"I've never met anyone like you... well, your reputation precedes you, but I never thought I'd see a Grimm in person. Wow, this really is a childhood nightmare come true."
Eddie Monroe handed him a bottle of beer, a slightly odd expression still on his face, cautious yet full of curiosity, with a trace of lingering fear.
"I don't understand what you're talking about. Could you start by explaining the word 'Grimm'?" Nick wasn't quite used to the guy's sudden familiarity. He took the bottle and set it straight on the table, carefully maintaining a safe distance between them.
Eddie Monroe's eyes widened, his gaze fixed on Nick's face as though he were looking at some rare creature. "Are you kidding me? I grew up hearing horror stories about your kind.
"You know, I was just a kid back then. They scared me half to death. How long have you been awakened? Why were you acting like such a rookie earlier?"
Nick felt as though he was practically some archvillain in this guy's eyes, the kind used to scare children into silence at night.
"I'm not kidding. I don't know what this 'Grimm' you're talking about is, and I don't know what you are, either. Please start from the beginning."
Eddie Monroe's eyes widened even further. He carefully looked Nick up and down, as though trying to determine whether he was telling the truth, before a look of realization crossed his face.
"Are you an orphan?"
"More or less." Nick nodded. "My aunt raised me, but she left home a few years ago, too. Said she was going to travel around the country."
"And her name is..." Eddie Monroe drew out the words, his expression curious and amused.
"Mary Kessler."
When Nick said the name, he distinctly saw the guy's face go pale for a moment, his eyes involuntarily darting to the side. Only after a long pause did he mutter, "Oh-ho. Now that's a name I've certainly heard."
"You're not messing with me on purpose, are you?" Nick asked suspiciously. The guy was acting like something of a clown, his face so expressive that Nick couldn't tell whether that whole series of reactions had been real or merely an act.
"Mary is just a librarian."
Eddie Monroe stared intently at Nick for a moment. His backside, which had barely touched the sofa, shifted uneasily, then he abruptly sprang up as though he'd been burned, making it clear he wanted his guest to leave.
"Okay, since you don't know anything, I'd rather not get into trouble, all right? I'm not like the other Blutbad. I turned over a new leaf years ago. I don't take part in the killing anymore."
"Sit down." Nick's voice turned cold. He wasn't going to let this guy keep steering the conversation. He slapped his newly purchased P226 onto the coffee table.
"Stop playing games with me. From now on, I ask, you answer. What does 'Grimm' mean? And what is this 'Blutbad' you call yourself?"
"Blutbad" was a German word typically used to describe large-scale violence or a one-sided wartime slaughter. It certainly didn't sound like anything good.
Eddie Monroe spread his hands and shrugged. "Are you kidding me? Didn't your aunt ever show you that book? I'm the 'big bad wolf' your ancestors said wanted to eat Little Red Riding Hood!"
Nick's heart lurched. A truth deep inside him, one he'd never wanted to examine too closely but could no longer ignore, could no longer be held down and abruptly surfaced.
In his previous life, he had nearly become a shut-in. He liked books, video games, and all sorts of movies and anime.
If he hadn't suddenly filled out an enlistment application on a whim before graduating from college, then passed the physical and become an army grunt, his life might have followed the same prescribed course as those of his college classmates: graduating, working, getting married, and having children.
Reality would wear away all a young man's sharp edges, and the heavy responsibilities of a family were enough to make a man forget everything he'd once loved.
By comparison, Nick had been fortunate. Though military life had kept him apart from civilian society for over a decade, it had also acted like a time capsule, preserving many things for him.
After leaving the military for a civilian job, with plenty of free time and a little money in his pocket, he had quickly become something of a homebody.
Popular games or obscure ones, he tried anything that interested him. When the four big mainstream anime series stopped being entertaining, he dug up older, more classic works.
Of course, he also had to download and watch all the Hollywood blockbusters from its golden age that he'd missed over the years. Gradually, his interests had expanded to include various American TV shows.
In this life, apart from Aunt Mary's suggestion, the crime shows he'd watched in his previous life, such as Bones, the CSI series, and Chicago P.D., had also played a major role in his decision to join the PPB and become an American cop.
In the days before Nick crossed over, his interests had just shifted from those crime shows to American fantasy series.
After watching a dozen or so episodes of Supernatural, he'd found that sort of show quite entertaining. Not only were there enough beautiful supporting actresses to dazzle him, even the female ghosts were rather pretty.
So he'd downloaded another fantasy series called Grimm, only to be called away to fight a wildfire before he could watch a single episode. After that, he'd been reincarnated into this earthly world.
Twenty years had passed in the blink of an eye, and those memories had long since grown hazy. Combined with his subconscious reluctance to believe he'd actually entered the world of a TV show, it was only now that Nick finally snapped out of it.
He vaguely remembered that the show's setting was a strange world with vast numbers of supernatural creatures living in hiding. Those creatures shared a common natural enemy: an ancient family known as the Grimms.
In this world, the big bad wolf, giants, foxes, and all sorts of witches, fairies, monsters, and other beings from the familiar stories in Grimm's Fairy Tales really existed.
The Grimm Brothers, the authors of Grimm's Fairy Tales, were fictional, however. "Grimm" was merely a code name representing several families of monster hunters who could see through these monsters' disguises.
Nick hadn't had time to watch the show before crossing over. He'd only downloaded the complete series because he'd come across some clips on Bilibili and found them interesting, only to cross over before watching a single episode.
He quickly rummaged through the fragments of memory in his mind and asked uncertainly, "That book you're talking about wouldn't happen to be Grimm's Fairy Tales, would it?"
Eddie Monroe gave him a look that said, "Are you messing with me?" "That's just a book of warnings your ancestors left for the world. Nobody knows why it ended up becoming a book of fairy tales. Maybe because there was too much nonsense in it.
"I'm talking about the journal recording the glorious exploits of you Grimms. Hell, did Mary Kessler really teach you nothing?"
"I'm not lying to you. I always thought Aunt Mary was just a librarian. This 'Wesen' you mentioned, is that a collective term for people... uh, creatures like you?" Nick adopted an attitude of humbly seeking instruction.
"You could say that, but we generally don't call ourselves that. We call our own kind Blutbad. As for blood werewolves, wolf monsters, big bad wolves, and so on, those are all names other Wesen gave us."
Before you continue