The Fusionist Book 5 -- Chapter 52

Chapter 52

Holding her breath as the Flying Shappo took to the air, Nedira saw the moment it identified them and began heading in their direction. She gripped her staff tighter in her hands, ready to blast it apart with the new Pyroblast effect that Larek had somehow managed to instill in the Fusion that was on it, which was something she never would’ve believed possible if she hadn’t seen—and used—herself. The way that the Fusionist could simply take a spell’s effects and replicate them in a Fusion left her nothing short of astonished, even though she’d seen it multiple times before. She had thought that the void-based bag of his had been his crowning achievement, but it almost paled in comparison to the staff in her hands. Having practiced and killed multiple monsters with it, including one of the Flying Shappos that was heading toward them at the moment, she knew firsthand how powerful – and dangerous – it was.

But now he had created a Fusion that would kill a monster like the Flying Shappo without their intervention? How is that even possible? She had seen and relied upon the other Fusions he had made such as his Frozen Zone and Healing Shelter in their journeys together, but she was more than aware of their limitations and drawbacks, which included depleting the ambient Mana in an area if too many of them were active simultaneously. While she wasn’t able to completely perceive the same strands of light that Larek seemed to see, she had become much better at discerning the density of Mana in an area over time, as it was more a strange numerical sense of it than something visual. It helped to determine how much of the local density she was depleting when she used her new staff, which was extremely helpful.

When she hadn’t been using her staff, she could sense that the local Mana around them was at around a static 95% density; this was because of the always-active Fusions that they had on her robe and his clothes absorbed that much ambient Mana from the environment to keep them going. When she used her old staff, the draw on the ambient Mana brought the density down another 3% to 5%, which wasn’t that big of a deal – especially since the Fusion on that staff regulated how much could be drawn from the environment. The offensive Fusions that Larek used, such as Frozen Zone, consumed about 8% of the local Mana density to keep them active.

The issues concerning ambient Mana arose when the total density dropped below 50%, as that was when it started to use more than could be quickly replaced. That was why, when they placed a maximum of six of the offensive Fusions near an Aperture to kill the reinforcements, that it managed to maintain the balance. With six of them there, and if Larek and Nedira weren’t nearby with their own Fusions, it used around 48% to 49% of the available ambient Mana; adding another one would slowly deplete the density until some of the Fusions would break, thereby freeing up more Mana density.

In contrast, the new staff used between 5% to a whopping 50% of the nearby Mana density for the highest of Magnitudes. The biggest difference was that most of the functions of the staff’s Fusion weren’t continuous, so using a Magnitude 12 Blast, for instance, depleted the nearby Mana density for a short time, but it recovered fairly quickly as more Mana flowed in to replace it. It was almost like her own Mana regeneration in that respect; it regenerated relatively fast upon single-use Fusion Effects, whereas continuous, always-active Fusions sort of reserved the Mana density so that it couldn’t be used for anything but keeping the Fusion active.

It was a strange way to look at it, and she had tried to describe the way she perceived it to Larek, but he seemed to have an instinctual understanding of Mana Density through a visual inspection, so it wasn’t exactly compatible with his thinking. But what she couldn’t understand was how he expected a single Fusion to be able to keep any monsters from emerging from an Aperture, because the reserved Mana density cost would likely be enormous.

Except that, besides a very tiny surge in the Mana density being consumed when he turned on what he had just created, his Fusion didn’t seem to be using much Mana at all. She was about to say something when it passed through what she considered to be the boundary around the Aperture, the area where Fusions weren’t possible to place because they couldn’t absorb ambient Mana. At first, nothing seemed to happen and she sighted down the length of her staff, ready to blast the Shappo apart, but then it seemed to light up from multiple angles, as if a multitude of light beams illuminated it.

She only caught a glimpse of that before all hell broke loose.

A huge surge of Mana from the environment was sucked into the Fusion, leaving her slightly breathless at the sudden drop in Mana density, to the point where she couldn’t even calculate how much was being used. Instead, she could only look in awe as a large, thick dome that she estimated was about 25 feet wide and 60 feet tall extended over the entire Aperture, leaving the zone affected by the non-absorption effect hollow in its center.

The walls of the dome appeared to be powerful, hardened gusts of air, rapidly moving and keeping everything contained within – including the majority of the Flying Shappo; a tiny portion of its rear and back legs seemed to be stuck outside, but the majority of it was caught inside the effect. These walls of air were important, because in a flash the interior of the dome suddenly turned opaque as it almost instantly filled with a familiar-looking acid, similar to the Acid Spray spell she had taught to Larek and he had then incorporated into the new Fusion on her staff. Instead of a powerful stream of it, it was instead filling the dome like it was water in a lake, completely encompassing the Shappo inside, and it was thick enough that Nedira couldn’t even see it anymore.

I guess that would certainly kill it after a while, she couldn’t help thinking. But what about monsters that are resistant to—

A few seconds after the acid appeared, it suddenly froze as a sense of horrifically extreme cold filled the dome, which was something that the Naturalist could feel even from 100 feet away. Over the course of 2 seconds, the entirety of the acid froze completely solid, enveloping the Flying Shappo in a block of acid ice; if it hadn’t been trapped before in the viscous liquid, then it certainly was now.

Before she could wonder what was going to happen next, two things happened nearly simultaneously. First, the exterior of the dome expanded outwards approximately 5 feet, leaving a gap between the frozen acid and the wall of air. A split-second after that happened, the solid, dome-shaped block of acidic ice shattered, reminding Nedira of her Shatter spell. As soon as the ice shattered, all the millions of shards were picked up by powerful internal gusts of air, which whipped them around in a fury for a full 5 seconds, making so much noise as they crashed against each other that she had to cover her ears as she watched with wide eyes.

In the midst of the “acidicle” (acid icicles) destruction, she thought she caught sight of a few obliterated pieces of the Flying Shappo, but there was so much going on that it was difficult to tell for sure. The only thing she knew was that when the cyclonic devastation was complete and the acid fell to the ground, where it melted into the dirt and rivers nearby, the only trace of the monster at all was the small portion of its legs that hadn’t made it inside the Fusion’s area of effect before it was caught by the air wall. As it fell to the small dirt island that encompassed the area around the Aperture, some of the melting acid fell on it and began dissolving it immediately, leaving only a small portion of it behind.

Mouth open in shock, Nedira had to take a few seconds to comprehend what she’d just seen. The complete obliteration of the flying monster had been done so thoroughly and quickly that it seemed almost impossible; she had figured Larek would fill an area with powerful Pyroblast effects, which had proven highly effective against the Flying Shappo, but he had done something completely unexpected – and yet extremely smart. He had incorporated many different damaging attacks, both magical and physical, which were designed to exploit the weaknesses of all monsters, no matter what they were.

If something was resistant to physical damage? The magical freeze coupled with the explosive shattering of the acid ice should be more than enough, but then it would also be pummeled by air gusts that could were magical in nature. Resistant to magical damage? The physical nature of the acid was strong enough to eat through just about anything, and adding in being slammed around by high-speed acidicles after being inside of a shattering explosion, there wasn’t much that could stand up to that. She couldn’t think of a single monster, other than one perhaps too large to fit inside the dome at all, that wouldn’t die when exposed to the effects of the Fusion, or at least be so severely damaged that they wouldn’t be too much of a threat.

But there were downsides to this devastating destruction, of course. As she reached out with her senses, she was again shocked to find that the Mana density of the immediate area was down to less than 5%, though it was slowly creeping back up as more Mana flowed into the environment.

“That… used more Mana than I expected… but it worked, I guess?” Larek mumbled at her side.

“What in the world was that?” Nedira asked, finally able to speak again.

He turned to her, thoughts still obviously chasing each other around his head as he looked slightly distracted. “That was my new Shattering Acidic Occlusion Dome +12 Fusion. The draw of Mana was nearly too much; I may have to limit the last attack time by a second or so to make sure it doesn’t deplete the density too much.”

“I’d say so! That was incredibly destructive and scary, if I’m telling the truth.”

He appeared worried at her words. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. I didn’t think there was any danger to us, but I can see how that might’ve looked.”

Shaking her head, she said, “No, it wasn’t that. It was watching what using almost every drop of Mana in an area can really do, something that I doubt any other person alive has ever seen before. I can’t even imagine what would happen if someone, other than you, got ahold of this kind of devastating power. I thought your staff Fusions were scary enough, but this… this is on a whole other level.”

Still looking worried but now thoughtful, he nodded after a few seconds. “I can definitely see that.  I might need to add some sort of shut off for these Fusions, similar to what I’ve done before, but perhaps more permanent? I’ve only been thinking of terms of us using these things, but what if someone was to get ahold of them without our knowledge? That certainly bears thinking about, especially ways to prevent them from accidentally—or intentionally—killing a lot of people.”

Nedira agreed. These Fusions he was creating were powerful, but they could also cause a lot of damage if they weren’t careful. Knowing that he would probably come up with a way to prevent that from happening, she moved on from her worries as she waved toward the Fusion. “Going back to the Mana draw, that Fusion used a lot of ambient Mana all at once, but now it seems nearly dormant in comparison. How did you do that?”

It took a few seconds for her question to get through his furious thinking, but he eventually explained. “Oh, yes.  It’s in a relatively inactive state right now, though it has a light-based detection Effect that is Reactive continuously searching for more targets of a certain size. It won’t react to small animals or insects, as I didn’t want it to activate every time a fly flew through it; if we ever encounter something that small, it might not be the best idea to use this, but for 99% of other monsters, it should be fine.

“The Reactive Effect, once it detects an object of proper size, waits until it a mass threshold has been reached before activating the rest of the Effects that you saw, in order. In total it only lasts 14 seconds total, though I might reduce that down to 13 depending on current Mana density levels. As you also no doubt sensed, it uses a lot of Mana to activate it, which means that it isn’t suited for normal Apertures outside of the Calamity; they seem to respawn their monsters faster than these inside here, and they would be useless to protect against a newly opened Aperture, as the constant flow of monsters repopulating the territory would cause it to drain the Mana density in a short amount of time, which would lead to the Fusion cannibalizing itself. It’s possible that I might be able to tone down the severity of the destruction to save on Mana cost, but the majority of the expense can be attributed to the size of the dome itself.”

While she wasn’t an expert on Fusions like Larek, she could understand a bit of what he was referring to. The devastating Effects, while expensive in terms of Mana, were secondary to the area of the dome, which took a lot of Mana to extend all the way around the entire Aperture. It was possible that multiple Fusions with just a portion of the area might work to reduce costs even further, but he shot that down even as she voiced that thought.

“There’s too much danger of overlapping areas of ambience if I were to try and split it up into multiple Fusions, which would lead to formation degradation at an increased rate. I’ve also found that I have a problem with irregular shapes, as that was what I thought of doing at first; having a dozen wedges of a large dome shape butted up against each other sounds like it would save in Mana cost, but I instinctively felt that creating a slice of a whole dome was going to cost nearly as much Mana as the entire dome because of its irregular shape. That’s why most of my Fusions are cubes, domes, or spheres, as those seemed to conform to my formations at a much better rate than something like a triangle, or in this case, a slice of a dome.

“Perhaps in time I will get better at envisioning something like that, but for now, it’s basically the large dome or nothing.”

It was disappointing, but Nedira knew better than to question what he could or couldn’t do. He was already defying what should be possible with what he’d created, so who was she to tell him that he was wrong? If he said it couldn’t be done without being nearly as expensive as the original, then that had to be the case.

“So, the plan is to place one of these on all the Apertures that attack us on our way north?”

He nodded. “Yes, but I need to make a bunch of them first. I should be able to use my Focused Division Skill to make a few of them at one time, but it’ll still take nearly a day before I have what we’re likely to need.”

“With all these new Fusions, we should be fine if you need to take a day to make enough. We’ll be able to make up quite a bit of time with them later.”

“That’s what I was thinking. Time to go back to camp?”

She agreed and Larek controlled the box they were standing in as they moved out of the Aperture’s territory. As much as she disliked the obsidian ground that made up the majority of the Calamity’s environment, she also didn’t want to spend time camping on top or next to a river – which was what the Shappo Aperture territory was mostly comprised of. When they arrived at their previous encampment, Larek got comfortable while Nedira spotted another swarm of the annoying Razor Locusts in the distance. She wished they could go back and close off that Aperture with his new Fusion, but that would require a bit of backtracking. As it was, killing the flying insects was easy enough with a single use of her new staff, which she did as soon as they were within range, “blasting” them apart with a Magnitude 6 blast from her staff.

Larek spent a few hours creating more of his newest Fusion before Nedira became too tired to keep watch, so she slept for about 6 hours while he kept watch. She did the same for him afterwards, and as soon as she woke him up later, he went right back to creating more Fusions. She never got over how incredible it was that he Larek was able to manipulate his Mana in such a way that thousands of Mana flowed into the Fusion he was working on every second or so, as handling that much would tire her out within minutes. His knack for every aspect of Fusion creation was why he was the Fusionist, however, and not her. More and more, though, she felt like she was becoming less useful; it had been a while since she’d had to actually cast a spell, as most of their attacks had been with Larek’s Fusions. She knew she had a lot more to offer than just standing there holding a staff, but it was hard to compete with something that didn’t require her pool of Mana to use and wouldn’t tire out no matter how many times you used it.

Pushing away those forlorn thoughts as soon as the powerful Fusionist was done creating what they needed, she was eager to get on the move again. As they took to the air in his Pattern-constructed box, she looked toward the northeast and thought that if everything went right, they might be able to get out of the Calamity a day ahead of schedule, despite the break they took to create more Fusions.

It was only a matter of time before they were able to come back in and search for Verne; while she would happy to be reunited with him, she was more anxious to find out if he knew where her brother was located.

She would find him, if it was the last thing she did.