The Beast Monarch

CHAPTER 6: The Lab

The air didn't just crack this time. It screamed.

Down the block, in front of Mama K's noodle stand, reality split with a sound like tearing tin. Another rift - small, unstable, yellow turning orange. D-Rank spiking.

People in Old Tamer District screamed and ran. No Bureau sirens. In the slums, response time is twenty minutes if they come at all.

"Marcus, get them back!" I shouted.

Marcus was already moving, Luna bursting out of his carrier, throwing up a pale healing light that made civilians run toward him instead of away. That's what a support tamer does. Anchor.

The rift pulsed. Something was pushing through - not a Hound this time, a swarm. Rift Mites. Tiny, 1-Star, but hundreds of them. They eat concrete and flesh equally.

Grim was already expanding to Battle Slime, fists up, but there were too many. If they spread, they'd eat half the block before Bureau arrived.

Codex hissed in my head. Host, your Monarch pressure can suppress low-rank rifts. Focus. Command it to close.

"How?"

You are a Monarch. Tell it no.

I didn't understand, but I tried. I planted my bandaged hand toward the rift and did what I do when I'm cornered - I got dominant.

"Close."

I didn't shout it. I ordered it. That charisma the System gave me, that calm-under-pressure that people mistake for arrogance - I pushed it through the bond, through the SSS talent I didn't know I had.

The rift shuddered.

[Monarch Pressure Activated - Rank: Fledgling]

[D-Rank Echo Rift Suppression: 34%]

The swarm slowed. The rift's pull weakened. It was like holding a door shut against wind with my mind.

"Grim! Burn them!"

Grim roared and slammed both fists into the ground. SHADOW PUNCH - but this time the shadow spread through the cracked pavement like ink, swallowing the mites. They dissolved with little pops.

[Energy Absorbed: +32 Points]

[Level Up! Level 5 > Level 7]

[Grim Experience: 100% - Evolution Available!]

The rift collapsed with a final whine, leaving a scorch mark on the asphalt.

Silence. Then Mama K, holding her ladle like a weapon, shouted, "That courier kid closed it! The F-Rank closed it!"

People stared. Not with mockery this time. With something else. Hope. In this district, everyone was told their beast was trash.

Evelyn grabbed my good arm, hard. "You did it. You suppressed a rift without a beast skill. Only Monarch-class talents can do that. The Bureau said that line died out fifteen years ago with your parents' team."

"My parents?"

"Not here," she said, looking at the crowd gathering. "Lab. Now."

Her lab wasn't a lab anymore. After Cole got her fired, they'd revoked her Federal keycard. What she had now was a gutted auto-shop under the Old Bridge, full of salvaged scanners, incubators, and notebooks stacked to the ceiling. It smelled like ozone and cheap coffee.

She locked the door and pulled a tarp off a table.

On it, in a stasis case, was an egg. Grey, feathered, dead-looking. A Storm Feather Hawk egg - I recognized it from Academy textbooks. Cheap wind beast, 2-Star max, always sickly. This one was cracked and cold.

"Incinerator batch," she said. "Cole Depot throws away 'defective' eggs that don't show wind energy. I saved this one. It's been dead for three months."

I stepped closer. System kicked in before I touched it.

[Scanning... Species: Storm Feather Hawk - Defective]

[Hidden Bloodline Detected: 0.3% Phoenix - Unawakened]

[Evolution Path: Feather Hawk > Storm Talon > Ashfeather Phoenix Chick > Gale Phoenix Monarch]

[Status: Dying - Can be saved with 20 Energy Points]

My hand was already on the case.

"Liam, that's 20 points -" Evelyn started.

"It's not defective," I said. "It's just appraised wrong. Like us."

I poured energy into it. The blue light from the System went into the grey egg.

[Energy Consumed: 20 Points]

[Bond Forming...]

The egg cracked. Not broke - hatched. A chick fell out, wet, grey, no bigger than my fist. It had one crooked wing and coughed. It looked up at me with angry, prideful eyes - just like Zara's wyrm.

Then it saw Grim. Grim leaned down, big Battle Slime face over the tiny bird.

The chick tried to peck him. Grim flicked it gently. The chick chirped, furious.

Marcus whispered, "Oh man, you got two now? You're going to break the soul limit -"

Second bond successful, Codex said, sounding almost fond. Species: Storm Feather Hawk. Designation: Gale. Loyalty: 92% - Wary. Potential: Mythic.

[Second Beast Slot Unlocked! Level Requirement Bypassed Due to Monarch Talent]

[New Beast: Gale - 1-Star - Skill: Gust]

Gale sneezed - a tiny gust that knocked over Evelyn's coffee - and then passed out in my palm, exhausted from being alive.

Evelyn stared at the scanner. "Two beasts. At Level 7. That's impossible. Soul limit is one until B-Rank... You broke it because your bond is 100%?"

"No," I said, looking at Grim and Gale. One trash slime everyone threw away. One defective hawk everyone left to be incinerated. "I broke it because I don't believe in limits that were written by people who sell the cages."

That's when Codex's voice changed. Less system, more... old.

[Memory Seal Fragment Recovered - Trigger: Second Bond]

An image slammed into my head - not a System screen. A memory. Not mine, Grim's.

A lab, 15 years ago. Fire. Two people in Tamer gear - my parents, I knew it instantly - pushing a tiny Shadow Slime into the arms of a five-year-old me. "Protect him, Grim. No matter what they do to your file."

Then Bureau agents in black dragging my parents away. And a man in a Cole uniform stamping my talent file: SSS > F.

I staggered.

Grim caught me, his slime arms solid.

Evelyn grabbed my shoulders. "Liam! What did you see?"

Before I could answer, the lab's back door - steel, bolted from inside - dented outward with a massive BANG. Something S-Rank was trying to get in.

And Evelyn's old Bureau emergency radio, which she'd kept as a souvenir, crackled to life on its own.

"...all units, Cole Conglomerate HQ reports unauthorized SSS file access... suspect is Monarch-class... use lethal containment..."