The conscience.

The place within all humans in which guilt and morality stems from.

The conscience is what separates humans from animals.

Or in this world, the conscience is what separates the monsters between intelligent and wild.

Those who are 'fully intelligent' have obtained many traits of humanity, and a conscience is one of these things.

Those monsters who are partially intelligent and partially wild have intelligence, yet no conscience.

The conscience is the line between a human and a monster.

And who other than a demon would place those with a conscience in the midst of a gathering of monsters?

Rylth was a monster who was a mix between intelligent and wild from her birth. Just as Fargar or Algorithanus, she did not have a conscience.

A trait that all intelligent monsters shared was that from birth, they were able to speak the human language. Rylth never understood why this was, but she for some reason understood the human language as if it was a mere instinct.

Rylth never considered herself to be human in any way shape or form. Of course, this was obvious. She did not have a conscience, or any form of guilt. She had intelligence, and emotions such as anger or hatred, and she also was able to be intrigued or interested in phenomena, but she lacked the emotions of love.

She was nothing more than a beast with the ability to communicate.

What is the most important thing to any animal?

Eat. Sleep. Reproduce.

To carry on ones bloodline. This is of course a natural instinct for any animal.

While it is rare for animals to have intelligence, it is not impossible. Yet, for animals to have intelligence on the capability of human levels to the point of having these complex emotions is something that is rare indeed.

However, through that demon who experimented with monsters, this became an possible.

Rylth's first goal in her life was to progress her species and her bloodline. It is commonly known for female spiders to lead the species, and even for them to consume the male once they have obtained offspring. This is exactly what Rylth did.

Not only did she kill her own partner and consume part of him, but when she first layed eggs she set aside a part of him for her children to consume.

But something was off.

The first time that Rylth laid eggs, she only laid a total of 2 eggs.

Now, anyone who knows anything about spiders would know that they lay many eggs. For only 2 eggs to be laid... even for Rylth, who had never laid eggs before, she could tell that something was off.

How could there only be two?

There should have been hundreds. Thousands even. How would her species survive with only two offspring? Rylth was filled with an emotion that she had never felt in her life before. Worry, and concern.

Worry for the lives of her children.

The worry that only a mother could give to children.

However, this concern was short lived.

Crack! Crack!

The two eggs hatched simultaneously one day soon after they were laid, and out of each egg came one... thing.

They looked... spiderish. They had the facial features of spiders, however they looked much more human than a spider would. They had the hair of humans on their heads, and their upper 2 arms were humanoid arms with hands.

Below their human arms, they had 2 pairs of insectoid arms, and a set of thicker spider legs. The odd thing about them was that their legs were thicker than their arms, which was not a typical characteristic of spiders. Usually, a being that walked on all 8 limbs would have roughly equal sized limbs. Why did these spiders have differently sized legs?

But the mother, to her own horror and disgust, soon learned the reason.

The two children, one male and one female, stood up on the two legs the day they were born as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Not only did they do this, but they began to instinctively speak on that very day. And it was the human language.

"Mother?"

"Sister?"

"Brother?"

Rylth was filled with horror upon seeing this.

These could not be her children. She was a spider. While she somehow could speak the human language, there was no way that her children could be so fundamentally different from her.

Rylth was ashamed that she had saved a piece of her previous partner for these children, and disturbed that she ever could have cared about them.

Right now, she was only thinking of the most useful way to get rid of them.

But wait.

She was not certain that she would be able to find another male partner so easily.

What would happen if she couldn't?

Would she live on, never reproduce anymore, and her species would die off when she died?

Rylth could not accept that.

Even if these abominations were not worthy of being considered her children, they were currently the only ones who would be able to carry on the species if Rylth were to die.

And so, Rylth grabbed a leg of her previous mate, and ripped out the meat.

She gave it to her children, and they both began to feast on it, their four eyes glaring with hunger as they dug their fangs into the meat.

"This food... is delicious"

"Thank you, mother..."

Rylth glared daggers at the abominations, but went against her own desire to kill them so that she could preserve the species.

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