Chapter 44: Chapter Forty Four

The first thing I did when I woke up again was take the pill I'd gotten from Rustle. I had the thing on me and in the excitement of the whole imminent death thing I'd forgotten about it completely. I'd never taken Alchemical medicine before, so I was actually really interested to see what would happen. Ten whole points was a lot, but it was within my tolerance limit for artificial points even at H rank since I'd never boosted any stats before. Even the food back at Rantano's had just been a temporary buff.

I didn't mind the shortcut here because I was almost done this rank and probably wouldn't need those potential points for some emergency later anyway, I figured I might as well try this out. I needed to hit G rank as fast as possible if I was going to survive whatever the Heartripper Society was going to throw at me. I stripped out of my clothes just in case of sweat or thrashing around and tossed back the pill, laying down on the bed.

Once the pill hit my stomach I felt a pleasant warmth spread from it to every part of my body, it was pretty relaxing. A nice soothing feeling like a warm bubble bath rolled through my muscles and heated up by bones, and within minutes it had permeated every part of me. I felt like every cell in my body was being gently warmed. Then the gentle warmth started to increase. Degree by degree the temperature climbed, rising as I laid there, and the words gentle and soothing stopped really being applicable.

The feeling of every cell in your body slowly overheating was not one I would recommend, there was no way to stop it or slow it down, I staggered out of bed and jumped in the shower, pumping cold water onto my body, but apparently the heat wasn't actually physical, so I had to deal with the freezing water causing my muscles to cramp up and shiver while still feeling the horrifying burning. I collapsed into the water and spent the next five minutes somehow burning and freezing alive at the same time. When I finished convulsing in agony on the floor of my shower I dragged myself to my bed and checked my stats from under the comfort of my blanket.