1 Prologue: The Beast

It was quite a clear night that day, a couple of men was running desperately inside a dense forest. Their metal armor was soaked and covered with blood and guts. One of the men who was holding a pistol on one hand and a bloody sword on the other, suddenly raised his sword upward.

All the others immediately noticed the sign and stopped running, and then began crouched down while he leaned on one of the big trees around. He checked the gun for a little bit and found the magazine empty.

One of the men from the back slowly came up to the sword holding man then whispered in a hoarse voice.

"Huh…Huh, Captain…, we don't seem… to be chased by it...anymore" he said," It's time to… go back to the… gathering point, sir."

"We lost so many men back there. Are you sure about that?" the captain tried to speak as calm as he could," It is hard to imagine such a beast to just give up like that. Can you contact anyone else at all?"

After taking his breath, the man took out a small stone, on it a small intricate symbol was carved deep on one side. He held it firmly while closing his eyes at the same time, the stone then began to give off a weak white light along its symbol but then suddenly turned red and stopped. The man who was holding the stone opened his eyes with a surprised and scared face.

"What's wrong?" the captain asked with a worried face.

"All the other stones had been destroyed, sir."

"Impossible, I had told the teams to all spread out in different directions and we was the only one being chased by it just a moment ago".

"Sir, I think we need to keep moving now or it will be too late." The man said while looking around the forest.

The Captain nodded quickly then hold his sword up high again then pointed it down forward. The other men quickly raised up to move once again in the darkness of the night.

"I will kill you for this, you beast!" He mumbled to himself.

"YOU WERE LOOKING FOR ME"

A sudden penetrating voice rang out from the other side of the tree, the captain quickly swing his sword at the point of the voice but before he could see it. The claws came from below and struck him at the front knocking him out flying to another(the) opposite far away tree.

The captain spit blood and his lifeless body slumped down motionless. The captain despite the pain yelled out.

"RUN! Save your selves"

The beast appeared from behind the tree showing its large intimidating size. It looked like an oversized tiger with pitch black and thick furs. Its eyes blood red with a sense of rage in it.

The other men witnessed the gruesome site with wide eyes but instead of running away, they immediately pulled out their sword as well as yelling.

"Protect the captain".

"We follow the captain"

They began to swarmed the beast with numbers and in formation. They attacked it from multiple angels at once while trying to maintain a bit of distance from its claw.

"Finally, a little bit of resistance" The beast thought to its self.

Some of the men got close to the captain while the beast was distracted. He checked the captain wound, a huge gaping hole that has been made in his stomach bypassing the armour.

"Ur…Why aren't you running?" He said slowly.

"It seemed to us that the end is here already, why delay the inevitable? We would rather go down fighting than running away like cowards heh." One the men spoke softly "We have already made our conviction after all so don't worry too much about it".

The captain then looked at his men. They were good as they were able to stop the beast for a while. But the men number began to thin out as the beast began to strike them down one at time and tear apart the others. The beast not only moved carefully to take care from the enemy attacks but struck at wherever there was weakness in their formation.

"Sir, the wound is too deep, without a healer we won't be able to save you." The men informed the captain while trying to stop the blood flow.

The fact that beast was moving ever closer and closer to this palace didn't escaped their minds.

"Ur…Its fine, do what you have to do" The captain said while holding one of the man shoulders.

"Sorry that we can't do any more for you sir. Let meet on the other side."

After saying that, the men stood up, and draw their blades to join the ongoing fight.

After a couple of minutes later the site of slaughter can be seen on the dark ground as bloods and body parts scattered around the place. The captain body can be found lying dead in the middle of a pool of blood. Among that gruesome site a beast can be seen moving from body looking and smelling each and every body it came across. Some of the stones with the symbol can be found in some of the corpses but whenever it came close the stones disintegrated.

Once it stopped by the captain body the beast noticed something unusual. In one of his hand there was something that looked like a weapon of the human race, a pistol. The beast began to morph one his claws to what seem like a small hand and picked up the weapon.

Looking at it a bit longer, the beast broke out a low prowl and ran back into the forest.

Sometime later, in an old castle atop the mountain that was near the site of the killing.

The Beast began to climb on one the castle stoned tower then landed on a wide-open balcony.

Like they had been expecting it the maids from the castle stand on attention in either sides of the balcony in all of their hands are big towels, and once the beast landed on the marble floorings. All of them simultaneously said one line.

"Welcome back, Master!"

The Beast stood still for a moment and then the maid began to swarmed around while trying to clean every part of it. The door in front of it began to open wide revealed a sharp eyed white-haired old man on the other side.

"Master! Have you been hurt anywhere?" The old man asked with not a worried look but a stern one.

"I am fine actually, the last bunch were a bit annoying but that was all there is to it" Instead of the usual prowling, what came out the beast mouth was a soft voice of a woman. From its mouth the beast spitted out the pistol.

" Check this thing here for me, it seemed to be a weapon of the human, if any things came up just tell me"

The old man held his hand toward the weapon and when the mark on his hand light up a little bit, like a sentient thing, the gun moved toward him, instead of touching it he moved it around to have a look then called one of the servants to put the thing away.

"So this is the thing that created those horrible sounds back then" He thought to himself .

The maids quickly did their job then stood back to their original positions. The beast's body then began to contort, its limbs shorten, the furs grew back in to soft white skin. When she turned back completely, a short and white-haired girl appeared before them, the blood shot eyes of the beast were now replaced by the moon liked pupil nested in the sea of darkness, her figure was slim but slightly muscled. Her two maids from behind quickly came up from behind to both cover her with a red gown and a pair of soft slippers.

"Why don't you send the grunts to do this work, my lady. If anything were to happen to you the duchy would be devastated." He spoke to her.

"The enemy is not as simple as you think and revealing what we have right now is undesirable to us right now." She talked with him while walking inside the palace "And I am too tired right now so let us speak tomorrow"

She began to walk to her room at the top of the tower and where ever she appeared the servants would begin to bow their heads in respectful manner. When she was in front of her doors, there was already a couple of servants in front holding a cup of hot liquid with some cookies on the site. She then nonchalantly picked up the tray from the servants to enter the room with. The old man quickly caught up to her from behind but his feet were not moving at all.

"Are we at war my lady?" He asked her quietly.

"Not yet any way" She answered while closing the doors" Don't worry about it too much Gerald. Just go to sleep already"

Gerald with dejected face looks on as she closed the door

"Good night then, Melina my lady."

Hearing him calling her name, Melina smiled a bit then waved at him and closed the door.

The beast girl put the tray on to the side desk then took a little sip from her cup. But in the main desk of the room something unusual stood out and it was a laptop.

"Ding Ding Ding" The small ringing sound continuously came out of it.

"Seem like a heated discussion is taking place" Melina thought to herself," It seemed like I still have some time to burn anyway".

She sat down onto the chair, opened the chat app on the screen and typed into the key board.