The Hunter's Bureau headquarters rose like a fortress carved from a single block of iron. Its walls were dark, unadorned, streaked with centuries of salt spray and northern winds. Enormous beast skeletons decorated the outer walls like trophies claimed from extinct gods. Massive ribs the size of ship masts arched over the entrance. Clawed skulls were embedded directly into the architecture itself. Green lanterns burned with Flow-fire that never flickered regardless of wind.
The building did not resemble a government institution.
It resembled a warning.
Maria had left them at the entrance, citing a need to visit a friend—the son of a rich merchant, she had said, with a smile that suggested there was more to the story. Jamie had immediately perked up.
"Is he your crush?"
Maria had not confirmed. She had not denied.
"Maybe," she said. "When I come back, we'll talk. You can tell me about yours."
"I don't have a crush."
"Everyone has a crush."
"I DON'T."
Maria had looked at Elias. Elias had looked away.
"Don't," he said.
"I didn't say anything."
"Your face said it."
Maria laughed and left.
Now Jamie walked beside Elias, still staring at everything, still reacting to everything, still being Jamie. Her head tilted farther back the closer they got.
"Whoa."
Even Elias found himself staring slightly.
Hunters moved constantly through the enormous courtyard. Some wore thick beast-hide cloaks while others carried weapons that looked less forged and more harvested. Massive axes fashioned from jagged monster bone. Spears lined with crystalline fangs. One man casually dragged the severed leg of some enormous insectoid creature across the stone floor while two others argued nearby over payment.
Everything about the place radiated violence.
Organized violence.
The Hunter's Bureau Headquarters was the administrative heart of a kingdom-wide network designed to keep the balance between human civilization and the wild. From its austere halls, the Bureau coordinated the tracking, culling, and management of beasts across every region of Aerthos. Regional branches submitted reports, requested reinforcements, and sent samples of slain beasts to the capital, where their hides, bones, crystals, and Flow-saturated organs were refined and funneled into the open market.
This trade was not incidental; it was a pillar of the kingdom's economy. Hunters who operated in distant territories paid a commission on their harvested materials to their local branch, and a portion of those funds was remitted to the central headquarters—a steady stream of revenue that funded operations and kept the Bureau self-sustaining. Aethelberg itself, however, was a large city that on its own was considered a region, its streets too crowded, its walls too high, its population too dense for any significant beast presence to take root.
The Gulf of Ae occasionally produced aquatic threats—migrating predators drawn by warm currents or disoriented seabeasts—but those were the exception, not the rule. The capital's hunters spent most of their days buried in paperwork, reviewing incident reports from the provinces, auditing commission ledgers, and certifying the purity of refined beast products before they were sold to merchants. The danger was elsewhere. Here, in the quiet offices of the Bureau, the danger was managed, monetized, and filed away.
Dante walked through it all casually with his hands in his pockets.
Several Hunters greeted him immediately.
"Boss!"
"Morning boss!"
"One of the containment teams lost another arm!"
Dante pointed lazily toward a nearby office without even slowing down.
"Paperwork first. Cry later."
"Yes sir…"
Jamie stared at everything with unconcealed excitement.
"THIS PLACE IS AWESOME."
Elias glanced at her. She pointed at the nearest wall, where the mounted head of a massive boar—its tusks longer than Elias's arm—glared down at them with glass eyes.
" I wish I could encounter something like that one day."
"There is something deeply wrong with you."
"Why don't you think it would be cool to see this thing for real?''
"It would be quite powerful."
"THAT'S WHAT MAKES IT AWESOME."
"Luckily its dead."
"You're just boring."
Elias sighed. Dante barked out a laugh.
"HAHAHAHA! Nah kid, she's got the right attitude. Hunters who scare easily don't live very long. The heads are from across the kingdom. Hunters send them in when they retire or when they... don't."
Jamie's eyes lit up.
"WHEN THEY DIE?"
"When they die."
They entered the main halls of the Headquarters and Jamie's excitement somehow increased further.
The corridors were enormous, built more like castle passageways than administrative halls. The walls were lined with mounted beast heads and preserved corpses. Some looked vaguely recognizable. Others looked like nightmares created by a delirious god. One had six eyeless wolf heads fused together into a single neck. Another resembled a deer with human hands instead of antlers. One massive mounted skull looked almost draconic except its jaw split vertically instead of horizontally.
Jamie stared upward in delight.
"Oh Gods that one's horrifying."
"Thank you," Dante said proudly.
Elias frowned at one particularly grotesque creature whose face seemed to shift slightly when viewed indirectly.
"Is that thing still alive?"
"Maybe."
"Maybe?"
Dante shrugged.
"Hard to tell sometimes."
Jamie burst into laughter while Elias quietly decided he hated this building.
"Did you kill all these?" Jamie asked while spinning around excitedly.
Dante looked toward the mounted beasts.
"Some."
"Only some?"
"The credit doesn't belong to me alone." His voice became calmer then. "These trophies were gathered by Hunters across the Kingdom. Men and women who've spent their entire lives protecting humanity from their inhuman brethren."
Jamie blinked.
"Inhuman brethren?"
Dante glanced sideways at her.
"People misunderstand beasts." He continued walking. "Humans like pretending they're somehow separate from the rest of nature. Superior. Civilized. But in the grand scheme of things we're all the same. In a lot of ways, we are not different from the dogs in the market."
His fingers brushed lightly against the mounted jaw of a massive predator.
"We're born. We live. We die."
Elias looked at him.
"A human and a dog are obviously not the same."
Dante grinned.
"Are they not?"
"They aren't."
Dante nodded thoughtfully.
"Alright then. Let's say you leave a dog inside a Node for fifty years. Long enough for it to absorb enough Flow to evolve into an Apex Beast."
He looked directly at Elias now.
"Meanwhile you remain an Acolyte. At that point, who exactly becomes superior?"
Elias went quiet.
"That doesn't matter."
"Oh?"
"It still wouldn't remember kindness shown those decades ago. Or morality. Or anything human."
Dante watched him from the corner of his eye for several moments before chuckling softly.
"Elias…"
His grin widened slightly.
"You really don't know anything."
The conversation died there as they passed another enormous chamber. This one was filled almost entirely with women sitting behind mountains of paperwork. Stacks and stacks and stacks of paperwork.
Some looked dead tired, and it wasnt even noon yet.
One woman stared blankly into space while mechanically stamping documents with the expression of someone whose soul had already left her body several years ago.
Jamie whispered.
"What happened to them?"
"Administration," Dante replied solemnly.
One of the women blocked thier path.
"Boss."
"Yes?" Dante shuddered.
"We're still missing the tax reports from Sector Nine."
Dante immediately accelerated his walking speed.
"I suddenly cannot hear."
"You signed them incorrectly."
"Oi what that?" Dante pointed at the window. The moment the woman lookedaway he pulled the two children past her and slammed the door behind him.
Jamie nearly collapsed laughing while Elias quietly noted that even terrifying monster hunters feared paperwork. He looked around. Dante's office was'nt an office. It was a cave.
Calling it an office felt dishonest.
The chamber was massive, nearly the size of a small arena. Beast skeletons decorated the walls while enormous weapons leaned casually against support pillars. There were weights fashioned from gigantic beast bones and metallic carapaces larger than wagons.
Dante pointed proudly toward a horrifying pile of monster remains in one corner.
"I use those for lifting."
Jamie stared.
"Those weigh more than a house."
"Exactly."
"Its deeply concerning. you'd rather lift weights that actually work." Elias said.
"Thank you."
"Its not a compliment." Elias pointed out.
At the center of the room floated a massive sphere of water suspended between two rotating metallic plates covered in glowing symbols of a Containment Array. Inside it swam the angler fish. Except now it was much smaller, only slightly larger than a large dog.
Its lantern glowed softly beneath the water while miniature underwater cliffs and coral formations drifted within the floating sphere like an artificial ocean ecosystem.
Jamie immediately rushed forward.
"IT'S ADORABLE."
Elias stared at her.
"That thing tried to consume the ocean."
"And now it's cute."
Dante laughed loudly.
"I decided to give it a more comfortable environment."
The fish drifted lazily through the artificial currents. Jamie pressed her hands against the floating sphere.
"So this is really the same monster?"
"Mhm."
Dante folded his arms.
"Life's valuable. Even dangerous life."
Elias glanced at him.
"It would've destroyed settlements."
"If left unchecked, yes." Dante nodded. "But humans are also part of the problem."
Jamie tilted her head.
"Huh?"
"Most Beasts don't attack people immediately. Humans expand into their territory. Humans challenge them. Humans try harvesting them. Humans want trophies."
He shrugged.
"Eventually conflict becomes inevitable."
His gaze drifted toward the floating beast.
"I hope someday beasts and humanity can coexist with actual understanding. Dunno whether to say we were lucky or unlucky that this was a male and not a female."
"How so?" Elias asked.
"The females are larger. Stronger. This one is young, arely matured male. It wouldnt grow that much larger even if left alone." He paused.
"But the full-grown females... they can bite chunks out of the continent."
Jamie and Elias stared at him.
"Pardon?"
"Chunks?"
"Chunks." Danye affirmed
"Out of AERIDOR?"
"Out of anywhere and anything they want."
Jamie's eyes were the size of dinner plates.
"THAT'S TERRIFYING."
"Thats why I wanna fight one."
Jamie blinked.
"What?"
"A full-grown female." Dante's grin was sharp. "That would be a real challenge."
Jamie stared at him. Then she laughed.
"YOU'RE INSANE."
"And thats what'll make it evn more fun."
lias walked closer to the sphere.
The fish stopped swimming and stared directly at him. Elias stared back. Something about its felt… strange. It had the intention os one that was...hungry.
He found himself thinking about its consumption ability.
"The consumption ability," he muttered. "How does it work?"
How did it devoured matter, Flow, concepts and perhaps even the other layers of reality?
And inevitably—
His thoughts drifted toward his Soul Predation and how incomplete it was. His hand rose unconsciously and touched the floating sphere.
The surface was solid—not glass, not crystal, but something else. Something that held. He pulsed a thread of Flow through his fingers.
The fish's lantern blazed.
It moved.
Faster than Elias could react. Its mouth opened—wider than it should have been possible—and it bit.
Pain exploded across his side. His shoulder. His ribs. The fish had pulled him partially into the water causing it to distort partially, its teeth embedded in his flesh from shoulder to waist. The water was cold. The pressure was immense. His blood spread through the sphere in dark ribbons.
SPLASH.
Jamie screamed.
"ELIAS—"
She lunged forward only for Dante's arm to stop her instantly.
"Wait."
"What do you MEAN WAIT?!" Jamie shouted. "IT'S EATING HIM!"
Dante's eyes narrowed slightly.
"No, the beast can consume attacks. If you hit it, it will only get stronger. If you get too close, it will consume you too."
"THEN WHAT DO WE DO?!"
Dante did not answer. Inside the sphere Elias struggled as the fish violently thrashed around him. Water exploded in all directions within the containment bubble while its lantern flared brighter and brighter.
But something was wrong. The beast couldn't consume him.
If the Dominion Beast had actually succeeded, Elias would already be gone. The essence of its consumption was the authority to devour anything weaker. To assimilate. To erase.
The beast's jaws remained locked around him yet it could not fully devour him no matter how violently it tried.
'Interesting. Very interesting.'
Inside the sphere Elias felt teeth grinding against his reinforced body while water pressure crushed inward from every direction.
His eyes narrowed slightly.
'So this is Consumption.'
He knew that with his immense energy, the creature would be unable to consume him without exploding, thus elias could use Flow Infusion to escape.
But—
Would there be another opportunity to finally test his own hunger?
Elias calmed down. He would drown but wouldn't die. He pushed the feeling of his lungs burning aside and tried to corrupt the fish with his essence.