20 Taking the potion

The potion was in no way smooth and refreshing. Instead, it was slightly warmer that room temperature, and was full of a rough, grainy texture. Max resisted the urge to vomit as his body reflexively tried to reject the food.

It was astounding how intelligent one's body truly was. From the large organs like the stomach knowing what food would be good or bad for it just based on the taste and texture in the mouth, down to the very tiny white-blood cells knowing which cells are foreign and attacking them with more precision than an MQ-9 Reaper.

However, Max did not bother chewing on it, and swallowed it with his eyes closed like he was taking in an extremely bitter medicine, just not something that would, in any way, be beneficial to his health other than giving him power and the ability to survive in this world.

The liquid did heat up a bit in his mouth to slowly match the temperature of his body. It flowed without any disturbances straight into his stomach. Unlike what Klein experienced, Max did not feel it spread in cool tentacles all across his body. Instead, he felt the liquid become smaller and smaller, condensing into a smaller size within his stomach with each second until he could not feel it any longer.

*Boom*

Suddenly, a wave of heat originated from the location of the disappeared ball of liquid from his stomach, and spread all over his body as though an explosion had occurred. Max felt the head burn through his entire body until it reached his toes, finger tips and his scalp, before rebounding and heading back to his stomach.

Immediately, Max could no longer remain standing as he fell to the ground in pain, convulsing every time the heat rebounded in his stomach to head back out, and then again when it rebounded at the ends of his body to head back inwards.

The cycle repeated 10 times before it finally stopped and Max opened his eyes and let out a breath of relief.

However, all colour from his surroundings rapidly drained, becoming nothing more than black and white. Max did not have time to think about how different this was compared to Klein's spirit vision that saturated all the colours around him.

The simple reason for this was due to the sudden changes occurring all over his body. His mouth which he had just opened to let out a breath suddenly widened as it began to split his skin and muscles, extending from one ear to the other.

Inside were rows upon rows of mangled yet incredibly sharp and white teeth, looping around in circles all along his mouth and down his throat. To an outsider, it may have appeared like Max could swallow anything and completely destroy it.

His hands and legs split up into innumerable tentacles as his body began to lose its structure, with his bones slowly vanishing, replaced by strong muscles which could move the body almost just a well but could not provide enough support for it to maintain its shape. 

Max was right now just a pool of tentacles and teeth. Suddenly, his two eyes also began to multiply, changing colour from his original red into pure black, with no white remaining, only nothingness.

Compared to the 'losing control' of others, who felt their minds being split or taken over by other entities, Max was feeling himself slowly enter the embrace of nothingness, returning to the original state of unending nothingness before the True Creator had created the world.

He could feel his thoughts gradually slow down and his body movements were also slowing down. However, It was now that the ritual came into effect as Max suddenly felt three chains piercing his gradually failing mind and yank it back into his body, returning his bodily functions, as well as the speed of his mind.

The three concepts, despite being physical objects, were still concepts within that Max had shifted. One could think of it in various ways. For the Wind, Max had bent its path, flow, direction, speed, velocity, turbulence, and many other things. The same went for the water. As for the sunlight, Max had changed its density, its concentration, its direction, the energy it could give out as heat and light, and many other concepts.

Thus, he had successfully Bent three concepts, resulting in them pulling back his mind from losing control at the moment of ingesting the potion. His body rapidly returned to normal, but Max's vision was still completely black and white, and it was giving him a headache.

Max quickly did what he had spent quite some time during his week of rest in Tingen trying to remember; what Old Neil had told Max on how to deactivate the Spirit Vision. Well, despite his Spirit vision being different, Max tried to do the same. 

He grasped the crystal monocle he had in his hand and tried to clear his mind of all thoughts other than that monocle. After a while of clearing all his thoughts, he successfully returned his vision to normal and took in a deep breath.

It was unfortunate that he needed to maintain his concentration in order to keep the spirit vision deactivated, but there was nothing he could do…

Max slowly stood up and checked his body. There were not too many changes other than his height increasing by a bit, indicated by the extra pair of casual clothes he had worn on the journey here becoming about 2 inches shorter than normal. Right now, Max could easily pass for a proper 15-year-old.

He quickly pulled out a mirror from his bag and checked himself. His face had matured quite a bit, and the scar on his eye had also somehow faded slightly. Thought it was still very easily visible. Most importantly, however, his crimson eyes now had become slightly darker, slower to a maroon than red.

However, the change was not easily visible unless someone deliberately looked at you for a long period of time.

Max nodded in satisfaction at not having his body deformed as a side-effect of consuming the potion and quickly packed up everything back into his bag to not leave any evidence of his existence here. He also made sure to scan the area for anything he left behind before leaving, swiftly returning to the carriage, who was thankfully still waiting for him.

It had only been around 15 minutes since he ventured into the woods for his 'bowel cleansing' which was not too long for a person in this era. In fact, it was not too long for a person in any era.

Max went on the carriage and went to the top of a nearby hill, which was his original destination as an excuse to get the carriage driver to bring him along. Up here, he once again paid the driver for the time till now and sat down for a nice cup of tea to enjoy the view using some firewood he had brought with him to heat the water before adding the tea leaves.

After a bit of relaxing and getting used to his new body with some light stretching and warmup, Max took the carriage back to Backlund where he paid him the full amount and returned to his motel. 

Once back at his motel, Max finally relaxed a little as he had been tense the whole time, hoping not to suddenly lose control and turn back into whatever it was that he had become while consuming the potion.

'I should check out my mythical creature form' Max thought to himself as he got back up and walked to the slightly rusted and mouldy mirror. He then let his thoughts get flooded by countless other things while forgetting about the monocle. Next, he also thought about the world's memories of his life and his strongest emotions, all while remembering how he was powerless to stop the old man from leaving just like that.

Looking at the mirror, Max noticed that some parts of his body had turned from his normal light colour to a much darker shade and their shape had also deformed greatly. He could not make out the colour since everything was black and white, but it still looked horrendous. 

Max also noticed his mouth becoming wider and wider with his teeth becoming sharper but also bending in random directions, while his eyes began to split into more eyes, and his thoughts began to gradually slow down.

Seeing this, Max quickly recalled the monocle and cancelled his Spirit Vision, while also recalling the feeling of his ritual bringing back his thought process to normal, while also returning his body to normal.

Within just 2 seconds, Max was back, though he was breathing heavily as though he had seen a ghost. He was not suddenly terrified of his mythical form, though it was considerably disgusting it was not enough to make him this scared.

No, what he was actually concerned about was the vision he saw when he almost lost control just now…