Beastification is a widely misinterpreted and often incorrectly used term, frequently employed as a catch-all to describe the process of mana reinforcement in natural animals. This process enhances and often overdevelops specific evolutionary traits within a given species or subspecies, in addition to applying standard physical enchantments. However, this broad usage is inaccurate, as it merely describes the natural process of mana reinforcement that all creatures undergo when exposed to moderate to high mana environments.
True Beastification, by contrast, refers to a distinct process in which an animal, for unknown reasons, begins to develop a crystalline structure within its chest, typically adjacent to the heart. This crystal gradually integrates with the animal’s physiology, forming a rudimentary mana network that assists with and enhances the flow and control of mana within its body. Current research suggests that the development of such a network should, in theory, require sentient cognitive thought. Yet, this mana crystal, as it is commonly known, enables affected animals to instinctively harness mana. Documented cases include instances of bears capable of igniting their fur into an inferno without suffering physical harm.
The patterns of Beastification are particularly intriguing and, at times, appear unnaturally structured. While there is currently no direct evidence to support this claim, it raises the possibility that the process is not entirely organic. It is as though the system—whether consciously or as a function of its design—has taken a naturally occurring but rare phenomenon, one that allows non-sentient creatures to utilize mana, and repurposed it. If this is the case, Beastification may be following a predetermined path, artificially guided toward an unknown objective of the system.
— Extract from a lecture by Dr Elliot Barnes, Doctor of Applied Mana and System Theory, delivered in September 2042.
Chapter five
Day of awakening – 00:17
The blob monster cried out in pain, flailing from side to side trying to dislodge the man attached to its back, its large, bloated hand unable to reach him in the centre of its back. With nothing but the kitchen knife to hold onto, the man swinging back and forth like a pendulum. Like watching someone cling to a bucking rodeo machine, it was honestly impressive how long they were able to stay attached to the knife, blood fountained out, coating everything around it, but it wasn’t long before, whether from the blood coating the blade’s handle or their hands simply getting tired, they lost their grip and were flung to the side crashing against the alleyway wall.
I sprang into action, ready to rush out and drag them to safety, but no sooner had I started to move, they picked themselves up off the floor and rushed round to stand next to me on this side of the car almost like they had simply bounced off the wall completely unharmed, that and the fact that he, and from the height and build they were a he, he was wearing black jeans, a black hoody and a black balaclava with a full face skull on it, told me everything I needed to know about this guy.
Fucking indestructible teenagers.
Every part of my body felt beaten with all the warning signs that I was going to be covered in bruises come the morning, but he just gets slammed full bodily into a wall and just gets up as though he was made from rubber.
“I hope you don’t mind me ‘Jumping in’?”
Suppressing a smile at his attempt to put on what he must have thought was a deep, gruff voice.
“No, I was planning on bailing anyway”
“You were planning on giving up the kill?” surprise starting to break through his forced voice.
“I had it locked up, but no way to finish it and I didn’t want to waste time when there might be better farming spots.”
“Guess that’s true. Wait, does that mean if I had waited, I could have had the kill to myself?”
“Yep,” I turned smiling at him, “But now you’re going to have to share all that tasty EXP.”
An unintentional groan spilled from the kid before he remembered to force his voice.
We stared the blob monster for a bit, watching it thrash, trapped in place, a geyser of blood gushing out of its neck.
“It’s sure taking a long time to die, how long do you think it’s going to take?”
The uncertainty in his voice was at odds with the deep, gruff Batman voice he was trying to go with.
“No Idea, it has certainly lost a lot of blood though”
As it was a lot of blood, way more than the five or so litres that a human normally had and it was really fountaining out of the creature’s neck and thickly coating the surrounding area as it thrashed, I was honestly surprised that the kid didn’t seem to have any on him.
“Is it just me or does it appear to be deflating slightly? Also, I’m Jack”
“Oh,” the kids voice suddenly got even more deeper causing me to burst out in laughter said next “I’m Reaper.”
“Sure, you are kid, Sure you don’t mean” I dropped voice to match his “I’m Batman!”
“No, it’s Reaper! And I’m not a kid I’m twenty… five, yes I’m twenty-five.”
I burst into laughter again.
“Kid if you are even twenty I will give Mr blobby here a deep passionate kiss right here and now, no if I had to guess you are sixteen, maybe seventeen. Also, you know that skull mask looks ridiculous, right?”
“No, it looks badass” his force voice rapidly being replaced by an annoyed one.
“It makes you look like you're out trick-or-treating, you know it’s glow in the dark, right? Not very sneaky.”
“Shut up!”
The forced bickering carried on, going back and forth trying to distract ourselves from what was going on and the stress we were under, while we waited for kill notification to appear.
Finally, after what had to have been fifteen minutes of light-hearted bickering, the kid having given up on the forced batman voice. We finally got the message we were waiting for.
The kid whooped as I cursed.
“Minor contributor!... I did all the fucking work; you just stabbed it once and then just hung around chatting for the rest of the fight.”
“The Reaper is just that amazing, you just need to get good”
“The Reeeeapeeeer can go fuck off, I’m not calling you that, it is lame”
“Don’t worry I can carry you if you want, want to team up? You can be my robin if you want and ride the Reaper train.”
“A, go fuck yourself, B, Robin can go fuck himself, I ain’t anybody’s fucking sidekick and C…” I let out a long exhale as I moved over to my length and steel box section to see about pulling it free “yeah we should probably team up, I wasted too much time trying to solo this as it is, we will be able to farm quicker and safer as a team”
The kid nodded at this, before heading off to retrieve his knife, before stopping suddenly and almost slipping in the blood puddle, distracted as he probably saw a verification of the message that had just appeared.
Even before the message had disappeared an evil grin had spread across my face.
“Hey Shannon, I just got a party invite from you Shannon, is that correct Shannon, looks like I’ve been automatically rejected Shannon, shame about that Shannon.”
The kid let out a pained groan as he disappeared behind the blob to try and retrieve his knife. I was about to start giving him more grief about his name now that I know that his was in fact a weak spot for him, when I heard footsteps jogging up from down the street. A well-built man in full biker gear, the commute to work kind, not the Hell’s Angels kind was jogging down the street towards us, what looked like a cricket bat held over one shoulder.
“Hey, you guy okay? Is it dead?”
“Yeah, we got the kill notification, we’re fine”
“The what notification?” the man said with a confused look on his face as he came to a stop next to me staring up and the creature. “Damn, that's massive. You two really brought this thing down yourselves?” he directed a look of doubt at me before continuing. “I heard the commotion and would have come over and helped sooner, but I was fighting off this porcupine bear thing.”
The man instantly had all my attention.
“Is it dead? Did you kill it? Did you get the kill notification?”
“What notifications-”
The man leaned back at my sudden intensity, stepping into a wary defensive stance.
“Notifications?-”
“The Kill Notification! Did you kill it and did you get a message confirming that you had killed a Mana Abomination!? It important!”
“The weird box thing that popped up? Talking about potential and banking, yeah I got it?”
“Oh, okay then,” losing interested I turned back to trying to budge my length of steel box section and seemed to have gotten itself stuck.
“Is the window important, why does it matter” the man eyeing me still in a defensive stance, most likely concerned by my sudden change in attitude and back again.
“Because these creatures might be able to heal, regenerate missing body parts etc. We just don’t know”
“And you trust these…Kill Notifications? To confirm they are really dead?”
“Trust an unknown popup that magically appeared around the time the world end and people started turning into monsters???, fuck no, it just cost me nothing to keep whaling on them while I wait a little bit longer for a pop up.”
“I guess that make sense, wait what do you mean turning people into monsters!?”
The man roughly grabbed me by the shoulders, forcing me to turn and look at him.
“Fuck man, calm down” breaking his grip on me and taking a step back.
“Calm down!? You just said that that-” He pointed angrily at the blob monster that had been leaking blood all the time and like a ballon had deflated to almost half its original size and starting to fold in on itself. “Was once a fu-… was once human? And you wait me to be calm?!”
“Look I don’t know anything for certain, it has barely been a handful of hours since this all kicked off but” I then went on to explain about Claire and my suspicions around it while once again trying to free my makeshift spear.
By the time I finished my recounting, I had failed to budge it an inch, but I noticed that Shannon had retrieved his knife while somehow not getting a single drop of blood on him and had been standing off to the side of the man listening in. The man had been silent while I recounted my story.
“This can be true, even if it was it would take months for someone to mutate and transform like that-“
“It’s true. I saw it happen”
The man turned to face the kid, seeming not surprised to find him standing behind him, like he knew he was there the whole time.
"We—me and my gran, that is—we had a lodger, you know, to help make ends meet. Dominic. That was his name. I think he came from Poland. He hadn’t been with us long, and he mostly kept to himself. But he was in the kitchen when Gran and I got back from shopping—she likes to do it last thing at night, says it’s to get the best deals, but I think she just doesn’t like the crowds. We got home just as the lights went out, but Gran likes candles, so we lit some to see by, and he was just standing there. In the kitchen. Not moving. Just swaying slightly, in this creepy way."
"Gran called out to him, asked if anything was wrong, but he didn’t respond. Just ignored us. I went to grab his arm to shake him, but he was so hot—the heat, it was like—like standing next to a bonfire. And then he suddenly turned, and his face—his face was—he looked drugged or something. And then he just changed. He just started to grow, straight up, like his mouth stretched out and his arms extended down till they nearly touched the floor, and then—then he rushed past me. Straight for Gran. Knocked her over a chair, and then he was on top of her, trying to pull the chair away, and Gran was screaming—"
"I grabbed a knife. I just started stabbing him, in his back. Over and over. And then—I saw the message pop up."
"But Gran had passed out, and the phones weren’t working, so I ran across the road to see Charlotte—she’s a nurse at the hospital, I thought she could help—but then I saw it. This… Rhino-man thing. But with a round head. With these ridges—like that guy from that really old show, Star Trek, that Gran likes to watch. And it was just trying to smash its way through the door, and I could hear Charlotte screaming on the other side. So I—I ran up and stabbed it. In the back. And—"
"And I think it was Mike, her husband. I think I killed Mike."
The kid was nearly hyperventilating as he just spewed out what had happened to him as though he needed to unload it all quick unless something worse happened.
“Whoa their Kid, it okay, you did the right thing, is your Gran okay, where is she?”
“Charlotte is watching over her Mr Jamerson’s, most of the street are there as he has all these gas camping lights.”
“Why did you stay with her Kid, why are you out here fighting these monsters instead?” The man asked a slight accusatory tone in his voice as he stared at the kid, still wearing his glow in the dark skull balaclava mask.
“Because of the EXP of cause, I’ve read the stories, I don’t want to be under levelled.” The kid responded with clear are you an idiot tone in his voice.”
“Under levelled?!” angry now clear in the man’s voice as he started to point at the kid, “this isn’t a game kid, you are KILLING people! You can’t just-“
“ENOUGH!”
Interrupting them both before this could escalate I continued.
“We don’t have time for this, there are monsters out their killing people and we are wasting our time here instead of helping people”
And failing behind with our farming, we need that exp.
“But you’re talking about killing people-“
“THEY ARE EATING PEOPLE!” I roared back at him. “They are turning into God Dam Monsters! and killing and then eating the people who are closest to them who I would guess considering the time of night this all kicked off meant their loved ones. For fuck’s sake, I found one guy eating what I’m ninety-nine percent certain was his wife and child—after beating them both to death!”
This was then punctuated by a scream another couple of streets away.
“Case in point” I said grabbing my make shift spear, bracing my foot against the car and with my full body behind it stoked by the angry that had been slowly boiling away I heaved, whatever was pinning the box section finally gave way and pulling it free, more blood bursting out and coating the inside of the car, I turned started jogging towards where eth scream had come from, the other two following behind.
