Emika had decided that she would, on her first try, ask a fairly simple question that would hopefully give her a good overview of the magical world. Thus, the question she sought an answer to was:

What is a monster?

Immediately upon crushing the twigs, her mind started to get flooded with information. Hints of visions, voices, and raw data entered her stream of consciousness, to the point where she couldn’t put any of it into words or understand it. At the same time, it felt as if some foundation was being laid out inside her brain. Then, a text appeared on her phone:

Nonhuman Beings that are either born through magic, infused with magic, or capable of using magic, are generally referred to as ‘monsters’. Many attempts have been made to categorise monsters throughout the centuries, though no universal method has ever been widely adopted. There exist species of monsters; in the sense that of that particular monster, there are many specimens. Likewise, there are special monsters that are referred to as ‘unique’, in the sense that it is the only individual of its likeness. Some of the strongest monsters to have clashed with humanity throughout the ages are of the type recognized as ‘unique’, although species such as dragons have still inflicted great devastation and loss.

With that, there also exists the attempt to categorise monsters by the danger they pose to humans. The most widely recognized classification system in modernity is the Falter-Reigh-Ranking, which ranks monsters like this:

F-Rank: A monster that poses no risk.

E-Rank: A monster that poses a risk to property, mostly referred to as a ‘pest’.

D-Rank: A monster that may harm humans in certain circumstances, but can easily be avoided or doesn’t leave lasting damage.

C-Rank: A monster that can cause serious injury to humans, but rarely does.

B-Rank: A monster similar to a C-Rank, except it has an aggressive/hostile disposition towards humans.

A-Rank: Serious risk. Killer of humans.

S-Rank: Similar to A-Rank, except it is very hard to suppress.

SS-Rank: Poses a risk to small scale settlements.

SSS-Rank: Poses a risk to populations.

After reading through that, Emika took another look at Lester’s notes. She vaguely remembered having seen some kinds of danger levels in his database, especially when it came to his monster sightings.

With slight surprise, Emika found that the Well of Abstraction she’d met yesterday had been denoted as S-Rank. She couldn’t for the life of her imagine how it would be that hard to deal with… Then again, it was probably easily possible to get maimed by it if not careful. Emika smiled proudly. So, to other people, that little creature was this dangerous? Maybe not everyone is as precarious and cognisant as I am, she thought.

She figured that in her next questions, she could ask about curses, Revenants and maybe even about the Well of Abstraction itself. However, she didn’t want to blow through all of her resources immediately, and maybe she’d come up with questions that were more important later. After all, while this detailed definition of monsters was certainly nice to know, it still didn’t feel like a game changer…

She wasn’t sure if she’d actually want to destroy her trees for it if all the knowledge she’d receive from Barnacle was going to be in that realm. In either case, she decided to think about it for a while first.

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Which meant that now, she’d finally get to reward herself with some Melisande-time. But first, not having eaten in a while, she inattentively poured herself a bowl of cereal and added her last droplets of oat milk to it — she’d have to fetch her delivery from outside later.

She crunched down on the first few spoonfuls at her kitchen table while unlocking her phone. When Emika opened the forum, her heart immediately lit up. She had gotten several messages from Melisande during these past hours.

That girl often wrote fairly small, inconsequential things; reported random thoughts she had, shared creepy anecdotes she found on the internet, and so on. Sometimes, she’d complain about work, too. Apparently, she was a doll maker for a living.

Emika didn’t respond to every single one of her thoughts, and she was fairly certain that Melisande didn’t mind that. Most of all, she appreciated being made part of Melisande’s life like that a lot. Her chest swelled up every time she remembered that there was another person in this world who would think of her so much as to write her so many small messages each day.

I just did some research, she wrote to start the conversation. I know this is kind of a personal question, and you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, but what is your danger level?

Lol, Melisande answered. That nonsense made up by privileged old men?

Emika hesitated for a second. Now that she mentioned that, it made sense. Thinking about this for more than a second… hadn’t Emika just asked something really bad, maybe? After all, she didn’t even have a clue who made up those facts that Barnacle spat out, and didn’t know anything about its inherent biases, either. I’m very sorry. This was an insensitive question.

Melisande still replied rather quickly.

well...Idk what they categorise me as nowadays. Ig i’ve gone through all kinds of ranks. A-Rank… then I got upped to S-Rank… and at some point, some people wanted to put me into SS-Rank, i think. well. that was just for political reasons if you ask me… to get rid of me? I don’t even know if they succeeded in reclassifying me…

Wow, Emika thought. For some reason, she had not expected that answer. If Melisande was truly that dangerous, wasn’t it a bit of a miracle that she’d be talking about it so openly?

Then again, maybe Melisande was right and this was all a bit of a sham. After hearing what Lester had told her about Cursebreakers, Emika couldn’t help but feel slightly sceptical about humans when it came to dealing with monsters and curses. But… there was no way to know whether what Lester said was actually accurate, either…

Emika thanked Melisande for the answer, and after a few back-and-forth messages, the heavy air she had felt after asking her question was all cleared up.

She focused her attention back to her meal, and was about to swallow the next spoonful, when she suddenly noticed a movement in it.

A few seconds later, she saw a somewhat large black beetle squirm itself out between the flakes.

“Oh my, what a cutie you are,” she whispered, slowly getting up from the table, careful not to let it fall out. Perhaps she should do a better job at sealing up her food supplies. “What if I had accidentally hurt you? Don’t you know it’s dangerous to hide inside my cereal? It’s what I eat.”

In a feat of dexterity she was quite happy with, Emika managed to write a small note to Melisande saying that she was going to fetch her delivery while holding the spoon so the bug wouldn’t fall out.

She let it jump off once she was in her garden. Absent-mindedly, she swallowed down what remained on the spoon and went out to gather the oat milk from her gate. Upon seeing her empty mailbox, she finally remembered the newspaper she had still not read.

It was inside the bag she’d taken on her trip yesterday, and after returning inside, she pulled it out. As she unfolded it, three letters fell out that must have gotten caught up between the pages.

Damn, Emika thought. With how long she hadn’t checked her mailbox before yesterday, these could have arrived ages ago… She hadn’t even considered that she might get actual mail.

Upon inspecting them, all of these letters seemed peculiar in their own way.

The first one was a red letter with a handwritten address. Emika didn’t recognize the writing, and she had never received a similar letter before. It didn’t seem very heavy, but it was fairly thick.

The second letter was even more unique. It had no address on it at all. Also, while it definitely felt like there was something inside, the envelope’s paper had no seams and no opening through which anything could have been inserted — as if someone had created a perfect, hollow piece of paper around another. In addition, thin vines with small leaves grew from and around the paper; and they were very much alive, not dried out at all.

The third letter, however, was in and of itself the least interesting, but at the same time, the most threatening.

It came from the criminal police.