Learning about Vitul History

In the three days that Fen spent in the infirmary, he went in and out of consciousness, flittering images going through his mind. This was the first time that the candidate was able to get some proper rest since he entered the Program; for some reason, It didn't pull him into another reality while he was asleep.

The reason why It gave him a break was because when It was giving Fen a thorough check-up using It's Vitality, sending pulses of energy to tentatively feel out his body as he healed, It felt that his mind was steadily unraveling.

It correctly guessed the reason for this; forcing Fen's consciousness into another reality every night since he entered was damaging his state of mind. But, if It's hypothesis was correct, Fen's nature as a Vitul would strengthen his damaged mind as he was healing and bring some side benefits.

The regenerative abilities of a Vitul shouldn't be underestimated. While many other races were capable of doing the same and self-healing themselves using a variety of methods, such as increasing metabolism speed or having ridiculous amounts of cells within their body, Vituls were unique.

Vituls were capable of passively using their inactive Vitality and Mana to accelerate their cellular activity to biologically impossible speeds, allowing them to regenerate entire limbs in an instant and survive wounds fatal to other races. At the same time, this regeneration strengthened them. Over time, they'd become ridiculously powerful.

When Vituls were still prevalent as one of the most powerful races in the universe, their warriors had no need for armor. When their civilization became used to manipulating Mana, their warriors were capable of creating armor made from their own Mana to block powerful blows, imbuing their own Vitality to strengthen their defensive capabilities.

That was all the Foundation had recorded about Vituls in their database, but, their records were strangely lacking. They were missing many key information about the Vitul race.

How could such a powerful civilization filled with of warriors disappear? Records of their warriors existed all of the universe in almost every civilization and organization, but their appearance, characteristics, and abilities were almost all unknown.

The only thing the Foundation knew about them was that they were extremely compatible with Vitality and the training path of the Knights, but that was more of a general estimation of their power.

Raisen was only able to discover Fen's nature as a Vitul because of the inhuman talent the candidate possessed with manipulating Vital energy, even more so than Erik, who was a certified genius.

But, even though he knew about Fen's being a Vitul, Raisen didn't tell anyone else, even other Foundation members. Although that was more due to the old Knight's greed, the action still helped Fen avoid the probing of other Foundation members.

It was extremely grateful to Raisen because of this, even if the old Knight wasn't aware of it. Although It technically existed in the same plane of reality as Fen now that he was in the Void dimension, It was still limited in it's actions, so It couldn't properly show it's gratitude.

While Fen was slowly recovering, the only thing It could do was watch, seeing the images that flew through the boy's mind and slowly get frustrated that it couldn't help the young Vitul understand his own nature, something that It was intimately familiar with.

One of the scenes was flashing by right now. A kid's voice entered inside Fen's head.

"Ray? Where are you? You gotta come back, Mom might get worried!'

A boy's voice was calling through a field filled with snow and trees, where another boy, younger, and with red hair, was hiding. He was hidden in a old tree's roots, which carved out a neat hole in the ground. He had left the entrance open so as to not draw attention to the tree, with snow gently falling into the hole.

The kid was giggling to himself, happy with his hiding place. He was confident that no one would be able to find him, but the rustling of dead leaves proved him wrong.

However, what entered the young boy's hiding place wasn't his friend but instead a black dog-like creature, with a head but seemingly no limbs, and puffy black hair covering it's body. It's head poked inside the hole, having smelt a weird scent coming from it.

Both of them were shocked to see the other; Ray, because he thought it would be his friend, and the dog because it thought he would find food. Dismayed, the creature dug himself into the hole and began to sniff around the place to see if there was anything for it to eat. Ray stayed frozen in place, afraid that any sudden movements might startle it.

Meanwhile, Ray's friend grew further and further away, until he started to go back home, having given up on finding his friend. The two weren't that close anyway.

Eventually, the dog-like animal gave up searching for food and simply sat down next to Ray, stomach growling.

The boy stayed in that position for a while, hesitating.

"Are you... hungry?" The thing's face picked off the ground and looked at him, revealing golden eyes filled with an unknown emotion. A tail revealed itself from the mass of black fur and started to wag through the air.

Taking that as an answer, the boy slowly reached into his pockets so as to not startle it and pulled out a bar made entirely of dried meat. It was a tasty treat that Ray's mother had made him.

"You want this?"

The dog opened it's mouth, its stomach growling louder.

"Here!" Ray held out his hand with the bar in it, to which the dog-creature hungrily gobbled out, lickings its mouth when it finished.

The boy giggled as it watched the dog sniff him all over, apparently searching for another meat-treat. It must've liked it.

"I'm gonna take you home!" The dog tilted its head to the side in response to Ray's declaration, looking extremely cute as it's ears flopped around.

"Hmm, you'll need a name though... How's Blackie? Not a bad name, I think?"

The creature started to lick Ray's face, making him giggle even louder.

"I'm Raisen, but my friends call me Ray. Do you wanna go home?" Young Raisen started to get up, but the memory was suddenly filled with golden light, making Fen wince with pain as his brain reacted to the memory.

In the instant before his mind was locked up from the pain, a strange sensation was flowing through his body as Fen went through the exact same thing young Raisen experienced in that moment. In that golden flash, Raisen's genetic potential was increased, as his body grew accustomed to the load that Vitality put on the body in large quantities, and now the same thing was occurring with Fen.

Amelia grew slightly worried at that moment, scared that something was happening to Fen at that moment. Raisen wasn't there, he had stepped out to teach his Lesson, so it was just her alone with the young candidate.

But her worries disappeared when Fen relaxed a few moments later. His brain was soothed from the irritation that the golden flash of light gave him, but there was a small itch in a corner of his brain.

'Information? Knowledge? No, those were Raisen's memories, but why is there suddenly more of them-'

Another flash of pain accompanied a burst of information, and Fen's skin crawled to accommodate for what his cells learned. The memory had unlocked a part of his body, and something activated to change his body once more. Fen had already lost count of how many times this had happened in the Program.

His cell membranes grew thinner and extremely faint energy trails connected all his individual cells, giving Fen significant more control over his own body. At first however, the sensation overwhelmed his senses and left him unconscious. Again.

Thankfully, no one noticed the slight golden glow emanating from his body which was quickly smothered and absorbed by his cells.

When Fen finally became aware of his own existence again (which he didn't know whether or not to be grateful), he could feel his tired and battered body healing. Well, of course he could feel himself healing but now he could feel a general sense of his cellular activity. Fen instinctively felt how to enhance different parts of his body with Vitality using the different functions of his cells.

Fen inwardly smiled. Well, another subject to experiment with would only add to his ever-expanding workload, but the more benefits, the better. However, the very moment he thought that Fen froze. He recalled what happened the past few days and listed the benefits he received, eventually coming up with an astounding list of strengths that he discovered during his time in the Program.

'Uh, isn't this too weird? I've probably used up all my luck for the rest of my life with all this; I'm not going to die tomorrow, right?'

'Before Fen could delve deeper in his strange luck, his sense of space disappeared, and suddenly Fen found himself in the other reality again. Really, does this thing not have the decency to knock or anything? The least It could was give him a heads up, or a notification.

"You're not going to die. Not tomorrow, at least." Fen flinched when he heard the powerful voice coming from behind him. The candidate performed a revolution in the air to look behind him, seeing a much denser form of black energy than the previous form he had seen before.

"Huh. So you can talk fully now." It was a statement, not a question. Fen didn't know how to feel towards It, friendly because it didn't seem to have any bad intentions, or perhaps wary because of the exact same reason?

But, Fen dropped his guard anyway. Not like being constantly aware of It would help him in anyway, It was too powerful for Fen to even defend himself.

"Yeah! You noticed, how sweet!" It seemed that It was able to produce more of It's own personality as It grew stronger in this reality.

"So... why'd you drag me here?" Fen cut to the chase.

"Oh nothing much, I was just watching you and felt that you finally noticed how quickly you were growing. Took a while, but you finally got it. But yeah, that's because you're a Vitul."

Fen narrowed his eyes.

"That's it? Is that the only explanation I'm getting?"

It sighed. "Listen, you, and the Foundation I guess, don't understand what we are-"

Fen shot up, "We?!"

"Ah, yeah I'm a Vitul too. Kinda. Bit of a long story."

"But, as I was saying, the Foundation has no idea of what you are. Your teacher knows, but he doesn't fuller understand our existence. It's a miracle that he didn't tell anyone else about you... You should trust him more. He might be a valuable ally later for you."

Fen's mind was still reeling from the shock of discovering another one of his own kind, and so close to him, but It kept going, not giving Fen a chance for his mind to digest what he was learning.

"If I still want to keep this meeting short, then I unfortunately need to summarize so that you understand why you shouldn't share, to anybody, what you are.

"Vituls are perfection. Genetic perfection." Fen could only watch in wonder as It started throwing holographic images all around their reality, projections of It's memories.

There was a humanoid figure walking alone on a barren field, with no stars in the night sky. The only thing accompanying them was the glowing sun.

A small community of beings, but with strange buildings and developments. The town looked like everything was made from rough stone but Fen recognized the glow of electricity in almost all the houses in the images, as well as other strange energy that he couldn't even recognize.

Inside a filled lab, various genetic experiments were taking place. Animals of all kinds were gently used, testing to find the one thing that their race searched for above all else. Perfection. The ability to become united as one whole.

But, during all of their actions, all their growth... the sky still had no stars. Just a single, yellow glowing sun. The absence of celestial bodies in the sky made Fen feel sad for some reason...

Tears began to fall from his face before he could realize, even with his enhanced control over his body.

It turned and looked back at him. Somehow, Fen could sense a sad smile on It's featureless face.

"No matter how hard we worked, it was all meaningless. We found perfection. But, what's the use of having perfection when you have nobody else to share it with? Our civilization was alone in the Universe."

"Our sun was eventually going to run out of fuel, and when it did no amount of genetic superiority would be able to save our people. We sent countless ships into space, tore several holes through reality into other dimensions, but their search was fruitless. There were no other stars, no other planets in the universe; our race came into being too early."

"Alone in the universe, Vituls could only delay the inevitable destruction of their home star and the end of our entire civilization."

"But, when they had lost all hope, a God appeared."

"Vituls everywhere rejoiced. They believed that they weren't alone in the universe, not anymore."

"It was benevolent and kind. At first. But, when we began to fully place our trust in this being, the God ripped a whole through space and revealed it's own civilization, and with it the existence of Mana and magic."

"But they didn't come with good intentions. When we finally came into contact with another civilization, our first sight of them was an army."

The dark energy around It grew stronger, and waves of energy pulsed out as It's anger grew from remembering.

Fen felt puzzled, why would this God attack them? As if sensing his question, It turned to face him and answered.

"They attacked us because they were afraid of what we could do. Not every race can reach perfection, but we did. Our mastery over Vital energy made them afraid of us, and our genetic perfection made them feel that they had to attack us first."

"An army with white wings and Demigods, with the intent of wiping our race from existence; they almost succeeded too. The only reason why they failed was because of our race's determination and the efforts they made to survive the war."

The entire time It was describing their race's history, Fen quietly sat still and absorbed the information, updating his knowledge about Vituls. Although it came as a shock that his people fought against Heaven, Fen was able to beat down the questions in his mind so as to not interrupt It, and let It continue the story.

When It did continue, the rage the being in front of him had shown earlier was all but gone, and now It spoke in a sad tone of voice. Now It sounded like a lyrical instrument that bounced it's notes through multiple dimensions, extremely solemn and depressing, though beautiful.

"We were in a prolonged war with Heaven, with neither side getting an advantage over the other. Slowly, Heaven's advantage was being taken away as our race broke down and understood the principles of Mana and magic; combined with our natural talents and perfected racial instincts, we were slowly becoming unstoppable on the battlefield."

It paused, taking a moment to look around the reality they were in.

"But, if we won the war then I wouldn't be stuck in this damned dimension."

"Even as the difference in civilizational strength decreased, the gap in individual strength grew larger as the war went on. Their Demigods grew closer and closer to the realm of Higher beings, and when they developed the living weapons of the Seraphs, the war was already lost."

With that, the story came to an end, and the moving memories in the air began to shrivel up and return back to It as black energy particles.

"How did you survive?" Fen tentatively asked.

It snorted.

"I became a God. I guess they didn't think it was worth attacking me, but they still destroyed our civilization."

It gestured towards it body. "This isn't my real form, just to let you know. I'm an extremely handsome guy, but I can't appear in front of your right now."

At that, Fen frowned. Handsome? In what universe?

"Hey, you aren't thinking something mean right now, are you? Cause I'll tell you now, every Vitul might as well be the god of beauty compared to other humanoid races; genetic perfection, remember?" It said in a flat tone, eliciting an 'oh' from Fen.

"But not you," the being finished, crushing Fen's ego before he could grow conceited.

"Your body hasn't finished the change yet. When it does, then you might be as handsome as me."

'Oh!' Hope was rekindled in Fen's heart.