"That's really going to hurt"(2)

The pain in his organs lasted for barely 10 seconds but it wouldn't have surprised Damien if somebody told him it had lasted 10 hours. every second felt like it was stretched to the maximum and even after it had ended, he could clearly feel every single cell affected by the strange phenomenon that plagued him.

The pain vanished when it had reached the intersection between his upper and lower body. he was lying face up on the ground, incapable of moving anything but his eyes.

He didn't see much though. somewhere at the start of the process, he went through, he had started crying. the tears still blurred his vision enough to only make out the outlines of the ceiling he was staring at.

He had stopped breathing somewhere along the way as well. presumably when his lungs were engulfed by the pain. he started panicking because he couldn't for the life of him figure out how he was supposed to start breathing again.

It didn't bother him for long. not because his lungs started working again but because a burning sensation spread from his fingertips and toetips towards his torso. his nerves were the next item on the list apparently. it felt like an uncountable number of fine lines of thermite were burning through his body.

The pain engulfed his torso again running up his flanks turning around at the shoulders, running through his chest and stomach, and lastly creeping up his spine. as it reached the base of his skull, he prayed for it to stop there like the last time. alas there were no gods in this universe and the closest Beings in power to that seemed to have taken a rain check.

In truth the barrier around the house prevented them from looking inside it. but even if they had seen or heard his pleas for help, they had no intention of interfering.

The outer will similarly didn't give a rat's ass about the pain Damien was in. It noticed the anomaly the sage had conjured to give Damian the opportunity to be fully integrated in this reality, but it didn't dedicate more than a quick thought to the phenomenon it could not expain but was to smal to present a problem.

The pain didn't stop at his cervical vertebrae and opted to reach a step higher. it ripped through his central nervous system like a gorilla through wet paper and soon engulfed his entire brain.

Damien had no doubt that he would die from this experience. it felt like someone had put a collapsing star right in the middle of his skull that was in the process of imploding on itself.

Fortunately for him he lost consciousness after a few seconds. the process was unperturbed by his state of mind and opted to just take its course anyway. after it was done with the brain the last part that was still missing were the bones. once again, the process started from the finger- and toetips. They cracked and broke into tiny splinters that dug through his muscles and some even ripped open the skin.

Damien's nerves were completely unresponsive at this point which was the reason he didn't wake up from the pain. After his entire skeleton was riddled with cracks the process halted for a moment.

INT appeared in a flash of light besides the limp body. looking in pity at the boy who had almost every cell in his body broken apart and ripped open. not wasting a single millisecond, he deactivated the barrier around the house.

The consciousness of the great mother could finally perceive the foreign entity that had invaded its sphere of influence without fulfilling the requirements of life it itself had set. trying to correct this error a huge amount of energy with a speck of the outer will's conscience flooded into Damien's mangled body. Which, at this point, was indistinguishable from the corpse of a brutal massacre.

At the same moment the energy started gathering somewhere around Damien solar plexus. a tiny orb was formed which Sucked every speck of energy it could get its greedy hands on. The consciousness of the outer will be slightly surprised but didn't put up any resistance against the thief that was stealing its energy.

The sage had long since isolated himself from its influence, so it was surprised when he came to it and made a request. also warning it about an anomaly that would appear at some point after his departure from this universe.

Admiring the masterpiece of a trap it had stepped into, it let go of every speck of energy it had brought. the condition for existing in this universe was to contain any amount of the universes life force. it was commonly known as mana to most sentient species. even the smallest particle was imbued with it.

Because Damian came from another universe altogether his body didn't have even a spec of it. as soon as the outer will detect him and analyzed the situation it would have either thrown him out the same way he had come from or, more likely, obliterate him until nothing was left.

Now, instead the preparations the sage had made worked their wonder. Every cell in Damien's body was first flooded with mana and then added to a massive and sophisticated circulatory system that connected it with the orb of energy which had also formed.

Set orb was the base of all sentient life that walked this universe. not many people knew of this pseudo-Organ. those who discovered it gave it many different names but the most common one it got was 'mana core'.

The energy flowed until it had engulfed his entire body and then abruptly stopped. After the end of this process Damian's body still looked like a badly butchered farm animal.

INT had to leave before his pity forced him to put the body back together and ruining any restructuring the sage had still planned. Contrary to the display that had just shown itself, the sage was no cruel man.

He had taken care to work his way up from the least painful process. thinking that his patient would slowly get used to the changes he had to undergo. he also shut down his brain after he had destroyed the nervous system.

The former process was supposed to make him faint while the latter would guarantee that he wouldn't wake up during the most painful step. which was the destruction of the skeleton and the bone marrow inside of it.

After Damien's brain had been destroyed his consciousness was experiencing a recapture of his life until then, it was like watching a third-rate movie without snacks or the option to just stand up and leave. he wasn't even able to shut his eyes or pluck his ears because he lacked both.