The giant torii gates stood out. I hadn’t paid attention to the fact that there was only forestry around them, so they towered over everything in their surroundings. I had expected it to take a bit of time to reach the actual base since they were so large, but it still took us a good hour to actually reach the base of the gates.

While we were walking, my attention inevitably lingered on the wall of fog that seemed to split the land. Bluish white fog rose up from the ground, shrouding the sky with an ever present haze. Small wisps of vapor swirled around the red pillars of the torii gates, wrapping around some parts like hazy strips of cloth.

The fog itself stretched further than the gates themselves, going left and right of the gate as if there was an invisible wall that prevented it from encroaching further on the land. It formed a seemingly endless wall of fog that extended past the horizon till I couldn’t tell if the fog wall ended at one point. With how it seemed to swallow the sky the closer we got to it, I felt like I probably wouldn’t be able to see the ends of them if I walked for another week or so.

Putting the sheer scale of the fog out of my mind, I switched back to admiring the torii gates. They were erected in a wide open field with oddly even grass. Like someone that constantly maintained the area around the gates; only small patches of flowers dotted the surrounding clearing. Despite the odd sight, I craned my neck further just to take in the sheer height the torii gates reached. I likened them to skyscrapers back in my previous world, and I felt that most skyscrapers might be shorter than these torii gates. A very curious part of me wondered just how they built them.

Beside me, Akisame was also equally curious about the gates. He had stopped dragging the bandits after we arrived and Shizuka asked everyone to rest for a while. Then, he ran up to touch the torii gates.

I panicked a little when he did that, worrying that they might react or something. However, I quickly cooled my thoughts as nothing happened. The young boy looked back at me with his hand on the massive red pillar that was one of the gate’s legs. I broke into a smile as he grinned in my direction gesturing for me to join him.

“Mister David, this feels weird.” Akisame said, patting the pillar. “How did they do this? What do they do?”

I licked my lips, idly touching the pillar as well instead of answering him. The wood was oddly warm, and I felt my sixth sense fire off for a second. I focused on the feeling this time, tracing it as best as I could to understand it better.

It was a little hard to grasp, but I got the feeling of what I’d describe as a train. They had trains here? In any case, Minamoto’s words about these gates being our transport rang in my head, and I figured that they might be some sort of way through the fog. A path or vehicle to get to our destination faster.

I squinted my eyes as I looked at the thick fog beyond the gate. Being this close, I could vividly feel my sixth sense firing off over and over again as if it was warning me of something. Oddly, it seemed like there was interference. Like I could feel that something was there, but whatever I felt was just too obscure and hard to pin a label on. It perplexed me as this sense had not failed like this whenever it activated.

“Woah! This is weird!” I nearly had a heart attack as I looked over at Akisame who was putting both his hands in and out of the thick fog next to the gate.

Hurriedly, I yanked him back, feeling a bit of resistance at the action. It was almost like I was yanking him out of really thick syrup.

“Don’t do that.” I said sternly, watching as Akisame’s enthusiasm died a little. I eased up a little as I saw his reaction. This was probably his biggest adventure away from his home, and while I felt his excitement, I knew he was still in pain from his loss. Subdued, I continued. “This fog feels wrong. Don’t walk into it, okay?”

“Okay… sorry.”

I sighed. Since when did I become a babysitter? “I’m not that mad, Akisame. Just… things that look weird or dangerous normally are very bad news. Don’t just stick your hands into random things.”

“Dav- the Gaijin is right.” I jumped a bit as Shizuka’s voice came from behind me. Her presence was a physical weight as I watched Akisame nod happily and flush with embarrassment to her words. Whether Shizuka understood her influence or ignored it, she continued while looking only at me. “This is a Fog Well. Though, towns and people who live close to them sometimes call it the lost lands from how many people get lost inside it.”

“Lost inside? Is it really that bad?” I said, raising an eyebrow.

Shizuka nodded. “Of course, they’re a really shitty place to find yourself if you aren’t at least Life Rank D. Fog Wells are regions where the Storm Belt creates heavy enough water that it falls out of the Inverse Ocean, forming lands that are covered completely by this fog– something that makes moving between regions phenomenally harder than they should be.”

Heavy water? My tongue tasted the slightly sweet air, and a spark of memory shot through my head. I paused as I wondered if the fog had anything to do with the vague memories of someone mentioning things about heavy water to me. Though, I reasoned the more esoteric effects like isolating my sixth sense was more mystical than whatever my memories were putting together.

“So, we can’t move through this? Won’t the fog clear up at one point?” I asked her. The giant torii gates were obviously something special, but the fact that this Fog Well turned out to be dangerous also concerned me. The fact that they had a name for it meant that this wasn’t the only one around.

Wonderful. I certainly loved areas of uncrossable fog that might or might not kill me.

“No, no Fog Wells have ever disappeared after they descend.” she chuckled. “Well, its not like you can’t travel through them. Though, the creatures that have adapted to living in them might be too much for someone who can’t detect them. After all, it… hmmm, perhaps it would be better to show you.”

Shizuka smiled as she finished her sentence before sucking in a deep breath and stepping into the fog. Instinctively, I reached out to try and stop her, but I was too slow as her body dipped into the fog, causing a ripple effect to spread along her entrance. It was almost like she had entered a body of water.

Almost immediately, her figure lost color, and I could only see a vague silhouette of a female standing just inside the fog. The silhouette moved around slowly, but I noticed her legs and arms blurred a bit as they tread through the thick fog.

“Is the weird lady okay?” Akisame asked next to me.

“I think she wanted to show me some-” I paused as I looked over at him. “What did you call her?”

“Huh? The weird lady?”

I took in that information slowly. Shizuka’s infatuation aura should still be working at this distance, but as I looked back at the blurry silhouette still within the fog, I understood a bit of what the fog did. Just like how my sixth sense seemed to be muted while I tried to sense what was in the fog, so too did Shizuka’s influence.

With that understanding, I stepped further away from the fog wall. Akisame watched me and copied my actions without asking. We both watched Shizuka slowly walk through the fog, and it only took minutes before she resurfaced, breaching through the thick fog with a slow gasp for air.

I furrowed my brows at the action, trying not to pay attention to Shizuka’s flushed appearance. Her presence was already running along the back of my thoughts, and my eyes bounced as she took longer breaths. Her ruby lips widened as she caught my glance. When I sternly met her gaze head on, her smile quickly died.

I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of seeing me blush like a schoolboy. While I had tried to put her previous manipulations behind us, I still held some biases. My thoughts were more on the oddities of the fog as well.

“Did you figure out what is wrong with it?” Shizuka asked.

“I’m guessing the fog takes away most senses.” I said, remembering my sixth sense acting weird. If Shizuka said that Fog Wells made moving around “phenomenally harder,” then I figured the loss of senses had to be much deeper than just special abilities like my sixth sense. “It’s a bit of a stretch, so it probably dampens them instead… I think. Oh right, I also saw it looked almost like a liquid when you entered it, too. I’m guessing the fog is hard to move in– like being underwater or something, if I had to take a guess.”

Shizuka’s smile froze on her lips. I saw she was in the motions to tell me something, but my analysis had stopped her words in her throat. “Yeah… how did you– no, nevermind. Did you have something similar in your land?”

“Yeah.” I lied easily. I had already had some clues on what the fog entailed, and watching her move through it had given me an inkling on what it did.

“An interesting Gaijin. Where did you pick up the stray, cousin?”

I flinched, stepping closer to Shizuka as a heavy, raspy voice appeared right next to my ear. Akisame turned and balled his fists at the newcomer, and I gave the boy points for courage. Though, I took all his points away as I saw just who would call the Queen “cousin.”

They were tall. At least six feet in height. On their body were clothes similar to the villagers; a thick green shirt that seemed a couple sizes too big, making it droop down to their forearms as well as reveal a bit of their muscular chest. Keeping with their oversized clothes trend, their black shorts were long enough to go past his knees to the middle of his shins. Their fingers had the same nail-talons that extended at least an inch past their finger tip. Vulpine eyes trailed over me curiously, eyeing me almost like a meal on a plate. A large, cheshire grin seemed stapled to their face, allowing me to see the similar needle-like teeth where human molars should be. It was nice to know that was a family trait…

However, the feature I noticed immediately were the tails that swayed behind him. Four large fox tails made out of animated stone and dirt were attached somewhere on their back. I hadn’t thought they were tails when I first saw them, but as I watched them idly swish back and forth I grew increasingly clear that they were tails.

I shot a glance to Shizuka then back to her supposed cousin. My question was at the tip of my tongue, but I held back, wary of the newcomer.

“No need to be tense, Gaijin.” Shizuka’s cousin said, holding his hands up in a gesture for surrender. His grin widened beyond what normal human lips were capable of, showing off more of his teeth. It was… unnerving. “I won’t bite.”

“Utamara, you’re as annoying as always.” Shizuka said, stepping forwards almost as if to shield me from him.

Utamara chuckled a bit, backing off further. “Come on, I get no entertainment out here. Screwing with everyone is my Gods given right. Or are you gonna order me around, Miss Commanding Prefect?”

Shizuka sighed, and I tried to figure out if this guy was even affected by her aura or not. “Must you get into old titles? I am the Queen now.”

“Right right, I forget the little kit has grown up after all these years.” Utamara mused happily. His tails swished faster as he looked over Shizuka. “How many tails are you at now?”

“Classified.”

“Boo.” Utamara turned to me, grinning. “So, I heard about a report about a Gaijin, but that turns out to be you. You are…” he regarded me for a moment, cupping his chin with his hand and squinting his eyes. “Less than I expected. A skill maybe?”

“Utamara. Manners.” Shizuka warned.

The Kitsune waved. “Yeah yeah, I get it. Anyways, I’m Utamara. No surname; I’m a pure yokai unlike someone else.”

“Uhm…” I felt awkward. Utamara’s first impression reminded me of Shizuka’s. Both of them were pushy in their own ways, and both of them seemed to speak their minds. Is it just a Kitsune thing? I prayed to all my stalkers that that wasn’t the case. “Nice to meet you. You can call me David, I guess.”

“Dav…id? Gaijins always have the weirdest names.” Shizuka shot him a warning glance again.

“My name is Akisame!” the boy next to me shouted at the yokai, puffing out his chest. “Why do you have tails?”

“Why do I…” Utamara seemed completely caught off guard by the question, and for once, his grin faltered as he thought over the question. He seemed to seriously consider Akisame’s question as if it was some philosophical quandary.

I threw a glance at Shizuka and she smiled wryly. I sighed, clearing my throat. “So uh, what is royalty doing all the way out here?”

“Royalt- what in Yomi are you talking about?” Utamara barked out laughing. He seemed to laugh harder as he realized I was being completely serious.

My cheeks burned as his laughter continued, and shuffled around awkwardly. I knew that I had messed up somehow, but his lengthy laughter only enhanced my embarrassment. It didn’t help that Akisame started laughing because he was confused about the situation. Though, I got the feeling that the boy only laughed because someone else was.

Shizuka patted my shoulder. “Pay him no mind. Utamara just wants to get a rise out of you. Natural born Kitsune are formed from deep emotions between two people; he is born from annoyance. It’s in his nature to be an asshole.”

I realized the implications of her words immediately. It wasn’t hard to put together after Utamara called himself a “pure yokai” while Shizuka described him as “natural born.” Those two facts added up together for me to realize that Shizuka was something different. A hybrid maybe? Is that why she has no visible tails?

“I can tell a bit of what you’re thinking. It’s a pretty annoying question people have, really.” Shizuka’s red lips creased. “Yes, I am a bit different from a normal Kitsune, but not that different. It goes back to how Toshiki was formed; one of the strongest Exorcists to ever exist fell in love with my ancestor, and they somehow made a spell for her to get pregnant like a normal human. I have no idea what shit they did, but uh… it worked. Anyways, just know that because the Queen has always been a Kitsune, Toshiki always has stray yokai with enough intelligence like Utamara who want to settle down.”

“Hey, this stray can hear you, you know.”

“Disregarding that,” Shizuka said, ignoring the male Kitsune while he grumbled. “If you really want to learn more, and I mean like you’re shitting your pants for not knowing or something, you can ask the old hag in Ikshiizu. She’s crazy about the history behind… well, everything.”

I wanted to comment on many things. Shizuka’s ability to render the founding of her kingdom to a simple sentence was perhaps the biggest thing. It was both impressive and utterly baffling. How someone who was labeled a one of the strongest Exorcists fell in love with a yokai was perhaps a very important detail. Based on my very slim knowledge of Japanese myths, normally exorcists were enemies with yokai.

However, Shizuka’s explanation let me understand another underlying issue. I had been confused why Minamoto hadn’t immediately chased after the Nurarihyon back in the village when I brought it up before we fought the Oni – Variant, but now things made a little more sense. Toshiki wasn’t just a kingdom founded by Exorcists. It was a kingdom founded by the union of Exorcists and yokai.

Which meant that the enemy who had planned against us could also seed yokai in Toshiki to attack us as well.

I knew there had to be protections in place to prevent such a thing from happening, but I still worried about the chances that the enemy could still attack. They had obviously used suicide units; if one squinted hard at the fact that they brought a literal army down on Minamoto’s, and subsequently everyone else’s, head. And if they planned to just take me down, I had no doubts that they could do it easily. The question now was: were they actually going to do it?

I sighed internally as I reviewed my thoughts over again. I knew I was going to have to open my Class Advancement once again and hope that I gained a godly class. It was a very distant, unrealistic hope, but I never really caught on to logical thinking.

“History lesson s’ great and all, but you still need to register for going through the Sacred Gates. I just know the bastards on the other end are gonna freak when a Gaijin pops up.” Utamara cut in. “Now, while it is fun messing with you all, I got a job to do.”

“Times like these are when you’re dependable.” Shizuka commented.

Utamara waved halfheartedly. “Anyways, I recognize most of the people here. I need to check,” he pointed to most of the children that were traveling with us from the village destroyed by bandits, Akisame and me. “All of them.”

There was a slow pause before people started moving. I watched as the parents lined up their children, a total of ten when you excluded Akisame and I, and they formed a small line as they waited for something. Utamara huffed as he saw them move easily.

“Good, they know what to do.” he whispered, glancing at me. “So, you wanna go first, sunshine?”

I blinked, backing away. “Uh, come again?”

“Sunshine, you know, your…” Utamara awkwardly pointed to his hair, and I slowly caught on to what he meant. It probably wasn’t often that blondes were seen here, if I had to make a guess. Though for the first time, he seemed a bit off balanced by me not reacting immediately to his jab. “Gods, don’t tell me you were sheltered or something.”

I ignored him like Shizuka said. Sure, he probably was stronger than me by miles, but his presence was similar to Shizuka in the sense that he seemed unthreatening. Did all Kitsune have aura techniques, then?

“So uh, how do we do this? Is there a form I have to sign or something?” I asked, disregarding the random thoughts that passed through my head.

“Huh? Nah, nothing that complicated out here.” Utamara waved his hand. “That boring stuff is for humans back in the cities to handle. Your kind likes all those useless things. I just need to log those that haven’t been seen before– easy stuff, really. Hand.”

I idly offered my hand when Utamara asked. He carefully tapped the tip of his pointer finger’s nail on my palm, drawing a bead of blood. I got a little confused as he brought the small amount of blood on his nail up to his lips and tasted it.

“Uh…” I looked around. The only other person confused was Akisame and the other children, so I reasoned that this was supposed to happen. Though, I dislike the fact that no one warned me of this in the first place.

“Interesting.” Utamara regarded me with a much deeper glance than before.

Beside me, Shizuka stepped up and looked at him sternly. “Did you find anything?”

“Nothing bad. One technique, two skills– normal stuff for a budding soldier. Did you know he has a hypersensitive soul?”

“He does?” Shizuka asked, clearly startled. She looked back at me as if she were trying to gaze into my deepest secrets. Hurriedly, I kept my eyes firmly stuck to the ground, knowing that I would probably say something stupid like how she suddenly started smelling like fresh flowers.

“Thank you.” her voice chimed in sweetly. Damnit, her ability is broken. I can’t even protect my thoughts around her.

“Yeah, anyways, it happens occasionally, so him having a hypersensitive soul is not that rare.” Utamara said, sparing me from my embarrassment. I changed my opinion of him immediately to a nice guy since he could have easily made it much more awkward. “Though, I wonder why the Exorcist of the Sleeping Woods never said anything about it.”

“Its Minamoto.” Shizuka said, and I couldn’t help but agree with her. My friend failed to mention many things.

“Right, anyways, I’ll get on with the others.” Utamara said, looking at Akisame and holding his hand out.

Sadly, his plan came to a halt as Akisame grew anxious about having his blood being tasted. I had to help calm the boy, and then he moved onto the rest. Though, now that I had a bit of free time, I decided to finally advance my class.

I prayed to every stalker who followed me around, and then wondered if praying to myself would work. I did silently in my head just in case.

Come on, give me a super godly class!