Once they left the house, Zinnia took her position slightly behind Noah as they walked toward the Palace tree, as it was regulated for a maid, not even slightly showing in their demeanor what they did just a few minutes ago.

The first thing Noah noticed were the tree leaves that crunched under his feet unusually loud, but he did not put it to mind. They were in the Dryad forest, leaves, grass and flowers were everywhere, even though there was not much other life here. No fly, no mosquitos, no birds or any crickets. In the absence of the usual noises you put more attention to the other sounds and his usual steps sounded somehow off. 

He looked around and noticed that the surrounding ground was littered with freshly fallen leaves that lay as a blanket around their house but became less the further they went.

The second thing he noticed was that the always following him gazes of Dryads were somehow off. He became a lot more sensitive after his last level up, and changes of moods or atmosphere around him were now more noticeable. 

He could not put it well into words, but Dryads seemed strange. They still looked at him with desire, but where there was pure lust before now looked more like… adoration maybe have been the best word, but Noah was not sure. There were now Dryads who gazed at him with a surprised or thoughtful expression, while others had faces full of longing. They stood there biting their lips, but seemed somehow afraid more than before.

“Am I seeing things or do you sisters somehow look stranger than before?” Asked Noah quietly when they were farther from everyone else.

“Can’t blame them. The tree house is soundproof, but not that soundproof. The way you slammed me must have sent the whole tree shaking, Master. And quite strongly judging from the amount of fallen leaves” Said Zinnia with an unperturbed cold voice.

“Oh. They heard us?” Said Noah, feeling embarrassed.

“Most likely and I’ve been most vocal this time, unnatural so for a Dryad, I might say.” Added Zinnia with a professional maid’s emotionless voice.

Noah turned back to look at her and saw her face flushed to the neck from blushing. It was obvious she only held the facade of not caring.

“So they are what? Wary of me?” Asked Noah, continuing to walk.

“More like worship.” Said Zinnia with a sigh. “It’s not often males could give any good satisfaction to a Dryad. Not to mention to this degree. I think you might be something of a celebrity right now. They long but do not dare approach. Which is good in my view. But you might find yourself with a fan club.”

“There are different types of fans. Let's hope there won't be any crazy Dryad fans.” Said Noah, adjusting his collar as if it was suffocating him.

“Hmmm.” Voiced Zinnia thoughtfully. “That will depend on what I’ll divulge when they pry me for answers later. They might be already waiting to bombard me with the questions while you are in an audience with the Queen.” She said, sounding malicious.

“Can you tone it down, please? Please don’t give me a crazy fan club.” Begged Noah.

“I’ll think about it, Master.” Answered Zinnia with a smirk.

Noah could only sigh as it may have been inevitable. It was his own fault for being…this rough today.

They walked in silence for a time until Noah remembered something.

“Zinnia, there’s something I wanted to ask.”

“Yes, Master?”

“Earlier when you explained about Dryads growth, you said ‘all beings of spirituality, including spirit creatures and monsters, are similar’, but it made me wonder why you said it like that. Theressa told me that monsters have no spirit.” Said Noah.

“It’s right in general but not entirely correct. More like depending on the point of view. Madam Theressa just sees it in a more realistic way so she simplified things.”

“I'm not sure if I understand.” Said Noah. “So the monsters have a soul as us or not?”

“No being may exist and live without a spirit. Even monsters. They too have something similar to spirit or soul in them, but it is different from all other natural beings in existence.”

“Different how?” Asked Noah thoughtfully.

“You see, monsters are a kind of knock-off of spirit beings. Unlike spirit beings living deep in the border world that occur naturally from concentration of some type of spiritual energy, monsters are artificially made by the Dark God from chaotic spirit energy to copy the image of spiritual beings. A kind of failed product as a creature, but made so quite intentionally, by the Dark God.”

“An intentional failed product?” Asked Noah.

“Yeah. Not all spirit beings are kind or rational. Many of them may be quite confidently classified as evil. Spirit energy may be lighter and darker in nature, but in its core remains the same. So, evil or dark spirit beings, such as demons, mostly occur naturally just as any other spirit being.

“But monsters do not classify as any of the types: light or dark. They aren’t made of another type of spirit energy that by its nature should not be able to produce any spirit beings. Chaotic spirit energy.”

“It is an energy that has no rules, no laws, no logic, it makes no sense, and has no balance. It may bend, distort or permutate already existing things or disperse it into nothingness with no logic to its effect. But it does not gather in similar clusters. There are no similar specks of it. No matter how many parts of it you compare, there will never be two similar. It is completely chaotic. This energy is pure chaos. So, it’s impossible for even an elemental spirit to appear out of it. Naturally that is.”

“However, one mad God found a way to force rules onto something that should not have any.” Added Zinnia with sadness in her voice.

“The Dark God.” Said Noah, nodding his head in understanding.

“Indeed. With its will, the Dark God forces chaos to obey, creating certain patterns inside it. Where only chaos should have been, an order must not exist. This is unnatural...MAD.” Said Zinnia, pointing out the last word.

“As a result, the energy that has occurred from these artificial patterns is driven by madness. It strives to disperse and revert to chaos but is forced to exist by the Dark God, so as if in protest to being unable to destroy itself it is driven by the wish to destroy, disperse, consume into madness, deform, and distort into hatefulness and ugliness everything around it. Because of this hatefulness and desire to mindlessly destroy we call it Malice or malignant spirit energy. That’s what the Monsters are being made of.” Said Zinnia.

“Still, malignant, dark or light, its spirit energy right? So they have spirit at their core. There is a soul. Right?” Said Noah.

“In short, yes, but only while they are still alive. Once a monster dies, that spirit or soul does not go to the spiritual world; it ceases to exist.”

“Why?” Asked Noah. 

“No one knows for sure, but it is believed that by bending the natural trait of chaos, The Dark God makes a wrecked and broken imitation of spirituality that is full of controversy and incoherence. No balance. Too unstable. Its very existence is unnatural and holds together only because Dark God artificially maintains these patterns in the chaos. 

“These patterns of spirituality in chaos serve as origin to monsters, similar to how elemental spirit energy serves as origin to all Elemental spirit beings. But they are under his direct will only until these spirits gain material body and get born into this world. He has no direct power here so he has to make them independent. And once free of his will, they exist only until they are contained by the flesh. Once monsters die, spirit energy without Dark Gods' influence simply ceases to maintain its form and returns to its natural state.”

“I see. He can’t exert his will over them when they come to this world.” Muttered Noah.

“Yes, but the dumb beast alone would not be able to achieve his goals if they are not organized. So Dark God made several crutches to exert his will here. First he sends Demon Lords who can organize monsters into an army. And the second crutch is his attempt to make smarter, more dangerous monsters.” Said Zinnia. 

“How?”

“Just as more sophisticated spirit beings get born from sophisticated patterns of spirit energy, he makes more sophisticated patterns in the chaos.”

“Some of his patterns are less successful and more unstable, some are more stable. These stable patterns create a higher hierarchy of monsters that may even evolve into sentient creatures, or high level monsters like Arachnas, Nosferatus, Loup Garous, Tariaksuqz and others Dungeon Lords rank monsters. Elites among the monsters, so to say. Not only are they incredibly strong, but they can also lead huge numbers of monsters as generals.”

“Why would they follow his will when they are sentient?”

“Being sentient does not mean sane, so in most cases it only makes them smart and cunning, allowing them to be more deadly, but still as monstrous in their very core of being. Which is exactly what Dark God needs. It’s possible he keeps them on that level of insanity intentionally. This would explain why these high-hierarchy monsters become the top tier of their path with no further evolution.” Said Zinnia.

“You could say that Dark God is intentionally stopping to improve his spirit patterns once they reach a certain level of stability. That’s because if he improves it further, the chance of sane and logical monsters, who would not listen to him, such as Madam, occurring would rise dramatically and Dark God does not wish that to happen.”

“However, chaotic energy keeps to its trait of unpredictability, even under Dark Gods forceful influence, becoming the reason why sometimes in defiance of all his effort, totally sane monsters get born, even from weak unstable patterns, like the Black Mist cats, or other similar monsters who are far away from top tier hierarchy yet awaken sanity and sentience.”

“This is also the reason why no matter how strong or sane they get while living, once their body dies the mass of chaotic spirit energy from which their spirit consists of, loses its balanced state and either instantly disperses, returning to chaos or transmutes into something more stable. A kind of protest if you could name it so.

“Because of that instability, the spirit is so fragile that once a monster dies his spiritual part simply perishes into dust or turns to rock, leaving only mortal flesh behind. 

“You said it can transmute into something stable? What does it mean?” Asked Noah.

“You’ve seen it countless times, Master. Normally it’s impossible for spirit energy to become a perceptible object, but one of the unpredictable things of chaos is that it does not follow laws. So, somehow it manages to form a crystallized mass of spirit energy that we can touch. You can often find it in the bodies of dead monsters. We call it monster cores. These rocks filled with polluted spiritual energy are coagulated remnants of the monster's souls that did not disperse.”

That's why madam explained it this way. Unlike all other beings that can maintain a spiritual form after death, monster souls simply cease to be in split moments. That transformation is considered irreversible. You can't return that rock back to the soul it was before, or gather energy back together, so monsters simply cease to be after death as if they never had a soul.

From afterlives' point of view, monsters are equal to being soulless.

“That's what awaits Theressa and my girls if they…” Whispered Noah.

“Them or any other monster with no exceptions. Either dust or stone. There is only one exception, which is feared and despised equally by both monsters and spirit beings. The reason why Madam Cassandra was so on guard against you when you first appeared in Threadweaver family.”

“Tamers.” Said Noah, nodding his head.

“Indeed. The wretched mages who bind the very soul and enslave it. In some of their despicable ways of using souls, they may cast them into objects, trapping them there forever. As long as the object containing the soul is not broken by force, the soul within it will be trapped inside and at the same time maintain the object's form making its own eternal prison. 

But worst of all is that in exception for very special cases, the souls would be left in total sensory deprivation. Unable to perceive light, touch, sound or any other sensory signals they will be tortured by total solitude. No sane being can withstand such a thing for long and soon will lose all sanity, in the end becoming just a broken husk of what it was before. A fate even monsters do not deserve.”

“You said there are exceptions in some cases with sensory deprivation. What do you mean? How can an object feel?” Asked Noah, raising an eyebrow.

“How can your puppet friend stay sentient and sane, Master?”

“Wolf?” Said Noah surprised.

“Indeed. A very special case is when the tamer of exceptional mastery manages to connect soul and an object so that the object serves as the new body for the soul. A sentient or ego artifact as we call it. Some of which may not simply interact with the world around them but even move on their own. It is the greatest secret of any Tamer's family, how they managed to achieve it, that they keep tightly closed off from the rest of the world, so I can't comment much on this topic.” Explained Zinnia.

“I see. Well, there’s not much time to speak.” Said Noah walking up to the Dryads standing guard at the entrance of the Palace Tree. The guards bowed and let them through, following him with their gazes.

As he had been here several times already he did not need Zinnia's guidance, so he walked straight to the throne room. He saw several Beast women that looked at him fearfully from the distance and bowed to them slightly, smiling warmly.

They returned his bow but quickly skittered away. Sighing as he watched them disappear behind the corner, he looked at Zinnia with a tone of sadness.

"How are they lately?"

"Not much change. Some try to bear through by putting up a strong front, some still seem broken beyond repair." Said Zinnia. "Those who were fighters took it better, but they are minority."

"I see." Said Noah and continued to walk. With his new senses he felt that Zinnia wanted to say something else but hesitated so he looked at her with a raised eyebrow.

"What is it?" He asked, making Zinnia surprised that he could feel her hesitation. She thought she hid it well.

"Did not know if I should bother you with it, but... Among those who seem hopeless, are also the family of that girl." Said Zinnia.

"Firria?" Asked Noah, remembering the cute, busty girl that was the reason he came to the Bull beastmen's help.

"Yes."

"Mother or sister-in-law?" Asked Noah.

"Both." Said Zinnia. "We had to return them back to the Gardens, shortly after awakening. The drug is out of their bodies, but their minds are not ready. They both were personal toys of that bastard. And he tortured them just to take revenge on Firria's dead father. Made them watch at their beloved one's severed heads every time he raped them."

"Fucking monster. What of Firria?" Asked Noah.

Zinnia sighed sadly before answering. 

"We made a list of names of all who still sleep after looking into their heads, so that those who awakened could find their family. Firria found her aunt and cousin. Her father's sister. Firria thought they were dead. Her aunt's family lived in another town, that was among the first to be enslaved. So, they were among those who were tortured and drugged the longest, so they are not in condition to be awakened. Far worse than her own family. Firria has been down since then."

Noah sighed without saying anything and walked in silence after that, deep in his thoughts until he reached the throne room.