It was early afternoon by the time Lia and I moved back up, into the primary residence. I had warned her about the Curse of the Sun, making sure she knew to stay out of direct sunlight, though even indirect sunlight was somewhat painful. Luckily, the day was overcast, allowing us to move freely indoors and even going outside might have been possible, though incredibly risky.

The moment I was off the stairs, a rapidly approaching, clicking sound caught my attention, making me whirl around to face the incoming threat. Only, there was no threat, only a furry missile that apparently had something to say about her person staying in a cellar with a too-narrow staircase to accommodate her canine furriness. In order to make her displeasure known, Silva bowled me over, pushing me flat to the ground before starting to absolutely cover my face in doggy kisses. The first moment, I tried to protest and stop her but once I was on the ground, I kept my mouth closed, not interested in getting slobber into my mouth, it was bad enough to have my face covered with it.

Lia, on the other hand, reacted amusingly hostile. She had been behind me on the stairs and when I was bowled over, she jumped and demonstrated just how impressive her newly gained physical abilities were. With a single leap, she somehow managed to get past Silva and me, and with a second leap, landed on a cupboard, from where she hissed down at Silva.

And here I thought I had accidentally created a Vampire, not some sort of cat.

Silva was quite unimpressed by Lia’s threatening hisses and summarily ignored her, at least until she felt I was thoroughly chastised and allowed me to push her off.

“What is that beast?!” Lia asked, her voice an angry hiss. Maybe Silva could understand her, maybe she simply didn’t like her voice or maybe she had even reasoned that Lia was the cause of my prolonged stay underground. Either way, with Lia hissing at Silva, Silva decided that reciprocity was fair play and began barking up a storm. In a possible further indication of Lia’s vampiric felinity, said vampire scrambled up, onto a higher shelf, squeezing between the top shelf and the ceiling, while hissing down.

It looked incredibly hilarious. While I had no idea how Lia had looked before turning Shattered and now Vampire, she had become a tall female, though far from Sigmir’s towering height, with long, almost gangly limbs and a mess of wavy, copper-coloured hair. Her most distinctive, and obviously inhumane, features were her eyes, the iris overly large, almost completely crowding out the sclera, and deep crimson, mirroring the colour of my Blood Magic. Luckily, her hands looked completely human, though I had noticed a special ability on her sheet that was called Retractable Claws. An earlier test had shown that she could manifest crimson claws around the last segment of her fingers, hard and sharp enough to leave visible scratches in the metal of her old cage.

After watching for a moment, I felt the onset of a headache and told both of my companions, for that is what they were, to knock it off and, to Lia, to come down, making sure to call her Chantalle where others might hear. They obliged, though from the looks passing between them, I was quite sure this wasn’t the end of it.

Silva’s barking was enough to bring a few people over and the reactions to Lia’s presence were curious. I wasn’t sure why, but most of them looked at her with a frown, apparently unsure of what was going on, while one middle-aged guy had a few tears run down his face in an expression mirroring the one Kira had earlier. Disbelief, relief and joy, all mixed and tangled together. Though that might have been due to her looks, her sleepwear was ragged, thanks to her attempts to break her cage as Shattered, and wrapping her in my cloak only did so much. Or rather, did very little, given that it was sized for my diminutive physique, and deliberately short even for that. But better than nothing, if only barely.

“Sweetie,” he exclaimed, quickly approaching and pulling Lia into a bear hug, completely ignoring Silva and myself. From the looks of it, that had to be Chantalle’s father, it would certainly make sense with the awkwardness Lia was displaying.

“Everything’s fine, my dog was just a little too excited,” I tried to assure the people around, not quite certain how much was known about the situation with Chantalle and now Lia.

“Miss Jacobs, may I have a word, please? Clarence said you were looking for us,” another guy asked, his voice deferential and hesitant. I recognised him from Mrs Wu’s gym and was relatively sure his name was Cheng Hu, the guy I was supposed to find.

“Certainly. Is it something that needs to be discussed privately?” I easily accepted his request, given that it likely was something about the reason his group had stayed here this long.

“No, not really, whatever works best for you. Just that we’d appreciate it if you can help us get back to the Gym, please. When we tried yesterday, but had to turn back due to wild animals. Hopefully, travelling with you will solve that issue,” he explained, making me frown.

“What happened? I didn’t really notice anything too troublesome, just a horse that wanted Silva and me to get away from the area. We just walked down the road, nothing to it,” I asked, needing more information as apparently, I had missed something troublesome.

It led back to what Mark had told me earlier, livestock getting powers thanks to the system and remembering that a human without the right tools had very little that they could use to press a point with thousand pounds of angry cattle. Before the change, livestock had been domesticated into relying on humans for protection and nurture, now the tables had turned. Instead of the livestock getting onto our table, they could eat us for dinner, if they were so inclined.

“Well, my plan was to head back, no problem. Just that we’ll travel by night, but I should be able to guide you, I can easily see through the night. Any additional plans with the people here, or anything I need to know?” I easily accepted his request, not really bothered by it. With the boost in level, I was confident that I could survive against anything, even if there might be things out there that could force me to flee.

“I’ll go with you,” Lia immediately jumped into the conversation, interrupting the talk with what I assumed to be her father.

“What?” said father questioned, sounding angry and insulted, “I just got you back, you aren’t going anywhere, young lady!”

“As I told mom, I’m not healed. I’m stable, but it’s a stability bought by her, at a high price,” Lia shook her head, gesturing towards me. Hearing her, the desperate plea in her voice, made even my chest feel tight, her father turning pale and swallowing hard. His eyes flickered between myself and Lia, who looked at him with determination in her eyes.

“Please, don’t force me. I don’t want to lose myself in the darkness, not again. Please, dad,” she continued, laying it on thick. And succeeding.

“You,” he looked at me, his face all twisted up to the point that I couldn’t read him at all, “You’ll take care of my daughter!” he told me, his voice almost breaking. Desperation, pleading, anger, hope, it was all tangled together into a rope that choked him out.

“Dad, don’t put this on her, she saved me,” Lia interrupted again, shielding me behind her body. With my diminutive size, that was quite easy, easy enough that it irked me. I could destroy everyone here with nary a thought and yet, this teenager felt she could protect me?!

“Maybe this is something that should be handled privately,” I made myself heard in their conversation for the first time, noticing that the entire area fell into an almost eerie quiet at my words.

“Please, I’ll show you my room. We can talk there, right, dad?” Lia asked, though I had a feeling that she would do it anyway, whether her father accepted or not.

“Yes,” he nodded, following after us when Lia gently guided me.

As we walked away, I could faintly hear people talk behind us and, unsurprisingly, the topic was on Lia and myself. Hearing them, I was somewhat certain that Kira and her husband hadn’t told the people what had happened to Lia, at least not the whole truth. Earlier, I had only listened with half an ear as Kira and Lia had talked about their future plans, leaving me with a bit of an information deficit. Something to solve in the future.

But for now, I had a worried father to handle, making me wonder how I should go about doing that. I didn’t want to alienate him, the farm was likely the best place to stay while investigating that Old Slaughterhouse, something I had put on my to-do list. The scent was rather interesting, and I wanted to know what was going on. If there was some super-powerful necromancer, it meant a lot of EXP for me, if it was a phenomenon of Wild Magic, I wanted to know, cause it likely meant that the dead wouldn’t stay that way.

If that happened, we’d have another mess on our hands, one we really didn’t need right now. And weren’t prepared for, at all.