Luck could be seen as a sort of mystical force of energy that existed all throughout the universe. Or, you could choose to not believe in this mystical energy at all, and instead believe that fate existed and every being born in the universe had a certain path set down in front of them.
There were numerous beliefs about luck and fate everywhere you looked, but the majority of intelligent beings believed that there existed unlucky and lucky people.
Lucky people didn't have to be considered successful or extraordinary in any way; they could live their entire lives with nothing eventful occurring and not think of themselves as lucky. But, isn't living an ordinary life an accomplishment on it's own only achievable through good luck?
The truly extraordinary individuals were the unlucky ones, not because they were special in any way, but because of what happened around them, and to them. These individuals knew that they were unlucky too, but it wasn't as if they could do anything about it.
Nearly ten minutes into the Scenario, Fen was cursing his own horrible luck and the unfairness of being alive in a universe like this.
He was running through the dense forest, sprinting past trees of massive sizes as a beast with a glowing throat and charcoal scales chased after him. The reptilian monster charred any plant life that it passed by, with orange-red flames erupting wherever it's clawed feet stomped.
"Gwuar!" A guttural roar echoed throughout the forest, reminding Fen of his reason for running.
"Fuck off!" Fen yelled back, his body still filled with energy.
****
Five minutes ago.
Fen was searching through the jungle for a suitable place to hide through the Scenario, and he finally found something that might suit his needs, although the place seemed a little creepy.
It was a ruin, with buildings covered in dark green moss and plant life hanging off the roofs. The building that Fen was looking at was two stories tall, and the top room had a balcony with easy access to the floor in case he needed to jump off and make a run for it. He looked around for any animals or monsters before he fully moved into the room, and finding none, Fen placed himself next to the window and began to watch for any signs of movement.
The Scenario never said he had to do anything for the half hour, so Fen fully intended to plant himself in a place where he could hide.
The only things he did inside the room were the dematerialization and the materialization of the different lenses in his eyes as the candidate closely observed the forest for any movement.
Three minutes passed like that, with nothing occuring.
It was at this point that Fen started nervously checking every part of the forest that he could see; there were only a few reasons why he wasn't able to see any animals in such a dense and obviously undisturbed forest.
The explanation that tugged at Fen's mind the most was that there was a larger predator watching him, scaring all of the smaller animals away. But, thinking about the problem more, he pushed this reason away. If there was a larger predator watching him then it would've made it's move by now; by sensing his actions it would know that Fen was aware of it's existence and so lost its element of surprise.
Monsters were more efficient than humans in that regard; knowing that their ambush was discovered, they wouldn't waste time and hope for an opportunity and would instead attack immediately.
So, if he wasn't currently being attacked, then that meant...
Instantly, Fen hurled himself through the balcony, the blood in his body coming to a boil as the Vital energy within him surged to give him a boost in agility. He came to a rolling stop in order to displace the kinetic energy that might've injured him if he landed on the ground.
With immense strength, he planted his foot in front of him when he landed and pushed with all his strength towards the forest.
The reason he did this was the massive surge of energy that he sensed while in the room, which started to show its effect now.
Boom!
A massive explosion occurred where Fen just was inside the room. Without even turning around, the candidate increased his speed with a grim expression. He had kept his pack on his back at all times in case he needed to make a quick escape, but the contents of the bag were slightly damaged from the roll he did when he landed.
But that didn't matter now; items could always be replaced, his life was more valuable than a few bars of food and water. The short sword was undamaged because of it's metallic nature, and Fen could feel the weight on his back from the weapon.
He prepared himself to fight at any second using the metal weapon.
"Roar!"
Welp. Any thoughts of using the weapon disappeared inside his mind when he heard the reptilian roar coming from behind him. He turned his head to get a glimpse of what was chasing him, and what he saw only reinforced his thought that he shouldn't fight with this monster.
The building collapsed into rubble as a monster charged through, revealing its scaly body covered in charcoal black scales that radiated heat. It looked like an overgrown bearded dragon, except for a puffy neck this giant reptile had scales that glowed red as bursts of flame appeared whenever it opened its maw filled with shiny fangs.
'Fire. Of course. The only thing that could hurt me, and of course the monster that's chasing me can use it.' Fen inwardly cursed his luck for the frost time of many that day.
When it caught sight of him fleeing into the forest, the four limbs started spinning as it dashed towards him, giving him a brief estimate of its height as it passed by the buildings.
It's head reached about 2.5 meters (8 feet) in the air, and its body was roughly 5 meters (16 feet) long including the long tail that made up most of it's length. It possessed short limbs with viscous looking claws that looked capable of tearing Fen apart, which combined with it's ability to shoot fire at him made it all the more deadly.
The two of them sprinted through the forest, and Fen could see several startled animals scattering away when they caught sight of him. Er, or maybe they were running away because they saw what was behind him? Either way, many strange sights and creatures came into his view.
A rabbit with horns...
Giant deer animals...
Wolves with golden fur...
All of them ran away after Fen passed them by.
As he ran he tried to formulate a plan, and to calculate what approach he should take. It was possible for him to run for as long as he needed within the time limits of the Scenario, but his luck being what it was, he doubted that he'd be able to continue running without running into some obstacle.
The reptile monster chasing him continued to let out roars as if it was getting frustrated that it couldn't catch it's running away prey.
Truthfully, Fen didn't know if he would be able to fight against the monster. He had never fought against a monster and had no way of knowing how powerful it was in combat. If he tried killing it and failed, then the chances of him being able to escape from it again were... well, low.
He had twenty more minutes of running ahead of him if he chose to run the entire time he spent in the Scenario. If he fought and killed the reptile monster chasing him, then he might be able to find another place to hide for the rest of his time... but that was a massive 'if'.
During the time that he spent thinking, Fen reached a wide river separating him from the other side of the forest. The gap was too wide to jump, and he didn't think he had the time to test if the water was shallow enough to run across.
There could even be aquatic monsters in the river, waiting for him to get close enough so they could eat him...
Fen froze, and jumped to the side as a fireball flew past the position he was just in. He tucked his limbs in and rolled across the ground.
Getting up, he saw that the monster chasing him had stopped. It started growling and approached him slowly. The bastard looked as if he was smirking!
"The fuck?! You think I won't go down fighting!?" Fen yelled.
It appeared that Fen's luck had finally appeared to ruin his life again, placing a whole damned river in front of his escape...
Fen was cursing his luck in his mind but his body was already moving, breaking out into a run towards the monster. It's eyes flashed in surprise that's it's prey was charging towards it before it opened its mouth, revealing the rows of sharp teeth hiding within.
When Fen saw it's neck began to glow red and flame appear in the back of the monster's throat, he felt a strange sense of familiarity...
Ah, wasn't this the same thing he saw before he was blown up by Amelia's explosion magic?
This time would be different however. His body had experienced too many changes and he had improved himself so much that it was hard to describe himself as the same person as when he sparred with Amelia.
As if to prove his point, Fen sent a massive pulse of Vital energy all around his body, quickly pressed his feet down into the ground... and ran away.
What? There was no way that he'd test his terrible luck against surviving another explosion- from a monster, which was much more powerful than Amelia- when he was pretty confident that he would be able to escape.
The only reason that he had tried to rush Amelia in the first place was because the room was too small for him to run away; in an open forest, there was enough space for him to do anything, increasing the available number of options Fen had when in a fight.
True Knights didn't retreat? Fen had never heard of such bullshit before in his life. Honor and pride meant nothing compared to one's survival, and the Sin's invasion of the planet had proved that fact.
Rather than fighting to preserve their humanity, humans had instead given in to the corrupting influence of the Sins, but in the end, weren't they the only race that had survived anyways? The other Fallen races were all gone and dead, while the Foundation worked to bring them back.
Nobody was around to watch him anyway, so Fen couldn't care less if he had to run away to accomplish what he needed.
Fen jumped away at the very last second when the burst of flame that came barreling towards him was just about to come within touching distance. This was of course intentional, as it allowed Fen to gain a head start before it realized that he was gone using the smoke created by the blast.
The intense heat slightly burnt away some of his exposed skin as he quickly run away, but it was worth it. He was able to put a few dozen meters between him and the fire-breathing monster before it stopped throwing flame and realized that it's prey had disappeared.
"Guar!"
"Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit!" A spew of profanities came out of Fen's mouth as he focused all his energy on running away.
He had spent a considerable amount of energy on getting away, running in the opposite direction of the river, but he was confident that he had enough Vital energy to continue running away until the Scenario ended- his little trick had brought him three minutes, leaving another seventeen before the end of the Scenario.
That confidence disappeared when he heard a sound coming from behind him.
Splat!
Fen stopped and turned. There was a sinking feeling in his heart as he saw what made that sound.
Where the fire-breathing monster just was, a messy pile of broken bones and torn flesh remained. On the top of this pile of flesh was a much larger version of the monster that was chasing him, except this monster was completely covered in pitch-black scales instead of the other's charcoal grey, and this one had a much longer neck similar to a snake rather than a bearded dragon. But, there was a much more distinct feature on this fellow's back that certified it's relation to a dragon...
Massive leathery wings stretched out from behind the monster's back, with a dark red making up the membranes of the wings. There was only two words that could describe what Fen thought when he saw such a monster.
Lesser Dragon!
In the short time that Fen was in his monster-obsessed phase as a kid, this kind of monster had left a massive impression on him. The only reason why this monster was defined as a lesser monster was because of it's lacking intelligence and size, as a true dragon was considered to be as intelligent as a person, and was even considered one of the intelligent races in the universe! Although, Fen wasn't aware of that last part of information.
If Fen was wary about being able to fight against the monster chasing him from before, the thought of fighting against this Lesser Dragon didn't even occur in his mind. There was only one outcome if he attempted to do that.
Death!
He might survive a few minutes, but anything past that would be pushing his limits as a Knight, and as a Vitul. His energy would run out eventually and when it did, most of his abilities would become useless. Fen wasn't confident in his ability to steal energy from the Dragon either, he hadn't fully learned that ability back in the Lesson with Raisen so initializing the energy transfer right now wouldn't be useful.
If he tried, he'd be burned alive by the Dragon's fiery breath.
It didn't help that half of his energy was already used up from escaping before either.
But he had to try. It wouldn't be pretty, or efficient, but by the Heavens Fen was going to try.
There wasn't a lot of information about Lesser Dragons within the Foundation's database, but from the little that there was, Fen was able to formulate a plan. He had to use the monster's weaknesses to his advantage to the fullest, or else he really would die.
So, Fen took the only logical course of action.
As the Dragon watched, the dark-haired candidate was hurriedly running away into the forest. Again. The creature was too dumb to realize that his pace was much slower than before, and simply thought that it's prey was trying to run away.
Unlike other creatures, a Lesser Dragon gave up much of it's intelligence in exchange for extreme power that bordered the limits of biological potential through the aids of magic and Vitality.
It completely abandoned the meal that it secured right below it's feet and began to flap it's massive leathery wings to take to the sky and catch the prey running away from it.
Which was exactly what Fen wanted.