The first two weeks had been enlightening in ways Randell hadn't expected. The difference between performing an autopsy on a monster corpse and interacting with a living subject was always an eye-opener, but dealing with 'princess Rythica', as he'd started referring to her, was certainly a new experience. And boy, did she deserve that title.

  Randell, who had grown up in a moderately wealthy house, had the misfortune of dealing with entitled nobles on many occasions. It was an unfortunate, yet unavoidable duty in his line of work. He felt fairly confident in saying he understood their kind well. From the way they looked down on the world, as if it were nothing but a stain upon their shoe, to the infamous tantrums they threw whenever they didn't get what they wanted. It was a song and dance that had been played out since the dawn of civilization.

  And little princess Rythica was absolutely worthy of that title. Oh sure, he may have called her a princess jokingly due to her subspecies. But the way she behaved made him feel like she was truly a member of royalty in the making. She would bang on the walls and screech when she was hungry. Then whine and scream for more. She'd get upset and even lash out if she didn't get what she wanted the very instant she wanted it. She'd scream if he tried to pick her up. Then screamed again when he put her down. In many ways, she was like a toddler. Worse, even, as most toddlers didn't actively try to maul the person feeding them. In fact, he was pretty sure she went out of her way specifically to try and sink her tiny chompers into his precious human flesh.

  Randell had thought of himself as a pretty calm and collected man. After all, he was an academic. An old professor who had taught many arrogant and incompetent youths over the course of his career. He had gotten good at not letting their antics get under his skin. But this little gremlin seemed to love pushing her luck. She'd screech, bang, and hiss at him for sometimes hours at a time. And, as he tried to calm her down, she'd go out of her way to try and hurt him. This, of course, came with the territory of working with beasts and monsters. But for whatever reason, she managed to get under his skin in a way that few others ever could. He got the overwhelming impression this wasn't just mindless monster aggression, but something personal. And it was only made worse by the fact that he needed to treat her with care. After all, if she died he'd lose a valuable research subject. And despite her natural weapons and defenses, she was still an incredibly fragile creature.

  Plus, the thought of harm coming to her felt... wrong, somehow. Like he was disobeying some primal part of himself. He shook the alien feeling away.

  That fragility was also the reason that her current accommodations were... less than optimal. He had wanted to put her in the proper space, a large and comfortable enclosure. Although it was currently under construction in his lab. The rushed nature of buying the queen off the black market so quickly meant he had very little time to prepare for her arrival.

  The temporary cage he had been keeping her in should have been more than enough, in his opinion. But the little princess disagreed vehemently. First off, the Vex tended to have a series of major growth spurts during the early months of their development. Given the slightly flaky nature of her skin, it was clear she was going to shed her skin soon, and that meant a growth spurt was imminent. The Vex's instincts seemed to also realize this and demanded a bigger space to prepare for that eventuality.

  This was only further exasperated by the fact that the hatchling was finally starting to learn to walk. Rythica was still slow, awkward, and terribly unbalanced, but it was clear that she wanted to explore her new surroundings more thoroughly. And a tiny cage was not exactly the best place for a baby to do that.

  She was constantly reaching her four diminutive, clawed hands out through the bars to try and grab anything and everything she could. Given that most of these objects were over ten meters away, he assumed she was still working on advanced concepts like depth perception. And maybe object permanence too, given how quickly she lost interest in something as soon as she turned around.

  She clearly had grown a personal vendetta against the steel bars of her cage and took ample opportunity to gnaw on them for daring to impede her path. Then she would suddenly turn her aggression on Randell himself, for some reason, as if demanding he fix the issue. Followed by another tantrum when he didn't immediately jump to obey.

  If this was anything like what new parents had to go through, he promised to never think another negative thought towards the young mothers among his staff randomly snapping or breaking down over the smallest things. Hell, he might even have to give a few of them a small raise out of sheer pity. There was no way this kind of thing could be healthy.

  The only saving grace to Randell's rapidly dwindling sanity was that the entitled brat spent most of her day sleeping. The Vex slept roughly 16 hours per day, which was a mercy on him. The 8 hours of screaming, eating, biting, and more angry screeching was already bad enough. The fact that she was often in a foul mood after being woken up, a fact he only learned after once waking her up early to feed before running some daily errands, was yet another cherry on top of this lovely sundae.

  So, it was with a furious eye twitch that Randell turned around to the sound of chitin banging on metal. He hadn't even finished opening the door to enter the room, and she was already screeching at him like a feral animal. And people wondered why he had a short fuse all of a sudden.

  "Alright, alright. Calm down. I'm coming," he said with exasperation. "I have your damn meal right here. Ungrateful little shit."

  She was banging on the walls of her enclosure, and trying to bite through the bars. At the same time, she was staring directly at him. Her head tracked his every movement, a fierce scowl on her tiny face. The glare, when compared with her bright violet, insect-like eyes made for an unsettling visage. One that didn't faze him in the slightest after the last two weeks of dealing with her. Her mandibles and other mouth parts were moving and clicking. Making noise and probably trying to assert dominance or something.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  He walked up to the cage, and, without grace, dropped a slab of bloody pork into the cage. It had to be extra bloody, for whatever reason. Because why not give him more work to clean it up afterward? If he dared try to drain it first, she simply wouldn't eat. Then she would complain and complain until he brought her something more to her tastes.

  The pork was devoured in record time, leaving the cage, and Rythica herself, splattered in viscera.

  Trying to salvage the situation somewhat, he pulled out his notebook and watched her closely. He made sure to leave a few bones within the meat for her to bite through. It wouldn't harm her due to the structure of their digestive tract, but it served as an excellent test for measuring her bite strength.

  There were actually bones from three different beasts mixed into the meat, each with varying densities. When the first bone cracked, the weakest one, he felt mildly surprised she managed to achieve even that at a mere two weeks old. She failed to do any real damage to the other two, not even leaving bite marks on the biggest one. That felt much more reasonable. He quickly noted all this down and narrowed down the range of estimates he had for her bite strength. She was strong for a newborn, but still weaker than many other beasts or monsters. In more applicable terms, she wouldn't be able to bite off a finger if she managed to get ahold of one, but it would still hurt like hell.

  He added a few of his own thoughts to the book before placing it on the nearby desk. As with every meal, her entire cage was a bloody mess. Did she purposely sling gore across every surface just to annoy him? He swore she had to be doing it on purpose because it was just too much of a mess for him to believe it was an accident. He could have sworn he caught her once or twice throwing the meat against the walls and the bars of her cage before meeting his gaze. But, she was just a monster, though. So, it was probably all in his head. He was overthinking it.

  Sighing in annoyance, he grabbed the other objects he had brought with him into the room. A water bucket, rag, and a pair of thick, elbow-length leather work gloves. He pulled the gloves and met the monster's gaze.

  She stared back at him. She looked at the bucket. Back up at him. Down to the bucket. Then back up again.

  Her stare turned defiant, as if they hadn't already done this several dozen times. He took a step towards the cage, and she took a step back. Her face was a mask of sheer determination. He took another step, and she bolted. The Vex took off in a brisk, faltering gait as far from him as she could manage, which wasn't far, and curled up in the opposite corner of the cage, apparently hiding from him.

  The cage, which had no solid faces, did little to obscure her presence. But she did a valiant job covering her face with her hands, apparently not realizing that just because she couldn't see him, didn't mean he couldn't see her. It was almost cute in a way.

  Almost.

  Randell took the bucket and splashed some water inside the cage, thoroughly soaking the young princess. He pretended to not hear the outraged screech. The vex were a fairly hydrophobic species, and he used that fact to his advantage. He then reached into the cage and picked up the Vex hatchling. This elicited another outraged cry, but Randell ignored it. Randell felt slightly gratified, in a petty way, at annoying the young princess as much as she annoyed him.

  He lifted the small creature up to eye level. She flailed and squirmed and bit and made every angry noise she could. But no matter how many times she tried to claw at his hands or chew off his fingers, her tiny weapons couldn't pierce the thick leather. He smirked at her and started wiping her down with the wet rag, clearing off the copious amounts of blood that had gotten on her. This just angered her more.

  By the time he was done, she was screeching at him at the top of her lungs. Her tiny body, barely bigger than two fists put together, was doing everything in its power to wiggle out of his grasp.

  After he was satisfied, he opened a small wooden box he kept near the cage, and placed her inside, closing the lid. He let out a sigh of relief and turned his attention to the cage itself, giving it a thorough wipe-down as well. The thudding of something pounding on wood could be heard the entire time.

  Finally done, he placed Rythica back into the cage and locked it. He pulled off his gloves and stood up, stretching out the minor ache that appeared on his back. He was far too old for this shit.

  He turned his attention to the cage, but the angry queen had already retreated to the safety of her little dog bed and was glaring at him from underneath it. She hissed at him as he caught her stare.

  Randell gave her a little wave, and turned to leave, the angry hisses of the little princess following him out the door. He sighed again, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

  This was going to be one of his most trying projects yet. But the data he could gather from it was priceless. He could deal with it. He had already learned a plethora of useful facts about their species and theorized information that was either unknown or wrong in the books. He was confident that this would be a success, despite the challenges that he was already facing. He just needed to hire a damn nanny already.

  He snorted at the thought. Hiring a nanny to take care of a damn monster.

  Humorous or not, he was serious about hiring a dedicated caretaker for the beast. He had been forced to do quite a few things he had no intention of continuing. He was a researcher, not a damned zookeeper. His nerves were beyond fried by this point.

  Thankfully, the hiring process had already been initiated the day of the girl's hatching. Given the rather suspicious nature of the job, he was expecting it to take quite a while to find someone who fit the bill. And much to his chagrin, he was right. The job had been made available through many of the usual channels like minor guilds or plastered on notice boards within public places. It wasn't too well advertised out of fear of drawing too much attention, but it was still seen by more than enough eyes to reach the local gossip circles.

  Unsurprisingly, there were very few applicants, even with the hefty salary he was offering. First off, keeping Rythica's existence a secret was paramount. His life was literally on the line for this. As such, the job description was extremely vague on the actual details of the work required, other than essentially playing caretaker for a "potentially dangerous animal." Second, the job would require the applicant to sign a magically enforced contract of secrecy. Both of these points naturally deterred most people with a sense of self-preservation. And the unusually large salary for what should be a basic servant position only made the whole thing even more sketchy.

  Thankfully, there were a few takers here or there. There were always people desperate enough to work questionable lines of work to put food on the table. The world was not a kind place, after all. Sometimes, people just had to suck it up and take the plunge. It was a harsh reality.

  He had already interviewed a handful of candidates, but none of them had really stood out in his eyes. They either lacked the skills to handle the task or lacked the trustworthiness required to keep the job safe and secure. And even with the contract, some people might still deem the cost of losing their levels worth it to report his private activities to the local authorities.

  He sighed and rubbed his head. He had far too much work to do, and Rythica was a distraction that was chewing far too deeply into his actual work. He was getting tired of losing sleep to catch up from so much wasted time.

  He hoped the next interview would go better. Whenever the next person applied, that was.