Over the next few years, while the evil and sinister creatures did battle with the black beast, rest of the world was able to adjust to the new reality and the human race learned how to defend itself from its new predators. During this period of time people learned of the weakness and rules the creatures had to abide by. The first one they discovered was most of the creatures couldn't enter or intentionally damage an inhabited building unless it had been abandoned for a year and day. The wicked ones would also disappear into dens during the day for unknown reasons. And, because technology still worked, they discovered a majority of the creatures could be affected by strong magnetic fields and possibly by salt, gold, silver, copper, and/or magnetized iron depending on their specie.

     Eventually, because of their battle with the beast, the evil ones (dubbed unanimously by humanity as monsters) approached the world's leaders and asked for their help to defeat the beast. They agreed to this, not knowing he was only feeding on the monsters and not on any of the benign ones. They told our leaders about what they knew about the beast and what they had done so far in their attempts to stop it. 

     The beast they told them could only be 'killed' if someone cut off its head or destroyed its heart causing the beast's body to disintegrate afterwards. This, however, was only a temporary solution as it would always come back during the next full moon somehow and return to hunting them as if nothing had happened. Another problem was the only way to get close enough to kill it was to catch it unaware. The only time it was like this was when it was sleeping off a huge meal which it did during the day when monsters couldn't normally bother it. The monsters did have a solution to this one though. If a human was willing, a monster could merge with them, giving them the monster's powers and abilities while the monster would be free to go about during the day. What they didn't tell our leaders was the monster could slowly tear away at their human host's mind; eventually breaking it and claiming the human's body for their own. 

     They also had a special knife capable of removing the beast's heart without killing it and a box which could keep the beast's heart alive infinitely by trapping its life-force and spirit within its confines. However, they had difficulties retrieving the heart with just human/monster hybrids. The beast would either destroy the group and eat it or the heart would get damaged in the battle, killing it and allowing it to be free to come back to life elsewhere causing the attempt to fail. They had come to our leaders hoping that with enough pure humans involved the group they sent would be able to keep the beast still enough for capture as they had noticed it wouldn't or couldn't harm humans. With our leaders consent, they were finally able to seal the beast away.

     After the monsters captured it, they took the box and hid it away somewhere so their enemies amongst the benign races could find it and free the beast to prey upon them once more. Without the beast to distract and hinder they sought to terrorize the human race. Unfortunately for them, the beast had already bought us enough time to adapt and they weren't able to terrorize us quite as they liked.

     Meanwhile the girl had now turned into a young woman and like the rest of her race, did not like the monsters. She longed to fight them on a grander scale but she lacked the ability to do so. Life went on and the young woman helped those she could as she bided her time and waited for her chance.

     In 2020, she got her chance.

    This is where her story, or should I say mine, begins.

     ....

    Sort of.