American Isekai - Chapter 110 (Patreon)

Terrace used a syringe to inject the White Crystal solution into my body.

He injected from four places. Two injections went into my arms while two went into my thighs. I even had to drink some of it. And the taste was unlike anything I’ve ever eaten.

My entire tongue went numb, like I wasn’t drinking some liquified crystal but some oral anesthetic.

My throat and stomach was the same. It was like they became foreign parts of my body.

At first, that was the only uncomfortable part about it. But then, it started to kick in.

The White Crystal flowing through my blood started to feel like lead as it dispersed throughout my muscles and organs. It only took a few minutes to fully circulate everywhere, and once complete, my heart started to beat faster in an attempt to move my heavy blood.

My entire body started to throb a bit. It was no worse than a sore day after a hard gym session.

But then he brought out the other vials, preparing more injections.

I realized it couldn’t be that nice. Sure enough, he went through four rounds of injections, filling my body to the brim with that liquified White Crystal.

By the time it was done, it felt like the stuff had seeped through my muscles and into my bone marrow. The throbbing turned to a heavy ache, before that turned to a dull shooting pain that sent waves through my body with every heartbeat.

Not only that, but it felt like I could hardly move a muscle. Even my fingers felt like they were filled with molten iron. My internal organs were no different, and I felt like vomiting several times, yet couldn’t under some mysterious influence.

However, even that wasn’t the worst of it.

The four rounds of injections took about 40 minutes, each one spaced apart. That alone was agonizing, having to suffer through that long of a duration.

Then again, I was still sure I’ve been through worse. Football practices were no less brutal, maybe more so.

But in the back of my head, I still wondered about when I would feel that mental overdrive he talked about.

And it was about an hour in when I started to feel something weird.

(How are you doing?)

Umara asked, causing me to turn to her.

It felt like her voice was spoken to me in slow motion, yet also sped up so much that I couldn’t keep up with it. It was like I couldn’t actually decide whether or not I could process the information.

The lights all around my started to get brighter as well. Thats when I could see Terrace’s assistant Barron glancing over at me periodically.

“His eyes are dilated. The mental effects are kicking in.”

“Good. Give it another 15 minutes before paralyzing him. And adjust the dosage. He’s got a bit of Vigor in him.”

“Understood.”

I could hear them conversing, the words entering my ears, but my mind finding it extremely difficult to focus.

Within my mind, it felt like my Spark was rampaging, slowly ramping up until it felt like a typhoon of thoughts. I finally started to realize what it meant to go into mental overdrive, and yet I couldn’t possibly have been prepared.

Every feeling and sensation was amplified several times over, but not out of sensitivity. It simply felt like everything was registering in my mind multiple times in a redundant cycle until making way for the next set of thoughts and feelings.

I felt dizzy and out of control. It felt like time was moving ten times faster, and yet I felt like every moment would never end.

But shockingly, that didn’t last forever.

At some point, I started becoming far more lucid, shifting from mental chaos to hyperfocused.

My breathing became rapid as I dialed in, looking around at Maxwell, Umara, and Terrace like I was just waking up to find them in my room.

“Maxwell? What is this?”

“Your mind has adapted to the effects. It’s being overwhelmed with Psyka, but not its beginning to harness the power. The Crystals used were Authority 7, so they’re more potent, yet less plentiful. What you’re experiencing can be likened to how you’ll feel when you advance to a higher level.”

“Yea, that’s great and all. But it’s also more painful.”

I spoke as I felt tremors run through my body. It felt like I was filled with strength I coudn’t contain. My bones felt like fracturing and my organs felt like churning. And the hyperfocus only made it worse, like I was intimately experienceing every fragment of agony at every moment in time. It would be better if it all just blurred together.

Maxwell pat my shoulder.

“Just bear with it. The paralytic solution is being administered. Once it is, just try to distract yourself. Use your Spark to fill your mind with thoughts other than the pain. In fact, maybe you can use this opportunity for training.”

He suddenly brought out the third layer of the advancement formation, holding it up in front of my face.

My eye twitched.

“I can’t catch a damn break!”

“Come now. This will be good for your training.”

“And I thought you were being sympathetic!”

“That’s your girlfriend’s job, not mine.”

“Prepare for paralysis.”

Barron announced as he poked my arm with another syringe.

That’s when I felt myself lose control of my entire body, each muscle losing its ability to receive commands yet still able to transmit sensations.

My nerves were a bit dulled, which was a small bit of solace. But not completely.

I just focused on the advancement formation for a bit as I lost control. It was only when my neck and head went limp that I prepared myself.

It was time for the worst part.

Barron spoke after moving my face around. I couldn’t even move my eyes.

“Saturation is reaching the threshold, and his body is paralysed. Moving to phase 2.”

“Prepare the Crown. We’ll go top down, starting with the sensory enhancement before moving on to the spine.”

“Understood. Here’s the ocular injection.”

“Mm. Work on the ears while I do this.”

Terrace took the syringe and grabbed my head, shifting me around until I was lined up.

“Alright kid, here comes the hard part. All of that White Crystal is going to circulate through the sites that we inject the Crown in. Its power will be consumed there, so imagine all of the pain of your body being focused in one area. It won’t be fun, but I can assure you that this is worth it. Now, try to dissociate or something. Anything you need to do to bear with it.”

He said that before pulling open my eyelids and bringing up the syringe.

Inwardly, I was shitting myself. But outwardly, I couldn’t do anything as Terrace performed the ocular injection.

After that, I wasn’t exactly able to think straight.

The feeling of getting a renovation in your eyeball was difficult to describe, but it was safe to say that I felt like killing myself.

They may as well have gouged out my eyeballs and installed new ones. Of course, attaching the ocular nerve to a new eyeball required technology that they were far from having. I wasn’t even sure if there was magic that could do it, but then again, maybe this was precisely the magic that could do such a thing.

And so my senses were liquified, almost literally, while the agony of my body was transferred up into my head.

So all of the sensory discomfort was amplified by the world’s nastiest migraine. It was a good thing I was paralyzed, because otherwise I would have been trying to kill someone, probably Terrace.

Well, at least Umara got to share in my pain. She tried speaking, but I could hear her after Barron did the operation on my ears. Then my mouth was opened up, and they made a mess in there as well.

It felt like they were tearing me apart. Like some kind of sick torture.

And yet, through it all, I couldn’t help but remember how there was one woman who pioneered all of this shit, the one who had to destroy her own body in the pursuit of something greater, developing a key advantage to be used against the Scourge.

Oh, how madness and genius coincide. I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of deep respect.

Because I felt like I was the one going mad now.

I couldn’t estimate how long the procedure went on for. But it was a damn good thing that assigning my spark to effectively spam my brain with other unrelated thoughts actually helped in distracting me from the pain.

Not to mention how after my sensory organs were liquefied, the nerves all around them were either fried or killed, so the spike in pain dwindled after some time, settling back down to still unreasonable but better levels.

In a way, it almost felt like I had passed out anyway. But I was painfully hyperaware, so that wasn’t allowed to happen. I still had my sense of touch.

On a side note, becoming blind, deaf, tasteless, and unable to smell was quite the experience. Talk about the true sensory deprivation experience.

It felt like I was within that darkness for an eternity, feeling nothing but pain, like I had been thrown into a dark hell.

It felt like it would never end, and for some time I actually started to believe that. I wasn’t able to communicate with Umara since I had my Spark working to keep me sane, and so I couldn’t know how much time had passed.

But at some point, I felt them wrap up my face. Then, I was turned over on my stomach.

That’s when I felt syringes get stuck around my spine. The first ones were numbing agents, while the others went deeper and still caused me pain as if the numbing was just a placebo.

Whatever it was, it actually ended up serving me well. I started to lose my sense of touch throughout my entire body, dulling almost all of the pain except for what was around my head.

I didn’t know that this was part of the procedure, even though he said they would move on to the spine. Seems like Maxwell prepared something else, the cheeky old man.

Either way, I officially got the true sensory deprivation experience. No sight, hearing, taste, smell, or touch. The only thing I had was my Aura, which was the only indication that I was still alive and functional.

At first it was interesting. Once some of the pain faded, I was able to concentrate on other things. I got to appreciate the experience.

But after a while passed, it went from interesting to scary. It felt like I was suspended in a void, and I started to see things. I realized my mind was creating something to see, an attempt to fill the gaps. But it only served to give me hallucinations.

Or, at least I thought they were hallucinations. They started to focus at some point and I realized that it was actually my Aura.

I felt like I could see everyone around me. I could see Terrace talking with Maxwell, Barron preparing more materials to heal me, and Umara fidgeting anxiously in the corner.

In fact, it became so focused that I felt like I could project out. That’s when I noticed Maxwell, who actually sensed me.

He reached out with his Aura before I realized what was happening.

……

Maxwell felt John’s Aura, reaching out with his mind.

Sending information to another’s mind was nothing more than a rudimentary exercise for him, but that didn’t make it any less impressive for John to be proficient at it. He was improving well.

(You’ll be okay. The Crowns have been installed. Now you just need to heal everything back up. It’s been about 11 hours since the start of the operation. It may take another day for you to heal, and Barron will be periodically injecting you with more White Crystal until everything is over.

(...)

There was no response from him, which wasn’t unexpected. He just looked down, observing his body.

There were marks all over his back, arms, and legs. It wasn’t enough to just get a sensory upgrade. Maxwell wanted him to have more. And he knew just the thing for him.

Of course, adding more was only possibly because apparently, John had a freakish capacity for Crowns, according to Terrace.

A person’s capacity to get modified by Crowns was, put simply, determined by the stability of a person’s body. There were several measurements to determine stability and a whole science behind it that Maxwell had never bothered to learn. All he knew was that, oddly enough, people who required more sleep tended to have more stability. This could be figured out using some magical scans that Terrace had performed, along with several other measurements.

Age was also another factor. The prime of a person’s life was also the most stable time of their life. Unfortunately, not many could attain a crown while young. Only the children of rich parents would do such a thing, and even then many might wait to receive prime material or let their children get stronger before deciding on something so permanent.

Regardless, John could take plenty, so they pushed it to the furthest extent. This wasn’t to say they filled his capacity; he would expand that capacity as he got stronger. But for now, they had given him a most extreme procedure.

Maxwell was curious as well. He wondered what it was like to lose every one of your senses. He couldn’t imagine what John was experiencing. Perhaps that’s why his Aura was becoming more prominent.

But then, after speaking to him through Aura and letting enough time pass, he suddenly felt a wave expand from John’s body.

It was almost like he saw John’s ghost rise from his body before walking over to Umara. She also lifted her head, as if she could see it too.

(Go ahead and head back to the room, my sweet. You need sleep.)

His voice traveled into all their minds. Barron and Terrace turned to him as well, their eyes widening.

Terrace chuckled in disbelief.

“An illusion. That’s amazing. John, can you hear me?”

“...”

John didn’t respond. Instead, the illusory body teleported in front of Terrace.

(I can’t hear you, but I can see your lips flapping. Thanks for the most painful experience of my life. Next time, figure out how to numb the pain. You’d think if this technology were so advanced, you’d be able to do something as little as that. Umara, remind me to teach you some things about the human body after this.)

(Okay.)

Umara responded, surprising Maxwell.

She spoke again.

(How are you feeling?)

(Like shit. But I’ll be fine. You should go rest.)

(I’m staying right here. We’ll leave this room together. And if you need someone to talk to, you have me.)

(Then have someone get you a blanket at least. I don’t want you to be uncomfortable.)

(Says the man who just went through the most painful experience of his life. Don’t worry about me.)

She smiled as the illusory figure turned to her. Then, it disappeared as the telepathic connection was established with her once again.

She spoke into it.

(I love you, John)

(Love you too. I want to talk more, but this is all really tiring.)

(It’s okay. Please, just focus on recovering.)

(I will.)

With that, the connection was cut, everything going quiet.

Terrace scoffed.

“You’ve got quite the protege, Maxwell.”

“Yes, he seems to be adept at utilizing Aura. It seems the loss of his senses has only aided that as well. I’ll consult him later. For now, get him better.”

Maxwell said that while waving, a chair appearing along the wall.

A moment later, a cush couch appeared nearby.

“Lady Umara, feel free to use this.”

“You guys are turning my operating room into a living room?”

“I’m sorry, did you have another patient to bring in here instead of attending to my protege?”

“Nevermind. Barron, take the first shift to watch him. I’ll get some shut eye and finish him up later.”

“Understood.”

Barron nodded as Terrace walked out. As for Maxwell and Umara, they both got comfortable in their seats.

Like that, the last phase of the operation passed.