I slowly walk through the streets of ruined Venus, listening to the sound of the Chaos engine and following it. My mood was already pretty somber after I read the letter and set myself to find Ava, and discovering Maria and Vera in the basement didn't help at all.

I'm not sure myself as to why exactly I killed the Beast that has become of Maria, but I did, and I'm going to live on with this impulsive decision. Vera was dead anyway, and I doubt she would have wanted to live on by herself. Not like I'm trying to give myself an excuse, becaues I know very well who I killed.

After calming down I took their bodies out to the garden and quickly dug a simple, small grave for them using a garden shovel, which took much less time than I initially assumed it would thanks to my massively increased strength.

I also learned about one of my abilities as a Chaos Touched, and I'm honestly not sure what to make of it. I absorbed the life that seeped from dying Maria, making it my own and strengthening myself. I'm as sure of it as I can ever be, and I'm pretty sure this is what they were talking about when they said that Touched understand their abilities instinctively.

With that said though, I don't really understand my ability. What I get is that I can absorb people's life and that I can do it passively when someone near me dies, or at least when I kill them. But I don't know anything apart from that, if you don't count the strengthening myself part which is as good as nothing, because I don't know what exactly it affects.

Though one thing I managed to do and I'm now paying a bit of attention to is my life. It's looks a bit like an orb and seems to be almost full now. It also seems to be seeping out of me ever so slightly, and I have quite a few guesses related to it, for example that absorbing life strengthens it or that vitality leaves me with time, but nothing certain.

Also, now that I see this part of me, I'm pretty sure that life is what keeps me alive instead of food... however that sounds. Maybe I should call it vitality to avoid confusion.

After putting the two to the grave, I went back to the bedroom and exchanged my jacket for a new almost identical one, with this one being filthy from all the blood, and cleaned my tail a bit. I didn't have time for a shower, but I at least brushed it and shook the dirt out.

So I'm now approaching the Chaos engine, which I assume is the place where the army has set up their camp. Where there are large Chaos Storm incidents, first they send Touched to contain any dangerous threats that spring up and start rescuing the civilains, then they send evacuation teams along with Touched responsible for freeing the civilians and newly Touched, and when it's all done, a clean-up team comes, which clears the place of the remaining Beasts missed by the earlier groups and takes away all the corpses.

And that, I assume, is what the sound of the engine means. That the clean-up crew has made their camp out of the city and is processing the corpses. Mostly burning them.

When I come closer, I also start hearing human voices, but they are all too jumbled together for me to make sense of what each person is saying with the engine on top.

I'm pretty sure it's around half a mile away now, and I'm not exactly sure why I know it, but I assume it's one of the supernatural things around my new ears. And when I round the corner, I see them.

It's a large camp, to put simply, on the edge of the city. There is the military transporter that looks like a huge, rounded rectangle, a few more vehicles, incuding the one I hear the Chaos engine from that is basically a moving furnace from which huge amount of smoke blows out. They're burning corpses alright.

There is a barricade set up around the whole thing with a few soldiers on watch, who immediately raise their weapons in my direction and raise up the alarm. No heavy duty Chaos cannons, fortunately. If it's a rifle, even if they shoot for some weird reason and I get hit, I'll probably regenerate, but I'm not sure what would happen if a cannon blew my body apart.

I hear shouting from the camp, but it soon quiets down, replaced by barely audible nervous talks and another loud, male voice I hear distinctly.

"Don't shoot! Lower your weapons and keep them ready, but don't attack if I don't give the signal! I'll talk with the Touched!"

Hm, that's a good sign. At least no one will shoot at me without warning. Shouldn't, at least.

I keep walking for a while and when I'm around two hundred meters from the camp, I see a person jumping over the barricade, a large man from the looks of it. He lands on the ground with ease, painting him as a class 2 Touched, since class 1 would never be able to land from like five meters without at least rolling to offset the impact.

"Identify yourself!" He shouts. "This is a military clean-up team!"

Hm. "Chaos Touched! Demi Vulpes!" I pause for a moment, waiting for his response, but he doesn't say anything for a long while. "I was Touched during the Chaos Storm, but wasn't able to get in contact with the evacuation teams!"

"Alright! Come here and we'll talk!" He shouts back and I quicken my pace a bit, crossing the two hundred meters between us in silence till I stop at the distance of around five meters from the man, waiting for him to speak.

Also, now that I look at him, he gives the impression of a typical soldier. Rough face, short, light brown hair, square jaw, muscular body only partly hidden under the gray uniform. And he has quite high rank, from what I remember, though I'm not sure what exactly the cross on his badge means.

And I sense vitality from him. It's not a feeling I can put into words properly, but he has a lot of vitality that feels a bit like... static, greenish ball of... well, vitality. Not like I can see it, but it gives the impression of being light green, if that makes any sense.

"Name and Touch, if you will?" He asks.

"Vesper, Demi Vulpes. Class 2, probably, but I'm not sure yet." I reply.

"How were you missed by the evacuation teams?" He asks, frowning heavily.

"I was covered by a corpse. I woke up just this evening."

"There was life-sensing personnel in each team." He says heavily and I frown.

What, they didn't sense me? Oh, maybe I died and regenerated when I absorbed a lot of vitality? I don't know if that's possible, much less can check that right now, but I don't really have any other explanation now. Not like I'll be giving it.

"There was? I don't know about that. I know that I woke up just today and I have no idea what happened in between losing consciousness and now. Though I have an ability that has something to do with life, which might have been the reason for missing me."

He stays silent for a long while, looking at me with piercing eyes. I gaze back at him calmly, confident that even if he didn't believe me, I would be able to get out of here easily... wait, why am I thinking about it? I want to find Ava, not get out here.

"That makes me a bit suspicious, but alright. What's your purpose here then?"

"I have family among the Chaos Touched who were evacuated from Venus. I was told she was sent to Raphlesia, and I'm hoping to get there as well."

"Who is the family you speak of?" He asks, raising his eyebrows.

"Ava Chaelier. I was told she bacame a Demi Vulpes with seven red tails." I reply and don't miss the twitch of his face and flash of recognition in his eyes when I say the last part.

"Alright, I can work with that." He nods. "But I can't provide you any transport, unless you are willing to wait till we are finished here, which will take at least a week." I shake my head. "Thought so. Then the only option is probably calling a rifter. That would be very costly though, and depending on availability it might take a long while."

"How costly are talking about here?" I ask with rised eyebrows, knowing well that I have a lot of money.

"I don't know. Each rifter takes different fees, and I don't know if there is any rift near us or any rifter available." He answers and I nod my head. Thought so. Rifts aren't something you can create on a whim, but only something you can exploit. Unless you use Aether... not like I know what it is and where to get it from. I only heard that from my parents.

"I'd be thankful if you at least asked. I can cover the expenses, as long as they aren't unreasonable." I say and he nods.

"Come with me, then." He turns around and waves his arm lightly to follow him, which I do. "I am the commander of this clean-up team, you can call me Ross. I'm a mid class 2 Champion. You might even be stronger than me if you're a class 2." Hm, Champion. So a Touched who sort of turned into a human, an Unturned in other words. Alright.

Oh, also, nope, you won't be getting that information out of me.

"Hm. Not really, I'd say. I don't have any experience with my new abilities, so even if I had more strength I would lose to you." I reply to him, smirking a bit, and he nods with a small smile.

We both jump over the barricade, which took my a moment to realize I can actually do, and walk among the whispering soldiers to a large tent. I can pick up small bits of the conversations around me, but the engine makes it really hard to fish out anything substantial. I can isolate the sound of it to some degree, likely another supernatural thing about my new ears, but not well enough to hear the words properly.

Just about the only thing I get to know is that they find my presence here strange and they don't trust me, which isn't very surprising. I also notice with my new weird sense that there seems to be no one with higher amount of vitality than the commander before me, though I'm not sure if it means he is the strongest person here.

Vitality, after all, is not static, and I still don't even understand properly what it is. I can guess that the person with more of it will be stronger or will live longer, but those are only guesses till I learn more. Some of those people have their orbs of vitality kind of faint, while the others' are more vibrant, for good example of something I don't really understand. It feels as if they were kind of... same amount of vitality, but it's somehow weaker? I'm not sure.

Also, for a reason I can't really explain, the orbs all have some sort of... I don't know. Depth? Level? Let it be level for now, because I don't know how else to call it that would fit the fact that some of them feel more superior than other. And an important thing is that the level seems to heavily depend on size, because each of those sits in a certain threshold.

They are distinctly divided into... six levels, though majority of the people are between level one and three, and only Ross is on the highest level among the people here with no one else his equal. Apart from me, that is, because I am also on this level and even have significantly larger orb, whatever this means for me.

Either way, we cross the camp and walk into the tent and Ross approaches a large communication device in one of its corners. He sits by it and looks at me with a polite smile, waving at one of the chairs by a tea table. "Sit down, please. I'll call the command and ask if we can do anything for you."

"Alright." I nod, taking a seat and looking around the tent which I assume is the either the commander's private, because there is a section of it in the back that's separated from this part, or a more public one. Well, not like it matters.

I listen as Ross clicks a few things on the Chaos powered machine and starts talking to the speaker.

"Commander Ross of the third Venus clean-up team speaking. I have a Chaos Touched on hand who was missed by the evacuation team.  Name Vesper, class 2 Demi Vulpes. She is asking for a rifter to transport her to Raphlesia and is willing to pay."

He looks up at me with questioning eyes, taking the ball of a speaker away from his mouth. "Should I add anything?"

"It's fine." I shake my head, already having a brief understanding of how these communicators work.

"Alright." He replies, tapping a few things again and putting the speaker down, then looks back at me. "Now we are waiting for them to pick up. It should be no more than five minutes."

I nod in response and we stay silent for a while till Ross sighs and smiles lightly. "Is it fine to ask how you're faring? The experience must have been awful."

"It was." I nod. "After I woke up, first thing I did was crawling out from under a corpse. Not to mention that the only reason I got under it was getting a deadly wound, and it was only the Touch that saved my life."

"I see. But you can still say you were really lucky. To survive that and remain sane is not something many people can say. By early estimates there are only eight thousand survivors of this Storm, icluding three thousand who were aready Touched." He says and I look up at him in surprise.

"So little?" I ask with a frown. "Out of two hundred thousands? I thought there would be at least ten."

Ross shakes his head solemnly and grits his teeth. "You might have missed it, but the slums and residential district were completely wrecked. There was a huge Avis Wild Beast there, bordering on Mythical class." I feel a cold shiver as he says that and I look at him with shock.

"Yup, that's right." He nods, seeing my expression, whatever it is now. "The only reason this whole city wasn't upturned is Sovereign, who was coincidentally in Raphlesia to talk with the new Draco. They came here and subdued the Beast in a moment, but the residential district and the slums were still turned into... molten lava, practically. This one thing killed seventy thousand people, by early estimates."

"Wow, holy shit." I mutter. "I didn't see it. I'll need to thank the guy if I ever get the chance."

Ross chuckles at that, but without much amusement. "I don't think he'd care about that. You sure have heard how prideful he is."

"Yeah, but still." I mutter. "Three Mythicals have been fighting, and I was sleeping under a corpse. That's a bit... surreal."

"Mhm, it is." Ross smiles lightly. "But you at least woke up, and at least part of your family did from what I hear. That's already pretty good, all things considered."

"...Yeah." I sigh deeply. "Actually, I only had three really important people for me. Ava survived, and Vera, our maid, was killed by her lover who was turned into a Wild Beast." I say and see Ross' eyebrows rising up.

"Damn, that's rough." He says quietly. "I lost my brother to a Storm long ago, but that's still..."

"Yeah." I nod. "I put her to rest."

"Her?"

"The Beast."

"...I see." He gulps. "My condolences. Let's hope you'll find more hapiness in the future. Touch can be both a blessing and a curse, but you also get a say in deciding which it is."

"Mhm." I smile softly and sigh deeply, stretching my back, and at this moment the machine lets out a ringing sound to announce that someone has received the message.

I feel my chest tightening in nervousness and I look as Ross shifts in his seat and taps a few buttons, bringing the speaker to his ear.