The Werewolf was surprisingly stupid, charging straight towards him after Fen issued his challenge immediately despite having watched him easily kill his friend, One. With a fist filled with dark energy, the monster swung it's clawed fist straight towards his head. What it lacked in precision and technique, it made up for in brute strength and savagery. Fen managed to sway to the side in time to barely avoid the swipe, but although the attack barely missed the monster didn't pause in its attack and instantly swung it's body forward, pressing it's claws against the floor to kick it's feet in an attack packed with even more energy than before.
Fen snarled and used the chains still attached to his hands to take the brunt force of the kick, the metal bending slightly from the kick's force, lightly maneuvering his arms so that the metal wrapped around Werewolf's legs. Pulling on the chains, Werewolf's legs broke with a sickening crunch. As it turned out, the beast wasn't capable of manipulating it's flesh like Two was. Wrapping the chains around his hands, Fen pulled the monster closer and delivered another crushing blow with his hands, using the chains to restrict it's movements.
Howling, the crippled and enraged Shadow pushed off the ground with it's two good hands and attacked him with it's teeth-filled maw, to which Fen was more than happy to respond to with a headbutt. While the Shadow was willing to sacrifice it's body to inflict wounds on Fen's body, it failed to realize that his regeneration capabilities made it's efforts completely null. For every attack that it landed, Fen landed one on it, and while he could easily heal himself using his ample supply of Vital energy the Shadow clearly wasn't capable of doing the same. Vituls weren't a race full of pushovers, Fen was a clear example of that.
Too focused on the Werewolf Shadow however, Fen's senses failed to pick up the movements of Two, who used his brief lack of attention to jump onto his back. While his hands were occupied with restraining Werewolf using chains, the Shadow used it's sharp claws to dig deep trenches in his muscled back. While the tears weren't fatal, they still hurt plenty enough to cause Fen some brief displeasure.
He hastily gave up on his assault on the crippled Shadow to deal with Two, slipping his hands free from the chains tightly wrapped around the Werewolf. Removing his hands so quickly resulted in them suffering from several lacerations, which quickly bubbled and healed as he refocused and sent another wave of Vital energy circulating around his body.
With his hands now free, Fen raised them to grab onto Two's fur with a grimace on his face from the pain, pulling with all his strength to send the Shadow crashing into the wall next to One. But, it seemed that scratching him was enough to satisfy the beast's goals.
"Har... Har." Another weird laugh leaked out of its mouth as it's flesh deconstructed itself and rearranged it's body back to peak performance. Its skill with remolding itself was the biggest problem of the four Shadows, and was almost as annoying to Fen as his regeneration was to them.
The reason for the Shadow's amusement revealed itself as he felt an ice-cold feeling spreading from his back and up his neck, numbing the parts of his body as the black poison played it's part in ravaging Fen's body from the inside. This time though, it was Fen's turn to laugh.
With a horrifying visage of a smile, Fen manifested several Flaming Spears spellworks with his Mana and sent them flying into the laughing Shadow. The pain of the created wounds quickly shut it up as it hastened to free itself from the bright magic spears.
The awaited effect of numbness never appeared, as Fen's body naturally knit over itself to bury the black poison within, only to be destroyed by a wave of Vital energy. While he was unconscious, his physique had cleansed his system free from the poison by itself, taking advantage of the poison's nonlethal nature to understand its composition and rid it naturally. What this meant was that Fen had no more reason to be afraid of being attacked by the poisonous Shadow, which was why he allowed himself to be open to attacks while crippling the Werewolf.
While Two was struggling to free itself, Fen could faintly sense the emotion of fear in it's four eyes, the blue glow no longer seeming scary as the pupils danced in fear from the glow of three more Flaming Spears. The blue glow permanently ended as all of the spellworks struck true, not giving a damn about the Shadow's ability to reconstruct it's body using it's own flesh.
The death of two of the Shadows and the crippling of the other meant there was only one Shadow left; the eight legged wolf... Which was nowhere to be found.
A quick scan of the room showed the reason why the monster hadn't attacked him during the fight, and that was because it left through the only exit in the room. At least, what was what Fen believed as there was no sign of the beast nearby.
"Fuck!" Fen kicked the dead body of One, releasing some of his anger. "If the Shadow got away..." Various possibilities popped into mind, all worst case scenarios of what might happen now that he let the Shadow escape from him. He hadn't held back even a little bit in the fight, using all the abilities he had to his disposal to destroy and kill the monsters that held him captive. Based off their strength, the average strength of one of them was around the lower tier of Stage one, no where near the strength that Fen had. The only reason why there able to restrain him for so long was because of the abnormal poison Two had, otherwise they never would've won in a direct confrontation.
'If it can speak, which it probably can't, then people would find out about my 'unique' abilities. The Wolves sent them in the first place.' A light of understanding appeared in his eyes. 'Was this all of test? To find out my real abilities? Maybe they never wanted me to join them in the first place, and just wanted to find out how an Opfer with barely any knowledge about magic and Vitality could possible kill a Chosen with proven Stage three abilities. Fuckin' factions!'
To alleviate more of his anger, Fen finished off the Werewolf with a pointed kick at it's head, crushing it against the stone floor. It had been whimpering constantly after he crippled it, and it was starting to give him a headache. The annoying noise was impacting his ability to think, so naturally, he chose to rid the noise's source.
After relieving some of his stress, Fen picked up his short sword and left it hanging on his back, wrapping the leftover chains around his fists in case he needed to fight. They made a small clanking sound when he moved, but it was a better weapon than his damaged sword.
Taking a deep breath, he finished healing all the wounds left in his body and exited out the door, not knowing where exactly he was supposed to head. He was lost in an unknown part of the facility, with no interface in sight to help guide him. He didn't even have an idea where he wanted to go in the first place; should he look for the escaped Shadow, or head to find Ellora or Raisen to get their advice?
Whatever he was going to do, it seemed like it was going to be a very, very busy day.
****
"Four Shadows, all with the power of a Stage one combatant. Not, one, not two, but FOUR, and you... you're telling me that he managed to escape, honey?" A voice leaked out of the closed mouth of an old man, the same old man that had appeared in the screen created by the now dead Two. Next to him was his wife, with the same complex hair bun and perfect skin. The were surrounded by several other people, all of whom were seated at a long table in a massive hall eating some of the delicious food that sat in front of them.
The room was quite loud, but there was a barrier of silence surrounding the old couple. None of the noise made outside the layer of air magic reached the inside, preventing the raucous dinner attendees from disturbing their hosts as they talked. To keep up the illusion of majesty however, they were forced to talk without moving their lips so as to preserve their image.
The man and woman were seated in the place of honor, and were exchanging words with another by hissing through unmoving lips to communicate. The man's words, however, seemed to have a visible impact on the woman as her lips tightened further into a line. After a moment, another hiss containing her intent reached the the old man's ears.
"Wasn't his escape what we wanted, my dear? We didn't actually expect the Shadows to hold him back, not after he managed to kill Edmond." The woman eased back into her chair, more words reaching the old man's ears despite the stillness of her lips. "Now we can confirm our suspicions. There is something unusual about his strength. That old troublemaker, Raisen. His 'detailed' records show that the youth still can't apply the Vital Blade technique to his attacks, and yet he still managed to break through what a normal Stage one Knight would've been killed in."
"You're right. That is quite unusual."
"Well, one of the Shadows did manage to escape so we can more accurately attribute Altairus' strength when we interrogate it later. But all signs indicate that he is indeed special..."
Together, a cruel smile spread across their lips as they shared the same thought. The air around them seemed to drop by a few degrees as a suffocating feeling of oppression emanated from their eyes, cruel and power-hungry.
'All the more reason why we must have him.'
****
'Where the fuck am I?' Fen thought, having walked for a solid few minutes in the same direction and still not finding anything that might help him discover his current location. He was aware that the facility was maze-like, but he never actually realized how true that was until he was actually lost. He couldn't ask for help either, and he didn't come across anyone that might help him anyways.
The corridors were as empty as they could be, leaving him wondering for how long had he been unconscious for. His instinct was telling him that it couldn't have been longer than a few hours, so he assumed that everybody was asleep in their rooms. That didn't help him however.
The few rooms that he did come across were empty Training Halls, all with deactivated interfaces. Seriously, what the hell! He didn't even know that they could be deactivated.
While he was inside one of the empty Training Halls, he heard the sound of shuffling feet in the hallway. Turning his head to listen, he could also hear the faint sound of laughter- a rare thing to hear in the Program.
But, laughter meant people! Fen rearranged his apparel once again to look as presentable as possible and walked out to see a group of... Chosen. No wonder they were laughing, they weren't even Opfer!
Fen froze in place the second he saw the flash of white in their uniform. All of a sudden, the empty Training Halls were starting to make a lot more sense. Raisen had informed him about the laziness of the Opfer's counterpart, so now the empty Training Halls made sense. This entire time he had been stuck in the Chosen part of the facility. Wasn't there a checkpoint or something in between the two sections? How'd he end up here? Did the Shadow drag him the entire way?
His thoughts didn't lessen the speed of his reaction time, however, so he took full advantage of the Chosens' slow reactions.
With a flash of movement, Fen cracked his elbow against the lead guy's nose, causing blood to spurt out while he caught him by surprise. Before he could even land on the ground, Fen had already started preparing to throw himself at the two youths by his side as they gasped in surprise at the attack of their friend. Unfortunately for them, Fen didn't allow them to realize what was attacking them.
Using his still chain-wrapped hands, he sent out two straight jabs to their chins with his right hand, using his left to guard against any reaction from the Chosen who's nose he cracked with his elbow. A reaction, that never came.
"...Huh?" Fen relaxed his hands.
None of them got back up after Fen hit them once.
'Were they too weak?' He didn't expect that they'd go down that easily. It almost made him feel sorry for them.
Almost.
Taking advantage of the outcome of the fight, Fen took a closer look at them and realized that they were all around the same build as him, giving him a great opportunity. With deft and able hands, he quickly stripped them free from the burden of the clothes and changed out of his black and silver Opfer uniform and into the white and gold of the Chosen uniform, in the case that he ran into any other groups of Chosen.
He simply tossed his old uniform; it was half destroyed anyways, and he had more than a few extra pairs in his room to replace it. This way, now he just resembled any other Chosen with two extra folded uniforms in his hand.
He didn't think they realized it because of how quickly he attacked them, but Fen decided to play it safe and burn his old uniform after discarding it, to make it look like they were ambushed by some random Chosen rather than a lost Opfer such as himself. And if they did notice the blackness of his uniform, well, then that was that and there was nothing that he could do. But it was better to be cautious just in case.
'Well... I don't look that bad in this, do I?' Fen turned halfway to admire his appearance in the reflection of an interface that he found, one that was actually turned on. While he wasn't much of a fan for white, what with his skin being as pale as it is now, the gold looked splendid with his brown hair and eyes and made him feel kingly.
He stopped admiring himself and started pushing glowing buttons on the interface, not forgetting that he was stuck in the Chosen part of the facility. While he was blending in now, he also had two extra Chosen uniforms bulging out of his arms, which wasn't exactly normal. For one, Fen doubted that there were any other candidates in the Program who went through more uniforms than him, who had to make trips to retrieve new uniforms in bulk every other week.
After waiting for a moment, the interface lit up with golden particles before a glowing path of energy veins lit up the way back hom- to his side of the facility. He almost thought of it as home in his head, which was worrying. Fen had to remember that this wasn't his home, nor was he comfortable here.
He was only lucky that the Shadows that the Wolves had sent were weaker than him, otherwise it'd be his body laying bruised and broken at the side of the wall.