Answer:
B) The creature's creator is the answer.
This is a good observation. The General reveals to Rainsford that Rainsford himself will be the hunted in page 11-15 of the story. So, your observation is correct. There is a delay in introducing the main conflict. The main reason for this is to keep Rainsford in suspense and study his reaction.
Perhaps you, like me, were raised essentially to think of the slave experience primarily in terms of our black ancestors here in the United States. In other words, slavery was primarily about us, right, from Crispus Attucks and Phillis Wheatley, Benjamin Banneker and Richard Allen, all the way to Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass. Think of this as an instance of what we might think of as African-American exceptionalism. (In other words, if it’s in “the black Experience,” it’s got to be about black Americans.) Well, think again.