I woke up about half an hour ago.
Rose noticed it, it was difficult, but due to her being next to me I managed to share my thoughts to tell her to lay with me in… wherever was the place I was in. Probably I was back in the hospital… I'm pretty sure that they will start considering putting a plate with my name on the door.
She moved slowly and carefully to not hurt me. She knew about the reasons I was like this and was a little scared of hurting me by accident. She surrounded me with her arms leaving my head in her bosom. I could feel her lips on my forehead.
I could hear her relaxing heartbeat and her soft breathing on my ear. I didn't know why but it helped me ease the pain I was suffering.
She just waited there with me for the remaining time, it was like she had a healing effect for me, the pain had decreased a lot since she hugged me and only the weakened effect was left…
5…
4…
3…
2…
1…
[Weakened state ended]
[Skill Obtained Pain resistance Lv.2]
Finally, I could feel my strength coming back to me. My muscles were a little stiff, but now that I was back again to my usual self I will recover faster.
The only change I made was that I hugged Rose back. I surrounded her waist with my arms and with my enhanced sense working again I drawn on her sweet smell, her soft touch and the sound of her heartbeat and breathing.
This feeling was the one that made everything worth.
Recovering my senses had a stronger impact on me than recovering my strength, it took me a couple of minutes to get used to it. Rose was there playing with my hair, she knew that I was fine.
We took a little nap.
I heard footsteps outside of the door coming in this direction, there were three people.
Using the timer of the remaining missions, I found that it should be around 9 pm.
I didn't want to move from where I was, but probably the image of me on her chest wasn't appropriate, so I moved a little till our heads were at the same high. I looked at Rose and found her eyes closed. There were dry tears on her.
"I'm sorry for worrying you."
She just nodded and held me tighter than before.
I remember the effect of lost that I felt when the Astral Link was weakened, it was the worst part of this whole experience. I closed my eyes and hugged her tighter too.
The door opened.
I opened one of my eyes to see who came and found Dr. Rehn together with Hayley and Hope.
"Feeling better I see."
He said with a smile.
"Yeah. I woke up about two hours ago, 1 hour ago the weakened state stopped, and I felt my strength came back to me."
"What an odd power, but from what people describe from you fight with that beast I understand that there was a price to pay. Hayley told me that it was the side effect of an ability and it should be over by now from what you told me… if you want you can go back tonight, but come here in the morning before the meeting for a checkup."
"Meeting?"
"Yeah, there were no clues about a third wave that you mentioned and the presence of semihumans it's a secret for now too, but they need to talk about this and the potential effects it could have. They didn't have time today to discuss it today because they had to handle the refugees, and you weren't there either, so there was no use. I'll need to talk with you about the patients too by the way."
I could feel a lot of headaches tomorrow pain resistance will come in handy.
"Sure, I'll go back home."
I changed my clothes for something that Hope brought me from home. Apparently, the ones that I was using before were in a horrible state, mainly because they were covered in blood from too many beasts… and mine. I was cleaned by someone, but I didn't want to know the details of it.
I went back home talking with the girls.
"By the way Hayley, you were amazing today, I knew that you have been practicing in secret, but that level is amazing. If that Man-goat didn't have that heat power to counter you, you would probably be able to kill the other two easily."
"In the end, it was you who saved me again and killed the Minotaur … Giorgio saw the fight, he said that the best way to help you he could think of was no interfering on it."
She smiled.
"Hey Hey, what about me?!!? how did I do?"
"Sorry hope I couldn't see much of you fighting… I noticed a couple of your shots you still need to work on your accuracy thou… and stop pouting!"
Rose giggled at my side, she knew that Hope does it to annoy me.
We arrived home and found Dante sleeping on the couch and Dana playing with Cai-Cai. Isabella was looking at that with mixed feelings but calm while drinking a glass of juice. I sat next to her on the table.
"Don't worry she is a good snake."
"I know, but it's still weird to see her playing with a snake… and can't get used to it."
She had a warm smile on her face, she seemed to relax after seeing me alright. Then her eyes remind me of the time when It got too late while we were out playing in the wastelands.
"You have to stop scaring me like that… you know that there is a lot of people that worry about you?"
The next five minutes I received a scolding for being reckless, it finished with a warm hug and with her telling me that she was glad that I was ok. It was true I overestimated my own capabilities, If I took more people with us, probably we wouldn't end in that state. I hugged her back with my free arm and apologized for worrying her.
She broke the hug, sobbing a little.
"You two must be hungry, give me a minute I'll bring you something."
"Thank you, Isabella."
I looked at Dante sleeping while caressing Rose's hand, she got closer to me and rested her head on my shoulder.
After our little cuddling and napping I was refreshed, still tired, but I didn't want to go sleep yet.
The effects of Adrenaline burst were on another level compared to other F-Ranked abilities, that huge of an improvement (ignore pain, improved physical attributes, concentration and reaction time), it had to come with that huge weakness, but I feel that this is too much.
[The user's body is that of a normal human at the peak of the human capabilities. The improvement from the adrenaline Burst is pushing his body beyond that, also user overused Time infusion, and he got wounded during the time… to make it worst the user was less than 40 away seconds from the limit. Regular use of it shouldn't be that bad. Also, pain resistance should be able to help user handle the backlash better the next time if it reached this level]
'Is there a way to reduce the backlash?'
[Recovery type powers should decrease the time of the weakening, and pain resistance will help with the pain, enhancing users body might help too and getting the next rank version of Adrenaline Burst also help]
I should have taken recovery perk… none of those factors seemed like something I could change soon, only pain resistance, but the main problem was the weakening effect.
As I explored the menu, I noticed that there was another reward for killing the man-bull, that I almost forgot.
'How different is the low-Grade from the normal one?'
[The normal that you got before had some random objects (reading material) this is something common to all the surprise boxes, but it can change… besides it had, 3 random "items," 1-100 random system points, and 1 random E- Rank Esper Ability]
'3 random items?'
[the 2 weapon ticket and a junk food ticket…you were unlucky with that one]
'And the low grade.'
[2 Random items, 1-50 system points, and an F-Rank Esper Ability]
I thought about it for a second. At that moment Isabella brought the food for us and sat with us.
I was staving so I devoured the food in front of me, after finishing thought of something.
"That was delicious…."
Rose agreed with me, but it took her a little more time to finish because she was eating like a normal person…
This gave me time to make up my mind.