Chương 12: Not Unfortunate, but less fortunate

June considered the unknown woman's telepathic message.

"Oh, and my name's Grace, but my friends call me Lieutenant." She points to a little badge with three stars.

"Ok, Ms. Grace? Body manipulation?" June was a little confused about what that entailed. The woman fished out a bag of chips from under her table.

"To be honest, we don't know exactly; the transformation has its tells when it comes to affinity, and yours was... particularly violent. I saw the tapes; it almost made me throw up." June found it hard to believe that he had powers, but he found it harder to believe that she decided to eat chips while speaking about his gruesome reconstruction of all times.

"Oh, and" Grace tossed a small insignia pin to June; both his hands were occupied, but luckily the pin didn't fall on the muddy floor of the tent; instead, it flew into his still full, cold cup of coffee. It was a cone cup too; he couldn't place it on a surface. He didn't even want the coffee; they just gave it to him anyways. He took a deep sigh and fished it out and looked at the dripping colorful metal pin. The insignia had an image of a shoebill bird in an altercation with a small crocodile.

"Welcome to the Waterbird Company; you have been assigned to the support crew." She said with an annoying grin.

"Yes, you are being drafted." June was speechless; he didn't even get to voice his qualms in his mind before she answered.

Journal Entry - 2026-04-27 The dreams have continued for the last couple days. For some reason whenever I have these 'dreams,' my sleep in the waking world only lasts around 10 minutes. I do wake up feeling great, so I have few qualms with that. My transformation in the dream seemed to extend into the real... waking world. It feels unbelievable still that the dream world is a real place; maybe I am going insane. I think I'm going to start calling the dreamworld the Nightrealm, because it sounds cooler in my head.

Luckily my mom didn't notice the height change, my golden eyes, or frankly anything since she's basically blind as a bat. My siblings don't live with me, and they haven't visited luckily. My dog seemed to take my new appearance in stride; maybe my scent didn't change much or something. I think I need to find my old sunglasses to hide my eyes; my eyes apparently glow in the dark too.

Oh, and I have night vision now; I don't need my glasses anymore, and everything far and nearby is crystal clear instantly, so that's good. My body has been made very athletic, to say the least. I managed to get out the house without a barrage of too many questions and tried to do a 100-meter dash in the old graveyard near my apartment since not many people go there and the roads are nice and long.

It would be nice if I had someone to help me with timing myself so I don't have to meander and grab my phone to stop the timer. My best time was six seconds and forty-three milliseconds. I would like to search it up, but I have a feeling I'll just disappoint myself by learning it wasn't anything special. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. On another note, I can definitely jump almost a meter in the air; it feels like I'm an athlete now.

I can also lift heavier things too now; it's nice being able to lift my dog and feel no strain, but he's only around twenty-five pounds, so he wasn't heavy to begin with. The shakes in my hands still remained, my doctor told me once it was because stress, so I think I should find a way to rest. Anyways, back to the Nightrealm stuff. It seems ten hours in the real world is about four in the Nightrealm, but when I sleep, no matter how long I spend in the Nightrealm, only ten minutes pass.

It's confusing; I think I need more data than three days. The support crew staff are friendly; they all look human. Some of them have pointy ears or are very tall. I even saw someone using laser vision to weld something, which is a jarring visual for someone with no idea that people could get powers in the first place.

My powers seem a bit premature; it's only been two days since I got them, but I feel kind of left out that my friends have cool powers while I just look like I live out of a beauty salon, well, I'm not complaining too much. I was surprised when Grace suddenly drafted me, but she explained why after. It turns out she directly went against the orders of her higher-ups to save me, which was very nice of her; I owe her one now, I guess.

Anyhow, to get to the point, it was either I get drafted to the support crew, drafted to become a soldier, or sent to a lab; my awakening was unique and an incredibly rare occurrence since I skipped a step or two, and my power as it is seems to just make me more durable, stronger, and just healthier in every way possible, and she was talking about how some ghouls would dissect me to find out how to covet that ability.

Which is scary to say the least, but I think she was joking and sent me to the support crew so I don't have to fight. There's no way people would want to dissect me just to look prettier. Since most of my body was reformed, about every part of me changed for the better, well, except my personality. My mind, on the other hand, changed a little. My high-speed thinking that usually crashes and burns constantly felt manageable for once in my life, so I guess I don't need the meds I was considering taking again.

Those made me very ill a long time ago, so I was a bit reluctant to try them again, but at the same time, my thinking was too fast for me and tended to jumble in thoughts, so it was one or the other until my brain melted out of my ears. I'm still an apprentice in the crew, so they showed me around. We get our own little complex; it's two stories tall, fairly large, and built like a fortress a little far from the pop-up camp Graces' tent was at. The morgue I was in is near this building too.

I'm currently in the real world right now, writing on my disposable phone, so no one tries to intrude on my journal. Oh, and I met the team that saved me. A girl a bit older than me popped out of the big guy's shadow; they called her Shade. She's friendly. The current task the crew gave me is to become friends with her and to fix her blades, but she doesn't seem very talkative, to anyone actually.

She also doesn't want to give me her blades, and she sometimes just mysteriously disappears; I think it's something to do with her power. The big guy disappeared immediately too, but he was covered in a lot of blood and seemed really tired, so I didn't try stopping him for a conversation. There was a shorter guy around my height but still taller than me; he was friendly. He gave me a radio and called it a communicator. It's pretty much just a phone, a bit thicker.

The quality is nice, but it's also a little bulky, though it seems durable enough that I don't accidentally crush it like I did with my... never mind, I don't want to think of it. I wasn't using my old phone anyways, but other than that, he seemed like a tinkerer type, so we got along.

I met an older woman; she had a cool scar on her cheek, way too many blades strapped around her, and when she set her bow, I think it was made of bone, but other than that, it left a crease in the concrete floor, so I need to watch out for that, because I tripped over it twice already. Even though I am considered 'superhuman,' I still trip, which sucks. Anyways, she talked to me a bit oddly; I didn't quite get what she was saying, but the tinkerer guy said she's a cougar and I should watch out.

I think her name was Eric or something? Now that I think about it, I didn't ask anyone their names on that squad, and I forgot the names of my crew too. I didn't want to be weird and ask though, so I'm just going to wait and see if I hear their names from someone else, like I heard Shade and Cougar. Wait, was her name Cougar or Eric? Well, until someone else says their names, I'll just be ambiguous about their names so I don't make it weird. Well, it's almost time for me to sleep again.

I read a bit more of my novel today, and I'm going to sleep at 5: 50am again. It's definitely not an excuse to read a bit more, but if I slept earlier, I would wake up ten minutes later, and then I would either have to return immediately or just lie in bed awake until time comes. Well, tomorrow I will finish my task and become friends with Shade and fix her daggers. June, Signing off PS: That sounds cool right? I'm definitely going to end my journal entries with that