(Oct 2)

I felt sick, absolutely disgusted at what I saw.

The blood… the bits of broken bone shards scattered throughout the ground… the mangled organs tied together and the flesh that were ripped out in chunks…

Some of the people I saw ran away and threw up instantly, I too wanted to just run from this horrid scene.

But for some reason I couldn’t move, I wanted to look away but my body was frozen… just stuck staring at the “bodies.”

I felt sick, I felt like vomiting, it was the worst thing I had ever seen.

I’ve seen plenty of corpses before and I, myself have killed many monsters and beasts. In fact, I killed my first humanoid being recently, which was the assassin.

But that didn’t prepare me for this.

This was the first time I had seen a corpse… no, a pile of flesh and bones, so brutally ripped and torn apart into a mess.

Just the sight of it sickened me to my very core.

And yet I couldn’t look away.

I felt so horribly sick and I could feel my disgust and revolt just growing inside of me.

Look away.

Just look away.

Why? Why didn’t I look away?

At that moment, when I felt so nauseous and sick about to vomit… suddenly it all disappeared.

I felt calm.

All my disgust and feelings of sickness had vanished in an instant.

I no longer felt sick from the mangled corpse.

I knew instantly what had happened, this had happened twice to me before.

There was only one word to explain what happened…

Dragonification.

I lost my emotion of disgust.

Completely gone in an instant.

I felt something change within me, as if I had gained a new power but I ignored it.

I wasn’t in the mood to find out what new dragon powers I had gained.

I walked towards the piled of flesh, and the stench of rotting meat filled my nose.

But I felt nothing.

Despite the putrid smell and the gruesome scene, I no longer felt the sickness I felt before.

While staring at it, I felt a strange feeling within me.

It wasn’t disgust.

It was something different.

The splatters of blood…

The mangled meat…

The broken bone bits…

It looked like art.

You know how in some artwork, the artist just splashes paint over the canvas randomly, or some surrealistic artwork that is dark and is supposed to display a deeper and darker meaning.

Bizarre and strange abstract art pieces like that.

That’s what the disfigured corpses looked like to me at that moment.

When you put aside your feelings of disgust and revolt, it truly did look like art…

No…

What am I saying…?

What the fuck…

Did I just call a pile of mutilated meat and dismembered bodies… art?!?!

GOD DAMN IT!

Why’d dragonification happen at such a random moment!

So much is already happening, a war nearly breaking out, a wyvern attack destroying a part of the city, dealing with assassins, my family only recently moved to the city too.

And now this.

When I finally snapped back to reality, I saw there over a dozen soldiers and detectives securing the crime scene and investigating the place.

A few of the weaker willed soldiers and people ran away and vomited at the sight of it.

Since I was fine after dragonification happened, one of my superior officers ordered me to stand guard, keep citizens away and look out for any suspicious people who might be the murderer while the detectives do the investigation.

I did my duty and just stood here, but I would peek at the scene every once in a while.

I wanted to help in the investigation, but I didn’t seem like I could help in any way.

There was nothing I could do, all I could and had to do was stand and watch as the detectives did their investigations to find the culprit.

(Oct 3)

I was frustrated.

This morning, I asked Briggs if he could excuse me from my work today and let me go outside the city and hunt monsters instead.

I wasn’t in the mood to just walk around the city and do guard duty, I wanted to let out my frustration. I needed something to blow off some steam that was accumulated since yesterday.

When I was given permission to go, I headed out.

Right outside the city, monsters aren’t rare but as long as you stick close to the city, there shouldn’t be any insanely strong monsters, so I was safe going alone.

“Alright Anthony, be careful though. You’ve been acting weird today, but I’ll trust you because you’re a homie. Even so, don’t let you’re guard down because this time you’re going alone.”

Thanks Briggs, I don’t deserve such a great friend like you but I’m still grateful to have you as a friend.

After leaving the city borders, I headed to a nearby plains which was popular for monster hunting and training in general.

It didn’t take me too long until I found a couple ogres walking around and when they saw me, they ran at me and tried to attack me.

This reminded me of when I had fought the ogre before with the other C and D ranked soldiers while Briggs and Cornelia were watching over us.

I remember struggling to take down a single ogre but now, I was stronger.

I was able to easily take on a couple ogres by myself.

The ogre swung its fist at me but I easily dodged to the right and avoided it’s attack completely, allowing me to counterattack by shooting an explosive fireball at its rib, staggering it temporarily.

Two more ogres came from behind and teamed up on me.

They growled and ran at me while I pulled out my sword and parried their attacks.

After parrying, I jumped backwards and used the momentum to propel myself forward once again and slid right under the ogre to get behind them while slashing its stomach causing blood to spew out.

They were slow at turning, so I used this time to jump on its back and transformed my hands into dragon claws for a stronger attack output.

With a single sword slash, I sliced off one of the ogre’s head leaving the other two ogres left.

However, when I used my dragon claws, I felt a strange feeling. Then I remember that I had forgotten to check out what new dragon ability I gained from dragonification.

As I was distracted, the two ogres both jumped at me but before the ogres could smash into me, I grabbed them while they were midair and flipped them causing them to go flying behind me, crashing into the ground.

I ignored them for now and focused on finding out on what new dragon ability I gained.

Then I felt something behind me…

More specifically on my ass…

I had grown a dragon tail.

It was a small dragon tail, the size of my hand but it wagged like a dog’s tail.

What the hell is this, what am I supposed to do with a dragon tail?

In exchange for losing one of my emotions, in exchange for having dragonification happen, I gained a stupid dragon tail.

Anger swelled inside me.

I could feel my dragon essence swirling due to my change in emotions and I instantly took a deep breath to calm myself before dragonification happens again.

But I was still frustrated.

Very frustrated.

This was when the two ogres stood back up and they approached me again.

I was frustrated, I needed something to vent it out on.

And the two ogres were perfect as a punching bag.

At that moment, all my built-up stress, worries, and frustrations exploded in the form of strength.

I crouched downwards as I inhaled to gather all my energy in my body in my legs, and to also control my emotions, and instantly launched myself forwards towards the ogres like a rocket.

With the force of my jump, I clenched my dragon fist while punching forward, right into the stomach of one of the ogres, tearing a hole right through its stomach and blasting bits of it’s inside to the outside.

Even so I continued.

I spun around and with the force of the spin, I threw a kick at its knee and completely shattering all the bones in its leg due to the explosive force of my attack combined with a dragon essence infused explosion.

The other ogre was startled by the sudden increase of my power, and I injected as much of my dragon essence I could into my sword and tossed it at the other ogre’s head, piercing its skull with ease.

I was going wild.

Yet at the same time, I was calm; I was the calmest I’ve ever been despite going wild. I wasn’t thinking, my mind was blank as I just went crazy without feeling any emotions.

I jumped on the already dead ogre and with my clenched dragon claws and I punched and pummeled down on it.

My fist was moving so fast, it looked like a blur of colors with a red mist of blood flying around in the air.

Due to the overwhelming force of my punches, I caused the ground itself to crack apart and blood-stained dirt to fly into the air.

I was punching so wildly; I didn’t realize that the entire body of the ogre was already destroyed and most of it was gone so I was just punching the ground littered with meat and blood.

I increased my magic output and applied magic to each of my fist’s so each time I landed a punch, it caused a mini explosion which caused the bits of burnt flesh from the ogres to get sent flying everywhere.

Ka-boom! Ka-ka-ka-bbbbbboooooomm! Kaboom! Kaboooom!

When I finally stopped and snapped out of my trance, I realized what I had done.

I stood up and looked around after the smoke of all the explosions faded.

Chaos and destruction.

I looked back at the corpse… no. I looked at what left of the corpse of the ogres after I brutally deformed it and felt a sinking feeling in my stomach.

When I saw the corpses of the ogres, it instantly reminded me of what I saw yesterday.

A pile of flesh and blood, mangled meat, and broken bones everywhere.

It looked nearly identical to the scene that was in the city yesterday…

Oh god.

No…

I can’t be…

What if…

What if I was the murderer who killed those people in the city and ripped apart those corpses in such a gruesome way?!?!