Becoming a Monster

Chapter 461: Chapter 460: Coming Back Full Circle

"What defines me..."

The drake’s words lingered through the night. It left him pondering so deeply that he barely spoke.

When he asked Bolas if he knew what his calling was, he gave him an answer that he didn’t expect.

"There was a time when I knew what my calling was. Yet the moment I failed and went against my calling, it was also the same time I started drifting through life."

He recalled his failure without a shred of anger or bitterness; one could see that he was no longer held back by his past.

"Back then, I didn’t realize what my calling was until it was too late. We aren’t born knowing what defines us, but our souls will know when the time comes."

"It’s the moment you feel the most fulfilled," the drake continued. "An action that can seem irrelevant. An accomplishment smaller than any other you might achieve. And yet—"

His voice had slowed.

"Nothing else compares to it."

At first, Bolas’s speech was a riddle that seemed impossible to decipher with thinking alone. But as Noah stared off into the night sky, he began to realize that he had actually experienced the sensation Bolas mentioned more than once.

He thought back to every time one of his creatures grew stronger. The times when they grew not only in power, but in character.

And in finding their own purpose.

When compared to his greatest victories or the moments where his own strength reached new heights, none of those moments felt as right as watching something under his care become more than it was before.

The sense of fulfillment had almost always been easy to overlook. He thought it was a common feeling one would have when having someone to care for.

However, as he thought about it, he realized that his strength back then improved the most when he fought for them.

His deep pondering soon led him further. He hadn’t forgotten the core reason why he was reflecting so deeply in the first place.

That feeling he gets with his creatures, why does he now feel it too when it comes to creatures he has no connection with at all?

And it wasn’t just that one feeling. He often grew mildly irritated when he came across creatures who wasted their potential.

It was this irritation that led him on the path to tame Bolas in the first place. He always felt gravitated to help the creature despite not needing to. Coming up with reasons to justify it. But deep down, the reason was so simple.

And now he was feeling the same way about the creatures outside his walls.

There was no deep desire to help them, nor did he have a hidden plan to tame them later. He just felt an itch to make weaker creatures stronger.

When did this happen? Noah dug deep within himself to find an answer.

He remembered there was a time when he had felt the same disgust when he observed humans not fighting to become stronger. The waste who attached themselves to the strong to live. And the ones who were strong, yet were wasting their potential, to cater to the ones who didn’t deserve to live.

It was as if the roles switched from humans to creatures altogether.

When did it all change?

"....Evolutionary Guardian." He muttered softly to himself, more so in recognition.

Before, he didn’t take the class description seriously enough. He didn’t think any would. A class should’ve just been a clarification of his powers, a summary of what he would be capable of achieving.

Without the system, Noah couldn’t recall the text word-for-word. At the time he first received the class, he only cared about what the class offered, its potential, and the tangible advantages it provided. He hadn’t stopped to consider how the class affected him internally.

Now, he realized that just like the other times, the answers were always in front of him.

Small tidbits of the class worked its way through his thoughts. The first thing he remembered was that the class nurtures, evolves, and can merge with his creatures.

But as he searched deep within himself, he faintly recalled the very first line of his class. An Evolutionary Guardian was the protector and guide between nature and evolution. A force that existed to create balance.

He began to understand. A class was never as simple as he first imagined, at least he was certain of that fact when it came to awakening classes. It wasn’t just a reward for power. It was a reflection of who they were becoming.

And perhaps, just like Bolas said, maybe it was who they had been from the moment they were born.

Noah felt the world making sense for the first time.

The itch he felt wasn’t compassion, nor was it some obligation. It was instinct.

Whether they were his creatures or not no longer mattered. Whether they ever crossed his walls or remained beyond them was irrelevant. The moment he sensed wasted potential, imbalance, or stagnation, something within him reacted.

The puzzle was finally coming together. And as he was close to a breakthrough, he realized he was still overlooking something important.

"Is it the same for my Chimera trait?"

Noah didn’t dismiss it. He felt that this was more important than the class itself.

And as if waiting for this moment, it was Ailetta who helped him fill in the dots.

"I never thought about the significance of our class. Remember, I became ’this’ before my awakening." She still spoke of her change without a hint of regret.

"But your thinking isn’t that different from mine. On the contrary, we have spoken about this before."

Ailetta waited to see if Noah would recall their last conversation. But he came up empty. Not because he didn’t listen to her at the time, but the topic at the time was clarified as something to do with unique traits.

"When you evolved, you remember right? Back then, I always said you were holding yourself back. That you weren’t accepting who you really were. It was only when you accepted it that you were finally able to ascend."

Her eyes looked deep into Noah’s at the moment. "Now tell me... What exactly did you accept? What were you denying about yourself?"

Ailetta’s questions were calm. Spoken as if she already knew the answers and was simply waiting for him to catch up.

She didn’t have to wait long. Noah’s eyes sprang wide the moment she voiced the questions. As she said, they had talked about this before. Back then, he constantly thought about that world he was trapped in, that world where he almost lost himself.

He was denying his existence entirely. Human, monster... He didn’t feel that he fitted in anywhere. Which side did he truly lean on?

But in the end, he accepted that he didn’t belong anywhere. Like a Chimera, his existence wasn’t meant to be. He was something forged between contradictions. A being that shouldn’t exist, unnatural to humans, and unsettling to monsters.

A monstrosity in the eyes of both.

The moment he stopped denying that truth, stopped trying to justify himself, and stopped searching for a place that would accept him, clarity followed.

That allowed him to break the limits he had placed on himself.

Ailetta smiled faintly. "And its not just you, I believe that’s the case for all of us."

—

Noah thought about that discussion for a long time. Although it made almost perfect sense, he still needed to compare the information to what he understood and what he had been through.

In the end, to his surprise, there was a lot more to his experiences that confirmed their theory.

Ishii’s samurai code, his honor over ceding everything else. Paul’s stoic, unexpressive figure, almost like a rock itself. Levy’s fickleness, almost as if he truly were two different people. Raven’s extreme dislike for males, no different than the many versions of lore about Amazonians. And Amara’s personality allowed her to view everything in black and white.

There were possibly others that he hadn’t thought of, but he hadn’t interacted with that many people to understand what their unique trait was, or if they had one.

But then, there was the one who stood out the most. The prime example out of them all.

Mark.

Someone who had a severe hero complex, almost bordering on obsession. For the longest time, Noah had dismissed it as youthful arrogance. Someone born with insecurity or the need to stand above others.

But now, viewed through a different lens, that explanation felt incomplete.

What if Mark had been changed by his unique trait the same way Noah had been changed by his?

There was no denying to himself that he had changed a lot since he obtained the Chimera trait, and it wasn’t just his appearance that changed.

Just like Mark, Noah attributed his own change to the experiences he had, the near deaths, the constant pressure, and the necessity to adapt or to be consumed.

It was easy to believe that hardship alone reshaped a person. That anyone, given enough trauma, would eventually harden or break into something else.

But now, that explanation felt... insufficient.

What Noah couldn’t answer was where that change truly began.

Was it the unique trait that bent a person’s instincts?

The class that slowly rewrote their priorities?

Or, as Bolas had said, were they simply born with that calling and only needing the right moment to awaken it?