"Looks like our time's about to run out. When you wake up, your body should be in a more acceptable condition."
It turned away from him, and began waving it's hand around inside the reality. While it did so, Fen could sense a massive amount of energy entering his Mark, and the edges of his consciousness began to falter. Fen recognized the signs, he was about to leave this reality again.
'Wait a minute. Acceptable? So not fully healed then?'
"What's your definition of acceptable?"
It turned back and looked him dead in the eyes.
"You should be able to walk. Hey, don't look at me like that, you should be happy that you healed that much in just a day."
'...It had a point. Wait a minute, It hasn't told me it's name, has It?' It finally hit Fen that he had been calling the being in front of him 'It' the whole time. Then again, It somehow knew his name, but never shared it's own, so it wasn't really his fault.
"Oh, before I forget, because of 'genetic perfection' stuff, your body knows Vitality more thoroughly now because of your instructor's experiences. Absorbing and examining memories is a special skill that Vituls have. You essentially lived for a bit as Raisen, and felt what he felt, gaining the benefits without the need for a Blessing. There's a bunch more details, but you're about to leave any second now. "
'Damn it, another thing to add to my workload; and I have to study this ability of mine, or get some guidance from It. Argh, I need to ask It's name first!'
It was about to say more, but Fen cut It off with a question.
"What's your name? I can't keep calling you 'It; in my head. And don't avoid the question, even if you're famous I wouldn't know."
The question hung in the air for a moment as It hesitated to tell the boy in front of him It's name. Knowing wouldn't hurt him, right? The Foundation wasn't at the stage where they knew the names and stories of the multitude of Gods in the universe. Probably.
"You can call me Dey. Short for Deion. Nice to finally introduce myself to you, Fen."
With that, Fen's consciousness fully left this reality and he returned back to his position on the black rock bed. Much to his surprise with a red-haired girl to his left, slowly nodding off in a chair.
'Amelia? Why's she here?' Questions like that went through Fen's mind.
And to his right was instructor and Knight Raisen, who had a mobile interface in his hands as he looked through the data the Foundation had sent him. Feeling his glance, the old man looked and noticed that his student was finally awake.
With a smile, the old man greeted him.
"Oh? That was faster than I expected." He looked back down at his interface. "Must've been another growth spurt. I'll have to record that..."
"That's it?" His response to seeing Fen awake was a little lackluster.
"What? You want me to throw a party? I already knew you'd pull through. I wouldn't be here waiting if you weren't, would I?"
'Hah, yeah I guess he's not the type of person to do that.' Fen thought to himself.
Then, the young candidate pointed towards the now sleeping Amelia and asked Raisen a question.
"If that's your reason for being here, then why's she here? Doesn't she have other stuff to do?"
Raisen raised his eyebrows.
"Oh, so you two really aren't seeing each other? I was so sure..."
"Eh?"
"Well, she's been here in the entire three days that you've been healing. If she wasn't interested in you, then why be here? How was I supposed to know that her weak excuse of, 'I feel guilty', was the truth." Raisen turned off his mobile interface and fully faced him. "Now, I'm going to give you some advice, as a old man to a young teenager and not as a seasoned Knight, but as a male."
"Eh? Eh?"
"You should date this girl. Loyal people like her are hard to come by, and even harder to steal away from othe- I mean, date. Take advantage of this Heaven given opportunity."
"Eeeeeeeh??"
'But I have a girlfriend!' Fen screamed in his heart because his vocal cords weren't responding to his commands.
"Alright," Raisen stood up, "back to being your instructor. Get your ass up, you've missed a lot of Lessons. If you don't want to lose your skill at manipulating Vitality, you've gotta practice all the time. Even in your sleep. The past few days with your peer Erik have just been repetitive practice with utilizing Vital energy and circulating it through your body, but..."
Raisen looked up and down at Fen's body, which the boy now realized was almost completely naked except for a piece of cloth underwear, and continued.
"I doubt you need that practice considering you've been passively using your own Vital energy the entire time you were recovering."
Fen got slightly embarrassed then, regretting that he lost that much time. But, if his instincts were correct, then the changes within his body were more than bountiful enough to make up for those temporal losses.
"Actually, I should probably get some more rest in my room. Sure, I can walk, but my body feels creaky and weak. Food is a must right now." As if on cue, Fen's stomach growled loudly. In fact, it was on cue; his control over his own body had reached such an outstanding level of performance. Every one of his cells felt invigorated under his control, and Fen was sure that he could even heal all his minor injuries in a few minutes if he wanted too by expending energy.
But he wanted food first, to make sure he wouldn't accidentally starve himself.
"Hmph. Fine. Go sleep, and meet with me and Erik at the usual time in the Training Hall. And when I see you tomorrow, you'll need to explain that new Mark on your chest, cause I'm pretty sure that I didn't do that." And with that, the old Knight left the infirmary and headed back to his bed to sleep.
'Shit, I guess I'll have to tell him about Deion. Best case scenario, I can make up a believable lie...'
Raisen's departure did leave Fen with a problem in the form of a young teenage girl, who was fast asleep on a chair to his side.
Groaning, Fen pulled himself out of the rocky bed and unveiled his body, causing some of the female Foundation staff Healers to unconsciously appreciate his toned muscles, as if they completely forgot that Fen was patient.
Fen too also noticed the changes in his body. For example, the lumps of hard muscle on his stomach that definitely weren't there before...
'Uh, guess I have abs now? Yay? Oh, and my biceps are a lot more toned now, aren't they?'
Other races would curse the name of Vituls everywhere if they found out that they could get abs simply by existing. Fen's ancestors hadn't dedicated their whole lives for simply a pair of abs, but the bonus to their masculine charms were an added benefit from achieving racial perfection.
Deciding to review the changes in his body when he was alone later, Fen searched for any clothes that he could wear. Unfortunately, his old uniform was burnt away into nothing, and for some reason the Foundation members he asked for a spare coat blushed and refused, leaving a befuddled Fen with nothing to wear except for his underwear.
It was important to note that Fen's muscles weren't the only thing to have changed. The hair on every place of his body was burnt away with only his hair partly remaining. Through the healing process and enhancement of his body, golden, almost translucent hair grew back on his body, giving him a splendid golden shine along with his pale skin.
There were no scars as well, and with the consideration of his denser and enhanced bones, the person in Fen's place was a taller, toned, pale-skinned youth with excellent proportions and a handsome face. The two Marks on his chest only added to Fen's charm, looking cool with two very unique tattoos.
To summarize, Fen was attractive. Knights to slowly got better looking as they trained with Vitality, so the massive change in appearance wasn't entirely shocking to the Healers, who had no idea that such an effect could never be achieved with simple training with Vital energy.
Downcast, the young candidate decided to just wake up his Squad member and hope she wouldn't notice his bare body. Chances of that happening were practically nonexistent, however...
Amelia was asleep in her uniform, her hand propping up her head to keep her from falling. The position looked uncomfortable, but Fen knew that the furniture in the infirmary had special properties, take his 'rock' bed for example.
Her red hair looked a little unkempt, probably because she spent most of her time in the infirmary, but the way her hair fell onto her face could almost be called cute. Well, if the person watching wasn't Fen, who was extremely loyal to his girlfriend Miko.
He stood to the side for a few moments, taking into careful consideration how he should wake the girl up. Any onlookers would be extremely confused about the scene in front of them; there was a handsome half-naked youth standing in front of a pretty (ish) sleeping girl. Anybody would be confused.
Thankfully, the infirmary staff members only had eyes for Fen's appearance and not his actions, and didn't take any second glances at what he was doing.
Fen settled for the simple approach.
Stepping closer, he poked Amelia's shoulder a couple times. And then a couple more when she still didn't wake up.
Poke. Poke poke. Poke poke poke poke...
...the girl still didn't wake up. At this point Fen was a little annoyed. It didn't take him that long to get up, and he was lying in a bed for days from terrible injuries! What kind of self-respecting person doesn't at least acknowledge themselves being poked.
'Is this the difference in racial ability?' Ridiculous thoughts like that were going through Fen's head at that moment. If Dey was around, he'd simply answer 'no', but the God wasn't, so Fen just attributed this phenomenon to the difference in race and not because of Amelia's nature, which was the true answer behind the issue.
She woke up after being shaken for a minute. Tiredly looking around, the first thing Amelia saw was a bare-chested youth with a very annoyed look in his eyes.
Confused, Amelia looked behind her to see what the boy in front of her was looking at, too loopy to realize that he was staring at her. Fen's face started to twitch slightly, which shouldn't happen because of his control over his own body, showing the extent of his exasperation.
Amelia finally turned around and realized that Fen was staring at her, and not anybody else.
"Wuz wrong?"
"You. You're what's wrong."
"...but why? Did I do something wrong?"
Fen sighed. "Fuu, no, I guess not. I can't really blame you for your race." He looked at her with pitying eyes, still believing that her drowsiness was because of the race difference.
The boy stretched his hand out in front of him, intending to help pull her up, but Amelia took it as a pillow and leant her forehead against his hand. Seconds later, Fen could hear snores coming from the palm of his hand.
Alright, that was the last straw. A little angry, Fen used his other hand and wrapped it around Amelia's shoulder, using his recovered strength to pull his Squad mate up from the chair, which then morphed back into a black rocky block shortly after it could no longer sense the presence of anyone on top of it. What amazing technology.
With his new strength, lifting and picking her up wasn't difficult at all; it just put a little strain on his balance, but that wouldn't be to problematic as long as Fen was careful. Seeing that Amelia was too unwilling to walk on her own, Fen inwardly grumbled and swung her so that he could carry her princess style.
"Sorry for burning you..." She whispered in his arms.
"It's fine."
The two talked while Fen steadily walked towards the Squad room, using the directions the interface showed him when he asked. The flashing blue lights provided a path for him to follow. Amelia slowly regained her senses as he walked.
"No, its not fine. I should've guessed that you couldn't heal like that forever." She sniffled, like she was about to cry.
Fen began to grow lightly uncomfortable. He didn't really know how to deal with crying girls... his only experience with girls came from Miko, so he didn't have a really large sample size.
When her sniffles grew louder and Fen could see faint trails of tears on her face, a little seed of panic sprouted in his heart.
Sighing, he put her down from his arms so he could look at her.
She was much shorter than him, the height difference only becoming more pronounced after the changes that occurred inside of Fen's body. The numerous effects brought about by the change gave him many benefits, one of which was an increase in height.
Amelia was currently covering her eyes with her hands, trying (and failing) to hide the tears streaking down her face.
Conflicted, Fen did the only thing he knew how to do when there was a crying girl in front of him.
The youth reached out and placed his hand on the back of her head and pulled her close to him, placing his other hand around her back to calm and sooth her.
He wasn't good with words; if there was any lesson that he had learned from Miko, that was it- but he managed to express himself through his actions. Physical touch allowed him to convey his affection towards his family, and towards Miko.
A hug to his Mom here, a fist bump to his dad there, and a pat on his squealing younger sister there, were all acts he did to express his love towards them when his words couldn't.
And when Miko cried for whatever reason, Fen always stayed by her side, or hugged her. He hoped that doing that would help in this situation would achieve the same effect and calm Amelia down.
Surprisingly enough, Amelia went along with it and buried her head in his chest, her sniffles now becoming full grown cries.
"You could've died- and I didn't mean to hurt you that badly, I just caught up in the situation- and when you were asleep for so long- I started to doubt that you'd ever wake up!" Her sentences were pronounced with a sob, all while Fen continued to pat her head.
"I'm ok now. Sorry to make you worried."
'Though I don't really understand why you got worried..." Fen screamed inwardly, more than a little confused about why the girl in front of him was so worried for his well-being.
The two stood there for a couple minutes, getting a few odd glances from the Foundation members who walked by, but other than that the only sounds in the hallway were Amelia's sniffles, which slowly grew quieter as she calmed down.
"Ha, why are you naked?" Amelia laughed awkwardly and blushed when she finally noticed the current state of Fen's appearance.
Fen flinched.
"Uhh, I couldn't get any clothes..." He said bitterly, still angry with the infirmary staff members. His bitterness turned into confusion when he saw Amelia continue to stare at his body.
"Hmm, let's go back to the Squad room."
"Yeah." Amelia quickly agreed.