[- Ooouch… what just happened…]

Jack felt confused and weird all over. His head was foggy and he took a long while to recover.

Then, as he looked at his bloodied hands on top of his gold pile, his face went blank.

[- What…. What did I…. ELICIA! BABE!]

- Calm down, calm down, I’m right behind you!

[- Oh, thank god…]

Jack breathed in relief. He never thought he would feel such despair ever again. It was the same as when they had been ambushed by the explosion.

No… it was worse.

He felt but-first on the ground, calming himself with spells and thanking all that was of holy for not having killed his wife.

- There, there. It was just the squirrel-thing. Don’t worry.

[- Ah, Roberta?! Poor thing…]

Elicia felt like hitting him in a fit of rage.

‘So, he indeed named it… just a thing he did to fool around my ass… no, no, recompose yourself Elicia, it’s fine… the NPC log showed that their wedding wasn’t consumed, so it must be true… must be true, still…’

A little murderous glint flashed on her eyes.

[ - Say Babe, what happened?]

- Well…

***

[ - Then… I… I can’t even sleep?! What’s the use of transforming into a human then?!]

Jack wailed a bit, as expected.

Still, Elicia wasn’t particularly interested.

That’s because she had a bad premonition.

- Actually hon, it may be better if you did…

[- Aaah… what?!]

Jack stopped his crocodile tears from showing, and looked at his wife, quite wary.

- Say, our racial description says we will keep sleeping for most of the time. It should be something like a 1:1 ratio for a weak, young dragon, and a 10:1 ratio to an ancient dragon… so, I can only wonder what would it be to you…

Jack understood it.

[- Then, Christina…]

- We need to be able to be awake when they get in touch with us, don’t you think Hon?

Maybe it was a foolish hope. Something they could never achieve in their lifetimes. Or, better saying, on their daughters’ lifetime…

But they would still work for it.

[- No doubt Babe. I guess we need to build sleep-resisting skills then…]

Elicia’s face became adorned with an adorable and sincere smile. It was good seeing Jack compromise about something.

It seemed like he really cared.

[- So, how do we do it?]

Elicia grinned.

- Well, we need to start with a race that sleeps only a little bit, but often… how about, goblins?

Jack felt a huge urge to bend over and puke.

Goblins were the antithesis of his lifestyle.

‘I don’t want to be a paranoid meth-head! I rather be a slugging morphine-vet instead!’

Of course, he couldn’t say those words out loud.

Goblins had very fast metabolisms and very short life cycles. They would do everything in an amazingly fast-paced rate, including sleeping. A regular goblin would live a human day in around a single hour and a few minutes, sleeping, eating and shitting included.

Of course, they were very brutal as well, but compared to how brutal and violent a dragon was with people messing with their treasure, obviously it couldn’t compare.

Jack and Elicia had been awoken for six months. That in goblin-time should amount to 180 hours, or around eight days.

Even if Jacks’ sleeping rates were something like 100:1 and he failed on getting enough sleep-resistance skills, they should be able to awaken him up in five to six years on the latest.

- Uuuhm… thinking again Hon, let’s find something else. Let’s grind some more druid and nature magic levels first.

Jack beamed with hope. Anything but a goblin.

Had he known Elicia was looking for an even higher-metabolism rate organism for him to transform into, his joy wouldn’t have been as long-lived as the few dozen hours of work he had to put in to grind more transformation skills.