Author's Note: 'it', the friendly thing inside Fen's dreams will now be capitalized to make it easier for you to tell the difference. So you'll read it as It. Ex: In the Void It looked at Fen, ect.
Enjoy the story!
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Boom!
Despite having just been slammed into their personal Training Hall's walls for the fifth time, Fen looked just as excited as he did for the first. It was getting to the point that Amelia was beginning to think that he was masochist; he didn't reveal any expression of pain, even when he was burning.
And he was burning. Both of his sleeves were smoldering and smoke was rising from his clothes as the embers began to catch fire for the umpteenth time.
"Again!" Fen excitedly said, patting his sleeves to put out the glowing flames.
During her magical Lesson, Amelia had mostly learned about the manipulation of Mana and shift it around her body and surroundings, similar to Fen's Knight training, but she had also learned a few ways to manipulate the magical energy and convert it into heat, which can then be processed into flames. The entire process wasn't too difficult; at her stage of development, it would only be difficult to increase the heat of the flames. For now, she could only create enough heat to throw fireballs while using spells to cast rays of flame and other things.
For the first time since they began to spar, Fen was finally able to test his own endurance and regenerative ability. He had discovered that, just like he thought, the flames did slightly hinder his healing capabilities. However, if he cycled his Vitality throughout his body at the same time as his body naturally healed then the process could be accelerated through the expenditure of energy. Though tiring, it enabled Fen to heal faster than the flames could burn him.
He had worried that the Vitality he spent to heal his wounds would be lost forever, but Raisen had explained the general principle of how his energy could gradually recover.
For the sake of explanation, his body could be thought of as a container, and the Vitality he gradually absorbed from others combined with the Mana his two Marks greedily sucked from the environment expanded his 'container'. The energy he spent would then recover inside this container, meaning that he wouldn't permanently lose the energy he spent on training or sparring, like now.
For his container to expand, Fen needed to be topped up on Vitality and Mana, so that any extra energy he absorbed could be used to slowly cultivate.
However, his energy would run out eventually, even with the constant supply of Mana coming from his Mark and his gift. He hadn't reached the stage where he could absorb more energy from around him than he himself spent; that would be stupidly overpowered.
Currently, Fen had about a quarter of his energy left; he was left at about 75% after training by himself, and the rest of it had been spent to recover from being thrown across the room by Amelia's magic.
"Dude, just stop! Do you not feel pain!" By now Amelia's smirk had disappeared, replaced by a grim expression as she watched Fen continue to get up, again and again, even as his skin turned to ashes from her flames. Her will to continue was the only thing keeping her from stopping the spar, as her mind gradually grew disgusted at herself for throwing fire at Fen during the fight.
In order to keep Fen away from her, she was forced to throw her weapon away and focus on casting magic with both hands.
"Of course I do! But after a while, it all just feels the same!" Fen said, but he couldn't hide his muscles suddenly tensing up as a stray fireball thrown by Amelia caught on his leg.
He had dropped his sword before the fight began, so he was forced to use his limbs to protect his vital areas. Although he took less overall damage, pain racked his brain constantly throughout the fight. He told the truth though, as his body was constantly embroiled in pain, his mind eventually just gave up on sensing it.
Enduring the pain, Fen somehow managed to convince himself that this too was another method of training. Instead of getting used to pain in dangerous battles, he could do it while training with Amelia's fire.
"Alright, you need to stop. Hopefully you'll forgive me for this later." Throwing fireballs and heat rays weren't the only spells Amelia had learned in her Lessons.
Explosion. It was a highly dangerous spell with a massive energy expenditure, but if she was able to pull it off, then Amelia would be able to end the fight and, consequently, Fen wouldn't be able to fight and hurt himself anymore.
Although she didn't really care for the candidate she was fighting against, she was starting to feel pity as she looked on his still burning skin. Just looking at him made her skin itch and crawl.
The damage done shouldn't leave scars, but she wasn't sure. Fen himself wasn't sure. Thinking back to his regenerative abilities, he wasn't sure that he ever had to heal from this much damage before; but healing minor cuts and wounds didn't leave any permanent damage, so he doubted that this much fire would either.
However, even if he did have permanent scarring, it would be worth the experience. Coming home with a few scars is infinitely better than not coming home at all.
The onslaught of fire paused for a moment. Fen, having focused on dodging the fire that he could and blocking the ones he couldn't noticed the difference only after a few moments.
Searching for Amelia, he found her in a corner of the Training Hall, waving her hands around wildly as she quickly put together her explosion spell.
Spellcasting was done in three parts. One, collecting Mana for the spell, which could be done through external or internal sources. Two, weaving the spell itself using either runes or inscriptions that were written using fingers. More powerful Mages would be able to cast spells with a wave of their hands through manipulating Mana, but Amelia's skill only allowed her to manually use her hands.
Finally, the third step, launching the spell and keeping it intact until it worked. This was arguable the hardest step for any Mage to complete, as it required a refined sense of Mana manipulation to keep the spellwork together until it completed whatever it was made for.
Amelia was currently at the second stage of launching her spell, rapidly approaching the third. Fen knew almost nothing about magic, but his instincts were whispering in his mind that he needed to avoid being hit by the spell no matter what.
The two candidates were more than 30 meters apart. It wasn't a far distance using any scale, but Fen wasn't confident in crossing the distance before Amelia launched whatever she was creating in that corner.
But, he had to try. He had a feeling that even if he tried to dodge whatever was about to be thrown at him, he would still end up being blown through the Training Hall and back into the Squad room.
Fen pushed the last remnants of his Vital energy into his legs, at the same time lowering his center of gravity and head to create the least resistance to the air, another trick he learned during his training.
The sheer density of Vitality within his legs almost blew his limbs apart, but his cells barely managed to endure the pressure the energy gave. Consequently, his legs swelled up in order to handle the massive amount of energy and gave him a proportional boost of power and speed.
In the same instant, Fen's feet exploded from the ground as he rushed towards Amelia in a mad dash to arrive before she could complete her spell and somehow stop her.
27 meters.
23 meters.
15 meters.
Amelia's face scrunched up in frustration as she saw Fen's rapid approach. She worried about accidentally killing him, but his powerful regenerative abilities that he had shown her before pushed the thought out of her mind.
She also worried about accidentally being caught in her own explosion; although the spell wouldn't harm it's caster, the heat the spell produced combined with it's shockwaves would be more than enough to cause her some injuries.
At 10 meters, Amelia finally finished the second stage of spellcasting, barely finishing each rune with the bare minimum of legibility required for her Mana to be transformed. A small expression of worry flashed across Fen's face as he sensed a change in the energy around him; a reaction that his body had when noticing a deficit in Mana from his surroundings.
Finally, the hardest part of spellcasting came. Amelia struggled to latch onto her spell with her Mana and prevent the energy within the written runes from spilling out, which would leave her energy fizzing away wasted.
All Fen saw was a big red ball with compressed flames pressed up near him, almost before he could react. He had failed; the spell was completed before he could stop it.
Now, with no more energy to use and an exhausted body, Fen had to somehow brace for the impact. Amelia wasn't able to see his current condition, she was too focused on using her spell to knock him away from her.
With an iron will, or rather what was left of his will, Fen forced whatever energy he had left inside his legs to spread all throughout his body in a rudimentary shield. It was his last resort to defend himself against Amelia's spellwork.
A pulse of golden energy spread throughout his body, turning fainter and fainter the farther across his body it went until only a golden sheen could be seen on his ash-covered skin.
Kaboom!
Fen only managed to put his palms out in front of him, but he quickly lost all his senses as his limp body was tossed to the other side of the Training Hall, slamming into the white wall. The golden energy that had somehow managed to cushion him from the shockwave the explosion made was completely broken by the time his body brutally slammed into the wall, letting his enhanced body take the full brunt of the blow.
In normal situations, some of the kinetic energy would be absorbed by the wall, but the structure of the Training Hall forced any and all energy created from their spar to be reflected back at them instead of damaging the wall's integrity.
This meant that Fen's body was forced to endure everything.
His spine was the first to break, multiple vertebrae shattering into tiny fragments as the kinetic energy his body absorbed passed through his skeletal structure.
His arms were the next to break, cleanly snapping into pieces and piercing his skin as the two limbs were thrown into the wall after hitting his back.
His skull also hit the wall, but fortunately his back and arms took most of the shock of the impact. Unfortunately, his brain was left conscious as the impact wasn't enough to allow him to slip into peaceful unawareness. Every little pain and shatter, Fen felt it all. The pain was almost enough to make his heart give out from the shock, although the kinetic energy was just as ready to finish the job.
"Oh shit! Oh... shit shit shit shit shit shit!" If Fen's ears weren't ringing or his eyes not forcibly shut then he might've been able to perceive Amelia frantically running over to him, worried that she killed him.
By some miracle, the girl candidate was left almost completely unscathed from the shockwaves her explosion had created. Fen's primitive attempt at a shield of Vital energy absorbed most of the shockwave like a thirsty camel at an oasis, and his fleshy body absorbed the rest of it.
She almost threw up at the sight of him. With bones sticking at awkward angles in his arms and most of his skin burnt off, Fen's body was not pleasant to the eyes. His eyes opened slightly, showing that he was still alive and conscious.
That wasn't a blessing however. At the moment, Fen would've very easily accepted death if it was an option, but his body didn't let him. Even drained of all energy, his powerful physique struggled to keep his vital organs operational as his two Marks drained any and all energy from his surroundings to keep Fen alive.
At any other time, Fen might've laughed at the absurdity of the situation. He accepted the spar in order to test his healing abilities and increase his pain tolerance, and yet, here he was, with the perfect opportunity to do both and he wanted to give up and die. Admittedly, the pain was heaven-shattering.
It was at this unfortunate time that Gray and Qin both walked into the Squad Room, talking and sharing points about their two training Lessons. Both candidates froze when they saw Amelia struggling to drag Fen, or rather, what was left of Fen away from their personal Training Hall and next to their table, where she hoped she would be able to contact the Foundation to come help her.
"What happened?" Qin snapped out of his freeze rather quickly, rushing next to Fen to examine his wounds and see if the boy was still alive. Fen dully moved his pupils to follow his movements, showing that he was still painfully living.
"We-we were sparring, and he wanted to keep going even though I wanted to stop-but he told me 'again, again', so we kept going, and then-
"He was just, argh, why did he get so close? He could've just ran away, or out, or anywhere else but in front of me," Amelia started to hyperventilate as the reality of what she had done caught up to her, her words spilling out of her mouth like water from a waterfall. Gone was the image of fierce girl, replaced by a scared teenager terrified that she might've done something horrible.
As they were talking, Fen slowly drifted into blissful unconsciousness as his body failed to heal his brain in time.
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"You... should've... been..." It started to speak to him again. If Fen was awake, he would've noticed It's anger, although that failed to hide the not-small amount of worry in It's voice.
"More... careful!"
"You could've died!"
"Fuu, but with risk comes great benefit, right?"
"For us, they used to break a couple of your bones when your young, but that only happened in controlled environments."
"Couldn't risk losing even a single one of us, but it had to be done. Getting into a condition like that however..."
"Even I don't know how much you'll change from this. This never happened before. You're unique, just like I always thought..." The anger and worry were quickly disappearing, and the familiar tone of warmth was the only emotion in It's voice. This was because while It was talking, It swept waves of It's energy through Fen's body, It could tell that despite the horrendous damage done, he was healing, albeit slower than he should be.
This was expected however. That was how they were, they grow proportional to how hard the pushed themselves. In Fen's cases, he was already going through much more than what he was supposed to, but because of that, he should grow to reach a peak much higher than even It.
The waves of energy began to sooth Fen's jumbled mind, preventing him from breaking down when he woke up, which he would've, from the amount of trauma his body went through and was going through.
However, It began to feel foreign energy intruding into Fen's body. It calmly concealed It's traces before taking a step back to observe their magic and ensure that they wouldn't interfere in Fen's growth. Every time a spellwork made to heal him was created, It made sure that it never did more than It wanted.
It would help Fen heal using the magic the Foundation cast as a disguise, but It had to let Fen heal his more critical injuries on his own in order to grow. The process wouldn't take too long; a mere couple of hours would suffice.
When the Foundation finished their spellcasting, It was extremely tired from the multi-tasking. Taking their energy and using It's own to heal him while still maintaining the illusion that they were the ones healing Fen was already a lot, but the cross-dimensional interference created by Fen simultaneously existing in both the reality It created and the Void's reality instantly multiplied the difficulty of what It was trying to do.