Inside his room on the ship, Null could not help himself; his entire being felt like it was undergoing a most terrible itch.
He subconsciously shredded deep layers of skin off his body out of sheer irritation. There was nothing he could do to stop it.
From his arms to his legs, his head to his eyelids; nothing was spared from his ravenous fingers.
Bloody and soon to be scarred, Null could feel an intense burning sensation from within.
His mind was undergoing a complex shift in its rigid form of existence; something was added to it.
It was there that he was trying to reach— his insides were just begging to see the outside.
His skeleton was howling in anticipation to see the outside for itself. Most importantly, his brain was manipulated by the incessant pangs of both ecstatic pleasure and incessant pain.
It was as if the only thing it wanted at the moment was to be hand mashed into a saucy goop.
Null could not think because of everything occurring. There was only a primal instinct telling him that this was good.
As the saying goes, "No pain, no gain."
What gain he would get from this was beyond him. From what he could tell, death was the only thing he would receive after he finished literally tearing himself apart.
And for what, a bout of anxiety. Only a sycophantic mental person would see the benefit of this process.
For what seemed like hours passing, Null continued the gruesome process of shredding his skin off. Despite the actual minutes that passed, something was changing as he did so.
---
Klein and the village were still busy building upon their lives inside the newly improved bunker.
The size had more than doubled in size and with each day that passed more and more improvements were made.
After the situation stabilized— every dead meibeast was dragged inside, a proper area made for each method of utilizing them down to the bone— Meior had finally sat down to speak what he wished to convey to Klein before.
"What you may have noticed in the mofei is something that I was able to understand even before I came to this village."
A sudden weight was dropped onto Klein, "Before you came to this village?"
"Believe it or not, son, we aren't the only Imeni in the world," while Meior was telling Klein this truth, he could not even comprehend why he had not previously considered it.
"Of course, it may not even seem like a worthy acknowledgement considering the dangers of travel, however I come from a place not of this village."
Klein still could not understand the meaning behind his father's words, so he kept quiet and listened on.
Meior continued, "The place I come from is nothing like the backwater village. There is an actual city with proper defenses, all of the Imeni children are safe to play and run around."
There was some recollection before he spoke, "Unlike with our Meita Village, the City of Meidiora is actually safe. When I lived there, my parents could take care of me and make sure I grew up able to protect myself."
Reminiscing about the past seemed to hurt Meior a bit, but nonetheless he elucidated his concerns, "Despite what is understood here, the knowledge this village possesses is only a fragment of the truth; I know that you are smart enough to see it."
"The mofei you have used to keep the plant growth stable down here is well known where I come from, along with some others," he closed in on Klein's sitting figure and placed both hands on his shoulders, "What we have is a curse to those stuck-up pricks in Meidiora."
'A curse. It sure seems like a gift to me though,' Klein couldn't help but think.
Despite not having natural vision, he could still sense the world with his other senses, it just took some getting used to.
In the first place, it was not as if he could see clearly beforehand.
"What do you mean by that, father? Why would you say it's a curse to see the mofei?"
"Because only meibeasts have that ability."
Now that was a surprising take.
If an Imeni went around showing off something only a beast would have, the others would surely have problems with the significance of such a thing.
"What does that even mean? Are we some sort of monsters then," Klein had no reason to believe that they would be outcasted for such a ridiculous reason.
"What it means is that you and I carry the blood of a beast inside us," Meior admitted the unsettling fact of the matter.
"B-but how?" Klein was perturbed.
"Klein, when a meibeast becomes powerful enough, they sometimes gain the ability to shift their form as they desire. Some consider it an evolution of sorts; others consider it a heinous ability and shun those of the past who were used to birth young from such meibeasts."
"So, what you're saying is-," Klein now could see the light of understanding and Meior responding in kind, "Yes. Our ancestors were such people, born from the likes of a beast."
Meior took this time to observe his son's face; to which, all he saw was a thick mask of contemplation.
'So, my eyes come from the ancestor beast. However, this is such an incredulous feat the likes I could have never witnessed in my past life.'
A rush soon overcame the thoughtful child, "So about the other mofei, what did you mean by that," he could care less about his origins.
'That's my boy,' Meior knew Klein was smart, but seeing as his son seemed to contemplate what was important to his ideals, he was bound to triumph over any obstacles the future held.
"While here you only see the main four types of mofei, there actually exists many in between what is most commonly 'seen'," he explained.
"Take this nature mofei, as you call it, in actuality it lies predominantly between that of earth mofei, and the other three natural mofei— that is to say water, fire, and air."
Klein could slightly comprehend the meaning of his father's words and so he asked, "What about the nature mofei makes it different, what about the other types you mentioned," he was curious to know more about the mystical substance.
"I will start from the beginning, how they taught me when I was a kid," Meior understood the excitement Klein felt, 'He's just a kid after all. Soon he'll realize how special he is.'
That was for what was to come, as of the moment, he began his lecture on the Origin of Mofei and Meikind.