After Annie began interrogating the so-called "monster"—the one that had started out arrogant and overbearing but had later become meek and cautious—and after the female Claymore standing nearby, who called herself Claire, and the local boy Laki added their own explanations, Annie finally learned a tiny bit about this world and got a rough idea of what was going on.
Based on what the three of them had said, Annie finally believed that the monster might not have been lying: they really did seem to be at the top of this world's food chain.
Like other wild predators, those so-called apex predators didn't much like moving in groups. They could easily transform into humans they had completely devoured, then use those humans' identities to infiltrate villages, lie low, and hunt.
What's more, the naked human eye couldn't tell a transformed, lurking monster from a real person. The reason was that monsters could recreate the bodies of humans they had eaten. And if a monster had eaten its victim's brain, it could even perfectly reproduce the victim's memories and thought patterns?
As for the Claymores, they were super-soldiers created by a mysterious organization called the "Organization." To gain the power to defeat monsters, the Organization experimented on women's bodies, implanting and fusing them with monster flesh. The Claymores were half-human and half-monster, yet, like the monsters, they possessed strength beyond an ordinary person's wildest imagination. That was what gave them the power to fight, hunt, and execute monsters.
That was more or less the gist of it, and basically all true.
Annie still had some nagging questions, but Claire and Laki only knew so much, and they couldn't get any more information out of the monster either. So she had no intention of pressing the three of them further. Instead, she