staring towards him.

As Theron walks, his body besides his head is now wet again from the constant rain that kept pouring with no signs of slowing down.

Theron tried to grab the halo, to his surprise, it was a physical object that can be touched by any physical contact. He picked up the stick and poked his halo, it landed on the halo but repelled the stick away from the halo, causing it to fly towards the ground.

"It seems I'm in good hands for the mean time." Theron continued walking, several more beasts followed him through the thick forest around him, their eyes were locked onto Theron. Which made Theron slightly agitated, Theron feared that they might attack him as the forest is their domain.

Theron then had an idea, "Wait, this is the perfect time to try out these wings!" as Theron got into a defensive stance. He then realized he hadn't asked Demian how to make them appear again, he talked to the air around him.

"Demian, can you hear me?"

[Yeah, I can. I already expected for you to call me this early.]

"Demian, how do I make the wings appear again?"

[Just say "Angel, stance!" and it will appear.]

"Alright! Thanks."

[Okay, I'm going to go sleep.]

Theron then shouted "Angel, stance!" as loud as he can, the massive 3 pairs of wings sprouted from his back which extended as far as it could. Theron tried to move a wing, but failed miserably as the wing accidently smacked him instead.

The beasts who were watching felt intimidated and came out of their hiding, there were 4 of them. The looked similar to that of a tiger but with the body of a hippo. Their foreheads had a blue crystal that glow when attacking prey and predators, the 4 of them stood next to each other as they intently stared at Theron.

"Okay… this is a bit hard to control" Theron was not used to having wings, especially if they had 6 massive wings. Theron tried to imagine the middle wings as hands and used his hands to control them, similar to that of a Virtual Reality glove. The bottom and top wings were stretched outwards behind Theron, which made Theron looked bigger than he was to the beasts.

He stretched his right arm and made it straight, and slashed the air in front of him. Similar to that of a sword, this time the wing complied and slashed the air in front of him. He tried looking behind him but to his surprise his vision was now behind his head, the wings gave him a 360-degree view which was a huge advantage to him.

The beasts, who were now provoked by the wing's slash, rushed themselves towards Theron as he stood there not knowing what to do.

The beasts, who were about to hit Theron's body head on. Theron saw the beasts and tried to protect himself by covering his head and torso with his arms which looked like an X and stepped backwards slowly. As the beasts were getting closer towards Theron, his middle wings covered Theron's entire front body and obstructed his view. Causing the beasts to ram themselves onto the wings instead of Theron, the middle wings then knocked the beasts away by swinging both of its wings.

Theron, who was closing both of his eyes opened them slowly as he saw the beasts knocked on the ground, they were still alive but severely hurt by the impact of the wings. Theron sighed in relief as he tried to control the middle wings once again, this time with more confidence.

"Theron, imagine the middle wings as your arms and hands." Theron, who was talking to himself straightened his arms once again and focused on the panting beasts. Slowly he rose his arms in a straight angle, which the wings followed its movement slowly.

Although Theron desperately wanted to control all the wings, he knew that he didn't have the capacity to try and utilize them to its fullest, so he only focused on what he can control, which are the middle wings.

Theron walked slowly towards the lying beasts; he kept a distance between them as Theron was hesitant to go near them if it were to suddenly do a surprise attack. Although, he knew that the middle wings were long enough to reach them for the final blow.

As Theron raises his right arm upwards, he stared at the beasts with determination. Peasants like him didn't have the ability to defend themselves from monsters as they were only peasants, no power and no special abilities. 'This will be my turning point!' He thought to himself as he slashed his arm downwards as fast as he could.

A second later, the right wing raised itself and slashed the beast and the ground beneath them. A decisive and clean slash could be seen on their corpse and in the ground. Blood tainted the wing as it dripped on the ground, covering the soil with blood.

Though to Theron, he didn't care about the blood that tainted the wing. He was focused on killing the remaining beasts, one by one he slashed his arm which made the wing follow its movement and killed the other 3 beasts without hesitation this time.

Theron smiled in content as he saw what the wings are capable of, he knew he made the right decision. "So, this is how it feels to have power… it feels refreshing." Without realizing it, the wings folded themselves which made the wings' length to be shortened. The wings were still massive like before, but it was 2x smaller in length due to the folding of the wings.

"Angel, standby." The wings retracted and went inside Theron's back, the blood that were on the wings fell on the ground, all of it had fallen like a bucket of blood had just been poured.

"It seems the wings are waterproof, that also includes blood. Which is good." Theron assured to himself as he stared at the corpses of the beast, he felt as if the world was below him. For the first time, he has the ability to fight back.

Theron then continued walking away from the beasts, until he realized that he could turn the corpses of the beasts into food. So, he went back and picked the corpses up using his wings, the corpses were on the wings like beef on a plate. Theron was annoyed as the wings couldn't grab things but can only lift them. Theron was near the cave that his family had hidden themselves, he hid his wings as it dropped the corpses in front of the cave.

Theron went into the cave as he could see his family sleeping on the hard rock, he got closer and woke up his father. "Father, wake up." Theron shook his father several times until he had woken up from his sleep, his father who was still in a daze opened his eyes as he could see his son's silhouette being overshadowed due to the halo's light.

"Son, am I dead? Is this heaven?" His father who had fully woken up, could see the shining halo behind Theron as he saw his daughter and wife still lying on the ground. 'But how? We didn't suffer any injuries and hadn't eaten anything yet.' His father who was thinking of reasons to how he thought he died frowned.

Theron sighed and expected a similar reaction to his father, he shook his head "Father, we're still alive." Theron slapped his father's face repeatedly "Why are you hitting me!?" His father asked.

"Didn't you tell me to slap multiple times just in case you couldn't tell between real and fake?" Theron replied as he sat next to his father.

"Right… I did say that. So where are we?" His father asked who was intently staring at Theron's halo.

"We're in a cave right now, we're hiding from the beasts here." Theron said while he removed his torn shirt and turned it into a bandage.

His father then pointed at Theron's halo, which was just hovering above his head. "What's that…?"

"Ignore it." Theron replied. Theron got up and dragged his father's hand and brought him to the corpses on the ground.

"It's lunch, well maybe dinner too."

"How did you get this?"

"I… killed them, with a sword?"

Theron's father then the corpse, he saw a clean cut that was similar to that of a sword. His father who had a puzzled expression was in disbelief, since he knew that Theron never had any experience with a sword besides a stick Theron uses to ward of people off their farm.

His father who was somewhat hungry had no choice but to butcher the beasts, since they lived on a farm his father knew how to efficiently extract meat, skin and parts without damaging them in the process. After an hour he had successfully extracted everything, leaving only the bones as a byproduct. Thankfully the rain still persisted, so the blood was cleansed by the continuous fall of water.

Theron's father carried the edible meat inside the cave and left the wastes outside, "This should be enough to last us for a day or two." Besides the meat, he only brought the skin from the beasts to make a blanket.

"Though how are we going to cook them?" His father asked, as the rain continued to pour. The wood outside was wet, the environment was wet and hostile, there was no way to make a fire in this situation.

"I think I might have a way, let me go outside first." Theron swiftly left the cave and went beside it.

"Demian, are you there?" Theron asked as he stared at the ring on his index finger.

[I am, stop waking me up.] Demian who was slightly agitated answered Theron's question.

"Sorry, how do you use the fire feature from the set?"

[The conversion of solar to thermal?]

"Yes."

[You need to use your wings for that, the wings will heat themselves up to the point it burns. But it won't cause any damage to the wings itself, it will never melt unless you threw yourself into the sun along with the wings.]

"Okay, that's amazing and all. But how do I do it?"

[All you need to do is be under direct sunlight, since the ship's energy capacity right now is 4%. Because of its journey to land here, it consumed 70% of the total energy, then the ship consumed 26% of the total energy to change its form. You need a minimum of 10% to be able to convert the solar energy into thermal.]

"There's a problem, it's raining right now. The storm is blocking the sun's rays, so how am I supposed to do that?"

[Beats me, that's up for you to decide.]

"Can you at least give me a guide?"

[Don't be reliant on me, or else you'll lose your purpose. Anyways I won't talk to you anymore unless it's crucial, goodbye.]

Theron continued to ask more questions, although Demian didn't bother answering them anymore. Theron had no choice but to go back inside the cave with no solution, he saw his father sewing the skin together to create a large blanket.

"Son, can you turn off that light on your head? I want to sleep."

"It can't be turned off."

"Where did you even get that thing?"

"From a meteor."

"The one that crashed on the forest a few hours ago?"

"Yes."

"So, the rumors of people getting magical artifacts from the celestial plane were real."

"You mean space?"

"Space? You mean 'space'? Like, emptiness?"

"Similar, I guess?" Theron had forgotten that he was given knowledge about the true nature of things, common sense turned into a not-so-common sense. For what the memories had shown him were the things that were beyond Terra, his home planet. He saw the beautiful and the terrifying things that emerged from the cosmos, it had completely changed his view of the world.

"Father, would you believe me if I said that my race had be changed to that of an angel?" Theron understood that if he were to walk around a village or a kingdom with the shining halo above him, they might mistake it for an artifact. Theron wanted to create a convincing lie that will be able to convince others that the halo is apart of him, which is easier said than done.

His father, who was skeptical about his son's question. Had no choice but to accept what Theron had claimed, since it already happened it might have been true.

"Father, how does fire burn?"

"Didn't I tell you this before? Fire turns into fire because of mana particles accumulating into a fixed form of energy, which forces the energy to turn into heat and flames! Additionally, the concentration of mana causes the flames to change colors, the redder the color, the stronger it is. Hence why blue flames are the weakest of the bunch, as people who can control blue flames could only summon it for less than 2 seconds."

'That's not what the data says…' Theron thought as his brain right now was similar to that of a quantum computer. Its memory, comprehension, computation, and analyzation were a hundred times superior to that of a normal brain. Theron knew from his memory that was planted inside his brain were absolute and correct, most of the things his father had said were wrong.

'According to my memory, the most powerful flames were blue… meaning those who can wield blue flames were one of the most powerful people. But it seems it drains their mana capacity at an exceedingly fast rate.' Though Theron knew a lot of things, knowledge about mana and magic were blurry.

"Father, do you know what oxygen is?"

"Ox-yi-jen?"

"Oxygen."

"Okcigen?"

"No, O-X-Y-G-E-N,"

Theron wanted to slap himself from his father trying his hardest to pronounce oxygen, then again no one knew what it was besides him.

"Sorry son, not sure what spell is that. Or it might be an animal? Maybe a name? I don't know." His father wrapped himself and his wife and daughter with the leather he had extracted, "Are you coming to sleep?" he asks Theron. Theron politely refused and continued to wander outside.

(A/N: Do not my release schedule is somewhat messed up, due to me being busy with life and also doing art commissions. But please, feel free to read.)