Chapter 175 - Absorbing The Golden Stones

Tom fell to his knees. 

His forehead was wet with sweat that desperately attempted to coll Tom's skin down. Even with the raging current of mana dying down, Tom's entire body was burning like crazy. 

'Aaahhhh...' Tom released the air from his lungs, unused to this new body of his. 

He was still the same person that he was before absorbing the stone. But at the same time, he could feel that he was different. 

Tom raised his hand to his eyes, trying to see whether his outer self changed at all. Because judging from how the delicate wind brushed against his skin, he no longer was the same person that he was before. 

"Tom, are you okay?!" Cleo rushed to Tom's side, falling down on her knees and reaching out for his shoulders with her arms. Yet, before the two of them could touch, Cleo stopped her hands, noticing the weird look on her lover's face. 

'What the hell happened?' Tom asked himself, lowering his hand. He couldn't see any difference between how his hand was before and how it was right now. Yet, he could tell for sure that he had changed. 

'Is this what evolution feels like?' he asked himself, trying to crack the problem completely on his own. 

But there was one piece of information that he could actually use right now. 

"Marvin," Tom spoke, quickly realizing that even something as simple as speaking made him feel weird. 

As if it was his first attempt at doing so. As if speaking... was something he wasn't familiar with at all. 

"Here," Marvin didn't dare to waste even a second of his time, instantly kneeling on one knee beside his friend. 

Just like Cleo, Marvin could see the look on Tom's face. And if there was ever need for a military discipline in their group, the time for it was right now. 

"What's my level?" Tom asked, keeping his eyes lowered, stuck to the same point on the ground. 

With how his body was right now, Tom felt as if he would puke if he as much as looked around. 

"It's..." Marvin attempted to reply, only for his words to end up stuck in his throat. He then swallowed a mouthful of saliva before properly repeating his report. "It's the same as before, exactly a hundred-first level," he informed his friend. 

'What?" Tom held back his surprise, unwilling to let his friends worry even more. 'How could that be?' he thought, gnashing his teeth as he looked back at his hand. 

His skin had the same color. His muscles laid down in exactly the same way as they did before. 

But there was a distinct feeling that made Tom sure that he was now different. 

As if the word human could no longer apply to his existence. 

'Well, something had to happen,' he summed his situation up. 'All that magic energy had to go somewhere,' he thought, shaking his head to throw the delirious feeling out. 

"Tom, are you okay?" Marvin asked, echoing Cleo's earlier question. "I know that we are in a hurry, but if you need some time..." he suggested. 

"Don't mind me," Tom countered, standing up on his feet. "I wasted enough time dealing with that monster," he said, unwilling to reveal the details of what just happened. "We need to hurry up," he concluded, forcing the uneasiness back down his throat and grabbing the cloth on which the rest of the stones laid. 

'Should I use them all up now?' Tom hesitated, staring at the golden beads resting on the piece of cloth. 'I'm already feeling awful, so wouldn't it be better to just keep going right now? What's the use of resting up only to feel like that again later?' he thought, biting his lips. 

This was a decision that only he could make... A decision that he found himself unable to take. 

"Tom?" Marvin called out, clearly capable of seeing that Tom was in some kind of distress. 

"Fuck it," instead of replying, Tom reached out for the stone. Before anyone could as much as voice their concerns, his hand already touched the golden bead, instantly sending him back to the internal torture chamber of his body. 

Whatever this stone was doing, Tom was sure that he would end up stronger after consuming it. After all, he could feel that it contained an overwhelming amount of refined mana, an amount that no number of stones of lower grade could ever make up for. 

And once again, Tom's entire body exploded in pain, as if every last cell of his flesh suddenly broke apart, only for the mana to rebuild it from scratch. 

The magical energy felt like a liquid fire spreading from his veins to every last inch of his body, changing its structure on a level that even molecular scientists couldn't fathom. 

Yet, before the process could conclude, before Tom's torture could come to fruition... It ended. 

'Huh?' Tom shrugged, surprised by the events not happening in the exact same way as before. 

Right now, he felt an insatiable thirst, not for water, nor was it hunger for food, but a desire to consume more of that energy. 

Unable to stop his hand, he reached for another bead, allowing the excruciating feeling to fill his mind yet again. 

A few moments of struggle later, the process finally reached its final stage before closing on. Just as the raging current of mana contained within the stone dried up, Tom could feel that something in his body clicked, proving that whatever was happening to him finished just as it should.

Tom felt the air brushing past his cheek. This feeling was so intense that he instantly fell down on all fours and retched, releasing all the matter from his stomach out to the dungeon's floor. 

"TOM!" Cleo shouted. "STOP IT!" she protested. Unable to as much as move a muscle, Tom could only guess from the noises that Marvin was holding the girl back from rushing towards him. 

"I'm okay," he said in a meek voice, barely able to form a coherent thought. 

It wasn't that his mind stopped operating as usual. It was simply overwhelmed by a massive amount of sensory information flooding Tom's thoughts from all directions. 

The gentle sounds of wind hitting the dungeon's wall. The beating of the hearts of everyone in the proximity. Even the flow of mana within everyone's bodies appeared to produce a tiny, distinctive noise that Tom's ear could finally hear. 

'Did I evolve or something?' Tom attempted to guess, feeling how the control over his body slowly started to return to his limbs.

As devastating and confusing as those new senses were for Tom's brain, it didn't take long before Tom's grey mass started to adapt to it. 

In the end, human senses were far sharper than they would normally know. Their bodies were actually far more efficient at physical tasks than any of the modern men could believe.

The people who were born all right only to lose one of their senses in their lives were the greatest example of it, with how their other senses would sharpen to compensate for the lost one. 

After a few more shakes of his head, Tom finally managed to stand back on his feet. Taking his sweet time to straighten his posture, he took a glance at the remaining golden beads. 

"Don't even think about it," Cleo warned. Tom turned around, only to see her eyes widened in a fury.

"Think about what?" Tom asked impassively, intuitively taking a step back. 

It was rare to see Cleo be so full of emotions. And for the great soldier she was, she was even better big sister of their group, more than capable of beating everyone up with just the authority of that role alone. 

"Can't you see how weak you are getting after consuming those stones?!" Cleo shouted, finally wrestling herself free from Marvin's arms only to rush straight for Tom. 

She headbutted Tom's chest, only to wrap her arms around his waist and tackle him to the floor, away from the golden mana stones. 

"Kheee.." the air escaped from Tom's lungs when his back smashed against the floor. 

His brain managed to get used to this new sensory overload... But his body was still far from doing the same. Right now, even a child throwing a stone at his chest would be enough to topple Tom over, not to speak about Cleo's fully-fledged charge!

"That hurt!" Tom protested as soon as he regained his breath. While his words were an over-exaggeration, the meaning behind them was still true. 

"See?!" Cleo shouted, her eyes tearing up. "How could you feel pain from such a weak tackle if those stones weren't making you weaker?" she pointed out in a voice as angry as it was worried. 

"I'm just not used to this body yet..." Tom said before realizing the mistake he had made. 

Those words could be understood in a very wrong way!