Chapter 118: Benjamin Has Awakened
Benjamin seemed to have had a very long dream.
In the dream, he became an enormous whale, swimming away in the deep sea. The whole ocean had nothing except for him. His eyes could only see boundless water, and the whole sea was as silent as the cemetery at night.
So, in this endless stretch of water, he could only aimlessly swim about, swim about…
Gradually, he found out that he had melted into the ocean and became the ocean itself.
Becoming the ocean was a wonderful feeling; he could feel every wave’s somersault, every water stream’s flow. This intriguing new feeling freed him momentously, and he was addicted, occasionally lifting up a new wave, occasionally curling up a small eddy, he was having an extremely good time.
But being an ocean was also very draining. He played like this for a while and soon, he felt a wave of exhaustion.
Accompanying the sudden rolling tides, he yawned like a wave in the ocean and had the urge to fall into deep sleep.
But at the same time, he felt a faint sense of danger also arose in his heart. He suddenly had a hunch that if he slept like this, he might never wake up again. So, he tried hard at retaining his consciousness and energy, not letting the need to sleep pull him into a deep, deep end.
But… he was really tired.
Soon, following the exhaustion of his energy, the waves he lifted were also calm. The sleep monster’s power gradually grew bigger, staining him from beginning to end. He was so tired he couldn’t really hold up.
Just sleep for a while… it should be okay, right…
Gradually, he himself also lost the will to resist and was ready to fall into deep sleep.
But.
At this moment, a voice came from an unknown place, on his body- meaning it echoed softly across the entire ocean.
“Who are you?”
Benjamin suddenly woke up in shock, struggling with his urge to sleep while trying to answer, but the version of him who became an ocean seemed to have lost the ability to speak. Under the influence of his intense emotions, the most he could do was flip waves, make the rushing sound of tides, but he couldn’t form a complete sentence.
I…I am…
Just when Benjamin was using up all his brain juice, trying to think of the term to express orally, the voice was heard again again.
“You are my You Le Mei**.”
“…”
Benjamin woke up from the dream in shock.
He immediately sat up from the bed.
“You’re awake?”
A voice from reality came from his side. “You really are awake. From the looks of it, I thought you would never wake up again.”
But Benjamin could not be bothered to reply this person.
Although he still has not figured out the situation, but he did not have the mood to even lift his eyes to take in his surroundings. Because from the moment he woke up, a headache –at a level of pain he has never felt before – came over him, making him completely lose his ability to think.
He immediately stretched out his hands, hugged his head and bellowed painfully. And so, he did not have the energy to interrogate the System about why it played commercials even in his dream.
Since teleporting, Benjamin has experienced quite a number of headaches but this time it was stronger than any of the previous times. That feeling was like countless rats drilling holes into his brain; it was so painful his whole head seemed ready to split.
Under the torture of pain, sweat immediately soaked through his clothes- he was close to fainting due to pain once more.
In fact, fainting from the pain was almost a blessing. Even though the pain came like a rush of floodwater, Benjamin was still awake and unable to lose consciousness, which meant he could only deal with it.
After who knows how long…
At first, he had thought that with the passage of time, this pain would fade away, but he never thought that no matter how hard he persisted, the pain had no intention of leaving. The intensity was still as strong as it was when he woke up.
He was starting to regret why he wanted to wake up.
Painful to this bloody extent, he might as well stick his head into a dream and never wake up!
Fortunately, human beings are really living things with an extraordinarily strong skill to adapt; Although Benjamin’s headache did not weaken, but with time passing bit by bit, he gradually got used to this type of headaches.
—– Although it was still very difficult to get through, but he finally regained his ability to think and limited abilities to move.
And after he regained his ability to think, the first thing he did was to close his eyes and enter the space of consciousness.
He was very clear on how this headache came about.
It was all due to him summoning the super big water ball- this obviously was not something his energy could handle.
Earlier, when he was at the Cleansing Center, he was almost unable to protect his life and so naturally, he could not be bothered if his energy could handle it or not. He insanely absorbed water elements from the external world, storing a water ball in his space of consciousness, not caring even when his energy was fully expended. He was like someone who was exhausted to the brink of death but still would not sleep in three days three nights, using a feeling of expectation and fear to wait for a probable “sudden death”.
In the beginning, he had no end goal. He was just unwilling to die on a burning cross, so he wanted to show those people his true colors. He was very clear that even with his abilities, it was very hard to do anything under the church’s supervision, much less escape.
However, along with the exhaustion of his spiritual energy, the situation changed.
His consciousness was gradually lost, as if it was placed into warm water to steam. But the act of storing water balls was mechanically repeated continuously. Like this, uncountable numbers of water balls appeared in his space of consciousness and continued to pile up.
Thinking back now, he did not even know how much time passed or how many water balls were stored in the space of consciousness.
When he regained consciousness again, he was already on the cross and in the pits of the flame.
Actually, strictly speaking, that could not count as regaining consciousness either. That feeling was akin to his soul leaving his body, and becoming an observer from a third person perspective, who watched the him who was bounded on the cross. He could not feel the sensation of the cross behind him, nor could he feel the heat of the flames surrounding him… The only thing he could feel was the densely packed water balls in his space of consciousness.
Water ball…
In that moment, he did not think too much and subconsciously used the trick of non-verbal spell casting- he brought all of the water balls from the space of consciousness into reality.
For some unknown reason, during this whole process, all the water balls were oddly fused together, forming the incomparably enormous water ball that appeared above the capital.
He lifted his head to look at the water ball; just as if he was watching something through someone else’s eyes, he could not feel sadness or joy or a sliver of emotions.
But this state did not last for too long either.
As if a heavy hammer crashed down, his consciousness suddenly returned to his body. The flames in front of his eyes, the rising black smokes, and the crowds in the distance… He was experiencing everything as himself again- of course, and there was the Pope’s gaze from the right. That gaze watched Benjamin until he was a little irritated so he could not help but return the favor.
But the number of times he was conscious was only in that short moment.
At the blink of an eye, the weight of the entire enormous water ball crashed onto his spirit, pressuring him until he had the kind of feeling where his whole being was going to explode. He was already performing beyond his capacity by not fainting on the spot. But there was not much difference with the actual situation; not even half a second later, he already felt that he could not stand it.
Clearly, with his ability, there was no way he could maintain such an astonishing magic.
He could feel the collapse of magic and the loosening of his consciousness once more, but, he still scrambled to detonate the water ball in the sky before his spirit completely collapsed.
A water ball half the size of the capital, just collapsing like that, how powerful is it?
Although Benjamin was very curious, he could not witness this scenario with his own eyes. He lost his consciousness after finishing everything, lost in the bottomless abyss. And the last thing he saw was the panicking surrounding crowd, along with the Pope’s stunned expression.
Thinking about it now, that feeling… was not bad at all.
But of course, how does that saying go again… forcing a moment of glory may sacrifice a whole family. The headache now must be the consequence of using the huge water ball.
This was also very normal, with his level now, it was fundamentally impossible to use this technique. He did not know how many degrees of energy he exhausted, and seemed to have super super super super over-performed for a while to release the whole water ball. The him now only had a headache which was already something to rejoice about.
But…
Obviously, the consequence of a huge water ball was not just a headache.
Returning to the space of consciousness, Benjamin looked at the huge never-seen-before crack in front of his eyes, his whole being felt bamboozled.
Translator’s Thoughts
J_Squared J_Squared
**You Le Mei is a Chinese drink commercial
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