Death's Influence

The Chosen watched as Fen thought about the possibilities of magic absorption being possible. A wide grin appeared on the youth's face.

"So, you saw what I can do. Knowing that, do you want to continue fighting? You can't beat me if all you have are magic spellworks and constructs, and I guarantee that the strength you gained from your Knight's training won't be enough either. If you let me, I can make your death quick and easy, otherwise, I'll make you suffer."

Fen ground his teeth in frustration. He was right, of course. If he could absorb his magic, then Fen couldn't kill him that way. The only other way was to try and use his physical strength combined with his skill in combat to overwhelm the Chosen long enough for him to try and land a fatal blow.

But what were the odds that the Chosen was stronger than him? Being honest, they were quite high. Although Fen had the benefits of being both a Knight and a Vitul, resulting in his physical strength and agility to undergo tremendous changes, only a month had passed since the beginning of the Program. If the Chosen trained for even a few years, he'd have a greater power than Fen. It didn't help that the guy already knew about him, which was odd in it's own way.

He needed time to think and formulate a plan, but with a Chosen capable of instantaneous movement or something extremely similar than there was very little that Fen could do to increase the distance between the two of them other than beg.

"Why... why are you doing this?" He decided to start talking, to hopefully stall for some time. But, even after a few moments had passed the Chosen showed no intention to answer.

The Chosen's appearance flickered again before a crushing strike hit Fen on his side, making a loud *Crack* echo across the abandoned ruins. The wide grin never left his opponent's face, even as his blow sent Fen crashing through a ruined building, making it collapse in on itself.

Fen didn't even get a chance to cry out from the pain, he was covered in rubble before he could even react.

His armor, which he had spent a large five-hundred points on was useless against the strike. There were limits to how much kinetic energy anything could endure, no matter how well-made. It didn't help that the armor was nowhere near the supremacy that modern technology gave to equipment made for battle.

From that one strike, a massive hole was torn into the armor and his side, barely missing his vital organs by a hair's width. The accuracy of it made Fen think with certainty that it was intentional, further driving home how terrifyingly powerful the Chosen was. The bastard was just playing with him and he was this close to death...

Before the dust from the collapse could even settle, Fen sensed a massive amount of magical energy pooling all around him, flooding the destroyed ruins with light.

Struggling to move himself under the weight of the rubble, Fen strained his muscles to get out the way of the destructive spellwork.

'Move!' Fen screamed at himself. 'gET THE FUCK U-'

Kaboom!

Fen's ears were ringing.

No, that wasn't right. The sensation was like a vacuum, taking away all his senses. Fen couldn't see. He couldn't hear. His sense of smell was gone. His sense of touch was... hurting like hell.... which meant that he was still alive. Fen came to his senses a moment later, noting his position.

The magically fueled explosion propelled him some distance away. Thankfully, Fen hadn't gotten the chance to use his Vital energy any time during the 'fight', so he circulated (More like flooded) the energy around his body to regenerate any damaged body parts, the pain of his nerves being reattached and created directly hitting his mind in waves.

The result of his regeneration was that he got his limbs back. His armor managed to survive, barely, but it's original purpose of hiding his healing abilities was now completely ruined; Fen couldn't just hide the fact that his limbs regrew after getting blown off.

For now though, it seemed that for all the Chosen knew about him, he was unaware about his regeneration abilities. That, or maybe he was taking his time and strolling through the ruins. Either way, his opponent wasn't coming for now. Taking the chance, Fen spurted to his feet and sprinted towards one of the five-story buildings he saw earlier.

There was a reason for this of course. Fen still didn't know the full capabilities of his Chosen opponent. Going in recklessly to fight him now would just be throwing his life away. And, by running further away he could give his body the chance to recover and regain the Vital energy that he just expended to regenerate his body.

The local environment, though abandoned, was rich in energy both magical and Vital, and although Fen didn't know the reason as to why that was he for sure wasn't going to waste such a valuable opportunity.

Thanks to his experience running through different environments in the different Scenario spaces from earlier in the Program, he gained valuable experience with traveling in different types of environments .

When he arrived at the tall building, rather than using the stairs to get to the roof Fen instead leaped on top of a balcony, and propelled himself upwards. As he climbed Fen's mind worked to figure out a weakness that he could exploit.

'How the hell am I gonna kill that fucker? I can't use my magic, and he already showed that he can kick my ass one-on-one too. What other cards do I have in my deck...' Fen's sword was useless when he couldn't even hit his opponent, so unless he had some sort of way to know where he'd be-

Oh.

Fuck, if he had two free hands he'd slap himself.

Not all of his spellworks was meant to be used offensively. The magic he got from a beast in the Scenarios, Vanguard, was used to see in the future, but using it would deplete his magical energy very quickly. Meaning, he'd only get a few chances to land a hit significant enough to win the fight. Not to mention, the information overload from seeing so often in the future might be enough to kill him even without the Chosen gunning for his life.

Now armed with a fragment of a plan, Fen reached the roof of the only five-story building nearby. Flipping himself to agilely land on the roof, Fen saw a flash of something and immediately rolled to the side.

His action saved his life; a large ball of electricity crashed into the place where he just was and sent dozens of bolts of electricity all over the place.

"Ah, I guess I didn't give you my name, right? I'm Edmond. Quite proper for a distinguished man such as myself, don't you think?" Edmond, his Chosen opponent, let out a light chuckle as if nothing had happened.

Fen glared at the youth, all the while his Mana started connecting the complex spellwork of Vanguard which only needed a second to finish thanks to the memories of the monster he killed. When the spellwork finished, his mind was instantly flooded with information from the future. Gritting his teeth, Fen could only endure and try to understand what he could, filtering out the useless information that he didn't need.

Having already experimented with the foresight magic before, he had a brief understanding of how the spellwork worked.

The magic would give him all the information about the most likely futures, with the more accurate futures coming from the soonest 'future', and the accuracy dropped the farther away the 'future' was from the present. It was like an image that got progressively less blurry the closer it got. From afar you might not even be able to tell what color it was, but when it right next to you, all the information you needed was there.

The taste of the air, the texture of the ground, the feeling of burning... Huh? Fire?

Fen lowered his body to the ground as a fireball narrowly missed his face. He could see as an amused expression showed itself on Edmond's face.

"That's some nice reaction time you have. I'm wondering where that was earlier, or are you only able to react to magic?" The Chosen was still acting like his attack meant nothing and was just a greeting. Maybe it was, if the Foundation was full of crazies then why couldn't the Chosen? They both came from the same place after all.

"But that can't be right either, because you didn't react at all when I blew you up. Ah, actually, how'd you come back in one piece after that? I was sure I saw your limbs get blown off.

"Is that some type of regeneration? I don't suppose you have a healing potion inside that pack, but then again I didn't bother to check. Ah, well. What can I do..." As if troubled, Edmond grabbed his chin.

After finally filtering out the information that he needed, Fen used his lowered center of gravity to thrust himself forward while pulling out his short sword from behind him, letting the weapon drag through the air.

Tilting his wrist slightly, Fen slashed upwards from his downwards position. The slash was meant to cut Edmond in half, but all the youth needed to do was take a slight step backwards to avoid it. This time however, he had a small frown on his face.

"It's rude to interrupt someone when they're talking. Allow me to teach you some manners." A giant glowing yellow hand materialized in the air besides Fen.

Before the magic spellwork could completely materialize however, Fen dashed inside it, messing up the glowing particles and interrupting the casting, making the magic hand slowly fade away on the large roof.

Vanguard had warned him that dodging the hand was impossible, so instead, he attacked before the magic became stable.

By now, the small frown on Edmond's face had transformed into a feral snarl, making the boy's handsome features become distorted and ugly.

Again, Fen swung his weapon towards him. The attack was too slow to hit, and he dodged again, making the gears in Fen's mind start cranking to formulate a finalized plan.

If he could just get one hit in... If he could perform that one tiny action, then the attack would become much easier. Fen probably wouldn't even need to depend on the Vanguard magic if he could just get a single hit on Edmond's body, any place would do.

If Edmond's reactions were too fast for him to hit, then Fen just had to restrict his movement anyway he could and bet all his options on one movement. It just like with the Lesser Dragon, except this time he couldn't run away.

Well, he couldn't run away then either.

Again and again, the Iberian short sword became a blur of metal as the weapon frantically cut through the air, only to be just barely avoided by his opponent. The snarl on his face deepened as he realized that Fen wasn't going to give up the fight easily.

"What's the point of hopeless resistance? I can crush you at anytime, so why? Why resist? Just go with the flow man." Even as Edmond kept speaking, Fen's body kept periodically releasing magical energy. The Chosen could see this energy, but he didn't know what the point of it was.

Simply leaving the Mana there wouldn't do anything more than invigorate the environment, while forcing it to stay there would just drain his focus away from the fight; but even though Fen was obviously expending his focus to keep his magical energy there his sword never stopped moving. If anything, his sword was becoming faster and faster through the air.

Soon enough, the entire roof was flooded with Fen's Mana. The cost of focusing on such a large amount of magical energy was starting to take it's toll, Fen was dripping sweat and his face was pale. Every breath he took was laborious and raspy, too shallow to provide enough oxygen for his body. But, even though his muscles were screaming in pain and his arms sometimes refused to move, Fen never stopped swinging his sword to charge forward at his opponent.

"Argh, I've gotten tired of this." Edmond stepped away, annoyed at being pushed around. Raising his hands, he sent his Mana out to formulate another explosion to decimate the building.

Just as he began to construct his spellwork, a small smile tugged on the edges of Fen's mouth.

He hadn't been spreading his magical energy around the place for nothing. Every piece of Mana in the air as now dominated by his will, just for this moment.

Swish!

The air vibrated as Fen pulled on his magic with all of his will, destroying the destructive spellwork that Edmond was creating and causing a backlash, making the Chosen stumble on his feet and fall on his back, nose bleeding from the damage.

During the fight, a detail about Edmond's fighting style became painfully obvious to him. The youth had no experience fighting. The only reason why the Chosen was able to avoid all his attacks was because of his frightening reaction speed and power, but he had no knowledge about a fight. That was when Fen started finalizing the details on his plan, betting everything on a single moment.

Spellcasting required the caster to keep the spell intact during its creation and then control it with their Mana. Fen could've taken control of the spell with his Mana but that'd be useless, a Mage couldn't be harmed with their own spellwork. So, he did the next best thing and destroyed the spellwork while it was being created to partially damage Edmond's mind while it was still connected to the magic.

Fen was only able to do this because of Vanguard. He had to control the magic to give him specific details on the where and when of Edmond's spellcasting, otherwise the spellwork would've finished before he could react.

Now that the Mana did it's part, Fen immediately cut of the connection between them, allowing his mind a brief break from the searing agony of having to connect to all the Mana around him. The relief didn't last long though, as Fen directed his Vital energy to surge around his body.

The flood of energy destroyed small parts of his body and left a burning smell in the air, but the energy reconstructed anything damaged in the next millisecond, providing fresh muscle tissues and tendons for Fen to use. It was a technique that he had created through experimentation with Vital energy, that would allow him to gain a significant burst to his power and speed.

He named it, 'Vital Dash'.

Using it, Fen exploded from his spot and rushed towards Edmond, stretching out his hand to touch him. During the entire fight, Fen had the Death's Influence spellwork at the ready in the case he was able to touch his opponent, ready to poison his nervous system.

Tap.

Edmond, who was still trying to recover from the backlash of his magic being destroyed felt his body light up as if he was on fire. What he was feeling was the sensation of his nerves slowly dying, rotting inside his body as the Death's Influence went rampant inside him. Even if he could absorb magic, that was exactly what Fen wanted. The Death's Influence spellwork would be spread by Edmond's absorption and consciously effect his body, making the absorption work against him.

But Fen wasn't going to stop at just poisoning him. Grabbing onto Edmond's arm, he pulled back his arm, pointing the short sword at Edmond's neck, ready to perform a fatal strike.

Seconds felt like hours in that moment, as Fen focused entirely on landing a single thrust into his opponent's neck. He wasn't going to hesitate this time. His eyes were cold and determined.

"Noooooo!" roared Edmond, knowing that if he didn't resist he'd die.

A blast of magical energy sent Fen reeling, and a swift kick forced him backwards. Changing his focus on his sword meant that the Vanguard spellwork sizzled out of control, otherwise Fen would've been able to see Edmond's resistance with the foresight spellwork.

But the spellwork already connected. Edmond's eyes became duller and his reactions slower. The Chosen noticed the change, his eyes boiling with rage.

Edmond's mouth was pressed into a thin line as he let his anger control his actions, sending bolt after bolt of magical energy chasing after Fen now that his physical body was unable to act.

Fen had leveled the playing field, and he could see a faint sliver of victory.