God Of Crafting

Chapter 164: Pain of the aftermatch

"Haaa... haaa... haaa..."

I found that breathing heavily was oddly efficient at helping me deal with the overwhelming pain.

It felt as if... the muscle of my brain had to regenerate, forcing me to suffer through the pain of the growth.

Just like a muscle pushed to its limits, my brain now needed time to recover from the damage caused by housing two different personalities.

The original me... and this strange, profound me that had just manifested in my head.

"Tim...!"

Claire's voice was strangely slowed down, stretched in a peculiar manner, as if putting a pause between her words... and her intentions.

'Oh shit...' The moment I focused on anything other than the pain, my vision started to spin, leading me to drop my head back down as I finally managed to vomit up everything in my stomach onto what used to be the pile of documents, which had now turned to mere ashes.

'Shit...'

Throwing up was natural for a human, merely the body's defense mechanism like any other.

But throwing up, and throwing up while my fiancée and her father watched me do it...

'Shit...'

Cursing for the third time, I nearly lost consciousness from the lack of air as the last of what I had eaten finally left my system, allowing me to take a breath.

This had to be the worst I'd ever felt in my entire life.

But we got our answers, even if they came at the price of creating a lot more—and far more important—questions in return.

"Just keep breathing, we are here," Claire now switched to gently rubbing my back while trying to soothe my massive headache with her soft voice.

"I'm t-t-trying to..." I whispered, struggling to do something as simple and straightforward as uttering just a few words.

Bit by bit, with every passing second, however, the pain started to subside.

With the now undirected spiritual energy taking over my spiritual core, it rushed to reinforce all the parts of me that were damaged, including the tissues of my brain.

In a minute, I no longer suffered extreme nausea whenever I moved my head even the tiniest bit. Five minutes later, I could go as far as blinking my eyes. Roughly seven minutes later, I finally managed to lean back and sit down, only for Claire to instantly rush behind me, where she supported my weight while doing her best to make me comfortable.

With every step of recovery, though, it took more and more time for each to complete. And just like how I somehow endured the pain in about ten minutes, it took nearly a full hour before I regained enough of my motor functions to actually move my head and look around.

"It's waiting... we need to turn the factory back on again."

Even though I passed this message about an hour ago already, seeing how none of the three of us had moved from Chihiro's safe place, absolutely nothing had been done to that end.

"How do you know that? What's going on?"

Seeing that I was now in a state to have at least a light conversation, Chihiro hurried to get as much information out of me as he could.

"I just..." I hesitated for a second, gritting my teeth to deal with the pain that reignited the moment I tried to recall any of the details of what I saw and what my strange, other self thought.

"I just know it. Give me a week to heal and process all that I've seen, and I'll give you a proper answer. For now, though..." I shook my head, giving up on even attempting to dig into my memory. "You don't have that kind of time, do you?"

Chihiro squinted his eyes before heaving a deep sigh.

For some reason, it felt as if my words had an even greater impact on him than I believed they would make.

"I... No," he shook his head before putting on a small, thoughtful smile. "We don't have that kind of time indeed."