Although Yuki was a Foundation member, the amount of information that she had access to was nowhere near what the Archons had but even then she still had the ability to access the records of Fen's Squad mates. A few days after she saw him exit out of the first Task successfully she researched the rest of his Squad to see if there were any other abnormalities with powers similar to Fen's but was disappointed to see that they were ordinary.
Amelia had some talent and the Foundation had high expectations for the Mage she could become but compared to a monster like Fen she was nothing. An Empowered with the talent to reach Stage two in less than two months with the aid of Void energy was nothing less than a monster, far too extraordinary to be labeled with a title as small as a genius and far too monstrous to be called a simple prodigy.
Even if her search was met with disappointment, her little review showed her their respective Tasks rooms. Qin and Gray's rooms were found in the same area while Amelia's was around the same distance from where they were but in the opposite direction; that was what led to the current problem.
After she explained the situation to him, Yuki swiped away some of the black blood that had landed on her uniform and asked Fen, "Who do you want to go to first?"
The both of them were in much worse conditions than when they first left the Executioner Captains to find Fen's Squad mates. Although Yuki was also a Stage two Empowered her combat ability was limited as a Mage. If she had trained to increase her ability to manipulate her energy into combat adaptive forms, then she would've become an Executioner-in-training rather than her current position as a Task manager which required higher-level thinking and processing abilities. She only knew some basic combat spellworks like Flaming Orb, Wind Throw, and Force, none of which were very powerful as Stage one spellworks.
Her only real ability was her skill with which she could connect with the interface, but with the power within the facility scattering into the Void, that skill was nullified and made her depend on Fen for safety among the monstrous swarms of enemies.
But she had very little doubt that the second that she used up all her usefulness that Fen would abandon her to the Void Spawn to accomplish his goals. Even if she saw him as a savior to the rest of the Opfer because of his immense talent, his real personality was closer to that of a demon's.
Now that Fen had a single goal in mind he spared no effort in clearing the Void Spawn in his path. When brute force wouldn't work, he pulled a corpse of a fallen Executioner or Opfer as bait, uncaring if they were still alive or not. His cold eyes sent a spike of fear down her spine every time he looked at her for directions as if he saw her as nothing more than a tool, which she feared was exactly what she was. She couldn't help him fight and if she couldn't give him satisfying enough directions she'd take the place of the next body he threw to the Void Spawn.
When she asked him the question of who to go to first, he looked vulnerable. His eyes widened and she could see the worry in them that he might not arrive in time to save his Squad mates. Moments like this when he hesitated to answer her question reminded her that he was little more than just a kid, forced to make hard decisions because of his power.
Fen ground his teeth while his mind urgently tried to find a solution that would allow him to protect everyone, but he knew the obvious choice that he had to make.
He answered with a small yet firm voice, "...Take me to Amelia."
Without wasting any more time, Yuki hurriedly told him the directions they'd need to get there, "Then take a right, and follow these directions..."
The young Knight did his part and threw her over his shoulder, flooded his cells with Vital energy to increase his speed.
Slowly, the energy inside the facility was starting to recharge themselves using the ambient Void energy inside the dimension but the recharge rate wasn't fast enough to stop the massacre that was occurring. Already, the Foundation was scrambling their guards and Executioners to save as many of the Opfer as possible from the ravenous monsters rampaging inside the facility's walls.
The Archons were even forced to mobilize the Chosen and ignore the risk of the two groups reacting violently with each other just to get more manpower. The situation made them so desperate that the Archons were even considering if they should pull the candidates of Rift-178 out of the Void to at least recycle the resources used, but George Urok himself- who was traveling inside the Void at the time- decided for them.
His answer: No.
No matter how disastrous the situation was, the Foundation couldn't just scrap these candidates out of the Program. Time was slowly running out for them to save their planet, and they couldn't risk the potential consequences and variables that might appear from pulling all the candidates back to Earth.
Yuki lowered her head after Fen picked her up to carry her, silently agreeing with his decision. She could imagine just how hard the decision that he made was even if she couldn't understand it because she never went through anything similar.
Being forced to choose which of your friends to save without even having a guarantee that you could save them at all was a nightmare situation.
All the Task rooms were situated near the center of the facility but Amelia's was in the outer ring, making the number of encounters the pair had with Void Spawn increase significantly as they slowly advanced towards the edge of the facility. The invasion of Void monsters started near the edges of the facility before slowly flowing inwardly to ravage everything in sight, making Fen's heart tighten in worry from the pessimistic thoughts permeating his mind.
The Foundation acted fast and set up two rings of defensive lines, one around the edge of the Task rooms and another near the outskirts of the facility, but while their actions meant that there wouldn't be any more Void Spawn entering it also meant that there was no other way for the monsters to go except for destroying everything in the nearby area if they didn't meet one of the patrolling squads of Executioners.
Their slaughter included the fragile Stage one Opfer who could barely put up a fight against the monsters' strength.
Fen's mind was on the edge of collapsing from the sheer number of corpses he'd seen while heading towards Amelia's room, picturing his Squad mates face on every one of them. The only thing keeping his trembling mentality together was the fact that he hadn't seen her body among the many ravaged corpses.
'If I don't get there in time... I'll fucking destroy them.' His muscles strained after yet another Vital Dash pushed his body well past his limits. Even after undergoing his evolution and becoming a complete Vitul his body hadn't had enough time to become adjusted to the changes completely, meaning that his movements were full of inefficient actions that wasted more energy than he should.
Everything he did wasted more energy than it would have before his complete transformation, but because his overall pool of energy grew larger the two rates barely canceled each other out.
Finally, after running for Heaven-knows-how-long, the two of them reached her Task room. Fen gasped for breath and collapsed to his knees after seeing the entrance of the room filled with Void Spawn, eating a barely-recognizable corpse.
The Vital Spears hovering around his body flickered out of existence as his heart succumbed to the one emotion he swore he'd never get while in the Program: Despair.
Yuki stumbled to the floor after the person carrying her dropped to the ground. Her eyes widened with fear at the sight of such a large group of Void Spawn, but her power wasn't something to scoff at even if she didn't know many advanced spellworks. At least, it was enough to hold off a few Void Spawn while waiting for Fen to recover.
She noticed his monstrous strength was accompanied by a monstrous ability to recover after seeing him fight so much. Her Mana sense let her watch as large sums of natural energy were drawn from the environment and assimilated by his body to aid in his recovery; his recovery was the sole reason that two Stage two Empowered could even get this far while constantly fighting Void Spawn.
The Mage yelled, "Get up Fen! We can still get out here! We can go find the rest of your Squad!"
But her words fell on deaf ears.
'What's the point? I chose to go to Amelia first knowing that I could only save one of them... Qin and Gray must be dead by now.' He mumbled, digging his fingers into his palms. 'Damn this Program. I wouldn't even have known them if I wasn't brought here. I'll...'
But his thoughts untangled into a single stream of emptiness. What could he do? They were already gone, and he failed them. That wasn't anyone's fault but his own because he already understood that he couldn't rely on the Foundation for anything, and yet his strength still wasn't enough.
Even after Fen didn't respond to her words, Yuki continued to scream while throwing powerful blasts of Mana to the Void Spawn, "I didn't let you bring me here just so you can let us both die! What about your family!"
A flicker of life showed in his dead eyes.
Noticing the change, Yuki pushed harder, saying, "Don't make the Archon have to tell your family-"
"Shut up. I know that already."
Her words finally reignited the flickering will to live inside him, creating a blazing fire that caused his energy to start burning through his body.
"But before we leave... I'm going to kill them all." Fen's eyes lit up with ghastly green light as he pointed his worn short sword and dagger in front of him towards the group of Void Spawn. The monsters turned their disgusting pale heads towards him as the feeling of Vitality flooded their senses.
'Even if it won't accomplish anything, I just can't bear it if these shits live after killing her.' Like a blurry green bolt of lightning, Fen dashed forward and impaled his sword in the head of one of the monsters, pulling it out to make a large cut across its head. Black blood bubbled out from the cut before the monster screeched and snapped its beak-like jaws at his arm.
His dagger's special ability activated just in time to repel the attack with a conjured barrier of Vital energy, allowing Fen to strike again at the same spot and decapitate the monster. Its head made a sickening crunch as it fell to the floor, provoking a deep growl from the rest of the Void Spawn.
During all the other fights with Void Spawn Fen didn't have this ability to deal so much damage to the monsters, but after sending his Vitality into a rampage using his short sword's ability, his attacks were more than enough to kill them.
The death of one of their kind sent the rest of the Void Spawn into a frenzy and made them completely ignore the horribly bloody body torn to pieces between them. The sight of the corpse reminded Fen of his reasoning for killing them and reinforced his determination to finish off the group of monsters, no matter what he had to do.
Gashes and broken bones mended themselves together using Fen's Vitality, and his muscles ripped after multiple Vital Dashes were executed consecutively to cave in the skulls of several Void Spawn. Even if the power behind his attacks couldn't be compared to what he could do with a Vital Hyper Dash, the sheer number of times he used the simpler version of the skill made the effect extremely similar.
He had long since abandoned using his left arm for anything after it exploded from the overflowing Vital energy but he still considered it a worthy exchange for killing several Void Spawn before his arm was destroyed. The remaining Void Spawn were in a similar condition to him and were battered all over with their unique black blood pooling on the ground where they stood. Unlike him, however, the Void Spawn didn't show any signs of healing.
Fen knew that they relied on Void energy to move and think after listening to Yuki's explanation on their basic physiology, but it didn't appear that they were capable of using it to regenerate their cells like he was with Vital energy. Their strong bodies gave them a powerful ability to heal, but they were incapable of regenerating themselves.
No matter how powerful Void energy was, it still had its limitations when compared to refined Vitality.
"Argh!" Fen groaned after a Void Spawn clamped its teeth on his destroyed arm and nearly pulled out a bone. A quick slam with his sword was all it took to dislodge the injured monster but the rest of the Void Spawn weren't nice enough to wait for him to recover; immediately, another monster swiped out his legs and threw him to the ground until all of them were clawing at his exposed chest and arms.
No matter how much energy he injected into his body his torn muscles refused to heal as if he had hit his limit. He could only defend himself from the violent swipes and pounding with his now-broken short sword, relying on the Class three weapon to absorb the force behind some of the blows.
Yuki watched with horror at Fen's situation before creating a simple Flaming Orb and hurling it towards the grouped-up monsters. The spellwork bounced off their leathery skin, but the distraction was just enough for Fen to use some Vital Spears to impale himself and drag him away from the battle.
Fen took a moment to look at the state of his body and winced at what he saw.
His left arm was almost completely torn off, hanging by a thread of tissue to his shoulder. His usage of Vital Dashes on his arm had exploded the skin off and left the torn muscles exposed to the air, and the repeated gnawing and bites from the Void Spawn destroyed whatever was left. With no protection left, his bones cracked and broke down until a bloody nub of flesh was the only thing left of his left arm.
His right arm wasn't much better, but there was still enough muscle tissue left for him to use it by enduring the excruciating pain.
His legs were in a better state and even had some skin left, and his torso was similar but with deep holes in certain areas made from the Void Spawns' sharp claws.
If he still had his armor then maybe he'd be healthier, but his equipment broke down during his fight with the Stage three Warrior from the powerful shockwaves their battle created.
Yuki's eyes shook just from looking at how terrible he looked. It seemed that if just a single attack hit him right now he'd topple over and die, and her prediction wasn't too far off the mark.
The Vital Spears Fen used to drag him away from the monsters dissolved back into energy and was rapidly reabsorbed into his body, healing some of his more egregious wounds, but it still wasn't enough to stop his entire body from screaming out in pain.
"Hmm? What are you two doing here?" At that moment, a familiar voice called out behind him. Turning his head, Fen saw Raisen's bearded face looking at him with concern while looking him up and down and admiring the changes within his body. Even while mortally wounded, the Vital energy his body exuded wasn't ordinary.
The Void Spawn that caused him so much trouble disintegrated instantly as a wave of energy swept past them, which Fen's body greedily assimlated to recover his body and restore his lost energy.
But even after seeing that help arrived Fen's heart was still full of resentment and despair. He thought, 'Even when I tried my best, I wasn't even strong enough to avenge her.' If it wasn't for Raisen's timely arrival, then this facility would've been his final resting place.
Before his tired mind collapsed into unconsciousness, however, a bright golden light illuminated the Task room and an exhausted voice sounded around them, "Fuu, by the Heavens, that was exhausting. Didn't think that'd take that long either- Eh? What happened?"
Amelia's expression shifted into one of shock after seeing Fen laying on the floor covered in black blood and the various Void Spawn corpses slowly dissipating into nothingness.
Fen stared blankly at his seemingly alive Squad mate while his brain struggled to recognize her. It was hard to tell which of them was more shocked to see the other, but it was easy to see that Fen was the happiest. He hobbled onto his injured legs and collapsed next to Amelia, touching her face with his bloody fingers as if convincing himself that he wasn't already dreaming from falling unconscious.
He sputtered a weak "You're alive...?", before his mind and body forcibly shut down to prevent him from injuring himself any further, and Amelia instantly dropped to catch his limp body before he dropped down to the floor.
Right before he fell unconscious, Amelia saw his eyes light up with joy and his bloodied mouth stretch across his face as he mouthed the words, 'I'm glad'.
It was the most joy he'd felt in a long time.