Kaimin peered through the bars of the cell at a mutated wolf. It was about thrice the size of what he was used to and at least ten times as aggressive. It snarled at him trying to murder him just by staring him down. It rushed at the bars, slamming against them with considerable force, but the bars didn’t budge. They were made of the strongest metal known to their race, albinium.
“Shock it.”
Kaimin gave the command with practiced ease while keeping the wolf in his eyes. His assistant, Gonlur, cast a weak lightning spell from his position to Kaimin’s left. The wolf yelped and recoiled, retreating to a corner of its cell. It would be placid for a while before forgetting that Gonlur’s magic was bad news before trying to attack again.
These monsters really were quite stupid, even more so than their regular animal counterparts. It was as if these monsters forgot all of their original base instincts and had them overridden with something else. Something infinitely more violent.
He glanced over at Gonlur, trying to see how he reacted to this specimen, but all he could see was the usual blank faceplate. There was something eerie about not being able to see the face of your contemporaries, something unsettling. No emotion could be glimpsed from the blank slate, not even the eyes were visible. Well, there was still a debate about whether they even had eyes to begin with, but as long as they could see, it wasn’t too bad.
All that was reflected in Gonlur’s faceplate, was Kaimin’s equally unreadable faceplate. Kaimin shuddered as he was reminded of his own new form, feeling an odd sense of detachment. Nobody had fully adjusted to their new bodies yet. That would take a lot more time. Wanting to distract himself from the existential dread that crept up on him, Kaimin focused back on the wolf.
Only to be distracted by Gonlur’s tail swishing around, an involuntary nervous tick as Kaimin had found out. He was studying Gonlur and his own people just as much as the monster wolf. A sad necessity since the event changed everything… and everyone. Oddly fascinated by the swishing tail of his assistant, Kaimin failed to notice somebody else's approach.
“Hey, Kaimin! Gonlur!” A female voice called out, making Kaimin jump. “What are we looking at today?”
Kaimin immediately recognized the voice, as it belonged to his research partner of many years, yet, when he turned around, instead of the bubbly and cute elf that he came to know so dearly, he was faced with a monstrous-looking thing almost twice his size. Just like Kaimin and Gonlur, Gimmi had been transformed into what only could be called a monster. Plates of jagged armor, clawed hands, a tail, and an unreadable faceplate making for an intimidating sight when combined with her sheer size.
“A mutated wolf that Team B brought in earlier,” Kaimin replied after he was reminded of their transformed status again. “Probably one of the more aggressive specimens, although I don’t think it has any skills. Or if it does, it hasn’t tried using them yet.”
“Ohh! Look at the cute puppy!” Gimmi crouched down to match her friend's size, peering into the cage at the comparatively small wolf. The wolf seemed to take offense to that and charged at the bars again, intending to take out anyone it got its fangs on. “Oh wow, it really is quite grumpy.”
“Yes, that’s what I just told you,” Kaimin sighed and made a few notes while the wolf tried to break out. “Shock it.”
Another blast of lightning sent the wolf back into its corner, wary of the mage. No doubt it would attack again pretty soon.
“We’ve been repeating this spiel for about half an hour now,” Kaimin said while looking over his notes. “I honestly don’t think there is anything noteworthy about this guy's personality, except that it is even more aggressive than most other monsters we managed to catch. I say we keep our eyes on it for a bit, checking for any skill usage, and if it doesn’t show us anything we send it over to the lab for testing.”
“That should be fine, although we’ll have to make sure it's wrapped up nice and tight,” Gimmi sat down on her tail with practiced ease. “Don’t want it to cause any accidents.”
“Agreed,” Kaimin huffed. “By the way, how do you do it?”
“Do what?”
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“You seem to have acclimated to your new body so fast…” Kaimin looked her up and down. “I mean, you were so small before, and now you’re huge and have a tail and all that stuff. How come you’re the only one that doesn’t seem to have any problems with that?”
“Hmm? But we’ve been like this for almost two months now Kai!” Gimmi tapped Kaimins faceplate with a sharp claw. “If you ask me, you’re the weird one for still being so hung up about it. Everybody else is getting used to it as well.”
“Well…” Kaimin cringed a bit. Had it really been two months already? He had thrown himself at his work in order to distract himself from the horrible changes occurring on the whole planet. “It’s just… not natural… I think?”
“This is our new natural, Kaimin,” Gimmi admonished in an unusually serious tone. “You should better get used to it sooner rather than later. You know that if you need to talk, you can always come to me. Or if you’d rather, you know that the organization is offering therapy for anybody that needs it.”
“I know, I know…” Kaimin scratched the back of his head. “I’ll… see what I can do. But hey, look, the wolf looks like it’s about to attack again.”
Gimmi saw the discomfort in her friend and allowed him to redirect her attention for now, intent on hounding him about it later over a drink. She looked back into the cage and the wolf indeed had stopped cowering in its corner and was eyeing the three of them with bloodlust in its eyes.
“There really isn’t a lot going on in its brain isn’t there?” Gimmi remarked as the wolf attacked again, before being zapped.
“I suspect there isn't a single intelligent thought in this thing,” Kaimin confirmed. “As soon as it sees something alive and moving it switches into attack mode.”
“Bummer,” Gimmi shrugged. “Hey listen, I heard Team D saw something that looked like a bunch of fire that was alive! It was moving around and attacking them when they got too close. They’re currently discussing how to catch it for studying.”
“Well, they better study it off-site, because I don’t want to deal with yet another fire in the facility,” Kaimin groaned. “The last one cost us two valuable specimens.”
“Aw come on! Isn’t this at all fascinating to you?” Gimmi crossed her arms. “I mean, not only the intelligent races on the planet, but every animal suddenly transforms into these… monsters, but now there’s a mass of flames that somehow lives and all you can think of is the fire safety protocol? Where’s your sense of adventure?”
“Well, I didn’t ask for this, didn’t I?” Kaimin rebuked a bit harsher than intended. “Look, I’m sorry, but this is just a lot to deal with, okay? Not everybody can brush off a monumental change like that, and for now, I’d much rather calmly study the safer monsters they can bring in than dance around a fire that thinks I’m a marshmallow.”
“Alright, alright,” Gimmi held up her hands in defeat. “Now what do you say I get in there and try to coax out a skill or two from our puppy?”
“Just make sure you don’t get hurt… too much,” Kaimin sighed while gesturing for Gonlur to open the cell door for Gimmi. “I know you’re huge now and your constitution is decent, but make sure to signal Gonlur when it gets too much. He’ll zap it out of commission.”
“Yes, yes, this isn’t my first rodeo,” Gimmi answered before stepping into the cell. “Now, make sure to watch well, wouldn’t want to miss a skill activation.”
Gimmi had barely entered the cell when the wolf barked and rushed at her, ready to tear her apart. She only chuckled before kicking it hard enough to fly into the opposite wall. “You’re going to have to try harder than that, little doggy.”
----------------------------------------
I felt a weird disconnect as the memory ended, being thrown back into my body after having witnessed everything from the perspective of somebody named Kaimin. It took me a few moments to come to terms that I wasn’t him, the sensation of being in the wrong body fading by the second.
Well… that was different.
The system had shown me a memory of the people that lived here a long, long time ago. And it was quite interesting, to say the least. It all but confirmed the existence of elves, since the person called Gimmi apparently used to be one. In fact, it sounded like all of these monstrous-looking people used to be members of the regular races.
Something happened on Suigoss, and it changed everything. It changed the people. It changed the animals. It changed the very elements they thought they knew. Whatever it was, it apparently transformed the entire population of the planet into monsters.
I thought back to the house at the river and how the couch I’d seen had holes in the backrest and realized that the holes were probably there to accommodate the tail these people had. The drawings I looked at in this tower told their story. How they got transformed into monsters seemingly out of nowhere. How they had to fend off hordes of what used to be regular animals. And how they eventually won and started to build a research facility to figure out what happened to them.
I stared at the bonus objective, and how there were two more fragments left to find. Of course, I was going to try and find them anyway for the bonus. But now I felt compelled to learn more. Find out what happened to them. No matter what, I needed to at the very least find the other fragments before moving on to the next layer.
And if my guess was correct, I would probably find the rest on the other floating islands.