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Chapter 20: The Price of His Power

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Rex stumbled on the bed and rolled in the carpet, hands on his head, screaming from pain and the excruciating sensation of the gravity being forcefully inverted.

This is extreme vertigo.

—effects of over using the Raijin ability set.

Vomit gushed out his mouth, he screamed for help but none came.

It was 3 in the morning.

He summoned the video link up system and a number was dialed with a stamp of his palm.

On the other line, Graham answered with a bitter face but then his expression changed as soon as he saw Rex's pitiful state.

"What are you—h-hey, what's happening to you?"

"Doctor... anyone, help."

"Just hang on. Help is on their way."

"Hurry—"

Rex puked again and his eyes went up, his face green and red, lips purple, and vines formed on his head and neck in a matter of seconds.

He rolled again on the floor as if following the flow of gravity and each turn he made, he was drenched in his own filth.

This pitiful look was enough to make Graham shout his commands.

Rex was rolling on the ground, trembling like having an epileptic attack. It was abnormal.

With a stomp of his palm on the line, the video link system remained with Graham still shouting.

But he never heard any of that now.

That's because as blood flowed out of his nose, Rex has already lost to the oblivion world.

******************************

Waking up, he was already seated in the bench on the garage with a lot of familiar machines and tubes, electrodes, sensors, and wire cables attached on him.

People outside were making commotions, wearing worried faces, looking at him.

The twin doctors, the McCullers, were the two doctors presently working on him.

Graham was outside, in the car as seen through the open gate. Rex could see the curious eyes of other people in the second floors of their houses just opposite their own.

Rex could faintly see that Graham's lips were moving.

Maybe he was talking to Augustus in the video-link system.

He blinked once as a reaction from the penlight that hit his left eye. Then his right eye was also tested and he blinked twice, trice, and then continuous as he tried to catch the current situation.

Still, even before he could actually move, all he felt was the pain of his head as if being split open. He made a groan and complained about his throat groggily.

"Oh, whoa! He's alive!"

"He lives!"

Rex tried to blink many times again and focus his senses, his eyes felt like it was in a blurry planet from the hazy images he was seeing.

Seconds passed, the images sharpened, edges cleared, new faces came to greet him.

"You alright, lad?"

"Who..."

"At least you can talk. He's gonna be fine. The name's Martinez. Relax, I'm a doctor."

The doctor who introduced himself as Martinez summoned an info window when he clicked an invisible button 3 centimeters from Rex's forehead.

As it appeared, the bars and information from the machines attached to his body was reported in the info window and Martinez frowned at the sight.

Turning around from him, Rex felt lost and dumbfounded as to what had happened when he was still out. The Doctor faced the twins and the twins bowed at him with respect.

Then Manang Fe came out of the house, Rex made much difficulty trying to turn his head at the housekeeper who was called in the middle of the night for the job.

"How long..." Rex tried to steady his position and wet his sandpaper dry throat. "How long was I out?"

The words came out hoarse, with signs of pain on his face.

"2 hours and 12 minutes."

"Yep. That's two hours."

"Two hours... damn. I must... I have to go back, I'm in the middle of a mission... I..."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa... take it easy there, man."

When Rex tried to stand, and pathetically fell down to Frank's shoulders, the doctor of sorts made him sit down on the bench and checked his pulses.

The other doctor, Hank, took him and checked the reading on his panel. After that, he flipped a window panel towards the other doctor there.

"I have to go back. The mission...it's not over yet."

Frank pushed his body back and Rex fell on the back of the seat with a hard but not painful fall.

"Relax, you've just been forcefully logged out of the game because of your abnormal neuro-level reactions. Your neural levels are abnormally high compared to the other data we have but if not for your training, you would have been in a much critical condition."

At that moment, Rex saw a few red stained tissues on a bin with some kind of disinfectant liquid. That's where Hank took another poker wrapped in cotton and plugged it, rolled it, and cleaned his nose.

Though it was a bit painful, Rex has no strength to actually thrown out a complain.

So he just raised his head and followed the instructions to blow out the blood in there.

"Training?" He weakly replied. "That ki-something circulation?"

"Triple Bloom Meditation, to be exact. I'm gonna do something and it will sting."

Frank corrected him and informed of the procedure he was about to do when it registered too late on Rex's hazy consciousness the moment he felt the sting on his left chest.

Rex threw out a painful moan and was about to yell in agony when Hank held a hand on his chest, like a true martial artist, and closed his eyes, feeling the heartbeat.

To Rex, it was another unproven scientific way of checking vitals that these two had shown him. Rex had been subjected to many kinds of novel-kind activities since the time they met.

If not for the existence of the VR Technology, then he would have been laughing and saying that these people are crazy.

And yet when Hank's hand began to press lightly, Rex felt a sudden warmth and felt closing his eyes again.

Reflexively, he relaxed his body, made the posture he was 'trained' by these guys to do at least every two days, and then began to steady his breathing. What he found incredibly good in this situation is the warmth that spread from his chest and into his body.

With the relaxed position of his straightened back, arms relaxed on both legs, Rex knew he looked like he was actually meditating —which is embarrassing in some manner, but did not care.

He wanted to get away from this painful feeling. And so he entered that 'place' which he became familiar with this past month.

This is that same feeling he felt when he was in that trans of a moment of using Artemis MOD and giving his entire focus on dealing with the Lapis Lazuli.

He remembered now.

In those moments, he wanted to be faster. Faster than anything, faster than anyone, untouchable, destructive, more powerful than an S-rank monster, or a dragon, or any man who will stand in his way.

At that moment, he remembered Baron and Augustus' cold hearted change of mind.

He said that information was alright, now he changes his mind when he's near the deadline?

Unfair. It's so unfair it burns him.

The rage he felt, the anger, the injustice he experienced in that room where no one was on his side...

He wanted to punch that man in the face!

**************************

THUG!

A yell of pain got out of the surprised Hank.

"Don't get close to him!"

Frank was pulling Hank who had a hand on his bleeding nose —or lips.

But instead of being angry, Frank and Hank was in a much different kind of emotion right at this moment.

They were all smiles.

"Holy shit, this..."

"Yeah bro, that's the bloom."

The third doctor there scanned the readings on his panel and he too smiled as he touched his head.

"So this is what you guys have been up to."

"This kid's special."

"Yep, special alright."

The twins bumped fists and the third doctor sighed.

"How long has he been undergoing the therapy?"

Frank shrugged and Hank answered. "Three-four rated sessions maybe?"

"Why are you not sure?" the doctor's brows furrowed.

"Well, because sometimes Rex won't react with the therapy and sometimes he would. It's like his mind is in two separate worlds so we had to take things slow on him. We gotta make sure he actually enters meditation properly or his mind will collapse."

"Yeah. We even increased the intensity of the waves on his N-Link Device to reach near DNI-level. But, who would've thought right? This time, he really did succeeded to meditate without the machines."

The two doctors exchanged fists again and Hank took a hanky from his pocket, wiping the blood on his face.

"But damn, that was surprising. He broke my nose in a single punch."

"You fools. I can't believe you guys are actually experts on this. Just what were you even thinking?"

"But doc, if we didn't do that, his neural levels would not have normalized. Right now, it would seem that he was in a fight that he was forced to bridge the gap of power by using everything."

"Based on our expertise, trying to bridge that gap would have a setback that could almost cost him his life. If we were late for another 10 minutes, we wouldn't have made it. His mindset is just that unstable that it's even scary thinking what he's doing inside."

"Like switching personalities, is that it?"

Frank and Hank exchanged glances and nodded at the doctor. Their expressions were serious that the doctor had no choice but to sigh while looking at the panel in his hands again.

There were Rex's name and the icons that had the details and bars with the label of "Neural Waves."

Green below and red beyond. A border line was in the upper area and the moving bars showed a steady rhythm on the green "normal" area.

But above that, there were the previous reading, just like what the twins said, an unstable graph showing how Rex's mind was working inside.

Also, it was crazy to increase the sensitivity of the N-Waves into that of near DNI-level. If something actually did go wrong, Rex would have died then.

Earlier, when they saw him in that state, with vomit and blood and shits all over, rolling on the floor, trembling like a caveman in Antarctica, Martinez actually thought that he was on his way to Hades.

But Rex still made it.

No. In fact, at that time, he was sure he saw his eyes look at them and still able to plead for help.

He was conscious. And that's a remarkable feat.

But it was crazy, considering how much effort they actually spend with him. The infamous twins of the highly favored Yin-Yang School of Martial Arts, these technologically advanced machines just to monitor his wellbeing, and him, the renowned expert on Neuro Science, next to the Kingsley Doctors, Doctor Gilbert Martinez.

They were all here just to make sure this kid was safe.

If he really is special, then how special is he actually?

Aside from being the son of the Kingsley Doctors, how does a 19-year old boy like him made The Father's minions work at him with dedication?

Even Augustus's right hand man was here.

Remembering his own words, Martinez paused for 2 seconds and rescanned the panel in front of him.

"Is it really split... personality?"

Although he said that, but deep in his mind, Martinez's mind had a different thought.

It's as if they're forcefully changing him.

...or maybe waking up another him?

...damn, what are they doing to him?

"Doc." From behind him, Graham's stolid voice called and put a pin on his train of thoughts.

"Got a minute?"

"Ah, sure, yes."

Graham walked in and flicked his fingers, a panel popped up on the doctor's vision and the face of Augustus Laniary appeared with a frown.

[Doctor, how's our patient?]

"Critical." Martinez answered without hesitation. "He's in the brink of mental collapse when we reached him."

[And his readings?]

"In the boundary of life and death. It's as if he's actually fighting a real battle inside. The neural levels are abnormally high. He suffered from extreme Vertigo and almost completely messed up his entire mind."

Augustus leaned back on the couch where he was and he sipped a liquid on the tea cup on his table.

With one leg over the other, he placed the cup on the table and spoke again. But this time, he was smiling.

[Tell me doctor, how would you rate his development?]

"His development? As in..."

From this one sentence, the pin that held his thoughts in pause was released and Martinez gasped with wide eyed to Augustus. Are his thoughts really true? He still can't put a period on it but he had to know.

"My god, Augustus, what are you trying to pull here?"

Martinez couldn't believe his ears. He held his breath as to realize that all his assumptions might be true.

It's either the kid might be forcefully being changed into someone else or Augustus is trying to turn him into a patient of split personality disorder.

It was a horrifying thought for Martinez.

"You... just how cruel..."

[Martinez.]

But before he could finish, Augustus stopped his words with a call of his name.

If stares could be poisonous arrows, then Augustus' eyes that was looking at him were that of a giant spear with purple poison dripping endlessly on its tip.

The thought of being stabbed by those eyes made the doctor shiver and freeze.

[You are there for a specific reason. I do not want to hear anything that has nothing to do with your job. The right or wrong is decided by the one who hold authority and what I demand to you as the one with the authority is a simple report and explanation of the investment's condition. Is this hard enough for you to understand?]

At that, Graham stretched his fingers and purposefully showed it all to Martinez.

The doctor understood and he gulped.

"A-As I've said, he's in a pretty bad condition. His mind is in a condition where it fluctuates into red and green conditions alternately within select instances that could be traced down to extreme emotional surge. Like using only the necessary mindset in a battlefield and abandoning everything else in order to win. Usually, these neural patterns are only possible for soldiers but to see this kind of patter in a kid... well, that's the kind of condition he is in."

[I see. So he is trying his best, Thank you doctor and please continue to monitor his condition.]

"Wait. Please, I have a question."

[Alright, just one.]

Martinez hesitated and glanced over Graham who, in his black shaded face in the morning dawn, stared at him.

"I just want to know," by this, he glanced over to Rex who's steady position looked like a sleeping young man in a bench, only, he looked like a real Martial Artist in a Chinese movie doing a meditation.

"Why is he pushing himself this far?"

Augustus smiled at his question. It was a smile that told Martinez the facts he wanted to know. More or less, he had deduced what his plans for Rex was but now, he'd actually had a more concrete foundation to his thoughts.

This white devil is really trying to change Rex's personality into that of a soldier —something that just frightened Martinez to his core.

[To save his baby brother.]

Upon the answer he received, the line was cut. But hearing that, Martinez understood why and how all this is possible.

He now understood the boy's circumstances.

Now what's left to ponder is just the side of the now already deceased Kingsley Doctors.

Just how far could their machine change a person?

Intriguingly, Martinez had a thought to try it himself but he was afraid that it might cost him his own beliefs and his own values.

What he feared was what if he, too, change?

It's still unclear as to why they developed this technology and left it incomplete when they released it to the world.

If this continues, Rex might actually change forever...

—and for the worst.