Yuji was frozen, unable to comprehend the situation around him. There was a strong taste of iron in his mouth, and as he looked down, he could see that some of his fingers were covered in blood.

  "Haa... Haa...!"

  Panic welled up inside of him as he saw the body of a man on the ground. There were two large puncture wounds on his left forearm, and most of his forearm was covered in dried blood.

  None of it felt real, and it was made worse by the fact that his vision was similar to that of a cheap-quality camera. The world looked grainy to him as a large amount of pressure pushed down onto his eyeballs.

  He tried to remember what had happened before he had apparently killed a man, but Yuji had no memory of anything after he'd left work earlier that day.

  ... Wait.

  An idea occurred to him, but it seemed ridiculous and outright impossible. However, it would explain what was happening to him at the moment.

  Did I awaken...? But how would that even be possible?? I've never once read a grimoire, let alone laid my eyes on one outside of what I've seen on television.

  Yuji looked at the puncture wounds on the man's forearm again while running a pointer finger over his canines that now had tiny holes in the bottom of them.

  And why would I end up as something that drains blood?! Even if I did read two grimoires and somehow didn't notice what they were, I'd sure as hell remember a creepy book about all the Gods that were blood-based...

  A knock at the door practically stopped Yuji's heart as he whipped around. He stared at the flat metal frame, feeling a fear from it that should have only been reserved for sudden meetings with mythical beings like dragons or eldritch gods.

  "Yuji? Are you in there?" A soft, warm voice called out.

  Lisa?!

  Now he was really panicking. After a quick look around the room, he finally realized he was in his own bedroom. His dulled senses began to return to him, and that's when he heard music playing from somewhere else in the trailer, with a chorus of voices accompanying it.

  Lisa huffed from the other side of the door, "Come on, stupid! Miya and a few others heard loud banging from your room, so I know you're in there! Did you sneak in through the window so you could avoid my party?!"

  As if things weren't bad enough as is, the word 'Party' had made him remember what he had been preparing for earlier in the day. They were having a party at night, celebrating Lisa's engagement to the son of a highly influential person, which meant that the two of them would finally be moving out of their dilapidated trailer. But more importantly, it meant that her soon-to-be husband had the means to cure her legs.

  The doorknob began to rattle as Lisa tried opening it, but thankfully for Yuji, it was locked. However, that wasn't going to stop her and he knew it.

  "H-Hang on, sis! Give me a second!"

  He ran over to the other side of the room, giving the dead man a wide berth before he reached into a pile of dirty towels to yank one out. There was no light turned on in his room, but the small amount of ambient lighting from outside was giving Yuji just enough illumination to see himself in the mirror as he attempted to wipe off all of the blood he could find.

  Lastly, he pulled his white shirt off and shoved his arms through another one, but he left it unbuttoned as he ran back to the door.

  On the way though, Yuji finally got a half-decent look at the face of the dead man, and he immediately froze.

  There's... No way...

  It wasn't the corpse of an unknown man. It was a young man he recognized, and while he had only met him one time, he wouldn't mistake him for anyone else. It was his sister's betrothed, Ryu Murakami, of the prestigious Kitsune Murakami family. They ran the most important shipping company in the empire, and for a low-born cripple like his sister to be engaged into their family was nothing short of a miracle.

  Another round of banging on the door pulled him out of his stupor. He ran over to the door, unlocked it, and pulled it slightly open as his sister's balled-up fist hit the metal frame one last time. "Calm down, I'm here! I just wanted to relax a little before joining the party, okay?"

  Lisa looked up at Yuji from her wheelchair, narrowing her eyes at him, "Relax? You didn't do anything all day long! I had to beg you to go get the ingredients for me earlier!"

  Oh, right, that did happen... Wait.

  "... And then what happened?"

  There was a slight pause before she responded, "What? Are you drunk? You brought the ingredients back and then left to meet up with Ryu." Her eyes widened as she realized that her brother might know where her other vacant guest was, "Speaking of which, where is he? Ryu still hasn't shown up, and his sister is really starting to get worried. You know, because of, well..."

  Yuji did know what she meant. While the trailer-ring that went around the entire upper side of Gallios-5 was mostly devoid of crime, people had been going missing left and right lately. Which meant that it was only a matter of time before Ryu's sister called in the protectors, which would be the end of his entire family if he didn't hide all of the evidence soon... Very soon. A report on one of the Ryu children going missing would bring in the big guns for sure. They'd dispatch a full crew to his home the moment they got the call, so he had very little time to work with.

  "He's not here? Hmm, well, Ryu had said that he wanted to show me something, but in the end he changed his mind. So we just sat around and talked in his favorite bar for a while before splitting up. That's when I came back here and snuck inside. I wanted to try and sleep off the alcohol a little bit before joining you guys, but as usual, my lovely little sister just couldn't bring herself to give me some alone time."

  At most, he could only remember the promise to meet up with Ryu, and that he wanted to show him something. A 'Something' that had apparently led to Yuji killing Ryu and drinking his blood, but for the life of him he couldn't remember any of the details. All he knew from prior visits was that the place they were going to meet up at had a single camera outside of it, but he didn't remember seeing any inside the small commercial block itself. That meant what he was about to do was a roll of the dice, but he was still full-on panicking and barely even cognizant of what was happening.

  He was a part-time box carrier whose expertise was almost entirely tied up in Crystal Engineering. Coming up with an alibi on the spot was so far outside of his wheelhouse that it was a miracle he was even managing to speak without stuttering.

  "... You were drinking? Are you alright?" Lisa asked in a sympathy-laced tone. Even though the story was made up, he knew why she was suddenly worried about him. If Ryu wanted the two of them to drink, then he'd have no choice but to drink. Yuji had never actually had any alcohol before, but he couldn't risk upsetting his new family.

  Not that he really knew much about Ryu, but the young man's father was an entirely different story. Yuji's uncle used to run the Gallios shipping company that operated out of every Gallios mining outpost. In fact, he founded the entire thing, but somehow it had ended up in the hands of the Ryu family. He never knew why though, since his uncle refused to speak about it. All he and Lisa knew was that Uncle Gavin began to hate all of the Kitsune soon after he lost both his company and his wife.

  "Come on now, don't look like that. I'll be fine after I rest a little, so just give me about an hour. I'll be out there with the rest of you before you know it... Okay? And hopefully Ryu will be here by then too. He's probably just trying to shake off the alcohol before showing his face here."

  Lisa looked down while rubbing her hands together, "R-Right, yeah... That has to be why..."

  Yuji felt a sharp pang of guilt seeing her like that. Ever since she lost the ability to walk, she'd always had self-confidence issues, but after the marriage proposal came, he'd actually seen her smiling by herself quite often, which was a rare emotion in their home nowadays.

  And he'd just taken that away from her.

  "... I'll be out there soon." He simply said before closing the door.

  He then hurriedly walked back to the corpse, and only then did he finally notice the dried blood under the back of Ryu's head. Yuji bent down and lifted his head up, but he only got it a little off the floor before quickly letting go of his hair. Ryu's head then fell back onto the floor, echoing out a somewhat loud mushing sound as it landed.

  Oh my god, I did that?

  The back of Ryu's head had apparently been smashed into the floor several times, which had shattered nearly the entire back of his skull in the process. There were pieces of hair, brain matter, and bone either under his head or scattered near it.

  It was one thing if he only needed to clean some blood off the floor near Ryu's forearm, but now he had far more blood and god knows what else to clean up, and with very little time left to do any of it.

  There was one other thing bothering him too, and he'd mostly been able to ignore it because of everything else going on, but there was a part of him that felt a strong desire to drain whatever blood remained in Ryu's body. It was obviously not something he'd ever desired before, and he was having a hard time ignoring it. There was a part of him that felt half empty, and that desire was asking him to 'Fill it up' as he looked down at the blood.

  Yuji shook off the desire as best he could while running back to the pile of towels. He took two large ones from it and returned to the body, where he promptly knelt down and began to soak up as much blood as he could with the towel that had a cartoon chipmunk on it. It was a towel he'd had since childhood, but he was in a hurry and didn't have time to look for non-sentimental items.

  The voices in the trailer nearly doubled in volume as he wiped. While he continued cleaning up the blood, he was able to pick up on a few key terms, with Protectors being among them. There were also a couple of people attempting to calm someone down, and he was almost certain that someone was Miya, which meant that his time really was running out.

  Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit---!!

  After cleaning up the non-dried blood the best he could, he lowered Ryu's head on the other towel before running over to a mesh bag he had for dirty clothes in the corner of his room, near the foot of his bed.

  As this was all going on, he kept looking outside into the blizzard beyond his window to make sure nobody was walking by his room. For reasons unknown to him, his Uncle had taken the sheet he had been using as a blind for the window whose length encompassed his entire room, which meant that anyone walking by would be able to just look into his room if they wanted to. So far, nobody has passed by, but he could feel the panic almost overcome him as he considered the possibility that someone had seen what happened when he awakened. He had no memory of the event after all, so for all he knew, there was already someone running to the nearest public telephone.

  Choosing to pray that none of that had actually happened, he stuffed the bloody chipmunk towel into the bag and then grabbed a nearby white sheet, which he promptly wrapped Ryu's body up in. It was risky using white, but for the most part he'd taken care of the wet blood, and he didn't want a black sheet sticking out like a sore thumb in the pure white world outside.

  He quickly removed his grey cargo pants, tossed them into the mesh bag, and put on his only white pair of cargo pants that he pretty much never wore.

  There was a lot of yelling going on inside the trailer now, but someone had also jacked up the music, so between all the competing voices and the music blaring, he couldn't make out a single thing anyone was saying.

  The last thing he put on was his usual travel gear. A heavy hooded white coat, snow pants, and a warm breather mask that they only used on super cold days. Thanks to the blizzard, everyone would be wearing one anyway, so it wouldn't look out of place if someone did see him.

  This large white sheet with something inside of it is bound to stick out regardless, so it's still for the best that I don't run into anyone at all.

  When he put Ryu's body on a table near the window, he tried to think of a way to remove the dried blood on the ground, but the only thing that came to mind was a solvent that his family definitely wouldn't have. He'd seen it used on the job site a few times when fights broke out, but it was far too expensive for his family to have it on hand.

  Hang on, wouldn't they have a few bottles of it?

  Their neighbor, Miss Silvia, ran multiple on-call businesses with her two sons, and he felt like he'd heard that 'Cleaner' was one of them. And lucky for him, all three of them were supposed to be at his sister's party, which meant that nobody would be in their home at the moment... Probably.

  Yuji cranked the left half of the window open, feeling a blast of cold wind blow into the room. He leaned over to the right and picked the heavy body-enclosed sheet off the table before climbing outside.

  There was a fifteen-meter gap between the trailers and the edge, and it slightly sloped upwards. Most of the guardrails had decayed and fallen off ages ago, but since only two drunken people had fallen to their deaths in all of Gallios-5's history, they had never bothered replacing them. Far more people died in the mines and the company didn't care about them, so they sure as hell weren't about to spend any manpower installing a massive fence topside.

  Which was normally not an issue for anyone who lived in the trailer ring above the city, but between the heavy body he was carrying and the blizzard rolling through with high winds, that fifteen-meter edge was looking mighty small to Yuji tonight. Even without the possibility of Ryu's body falling on him as he hit the ground, his family's trailer was located at the part of the city with the biggest elevation difference. It was a one hundred and forty meter drop to the mine shaft entrance below his trailer, so if he fell, he was going to die whether he was carrying Ryu's body or not.

  Yuji pushed the window closed and immediately began power walking toward the nearest elevator on the right side. It was only around thirty meters to the elevator so it didn't take him long to get to it, but despite the fact that he had only just left his home, he had already run into a major issue. The elevator was currently rising toward him, which meant that there were people using it to return home or maybe even attend his sister's party. His heart rate spiked as he watched the spinning yellow lights on the elevator rising toward him.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Okay, okay, calm down... It only just started moving, so I have a few minutes to get away from here. That's plenty of time... I think.

  He didn't want to risk running to one of the other elevators that were really far away from his home, so with only one other option left, he ran toward the emergency staircase that nobody used. After all, who would want to walk up or down one hundred and forty meters of a winding staircase when there were several fully functional elevators?

  Yuji kept as close to the trailers as possible while moving. Whoever was supposed to shovel the snow was nowhere to be seen, so the snow was halfway up to his lower legs. It was still fluffy and easy to wade through, but even a tiny amount of resistance was too much for him at the moment. He knew next to nothing about awakenings, so he could only guess that it was related to why he was so exhausted and sore.

  Weirdly, none of the trailers he could see had their lights on, which was surprising since it wasn't even all that late. His sister's party was supposed to run from six to nine, so everyone should have still been awake.

  As he stepped onto the snow-covered metal grated stairs, he saw that the elevator had arrived. There was an enormous number of people on it too, which was something you only saw when people were going to work or returning home from work.

  Except, it was neither of those times, and they didn't look like they were from the Protectorate, so there was clearly something he was missing or forgetting, but he really didn't care about any of that. He was far more concerned with the dead body on his shoulder.

  Yuji kicked some snow out of the way at the end of the stairs so he could look down at the area below, and it really made him happy that his family's trailer was on the dead side of town. There were only a handful of lights on near the area he would be descending to, and he knew most of them were always on by default. It wasn't as if they were on because something was going on down there in the middle of a blizzard.

  After making sure Ryu was still mostly secured on his shoulder, he began walking down the grated steps. He hadn't been on them in at least five or six years, and he couldn't recall seeing anyone else on them ever, so if nothing else, it made for a novel experience.

  He turned at the bottom of another set of stairs, preparing to make his way toward the next set when the metal underneath his left foot completely gave out. He heard a loud clinking noise as everything to his left, including the railing, broke off and fell.

  If he had merely fallen onto the level below, it wouldn't have been a huge deal, but he fell sideways off the walkway, and while Yuji had tried to grab the lower railway as he flew past it, it was just barely out of his reach.

  Fear and resignation hit him at that moment. There was some degree of solace in the fact that he wouldn't be alive to see the expression on Lisa's face when she found out he had killed her betrothed, but soon after that he was also feeling something else. In the same way a person naturally moves their hands or feet, he instinctively felt that something was what he should be using to save himself, and so he did. He focused on the 'Feeling' and activated it.

  Immediately, he began falling much more slowly. For the first time that night he felt a jolt of excitement mixed in with the relief.

  So this is how they use abilities! I've only seen them in recordings before... And it's a simple ability that makes me fall slower apparently?

  At first, he thought it might have been making him weigh less, but Ryu still felt like a laden brick on his shoulder.

  Yuji turned his head to the left and looked toward the ground. The blizzard was mostly blocking his view, but with the direction and speed the lights were moving, he could tell that he was falling at an angle. If he was falling straight down like he was supposed to, then the walkway light at the bottom of the stairs would have been directly below him, but now it was only slightly behind him.

  That light is the Shiba store... That one is the Section-Eight waste depository... And the one I'm falling toward is the Hargraven's mansion?

  He was tempted to turn the floating ability off and on again in the hopes that it'd make him drop straight down, instead of at the angle he was at when he first activated it, but he'd read that plenty of abilities had delays between re-activation's, so if he turned it off and then it was unavailable for more than five seconds, there was a good chance he was going to die. There was a lot of unshoveled snow on the street below him, but he had a hard time believing it'd prevent the remaining one hundred-meter drop from breaking his skull when it hit the ground.

  Around ten seconds later he could tell with one hundred percent certainty where he was going to land, and it gave him an idea, but he wasn't really sure if it was the wisest one.

  His feet eventually landed on the Hargraven's flat roof, and after a cursory glance at the door that led to the roof, he set Ryu's body down for a moment and then sat next to him to take a brief rest.

  As he rested, he looked around the roof for a good place that might serve as a hiding spot.

  There really isn't much up here though. Just a water tank and whatever that protruding block of brick is near the door.

  The water tower seemed like an ideal spot, which meant he had two options now. He could hide the body in the water tower, so the protectorate and the Murakami family think the Hargravens killed him. Or stick to his initial plan of burning it in one of the incinerators in the outpost.

  I know the Murakami and Hargraven families hate each other, but would anyone really believe it? If the Hargravens killed someone in their home, I feel like they would have far better ways of disposing of the body. Like the fact that the water depository's incinerator is right down the street from them.

  He knew a combination of the two would've been perfect, but that would require taking something from the mansion and tossing it in the incinerator with the body, which was completely out of the question. He'd only been inside the mansion once, and all he did was carry some boxes into the basement, so outside of the entrance and the two hallways he had to take to reach the door to the basement, he knew basically nothing about the mansion.

  Yuji idly watched as the lift near his house descended back toward the ground. Either someone was calling for it from below, or someone was using it again.

  The muffled sounds of the city in its usual nightly blizzard were one of the few things he enjoyed in his life. Despite what most people in the outposts of Gallios thought about the environment, Yuji loved the snow. The serene nightly view of the city under one of its blizzards was perfect in his eyes. And so long as you weren't a complete moron, it was very difficult to die of exposure.

  As brutal as the Gallios corporation was, it made sure that its workers were always healthy enough to keep working and that they would never die from the freezing cold temperatures. So long as you kept your body covered with the corporation's own hand-crafted snow gear and always had your heating mask on, you'd be fine.

  When the elevator was around eye level with the roof of the mansion, Yuji got a good view inside of it and saw that nobody was riding it. He then peeked over the side of the roof and saw around three people waiting for it to arrive.

  Alright, after that group is around halfway up, I'll jump down with Ryu, and...

  Not that he had forgotten, but the fact that he had awakened and killed Ryu was really starting to hit him. He'd spent most of his life working in the mines or the warehouse district, and then returning home to play games with his sister and Uncle. The idea that he was now in a life and death battle for supremacy and that he was moments away from incinerating the body of his sister's betrothed sounded completely fantastical, but it was his new reality, whether he wanted it or not.

  A reality that he'd have to adjust to, or die... As most awakened did.

  Yuji picked the sheet-covered corpse up as the elevator hit a point where it became hard to see. He then climbed up onto the parapet and, with a little trepidation, jumped off into the alley below while activating the floating ability. Just like before, he lost most of his velocity and began to move slowly toward the ground.

  ?!

  Around one-fourths of the way down, two people walked around the right-side corner that led to the front of the Hargraven's house, entering the very same alley he was floating down in.

  At first, it looked like he was going to land long after they had made it to the other side, but then one of the pair dropped the bag in their hands, which led to everything inside of it spilling out into the snow.

  The calm state he had managed to return to earlier had completely vanished in that moment. He watched through panicked eyes as the two individuals picked through the snow, trying to find all of the lost items buried within it. The two individuals were around ten feet to the right of where he was going to land, so even if they were looking down at the snow when he landed, they were both going to see him clear as day.

  Around two-thirds of the way down, the individual with the bag gave a thumbs up to their friend after a quick scour through the bag, confirming that they had gotten everything back. The other person smacked them on the back, sending them fumbling forward, which almost made them drop their bag again. That person then quickly turned around and raised two middle fingers at their friend, who returned two thumbs up back at them as the two of them began walking forward again.

  Time slowed to a crawl for Yuji as he brought his knees up to his chest. He was dangerously close to the couple now, and it looked like he was watching the world in slow motion as the two individuals walked past him.

  He landed in the snow behind them just as the nine P.M. alarm blared over the city, blocking any noise that was emitted as he landed in the snow.

  He sat there in the snow and didn't move a single muscle as he watched the two of them walk toward the end of the alley. When they disappeared around the corner, he finally stood up and bolted toward the other end. The alarm made any chance of the couple hearing him impossible, but it also signified the fact that anyone still out and about was going to be returning home soon, which included those back at the party. He needed to burn the body and return home now. If Ryu's sister hadn't called the Protectorate yet, she definitely was going to now that the nightly alarm had rang out and he still hadn't shown up.

  Yuji stopped at the end of the alley to check the street, and after a cursory glance, he could see five or six people walking around, but all except one were quite far away and only vaguely visible thanks to the street lamps.

  And he knew exactly who the one was. It was an always-drunk bum who was well on his way to being evicted out of the outpost, so he wasn't worried about that man spotting him. Right now he was quite literally lying down face-first in front of the liquor store, so while that meant he wouldn't be an issue, it did ensure that the owner would be coming out to shoo him off soon enough.

  He stole a quick glance above and noted that the elevator was coming back down. Filled with people leaving his sister's party, no doubt.

  Yuji ran forward, aiming straight for the depository at the end of the alley up ahead. He reached the alley in no time and kept running. Even without the white sheet it would have looked weird to be running around at night in the outpost, but he was out of time, so if someone did see him, then so be it. There was nothing he could do about that anymore.

  He reached the depository and pushed the door handle down. The door thankfully gave way, shaving precious time off from him having to fumble around with the keys to unlock it himself. He wasn't certain it would open, but it was still a possibility since people rarely cared enough to lock the facilities around the outpost.

  Yuji walked inside and closed the door behind him before flicking the switch that slightly illuminated the area around the incinerator.

  The small amount of lighting revealed a scene he was rather used to seeing. The depository was one of dozens of dilapidated buildings that rarely saw any use. Each outpost had two waste depositories, but more often than not, one was basically just a backup to the other. Yuji had used the one he was in now whenever he worked solo. It made the job a lot easier when nobody else was around.

  There was dust everywhere as usual, but there were already bootprints walking throughout it as well, as he wasn't the only one who randomly used the depository, so his prints wouldn't stick out.

  With that worry out of the way, he walked between the two conveyor belts, heading straight for the incinerator in the middle of the wall on the other side.

  When he arrived, he flipped the large black switch on the right to kick the furnace on. It took around four minutes to fully heat the inside, which normally wasn't a huge deal, but four minutes felt like a lifetime for him at the moment.

  Yuji then blankly stood there, staring at the black double doors, waiting to hear the clicking sound of the doors unlocking, which only happened when the furnace was ready.

  As he waited, he thought about what he knew of 'The Awakened', which wasn't much, sadly. His sister had been far more interested in them than he was. To him, they were fantastical stories that had literally no bearing on his life, nor would they ever... Or so he had thought.

  Life in the Gallios outposts was about as simple as it got, and he had a hard time believing things would ever get better for them, so dreaming of a life as one of 'The Awakened' felt kind of stupid and childish.

  Also, from what his sister had told him, their lives weren't as glorious as some of the news articles made them out to be. You only had so much time to ascend to the next tier. If you passed the allotted time before advancing, all of your information became available to the other awakened, and you were also stuck waiting for your next ascension chance for years. With those two put together, she had said that it was basically a death sentence for them. And that was assuming you even survived the missions before reaching ascension.

  But why is it a death sentence? Is there a reason the other awakened come after you if you fail?

  Click.

  Yuji grabbed one of the heat absorbers and then opened the incinerator up with it. He could see the frost built up inside the nearby tables almost immediately evaporate as a wave of heat expanded out from the incinerator.

  He brought Ryu down from his shoulder and held him up with both hands. Yuji then got as close as he could before tossing the body onto the table inside the furnace. The sheet burned away in barely a second, and he could even see Ryu's clothes erupting into a ball of flame as he threw the meshed bag inside.

  With that done, he promptly closed the doors. There was a timer built into the incinerators, so it would naturally turn off on its own in thirty minutes, and while that was far too long for what he needed, it wasn't like he could wait around until Ryu was no more either. Plus, in his mind, there was around a zero percent chance that the Protectorate would even check the depositories anytime soon. So long as he cleaned the blood up properly, Ryu would be classified as a missing person's case. Not a murder.

  They'll still check every building in a day or two though, including this one, but the evidence will be long gone by then.

  A loud popping sound rang out from inside the furnace. It made Yuji jump in surprise, and as he looked at the incinerator, he remembered seeing something on a show about arson cases. The investigator had been talking about bones popping once they reached a certain degree of heat.

  Up until that point, his mind had felt numb to everything happening around him. It had all felt like a sick dream as he scrambled to protect his simple life, but the popping sound erupting from Ryu's bones brought him back to reality. It was a horrifying reminder of what he was actually doing there.

  Yuji pulled back his hood and ripped the mask off before leaning against the nearest conveyor belt. He dry heaved several times into the belt, screaming at himself inside his own head that he needed to leave, now, but all that did was make him feel even sicker.

  He then tried his best to force himself to stop thinking entirely. He sat down near the conveyor and tried to empty his mind. It took a while, but slowly over time, he finally began to calm down.

  What is happening right now... Seriously, you have to be kidding me...

  Yuji had been secretly saving up money for years now and was only a year or two from being able to afford the services of a healer for Lisa. Whether they were awakened or self-taught, all healers cost an insane amount even if you only book them for an hour, but after eight years he was almost there.

  And now it's all for nothing. I'll have to do missions or something now, I think? I can't imagine I'll be able to keep working and living normally while doing all of whatever that is on the side.

  Eventually, he stopped feeling like he was going to be sick, so Yuji put his hood and mask back on before running back to the door. He opened it just a tad so he could peek out, and after confirming that there was nobody on either side, he ran back into the alley and straight toward the main thoroughfare.

  Just in case though, he slowed down at the end of the alley and began to power walk ahead while checking his surroundings. Everyone was gone now, including the drunkard, and he couldn't see or hear any airships approaching, which meant he still had time. He returned to a sprint and turned right toward the incline leading up to the elevator.

  Lucky for him, it was already there and waiting with nobody in sight. There was still the worry that he'd run into someone at the top waiting to use the elevator up above, but so long as they didn't get too close to him, they wouldn't be able to see his face through the mask with the minimal lighting and blizzard going on.

  He entered the elevator and pushed the large green button on the panel that activated it. The two spinning yellow lights turned on as the three-foot-tall gate locked in at the entrance. The pulley then whirred to life soon after, lifting the elevator toward the residences above.

  Yuji sat down and rested against the backside of the elevator.

  I'm gonna have to ask Lisa about the awakened, and while she is going to be ecstatic about my sudden interest in the awakened, I think it's for the best that I don't tell her why I want to know about them when I was so disinterested before. Knowing her, if I do that, she'll immediately figure out why her betrothed vanished out of nowhere---

  The unmistakable sound of a dropship approaching could be heard in the distance, knocking Yuji out of his inner monologue. He looked toward his right and could see a set of eight bright blue lights on the underside of the ship whizzing through the air, heading straight for the landing pad near the center of the outpost.