Terrace depressed the plunger on the White Crystal solution.

Something incredibly viscous flooded into me, feeling like what I imagined coagulating blood would feel like.

I could just barely see him retract the needle and receive another from Barron, which he jabbed into my thigh.

In total, he injected me four times, once on each limb. He also gave me a tincture of some sort that numbed my entire tongue, like I wasn’t drinking liquified crystal but some oral anesthetic. My throat and stomach felt similarly. It was like they became completely foreign to my body.

At first, that was the only uncomfortable part about it. But then, the White Crystal started to kick in. It started to feel like lead as it dispersed throughout my blood, 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 more vials, preparing more injections.

Looks like the process wouldn’t be so easy. 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 straight through my muscles and into my bones. The throbbing turned into a heavy ache, which then turned into an intense pain shooting through my body with every heartbeat.

Despite that, I could hardly move a muscle. Even my fingers felt leaden, as if someone had cut them open and poured in molten iron. Even my internal organs were heavy. I almost vomited several times from the feeling, yet couldn’t from some mysterious weight pressing down on my chest.

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

The four rounds of injections took about 40 minutes, each one spaced apart. The spacing alone was agonizing; it was just long enough to get used to the pain before another four injections.

Then again, I was still sure I’d 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.

It was about an hour in when I started to feel something strange.

(How… are… you… doing?)

Umara asked, causing me to turn to her.

My head moved lethargically. Her voice seemed like it was being replayed in slow motion, yet sped up so much that I couldn’t keep up with it. It was like my mind couldn’t decide whether to process the information or not.

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

“His pupils have 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, I could consciously register the words, but no matter how hard my brain churned I couldn’t process what they actually meant.

Within my mind, my Spark rampaged, slowly ramping up in speed until it felt like a pulsar instead of a star; a typhoon instead of a stream. None of my mental preparations could’ve prepared me for this; any token resistance I could put up would be washed away in the storm.

Every sensation was amplified by magnitudes — not out of sensitivity, but redundancy. My mind registered everything several times at the slow-yet-fast speed before the next set of thoughts and feelings overrode it.

I was dizzy and out of control. Time moved ten times faster, yet every moment just wouldn’t end.

It felt like forever before that feeling subsided.

At some point, my thoughts became far more lucid, shifting from mental chaos to hyperfocus.

My breathing sped up 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 now it's beginning to harness the power. The Crystals used were Authority 7. They’re incredibly potent, but difficult for us to acquire. 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.”

Tremors wracked my body, filled with strength I couldn't contain. The hyperfocus only made the bone and organ pain worse, “helping” me experience every agony in excruciating detail. It would be better if it all just blurred together.

Maxwell patted my shoulder.

“Just bear with it. The paralytic solution is being administered. Once it is, 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.

I felt parts of my body stop responding as the paralytic agent spread from the injection site, losing any feeling of control through my body. Thankfully, my nerves were also slightly dulled, a slight respite from the somehow intensified pain signals surging to my brain.

I just focused on the advancement formation 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 has reached the threshold, and his body is paralyzed. 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.”

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“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 the paralysis rendered me unable to even move my eyes in protest 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 developing. 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 liquified, almost literally, as the agony of my body was concentrated up in my head.

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.

Umara tried speaking to me at some point too, but I couldn’t hear her after Barron did the operation on my ears. Then they pried open my stiff mouth and made a mess in there as well.

It felt like they were tearing me apart. They practically were tearing me apart.

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.

Rather counterintuitively, after my sensory organs were liquefied, the nerves all around them were either fried or killed so the pain actually subsided to bearable if still agonizing levels.

In a way, it was almost like I had already passed out. I was unable to see, hear, taste, or even smell; touch was the only thing grounding me, and it made for quite the sensory deprivation experience.

I was in that darkness for an eternity, feeling more than like I had been thrown into a dark hell.

The pain was never ending, and even with my Spark, I was slowly starting to think it would just be an eternity of pain. I couldn’t even seek refuge in Umara’s mind. My Spark was working overtime feeding me junk, leaving me unable to connect with Umara, much less think about something like the advancement formation.

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, but they didn’t actually stop me from feeling the next needles push aside my flesh and enter my spine. Thankfully, I didn’t have to bear the pain, just the creepy sensation of separating flesh.

Whatever was in the needles, 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. 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 they were only hallucinations… right?

Eventually, the foggy images started to focus and I realized that it was actually my Aura.

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 I could actually project out. That’s when I noticed something in Maxwell change, and even if he didn’t turn his head, he turned his sight to me.

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

……

Maxwell felt John’s Aura reaching out for 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 handily.

(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 get just a sensory upgrade. Maxwell wanted him to have more. And he knew just the thing for him.

Of course, adding more was only possible because 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 quite 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 earlier, as well as 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 obtain 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 to his 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 rather 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, help him recover.”

Maxwell said that while waving a chair into existence by the wall.

A moment later, a cush couch also 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 main phase of the operation concluded.