(Oct 21)

The plan was a failure, The Grinch escaped.

I could’ve prevented it, but I decided not too… why I decided to do nothing, I still do not know myself.

And don’t misunderstand, I didn’t allow The Grinch to run away because I’m one of those annoying spineless naïve goody two-shoes who forgive even the most vile murdering scumbag villains for the sake of “friendship.”

Coming into this battle, I was fully prepared and even eager to kill The Grinch. It’s just… after what happened, I lost all motivation and just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

Despite some of the A ranker’s efforts to pursue The Grinch, it was too fast and was able to quickly disappear into the streets of the city.

Well, that was anticlimactic.

After an intense battle raging on for a long time, The Grinch just flees and then escapes.

I stood still for a while and once I confirmed the battle was over, I relaxed the strain on myself and released all the magic in my body causing all the strength I gained from the spice pills to also vanish.

The spice pills were a temporary power boost, so once they wore off, I would obviously revert back to my previous strength. However, since I consumed so many pills, I was able to permanently absorb a small portion of the magic.

So even without the spice pills, I now have the strength a lower-end A ranker.

Still, my body was a completely wrecked from the effects of the spice pills and I felt like I was about to collapse.

Luckily though, just before I could drop to the ground, I was suddenly frozen as a layer of ice encased me.

William knew the damage from the pills were tremendous, so he used his ice magic to prevent my body from decomposing and breaking down even further.

A small group of healers rushed to my frozen body and started to cast some healing magic onto me.

It took around half an hour to heal me because of all the internal damage, and I just had to wait inside of the ice until it was done.

That meant I had a bit of time to just think and reflect on the battle that just occurred.

Although it only lasted a couple minutes in real time, it felt like forever and a lot of things happened during the battle.

Instead of focusing on the negatives, I’m going to try to be positive and making this a learning experience.

Putting aside all my questions that I have, there’s a lot of things that I can reflect on and learn about in the fight against The Grinch.

For example, I have a lot of abilities and skills, but I only used a small portion of them.

I barely even utilized my dragon missiles, I completely forgot about them once I started to fight with my dragon claws.

Also, I threw away my sword as a decoy and forgot about that as well.

The issue with having so many options and so many abilities, is that it’s difficult to use all of them. It’s hard to master all of your skills to be able to use them all together in unison.

That’s a problem with inexperienced fighters, they learn a bunch of new cool abilities, they use it once and then completely forget about it. That’s super impractical, and yet it happens all the time.

Even if someone spends a hundred years learning thousands of different spells, they won’t be as strong as someone who spends a hundred years mastering a few spells and learning how to use them practically in battle to their full potential.

Its like that one quote: “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 spells once, but I fear the man who has practiced one spell 10,000 times.”

So I’ll need to learn to actually familiarize myself with using all my skills together, and not just strengthening them.

This is why it takes years for people to truly become strong, because it takes that long to get skilled enough to be able to use all of their talents together. It’s a lot harder than it sounds.

Another thing I’ll need to learn is how to control myself, more specifically, my emotions.

I went battle crazy several times, ignoring all pain and just went on the offensive to experience the thrill of fighting.

Sure, I was under the drug-like influence of the spice pills, but that’s just an excuse. I was unable to control myself.

When I get too excited, I tend to lose myself. Especially recently.

That’s why it’s especially important for me to be aware of this and prevent it from happening so that I can fight optimally, which will also reduce the chances of dragonification occurring.

Honestly, I lost control of myself so many times during my fight against The Grinch and got hurt so many times, I’m surprised that I’m still alive.

The amount of life and death situations that I got into was fucking insane.

The chances of me surviving all that must’ve been astronomically low, and yet somehow, I did.

I am the luckiest and unluckiest person at the same time. I’m lucky for surviving against all odds, and I’m unlucky because this happened to me in the first place.

I know the world doesn’t revolve around me, but when shit like this keeps happening, it sometimes makes me feel as I’m the protagonist of a novel or something.

I know, I know. That’s dumb, of course I’m not. But even so, it does feel like it sometimes with all the stuff that keeps happening to me.

Man, I didn’t think I’d have another existential crisis at this age.

Well, as that was happening, the healers finished healing me and the ice around my body slowly melted away.

I stood up and took a deep breath in before stretching my muscles.

It felt good to not be in excruciating pain and to be able to freely move without having my mind drunk on spice pills.

Since my cloths and armour were all destroyed during the battle, I was completely naked. I didn’t even notice until someone ran over and gave me some spare cloths to wear.

Anyways, once I was free, the first thing I wanted to do was to discuss what happened with William as there’s a lot of things I needed to tell him.

That’s when I noticed that William was nearby, but… something was strange.

Walking closer, I saw that he was on his knees with his hand gripping his chest as he breathed heavily.

“Hey, William! You okay there?” I shouted out as I rushed over to his side.

For some reason, his entire face was pale, and he was sweating intensely.

Suddenly, he just threw up and vomited all over the dirt ground.

“Urgh…. Sorry about that…”

“Hey, hey. Slow down, what’s wrong with you…?”

“Ah, it’s nothing. It was just that The Grinch’s roar from earlier affected me a bit more then I expected. I’ll be fine though. Don’t worry about it.”

Bullshit.

Utter bullshit.

He says that there’s nothing wrong? I’m calling bullshit.

Yes, The Grinch’s roar was powerful, but it shouldn’t injure someone of William’s caliber by this much to cause him to physically become ill.

William’s a god damn A ranker.

I’m not sure what’s going on, I just know that there’s something he’s not telling me about.

And I want to know, so I can help him. The same way he helped me so many times before.

“Come on man, I’m your friend. Tell me, what’s going on, I can help.”

“Like I said, it’s nothing. Well, I guess I am just…. Disappointed with myself honestly. Disappointed and ashamed of how useless I was during this fight.”

Although it did sort of sound like he was trying to change the subject, it was indeed true, William seemed quite bummed out.

Honestly, I’m not sure why. He did great. We couldn’t have had this chance in the first place without him, he was the MVP of this entire fight.

“Come on, you weren’t useless. Because of you, I didn’t die! You saved me multiple times! I was the one who let The Grinch escape, not you.”

Then he looked me dead in the eyes and said, “I did literally nothing but buff you from the background. You on the other hand, fought The Grinch one on one. Can you seriously say I wasn’t useless?”

“Well… it’s like you said before, you were weakened by The Grinch’s roar. If you were at full strength, we could’ve easily taken down The Grinch! Heck, you even fought with Briggs head on during the tournament and nearly won!”

“Ha! Do you seriously believe that? I didn’t think you of all people would be fooled by that act.”

“Act…?”

“Yea. The fight between Briggs and me during the tournament was planned. If Briggs was seriously fighting, I wouldn’t be alive right now.”

Holy shit, what? This was news to me.

You’re telling me that battle was scripted?!?!

“Not scripted, planned. It was planned. We didn’t go into details, but Briggs was going to win from the very beginning. I stood no chance; he went easy on me so that we could put on a show for the audience. He went easy on both of us.”

“But didn’t he go berserk?”

“Semi-berserk. Briggs has multiple berserk phases. In his normal state, he just fights normally, in his full berserk state, he loses his mind, but there are states in between where he only slightly loses his mind. Similar to how you sort of went psycho against The Grinch, Briggs is like that, but he can control how crazy he becomes ranging from normal to complete berserk.”

Wow. I… didn’t know that.

I just scratched my head awkwardly.

Sometimes in situations like these, I have no clue what to say or do.

Luckily though, William ended the awkwardness.

“But thanks anyways Anthony. I know you’re trying to cheer me up. I may not show it, but…. I, ahem, do appreciate you.”

“Damn. I can’t believe you’re actually being wholesome! That’s not like you at all!”

“Ah, shut up. Forget I ever said that then.”

It seemed like William was feeling a little bit better.

“Oh. By the way, there are some things we need to talk about… involving, ya know, The Grinch and the fight just now.”

I proceed to explain everything that happened, from how my emotions went wild, to how I lost it, how I noticed that The Grinch had dragon essence and so on.

Basically everything I wrote in the journal starting from the fight to the end is what I told William.

“Hm…. So The Grinch has dragon essence you say?”

William was thinking hard about this before he spoke up again.

“This means that there’s quite a high chance of The Grinch being involved with the Kenava kingdom. Similar to the assassins who tried to kill you or wyvern attack, The Grinch might also be one of their experiments…”

That’s a plausible theory.

We are at the brink of war, and I don’t know much about the Kenava, but from what has happened thus far, this seems like something they’d do.

“Also, once this is over, I’ll have to do more research on your dragon powers Anthony. This instinct of yours…. Very curious…”

I nodded and then asked, “So um, what now?”

“Well. The Grinch escaped, but the plan wasn’t a total bust. We’ll be able to track down The Grinch by following its trails. A monster like that won’t be able to completely conceal its tracks after such an intense battle no matter how stealthy it is.

All the troops are exhausted, so I’d say we all get a couple hour break and at night, we go on the hunt again for The Grinch again. And we will track it down, trap it, and capture it. Then, we will reveal all its secrets of whether this has to do with the Kenava or not.”

Sounds like a plan to me.

I was exhausted as well, so I could take a couple hour nap.

“Alright, I’ll probably head home then. You get some rest too William, you seem tired. Seriously. You’re working really hard, relax sometimes, got it?”

William nodded and waved goodbye as I left.

Before I could forget though, I picked up my sword and quickly grabbed my journal in the underground bunker and wrote down everything that happened leading up to right now.

So with all that out of the way, I’ll be heading home to see my wife and child again. I’ll probably get a good rest before meeting up with William again.

Time to go home!

…

..

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What. The. FUCK.

WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK IS GOING ON???

WHY IS MY WIFE THE GRINCH!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!