(Oct 24)

One of my fellow soldiers came by the house today and informed me that all the soldiers (me included) are to return to usual duties and routines tomorrow.

I got the rest of the day off but tomorrow is back to work.

(Oct 25)

Today was normal, nothing much happened.

Did my usual patrols around the city, saw a couple solders training, no one was making any commotions or anything.

Although as I was walking around, I did notice a lot of rumors being talked about.

The soldiers were gossiping about what happened to The Grinch since no one knew anything except for me, William and my wife.

The civilians were also talking how some of them noticed loud noises on the day we fought The Grinch.

Because of that, there weren’t as many people on the streets.

Aside from that, everything seemed to be normal.

(Oct 27)

My wife and I visited William’s lab again today for the checkup.

“Did you discover anything with your research or whatever?” I asked.

He shrugged.

“I did discover some stuff, but nothing revolutionary or ground-breaking. There’s still a lot more for me to study. Research isn’t something that happens overnight, it takes a long time. Not to mention I do everything myself; I don’t even have an assistant. And let’s not forget I’m not done studying your dragon essence either, so with The Grinch on top of that, it basically doubled my workload.”

I feel bad for William, he really is working extremely hard. I can even see bags under his eyes, probably the result of many all-nighters.

“Yeah yeah, it’s annoying but I’m the only one in this entire damn city who is even remotely smart enough to do this stuff,” William complained.

At first, it sounded like he was bragging that he was the smartest person in the city, but it was true. He literally is.

I haven’t seen many other researchers or wizard scientists besides him. Maybe a few helpers here and there but they didn’t do anything important.

I’m not sure why either, I had thought they were more common, but I guess not.

William went on to explain what he needed us to do.

“Anyways, I’m going to be doing some more tests and experiments which requires your wife.”

My wife and I were then led by William to the same lab building that I went to a couple weeks ago when he was making me do a bunch of weird tests.

After removing my wife’s restraining collar, he put my wife inside of the same large room reinforced with magic walls that I was in before.

William and I entered a different room, with a massive and thick one-way window that allowed us to see inside of the room my wife was in.

“For these tests, I’m going to need your wife to transform into The Grinch.” He explained to me, and then repeated the instructions to my wife through a speaker. “Ma’am, are you able to transform into The Grinch?”

“Well, I’ve never intentionally tried transforming, but I can try!”

My wife responded from the other side of the mirror as she closed her eyes and focused.

A few moments passed and nothing happened.

“Um, I don’t know how to do it. I usually just transform into The Grinch when my urges become strong enough.”

“Hm. Just relax. Close eyes and relax your body, don’t focus or anything, just ease yourself. If you feel something taking over, don’t resist. Just relax.”

My wife nodded reluctantly.

It took quite a bit of time, but eventually something started to change.

An absurd amount of magic started to grow inside of my wife, seemingly out of nowhere and enveloped my wife in it.

As that happened, a thick layer of green fur grew on top of my wife’s clothing, and she morphed into the shape of The Grinch.

According to William’s analysis, her transformation is quite similar to my dragon transformations as well.

When I summon a dragon claw, my hand doesn’t morph into a claw, but instead a layer of dragon scales and claw gets created on top of my hand.

Similarly with my wife, she doesn’t grow fur out of her skin, it gets created from her magic and appears on top of her clothing.

That way, her clothing doesn’t get torn every time she transforms.

However, William said that there is a slight difference with her transformation.

It’s true that fur gets summoned from her magic, but it also fuses with her as well.

Let’s use clay as an example. Imagine there are two balls of clay of different colors: red and blue.

They are separate and have their own distinct color, but if you mush them together, the clay will slowly mix with each other and sort of become one.

My wife’s transformation is like clay basically.

When she transforms, her magic creates a layer of fur and muscle, which gets fused to her clothing and flesh creating the entity known as The Grinch.

I felt a little uncomfortable watching my wife literally fuse like that, but I continued watching.

My wife… The Grinch started looking around, curious and cautious at the same time.

“Okay. Anthony, can you inject your dragon essence into this orb right here?”

William asked as he pointed to a weird crystal ball connected to a strange metal desk.

I didn’t know why, but I did as I was told.

Fwooosh.

A small vent on the ceiling opened and my dragon essence poured slowly flowed out into the room The Grinch was in like a gas.

The dragon essence I had injected into the orb had been transported through a vent and into the test room.

The Grinch immediately perked up and stared at the vent and the dragon essence coming out of it.

Upon sensing my dragon essence, The Grinch became agitated and energetic, and was attracted it for some reason.

As this was all happening, William was writing notes.

William did a couple more experiments like throwing meat into the room, releasing other strange gases into the room, playing a bunch of weird audio noises and etc.

At one point, The Grinch tried to escape, but the walls were reinforced and were at least several meters thick. Not to mention William had several… “counter measures” for situations like these (yikes, if you didn’t know that this was The Grinch, then a passerby would’ve assume this was an inhumane experiment).

An hour or so passed and William had completed all the tests he wanted to do.

Once we finished, William pressed another button which released some sort of sedative gas into the room causing The Grinch to slowly fall asleep.

After a few minutes, The Grinch transformed back into my wife.

I picked up my unconscious wife and we returned to William’s main lab room in the tall tower.

“So, any results?” I asked curiously.

“Mnm.”

William grumbled as he wasn’t paying attention to me and was staring at a weird glowing screen.

“What’s that?”

“I’m just looking at the recordings of the experiments.”

“Recordings…?”

William nodded and slightly raised the weird device.

“This is a camera, heard of it before?”

“Wait, that’s a camera??”

Holy moly.

I’ve heard so many rumors of the camera, but this was the first time I’ve see one!

Cameras are these technological devices that somehow can take pictures.

They’re usually expensive and only nobility can afford it, so I’d never expected to see one!

However, what was even more surprisingly was that this camera was special… it could… record videos!?!?

A normal camera that captures a single moment is worth a fortune, and yet William has a super camera that can capture long footage!

“Sheesh. Talking to you is like talking to a child. It’s because this damn country is behind in modern technology. In some more advanced countries, these things are a lot more common than you’d think.” William casually scoffed.

I don’t know how common William claimed they were, but to me, a camera was a thing of legends. In my mind, it is equivalent to a magic artifact.

“Our kingdom can’t afford to buy this willy nilly, so I had to build it myself after obtaining some parts… anyways, its not important how I got it. I was looking at footage of the experiments.”

“Ahem yeah, anyways. Do you have any results? Anything useful you found out? Anything at all you should tell me?”

“You act as if research is done in an instant. It’s not much, but I’ll tell you what I know.”

William proceeded to explain a couple of the things he figured out.

“With these experiments, we’ve confirmed that The Grinch becomes worked up when it comes into contact with your dragon essence, like a drug. The Grinch actively seeks it out and takes pleasure in absorbing it. Why? I’m sure yet. However, The Grinch, your wife, doesn’t have any dragon blood, and yet she is also to somewhat contain a bit of the dragon essence it absorbs.

She’s been living with you for a while now and her body has naturally absorbed some of your dragon essence while being around you. It’s not as efficient as dragon blood, but it’s still able to absorb and maintain dragon essence in small portions. I’m assuming this is the result of whatever Gin had injected into your wife.”

That would explain why I sensed a bit of dragon essence during my fight against The Grinch a few days ago.

“The biggest discover so far is that your wife has another soul inside of her.”

“What?”

“Yes. You heard right; she has another soul inside of her. The soul of a were-beast that is.”

William had inferred that the were-beast soul inside of her is what caused my wife to go berserk as The Grinch. It takes over her body when the soul wakes up.

The Grinch is very similar to a were-beast in appearance, except it’s green and much more powerful so there’s a good chance that The Grinch is just a highly enhanced version of some form of the were-beast family (mostly likely a werewolf).

“But how can a single body have two souls?”

“I mean, we live in a world where necromancy is common. People revive the dead from souls and corpses, why is it that having two souls in one body so strange? It’s definitely not a common occurrence, in fact I’ve never seen it happen nor ever heard of a case like this, but it’s not impossible. Mostly likely is that Gin somehow planted it inside of your wife.”

Of course it’s Gin, who else could it be. It seems like all my problems now are related to him.

“But yeah, that’s basically all I know as of now. I have yet to analysis everything properly, but I’ll be able to find out more as time goes on.”

I nodded.

Researching and studying these kinds of things probably takes a lot of time. Furthermore, William was doing it all by himself with minimal assistance.

As I was about to turn to leave, William stopped me.

“Oh! I forgot. Anthony, this is important.”

“What is it?”

“Remember about a month ago I informed you that our kingdom was going to have a meeting with the Kenava kingdom to negotiate?”

“Uh.”

I did not remember.

“You forgot? Didn’t you write it into your journal?”

Turns out, William’s right. I did write it into my journal.

On September 21, I wrote in my journal that I had met up with William and he had told me that our kingdom would meet up with the leaders of the Kenava kingdom and negotiate with them. He wanted me to come along as one of the few soldiers participating.

Well, um, I completely forgot about that due to everything that happened.

“It’s going to happen in a month, on November 30. But since it takes a while to travel, we leave on November 28. Just thought I’d let you know a bit early so you can prepare.”

“Okay… we’re meeting with the ruler of the Kenava then, right? We’ll be meeting the ones that caused the wyvern attack.”

William nodded.

“Yes. This is very important. If negotiations go wrong… this could lead to…”

…a civil war breaking out.