He took everything in one gulp, according to Pang’s advice.
As nervous as he was...he found out very quickly that he still underestimated it.
It felt like he just drank a mix of hot iron, ash, and magma. It coated his tongue like oil that quickly burned his throat, and his stomach felt like it was scorching.
Agony. Burning agony.
Then..., he realized it was just the beginning.
The pain quickly spread from his throat to the rest of his body. All his muscles and all his cells felt like they were being squeezed under pressure.
He curled into himself, rolling on the bed as if he was trying to put out the fire that was burning him to ashes.
"Aaaaaggghhhh!!" He screamed as he literally felt every fiber of his body being stretched out and burned.
His eyes were completely red, tears pouring endlessly as he gasped for air. He was completely drenched in sweat, but it was as if he had fallen into the boiling sea.
"AHHH!"
Like anyone in the midst of unimaginably intense pain of their own choosing, he regretted it. Why did he even take the damned thing?
He didn’t even remember anymore, all of his mind was filled with torment.
He felt like dying. Was he really going to die? He had hoped not—
Images of his family back when they were happy passed by his head.
He had just started with building his dream Inn, and was just starting with the life he wanted. He didn’t even understand this dream until he was on the verge of losing it. It would be such a shame to lose it now.
"GAHHH!!" he bellowed, the sound coming from his gut, as if all his weight was in there. He rolled around again, though at some point, he ran out of surface.
FLOP!
This time, fell off the bed, but he barely felt it. He was busy squirming on the carpeted floor. He was like a worm, but was cut into two and was now struggling for life.
Stop! Make it STOP!!!
A voice sounded in his mind. It was his own voice, seducing him to just give in.
There is one way to make everything stop, it said, and for a moment Finn was tempted to grab that tempting string.
Suddenly, as he was shivering from pain, certain words echoed in his mind.
"Son. Pain is just the body’s way of reminding you you’re still alive—until you’re not."
Ah, his dad did say that. Cringe, but he really said it.
Because he couldn’t calm down and had to run everywhere as a kid, he got injured a lot.
The worst one was when he climbed up a tree, fell down, and broke a bone—the type of injury that had a bone protruding out of the skin.
He was only four or five years old back then, and he screamed to the top of his lungs all the way until they got to the hospital.
Hospitals in the countryside were not big. His screams could probably be heard in the whole building.
He asked his parents if he was about to die, and his father threw him this quote he probably got from an old movie.
At the memory, despite feeling like he was being torn apart and burned from the inside, his lips still gave a small twitch.
It certainly gave him a tether to hold on to, and soon he could hear the panda yelling ’dont die, la!’ over and over. ’What if we get a customer!?’
’I still wanna eat good food!’ he added.
Soon, the pain slowly subsided, leaving Finn;s body aching as if it was hammered from the inside.
Finn couldn’t move his limbs anymore, and he couldn’t even roll, even when the searing pain had gone completely. His body was too sore, as if all his bones had turned to jelly.
" Huff
His mouth was parted for a breath as his face rubbed the wooden floor. It felt like it was his last breath, to be honest.
...
He woke up a few hours later to the scent of sewer climbing up his nose.
"Cough!" He coughed in shock, swallowing his saliva by accident. But then it caused him to gasp in more of the appalling smell, and he choked on his saliva even more.
"COUGH!! COUGH !"
At some point, he realized that he was completely wet from grime and black slime, and he was surrounded by a small pond of it.
Bleurgh
He barely, barely , stopped himself from vomiting right then and there.
"Don’t move so much! You’re spreading it!!" he heard the panda’s familiar voice at the side. He was dragging a few towels from the Utility Room, throwing them into the puddle. The towels would be cleaned thoroughly in the utility room, so he didn’t think too much of it.
He watched Pang finish up the cleaning and placed everything back in the Utility Room.
Sadly, there were still marks that seemed to have seeped into the floor already.
Pang glared at him. "Buy the [Auto Swipe] function now!"
"Oh, right." He didn’t buy that because he was saving hearth points and didn’t have a utility room at the time. He just forgot about it, honestly.
[Purchased! Auto Swipe! -200 Hearth Points]
He watched as the marks on the surfaces slowly disappeared. "Wow..." he said, unconsciously leaning over to look at the stain closer. At some point, he got near the Panda, who scrunched his face.
"Gah! Don’t come closer! You smell!"
Finn was offended, but then the ’aroma’ hit him in the face again. He really did smell, and he turned to head to a bath.
He was utterly exhausted though. He ate a bit of the food and gulped down both pitchers of the drinks, but he could still feel he was moving just through sheer willpower.
He took off his clothes as he headed to the bathroom, throwing the laundry carelessly into the Utility Room. He opened the shower and felt the comforting coolness of the water lather on his skin and hair, and for the first time in a while, he finally heaved a breath.
That said, he had to check whether it worked at all.
[Status]
Name: Finnick Altheus Solthar
Race: Human
Class: Innkeeper, Chef
Level: Awakened Tier 1
Awakening Type: Physical
Affinity: Fire, Earth, Wind
...
VITALS
HP: 8/300
Mana: 100/300
Stamina: 6/300
Wallet: 151 Gold
Hearth Points: 1450 Points
...
Skills:
Active: [Ingredient Scan] [Dish Analysis]
Passive: [Blade Proficiency - Growth Type (Lv 1)] [Monster Instinct]
[Strong Stomach] [Improved Palate] [Fire Resistance]
Condition: Exhausted. -1 HP and -1 Stamina per Hour ]
At this, he froze, amber eyes fixed on the values of his stats. Specifically, the horrendous number at HP and Stamina.
Fudge. What the heck? He almost died !
He shivered at the thought of how close he was to losing his life! Thinking about it, if he didn’t eat all those regenerative foods or if he didn’t stay in his room—
Other than his food, the Inn itself quite literally saved his life.
After pushing down the shock of realizing he had really almost croaked, a big grin crept up his face again.
He was finally ’awakened’!