Gathering Information II

"You just dumped all that emotional existential stuff on me and followed it up with... waffles?"

He nodded, dead serious. "The craving is real."

She stared at him. Then her eyes narrowed, and she pointed the mug he'd handed back at his face like it was a weapon. "Tomorrow. But I hope you know this means I'm making you cook it."

Dorian grinned, genuinely, this time.

"No promises."

Rose rolled her eyes but turned toward the kitchen, muttering under her breath, "You're such a weirdo..."

She paused at the door, looked back at him as he lowered his gaze to the cup. She knew she wasn't supposed to develop any feelings, but for some reason, she couldn't help it.

A small smile appeared on her lips, and she turned and left, vanishing down the hallway while her feet made soft thudding sounds, mumbling to herself, "At least you're my weirdo."

After Rose left, Dorian remained seated, unmoving.

His fingers sat loosely on his lap, shoulders slouched, and his mind drifted, just like it always did when the area around him became silent.

'When was I ever normal?'

It was a dumb question. He already knew the answer. He honestly didn't even know why he said it.

He leaned forward, fingers sliding across the corner of the book he had been reading.

He wasn't sure what kept him going, knowing fully well he wasn't really comfortable with the information.

It just made him feel weird, yet he still did, probably his curiosity that needed to be fed.

His eyes scanned the next chapter.

"Beast Classifications, Patterns, Instincts, and Psychological Warfare."

Normal beasts, or base class mutations, were often the results of raw exposure to rift energy. Animals twisted into grotesque versions of themselves, oversized limbs, venom glands, extra heads, multiple organs.

These ones lacked intelligence and acted mostly on instinct, hunger, territory, and noise, sometimes even smell.

They attacked because they could, predictable, killable, but still very deadly.

He flipped the page.

The advanced beasts showed up next, and what Dorian read got him furrowing his brows deeply.

A field report mentioned a soldier who was hunted for three days by a mutated hound-like, human-looking beast.

It waited outside his camp, avoided his traps, When the soldier finally fell asleep, the beast looked past the other soldiers in that tent and killed him alone.

Dorian shuddered and flipped the page quickly.

Very Advanced Beasts, also labeled Cursed Variants, had intelligence comparable to that of human children... or in rare cases, adults.

They could coordinate, infiltrate, manipulate environments, and sometimes even understand human speech.

Entire squads even lost because they did so much as underestimate these beasts. They were nearly impossible to track, unless you were skilled enough.

There was a note pinned at the top, with the signature of a possible survivor.

Very Advanced Beasts tend to mimic their prey's behavior. The smarter the prey, the smarter the beast becomes.

He stopped briefly at a blurry image of one beast human-type body, but it had visible pink veins, black skin, and no face. More like it was wearing a mask.

Moving his gaze to the bottom of the picture, there wasn't a name, just a number:

N-91, Status: Uncontained.

Below it, another quote was scribbled by a survivor of its attack as well:

It doesn't immediately kill. It speaks in ancient tongue, but after devouring the flesh of a woman it held captive as its bride, it spoke our language... and talks so casually with us.

Dorian's eyes narrowed, he traced the other parts of the notes to the corner of the page, written horizontally:

When it realized we weren't willing to speak, it took all the females and called in a swarm of normal beasts.

Dorian's grip tightened around the book, millions of questions forming in his head. One thing he wanted to know was why the beasts took the women.

If he wanted to assume it took them back to its home, then how could humans survive in the rifts?

He became skeptical about flipping the page, but he did it anyway, and the last class was displayed.

Humanoid Beasts (Deceivers)

His breathing slowed as his eyes roamed over the paragraph.

They were actually humans, or beasts of another level, mostly Apex, or simply the overall heads, before the Monarch.

Sometimes they appeared as pure humans, with heavenly features. Looks enough to make one stop breathing.

They do not kill randomly, but have been known to enjoy seeing and hearing people scream.

Based on the reports from the last massive wave in the West, twenty-five humans shifted, looking like Very Advanced Beasts but still maintaining their human features.

One was caught laughing with a child it later killed, but the others did not let the soldiers take the body. The healers took the body and healed it right before them.

However, they still weren't attacked.

These beasts' intelligence varied, but they all shared one trait; they hardly killed, unless it was necessary, dating back to the previous massive wave.

It was a massacre.

They had a very close encounter with one. Its face that was covered with a veil, but was a white, translucent beast girl.

She approached the soldiers, asking that they do not shoot. She walked past the frontline, the tanks, the mages, and went directly to a soldier near the tents, who was barely able to stand.

Dorian's breathing had paused. He kept his eyes on that page, not wanting to miss any information. But reading that part, his heart skipped a beat.

"It can't be, right?"

He asked, lifting the page a little to flip, because something felt very familiar about the beast mentioned.

The beast girl crouched by the injured man and told him to calm down, that she wasn't trying to hurt anyone. Knowing the soldiers had no choice, he did as she said, and she whispered her name to him.

She asked if her name was beautiful. He truthfully replied, but his next words were muffled by a kiss.

Another note was pinned to the page, and Dorian peeled it off the book and turned it over.

From another survivor, that specific day:

Our comrade told us not to attack the lady, and said she wasn't going to hurt us but help. We disagreed, and she seemed disappointed. She kissed our comrade again and vanished, promising to return. After that, our comrade was nowhere to be found when we returned from our mission, oddly without casualties

At the bottom, a name was written in an ink that had already faded, he assumed it was the beasts name, however, in a second his expression shifted to frustration and annoyance at once, as his eyes settled on the name—

Benson Wolfhart