…

Fate: “Uhh…”

Fate groaned as he stretched his eyes open to view his surroundings. What he saw was obviously not what he was expecting, not by a long shot. He managed to squeeze his eyes open despite his fatigue but suddenly noticed that he couldn’t move.

-The hell?! I took a short nap, I didn’t take some paralyzing agent!

Fate craned his neck to look at his arms, which were apparently above his head. They were chained to a wall, the feeling in them was numb.

-I’m chained to the wall?! How did that little sh*t of a...brother manage to do this to me?! Or was he even the one who brought me here?

He tried to get his arms free while the rest of his body dangled from them, failing to remove the cuffs. Although he was using a good deal of his strength, the chains barely rattled and he continued to remain on the wall.

Fate looked around the room. It appeared to be a simple room, with the floors and wall made out of stone, but it seemed to have some objects that he could not make out from where he was. It also appeared that there was no one in the room, at least for the moment.

-...Well, trying to be a douche isn’t going to help anything, but my options are either sit here and do nothing while I lose all feeling in my body...or I find a way to get out and deal with the consequences later.

Fate: “I think I’m liking the second option better...How the hell do I get out of these chains though?”

Fate began to contemplate, how he could escape his bindings.

-Try ripping them off the wall? No, that’s dumb and will probably just end up with me getting injuries or muscle cramps...Try to climb up the wall for a better position? No, that might end with me falling and somehow choking myself on the chain...Try to pry the bolts that are sticking it in the wall…? Actually, that’s not the worst idea…

He decided that removing himself from the wall was a decent place to start since his limbs were still quite numb. He began to coil the chains around his arms and moved positioned his legs against the wall, shuffling slightly upward with each rotation.

Finally, the chains were entirely coiled around his forearms, which relieved the gradual cutoff of blood circulation. This allowed him to focus on removing the components of his restraints.

-It doesn’t look like I can remove the parts in my cuffs, even if I used magic. I can’t move it that precisely and I might just end up ripping my arms off in a small explosion!

Indeed, Fate’s grasp on the intricacies of mana manipulation was far from even the amateur's level and trying to remove the small bits one at a time would require more focus than his brain could handle at his age.

-However, if I just want to rip something out of the wall, I think I can manage…

Fate: *inhale*

Fate began to breathe and sense the flow of mana around him. He used his own mana pool as a magnet for the surrounding mana in the atmosphere. The mana gathered and clumped outside of his body, in a manner now visible to the naked eye. It flowed through the small gaps and cracks in the wall, dispersing as it went.

-I just need it to go in…

The mana reached the point where the chains were attached to the wall, reconvening at one point. It condensed into an orb and…!

-And blow it up!

The orb began to swell, becoming more and more transparent within the wall as it expanded to a great size. The orb grew to a size of about a foot wide and tall, before bursting into a massive, pale-blue explosion that sent Fate flying across the room!

Fate crash-landed onto the floor of the small room, incurring a severe amount of pain and injures as he did so, before finally rolling to a halt near a large metal door.

-F*ck! I didn’t expect the explosion to send me this far! But...seeing as how I’m right next to the door out of here...I guess I should be grateful?

Fate: “Ughhh...Journal, display status...bar...!”

------------------------------------------------------------------

-----------------------------------------------------

HP: 59.3/104.5

MP: 8.57/23.70

Status: Exhausted(slight), Bleeding(moderate), Broken leg(bone fracture)

----------------------------------------------------

-My f*cking leg is broken?! Sh*t!

Fate gazed at his apparently broken leg, noticing a portion of skin around the knee had been torn through by a bone that was protruding from it. The wound was bleeding profusely, allowing the blood to flow into the gaps in the stone floor.

-I already used my shirt sleeves and I have nothing to be used as a splint, dammit! Ugh, this hurts like a b*tch…!

Fate grabbed the cloth that was wrapped around his foot and wrapped it around his broken leg, the cloth becoming soaked in blood as he did so.

-How is my HP at around half if I still have these wounds?! Humans should not be able to bleed for this long without any loss of motor skills or cognitive ability…Then again, my previous didn’t have magic so that might explain some things…?

Fate began to gather his remaining mana to blast through the door. The adrenaline rush of his fall was suppressing his exhaustion and some of the pain, but he needed to find some way to heal himself.

The mana collected once more into another glowing orb and smacked the metal door, head-on. This created another small explosion, which blasted a lower part of the door away! It wasn’t a large portion of it, but it was enough so that Fate could squeeze through to get out of the room.

-F*ck, seriously why did that not work?! How solid is this damn door?!

Despite his internal complaint, Fate began to slowly shift through the hole in the bottom of the door. After about 3 minutes of making sure that his leg didn’t get further injured while crawling through the hole, he managed to escape into the hallway.

He propped his back against the wall to sit up properly and checked on his wound. It was still bleeding through the cloth and underneath, seemed to be scabbing.

-Ughhh...the adrenaline is wearing off...this hurts! I gotta find some herbs or bandages...maybe that priest if I can, though I doubt he’d be willing to heal me...What do I do?!

*click* *clack*

Fate: “...!”

Fate turned his head down the hall where he could now hear a set of footsteps growing closer to his location. The lack of light prevented him from telling the identity of this person, but he could feel…

-Whoever that f*cker is, they’re dangerous! I gotta get the hell away from here!

Fate clutched onto the wall to stand himself up but had to struggle to stay up. He continued to hold the wall as he hobbled on one foot, to get down the hall and away from the stranger. Despite Fate having gotten a good deal away despite his injuries, the stranger made no apparent changes in their pace.

Fate rounded the corner a while later, but tripped over a loose plank and fell to the floor in pain.

-Sh*t! Move dammit!

Fate attempted to crawl, but his body was getting heavier and his vision blurry. He could hear the stranger’s footsteps growing closer with each passing second. He desperately struggled to get away, however, the strange made it to his location before he could get far enough.

Fate: “...Who...are...you…?”

With those words, Fate passed out on the floor and the stranger picked him up and threw him over his shoulder, before walking back in the direction of the room that Fate had escaped from...