Monsters are normal things gone wrong.
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That’s a pretty interesting take. I’ve read some Japanese fantasy webnovels, and quite a few of them have a recurring concept of ‘Miasma’, which can be number of different things, but all have the effect of turning animals and sapients into monsters. As the miasma collects in the bodies of its victims, it mutates it, and eventually solidifies into a crystalline structure referred to as a ‘magic stone’.
The stones are collected, sold for various reasons, but the most common is to power magical equivalent of household appliances. (although some are used for magic weapons)
In the Iron Kingdoms setting, dragons have mutagenic qualities, which leads to various mutations and toxic undead.
Another example is Phantasy Star 2, where the monsters were created by the systems intended to maintain planetary ecologies, but had malfunctioned or reprogrammed to create the monsters.
I myself came up with an area that was connected to another plane, both sides were subtly changed by the other. This led to good and bad things happening.
As such, the idea of monsters being something changed in strange and possibly irreversible ways is always something to keep in mind when world building.
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During the weekend, I played the demo version of Code Vein, and it includes the same concept of miasma, in this case it’s similar to spores than, if you breathe them, you become a mindless ghoul, so to remain a normal ghoul, you wear a purifier mask. It’s pretty bonkers, everything in that game is over the top, but I liked it and maybe when the game is on sale, I will purchase it.