22.1ᴘᴀᴛʀᴇᴏɴ.ᴄᴏᴍ/sᴛʀᴀᴛᴏᴛʜʀᴀx

Inquisitor Baera looked up as a fist hammered on her office door. She frowned and put her pen down beside the reams of paperwork she had gradually been working through.

"You may enter."

The door opened and a girl slumped through breathing hard. Her blonde hair was a tangled mess and lank with sweat. She looked as though she had run to her office from wherever she had come from. Judging from her appearance she was an active adventurer of the dungeon. Not that informative considering the town was built to service one. What was more curious was the huge patch of hair that appeared to have been ripped from her scalp leaving an angry red bleeding welt behind.

Baera leant to one side and rested her chin on her fist as she eyed the girl.

"Girl. What makes you think it wise to come to me in a state like this. You're so out of breath you can barely get a word out and you look like you've been in a fight with a Barber's wife."

The girl shook her head and then seemed to steady herself. "I want to report a problem. Something new."

"Please, go on. I am just in complete suspense to hear this," said the Inquisitor so dryly that it made deserts appear as oceans.

The girl seemed to realise just who she was speaking to and cleared her throat awkwardly.

"Uhm, Right. I was on a trip into the dungeon, part of a slaving team that liked to focus on minor tribal monsters like Goblins-"

"To the point girl."

"S-sorry. We were on our return trip when we came across a monster none of us had ever seen before. At first I only saw a glimpse of a shadowy figure, but later I saw it in full. It looked sort of like a bipedal wolf gone feral, with yellow eyes and black fur completely drenched in blood. Our team leader decided that he didn't want us to fight it and so we avoided it and went up two floors of the dungeon."

"I hope that there is more to this story than just a sighting or I will have you cleaning out the stables for a month for wasting my time."

"Yes! There's more. We made camp in east quadrant and thought we were safe but soon after we had gone to sleep the creature attacked and set our slaves free. It killed our Hobgoblin scout and then killed the leader of our team, a powerful Aeromancer. But what came after was why I came here."

She took a deep breath.

"The black furred monster attacked me, I fought back, and then it spoke to me. It told me that it used to be someone I knew, a Human."

Baera leaned forward, her brow furrowing.

"I, or rather a prior group that I was with, were given permission by the town's ranker to kill that person. We took him out to the dungeon for ease of disposal, killed him, and threw his remains in the big lake on the bottom floor. The black furred creature knew of this and named everyone who was there, it claimed that it was that Human but returned from the dead and turned into a monster. He promised revenge, I only escaped due to my new unique magic."

"Curious. It's true I don't know of any monster or species with that physical description and I know more than most. A human leveler that became a monster?"

"Yes! That's the thing, it sounds insane, but it's real! He had some strange ability that allowed him to consume and absorb things, I didn't get to see what he was capable of but he let slip that it's linked to growth."

"And an ability I have also never heard of. Hrmm, if you did not seem so sincere I would suspect you were making this up."

"Never! I would never lie to an Inquisitor, only a fool would do such a thing!"

"Quite. Very well, your name?"

"It's Eliza. Uhm, t-there's a reward right? It's just I recently got a special Class and I lost my new water staff for th-that and you know how, they're uhm, expensive."

"Eliza. You did well to come to me. Inquisitors place high priority on seeking out dungeon anomalies before they become an issue and nipping them in the bud. If I can confirm your words, then yes, you will receive an appropriate reimbursement. However, I will command you not to breathe a singular word about this. If this truly is as you say, a leveler somehow become monster then this is a… highly confidential matter. Now go and get yourself cleaned up and leave this with me."

The girl hesitated, bowed, and then fled from the Inquisitor's presence.

Baera rubbed her chin. "A shadowy monster? Where did I read that recently?"

She rifled through some minor reports at the side of her desk and pulled a paper free, a single sheet. A statement on the demise of half of a team of adventurers to a horde of Shroomlian monsters. Nothing unusual for this dungeon. Idiot levelers got themselves killed all the time. What was curious was that one of the survivors seemed convinced that they were being stalked by a black furred shadowy bipedal thing, and that it had caused the shroomlians to swarm and attack the team. An interesting data point perhaps grounding this Eliza girl's story. She noted that the two survivors of the team were currently accusing each other of having murdered the team's healer. She put the report back from where she had retrieved it.