Fen nodded his head with appreciation.
The pair immediately started the Lesson after the explanation, and Raisen gave him a metal rod of an unknown material to practice. Supposedly, the tool would help him visualize his own energy after injecting it, but because of Fen's Vitul nature he didn't need to. He already had a thorough understanding of his own energy from his own independent training, and combined with his multitude of combat experiences meant that sensing his own energy was as easy as seeing, and manipulating it was like controlling another limb.
But, just like controlling an arm, Fen still had to learn how to manipulate his energy to form the Vital Blade before he could actually do it. Just like learning how to throw a ball, he couldn't do it immediately and had to learn first.
Raisen helped by letting him examine his own construct, although the old- ahem, experienced Knight had to simplify his own energy in order for Fen to learn the basics of how it was formed.
Sure, he could show Fen his own version of the skill, but doing so would interfere with Fen's own learning and rather than learning how to do it himself he'd just be learning how to create Raisen's Vital Blade... That, and Raisen was too paranoid to let his complex creation be examined. A Knight had to have their secrets, after all.
After two hours of work, Fen was able to produce a faint sliver of light to which his instructor made no efforts to hide his own thoughts.
"I know that size doesn't matter and all, but come one! Have some dignity! You're letting yourself down, oh, wait, is that what it looks like when it's up?" His fake attempt to hide his laughter only further irritated Fen.
"Give it some girth, you're making me feel embarrassed just looking at the poor fellow!"
"I bet your girlfriends REAL satisfied, huh?" Rather than breaking the camel's back, Raisen's comments just pissed the camel off.
The sliver of light shivered before fragmenting into tiny pieces of Vital energy. With angry steps, Fen grabbed his short sword and swung the blade towards the source of all his problems: Raisen's head.
Unfortunately, the blade never connected.
Chuckling at his own sense of humor, the old man was on the other side of the room before he could even finish his swing. He wasn't a Knight in name only; he had the strength and power to prove it. Speaking of his strength, Fen started to wonder what stage he was. Surely he wasn't a Stage five Knight, right? That was too much power in the hands of an old man going senile. Still, he had to be at a pretty high stage to be an instructor at the Foundation.
"Struck a nerve? Didn't know you had a girlfriend... Hmm, I wonder how I can use this, size jokes are childish, but maybe- yes, that could work..." Fen's eye twitched as various scenarios ran through his mind, all of them ending with Raisen's death. Sighing, he stored his weapon away when he realized that let alone killing the old man, putting a scratch on him was a near-impossible feat.
Fen left him to continue his crazy mumbling and continued practicing to materialize his Vital energy outside his body. He already achieved that, even if it was only a thin line of energy, so Fen instead focused on expanding the line until it was at least a sizable bar. For now, practicing to form the Vital Blade was better than learning the technique behind changing it's shape. He had to learn how to walk before he could run.
The Lesson lasted for a total of eight hours, and within that time, Fen 'accidentally' sent several failed attempts at making a Vital Blade straight at Raisen's head. Even if the old man was a little hurt- emotionally of course, physically he was fine; none of the Vital constructs hit him- from the attempts on his life, he had to admit that the Opfer's accuracy with the failed Vital Blade was improving with every try.
'How insulting were my jokes to motivate him that much?' Raisen muttered inwardly as he poked the block of energy that had ricocheted off the wall before rolling to a stop next to him, watching as it started disintegrating into the air around them. His jokes never stopped much to Fen's displeasure, and they became much more crude as more time passed until a vein started to visibly pulse on the youth's head.
Even if his Vital energy wasn't infinite, he tried his best to form as many Vital Blades- well, more like Vital Blocks- as he could before they started unraveling on themselves in a last ditch effort to assault Raisen. To justify the act, Fen managed to convince himself it was for the sake of practice rather than harming the old man.
Actually, to hell with justification. The world, no, the universe would thank him if he succeeded.
And, although he was unaware of it, Fen was also starting to piss his instructor off, although the old Knight managed to disguise his jealousy well enough that the youth missed it.
The reason for his jealousy was Fen's growth in the short time that he spent in the Training Hall. In the first hour, he barely managed to create a thread of his Vital energy outside his body. And yet, by the eighth hour, Fen now had five blocks of his own Vital energy rotating around his body all with the intent of slamming straight into his face.
While achievements like this weren't new for Fen, Raisen had to admit that he had quite the talent. Fen himself attributed his success with his Vitul abilities, and although they did play a part in his growth, they couldn't possibly explain how well he was able to manipulate Vitality.
If Deion was here, he'd complain about why he didn't work as hard as Fen when he was training. That, and probably add some sort of lame joke at the end to lighten his own misery before laughing at himself.
In truth, Fen was blinded by his own desire for more power to realize how quickly he was growing, absorbing more and more knowledge to improve himself while at the same time skipping out on the smaller things. Raisen wasn't blind to this, of course. Even if Fen's talent was much higher than his own, his experience allowed him to see the small but significant cracks on his Vital constructs.
Sighing, Raisen pulled Fen over to talk to him before the Lesson ended, quickly dodging as the many Vital Blocks aimed at his luscious grey hair.
The youth snorted in disappointment as he realized that his target was left unhurt, planning to succeed during the next Lesson.
"Don't start heading out now, I know I've got some more time left until your next Lesson." Fen stopped before he was out the door, already regretting that he didn't pretend to not hear the old man. "Its been almost eight hours, but you still haven't talked about it. What happened in the Task?"
For once, a sympathetic expression was on his face and all the mirth from before was gone like it was never there in the first place. Raisen was many things, but a person to joke about death? Only if the person who died was a jackass like Rakir.
"You mean the Chosen? I killed him." Fen crossed his arms.
"Well obviously, otherwise you wouldn't be standing right in front of me. But it couldn't have been easy." He retorted. "I wanted to let you know that you can trust me."
Before Fen could formulate a response, Raisen started looking around the room, picking up leftover furniture and turning them over.
"What're you doin-" questioned Fen, before being cut off by a piece of paper that slapped him in the face before he could react.
Picking it up, it read 'Don't know whose listening. Ellora should've filled you in by now.' Now a full-fledged frown took over his expression as he realized the implications of those words. The people that he pissed off from killing Edmond were much closer than he thought...
Apparently satisfied with his search, Raisen got up from the floor, raising his two hands in the air. A flash of green light flooded the room as a bubble of Vital energy formed around them.
"Phew, I can finally talk freely."
'Eh? You insulting my 'partner' isn't you talking freely? Then what is?!'
"Good thing you were smart enough to not talk about your Task, otherwise you might've given me up." While Fen did choose to not talk about it, he simply didn't care enough to mention it. "Anyways, I did some digging after your authority level was upgraded, using the name of your education as an excuse to find out more about your race."
"Really? What'd you find out?" His curiosity was peaked.
"Well, for one, you really owe me one. Heaven knows what the Foundation would do to you if they found out, and I mean that literally- The forces of Heaven know exactly what happens to people like you. All over the universe, there's records." Rather than using his mobile interface to show Fen, he pulled out a handwritten report and handed it over.
Giving it a brief read, his frown deepened more and more as the words he read registered in his mind.
It was a record of four others, who, like him, had shown the ability to conduct Vitality without ever having a procedure or operation to awaken their bodies, all of them considered to hold significant talent as a Knight. But, as the record stated, those four others like him disappeared shortly before they reached Stage one as a Knight, with no traces of them left behind.
It was as if they never existed in the first place. Any information about them on their home planets disappeared, purged, while the only surviving records were within the Foundation's records.
Raisen explained the reason why the Foundation had them; essentially, it was because of their organization's status within the universe. Although they certainly had powerful individuals, as a group their power was extremely limited and only allowed them to obtain the 'breadcrumbs' of the universe, taking what technology and materials they could before holing themselves on Earth and within the Void dimension to prepare for the Succession.
As a result, they were overlooked by whoever it was that purged that information from all available records. Fen had a suspicion about who it was that performed the purge.
"Could a Universal Grade civilization be responsible for their disappearance?" Knowing that revealing that he knew about civilization Grades might endanger the source of his information, Dey, Fen still had to know if there was a chance that Heaven was purposefully purging Vituls across the universe. If there was, then there was one more reason why he had to obtain more power while within the Program; to protect himself.
Raisen had the reaction that Fen hoped wouldn't appear; shock, concern, and then realization as the old man knew that he was getting a hint about who was secretly helping the Guardian candidate. Otherwise, how else would Fen, a mere Guardian candidate, know about the Grades of civilizations? Something that was supposed to be hidden for everyone except members of the organization was discovered by this Opfer, there was no other explanation than someone helping him.
Pushing down his curiosity, Raisen still had to confirm something:
"Can you trust the person who told you about that?" His eyes were serious, with no trace of mirth in his voice. Raisen trusted Fen, but he was worried that he was naïve enough to be manipulated by someone else.
"I can. They haven't lied to me, or at least not yet. Our situations make it so that we have to trust each other. "
"Good. Then, yes, to answer your question. It could be. I assume that you think Heaven was responsible?"
Fen hesitated, opening his mouth to say something before closing it and simply nodding his head.
"Fuu... That's serious. Is that something that your friend told you?" Seemingly growing years older in just a few seconds, the old man now looked more like his age, gripping the edges of his desk to keep himself steady. "We'll have to believe their word then..."
His words touched a deep part inside Fen. There was no argument or thought put into it, and yet Raisen had immediately chosen to believe his word and trust him, something that Fen didn't know if he would've done the same.
"Fuck, and the Foundation's working to bring Heaven back to Earth!" He turned back to Fen. "Has your friend said anything about that? Any warning, or what to do? Do they even know??" Despite them only knowing each other for a little over a month, the two of them had built up a bond created from their mutual hatred of each other, creating a shaky yet sturdy companionship- no. Fen had to admit that they were friends.
"I don't know, he's never mentioned anything- the only thing he said about the Program was that I could trust you." Now that he started thinking about it, wasn't the Foundation's plan exactly what Dey had warned him about? The records that Raisen showed was exactly what Fen feared; Heaven was still opposed to any and all Vituls in the universe, but...
Why?
What could possible make Heaven, which was supposedly benign and good actively hunt down Vituls across the universe? The war between them and the Vitul civilization supposedly ended years ago, with enough time having passed that any hostility should've long since died by now.
The only explanation was that Dey was hiding something from him. Fear from the potential of their civilization wasn't enough to justify the actions of an entire civilization against one race of people, even if they were left alone, what could they do by themselves now? It'd take centuries before they could pose any threat to anybody, if they even wanted to in the first place.
Fen... had to trust Dey. But right now, he was starting to get worried and paranoid. Even if he trusted the God that didn't mean that he'd willingly remain ignorant. If he was to return home to his family, then he had to know the truth, the whole truth, not just whatever fragments Dey was willing to share.
"Okay. We have eleven months to get you prepared. The Intermediate and Advanced Lessons for manipulating Vitality will take you through all of that time, so we won't be separated." The amount of time that seemed like forever now didn't seem long enough.
"You have another Lesson soon, with an instructor who isn't me." Fen's eyes came back into focus after Raisen grabbed his shoulders. "You can not share your nature with anyone. Everybody who knows is a risk, I don't have to tell you that- Fuck, your Squad mates have seen you regenerate. We can only hope that they don't share that information with anyone else."
Fen's mouth opened when he remembered how Edmond knew information about him even before the Task.
"The people I pissed off during the Task can access my records from my Lessons; Edmond, he knew about me. Not everything, but he knew enough. If they spread that to-" Raisen cut him off, "Don't worry about that."
The old man scoffed. "We can thank my greed, I didn't put anything about your nature in the Foundation's reports. At most, they know you're a talented Stage one Knight, but nothing else."
He nodded, and took a deep breath from the relief. For a moment, he almost lost it... He clenched his hand. His fear took over him far too easily; he could only strengthen his will to not let it happen again.