The Fusionist Book 5 -- Chapter 49

Chapter 49

It wasn’t but an hour into their journey to the northeast that Larek and Nedira finally understood how dangerous it was in the Calamity the closer they got to the center. It was only the second subservient Aperture they passed after making the decision to keep going that they discovered their first evolved monster – other than the Rainbow Slimes, of course.

When they had to pass within range of the Aperture for it to send out reinforcements, Larek didn’t think anything of it at first. The map that Nedira was going by said that this particular Aperture was home to a monster called a River Shappo, and it mostly inhabited the dozens of large rivers that wound through its territory. The River Shappo had dark skin and only small tufts of hair on its head, was approximately the size of horse though nearly twice as wide, and it had an enormous mouth that could practically swallow a person whole. Of course, that person wouldn’t likely be whole once its strong, serrated teeth tore them apart on the way down, but that wasn’t really the point.

They were also relatively slow because of their short, though powerful, legs, and they only really excelled in moving through the water with speed with the fins on their back and flipper-like back feet. When Larek saw the River Shappo coming out of the Aperture’s territory, a large herd at least 100-strong, they moved so slowly that he thought that it wouldn’t even be worth it to stop and set up Fusions to prevent reinforcements from reaching them – because they wouldn’t catch up unless they stopped for a full day or more.

Unfortunately, none of the notes or the map mentioned that there was an evolved version of the River Shappo along with the original, which was what they saw next. A dozen enormous shapes suddenly took off from inside the territory, flapping wings that extended far from their bodies, which looked like very large versions of the Shappos running along the ground.

“What are those?” Larek asked, even as he prepared to dual-wield staves once again.

Nedira shook her head. “I have no idea. Never heard of anything like them before.”

That wasn’t good news. What also wasn’t good news was the actual size of the flying Shappos, as when they quickly closed the distance, he was able to put their dimensions into better perspective. If he was correct, then each of the evolved, flying versions of the Shappo were at least 35 feet long, a dozen feet wide, and had wingspans reaching 50 feet or more. Their wings were leathery looking and the same color as the rest of their bodies, making them look like a River Shappo had essentially grown to enormous proportions and inherited massive bat wings.

Other than the wings and larger size, he didn’t see anything else different about them – but that was more than enough. As the gigantic evolved Shappos that had to have weighed thousands of pounds flew toward them, moving at least 10 times faster than the original versions on the ground, Larek realized that it was going to be a bit harder to kill these particular monsters than normal.

They were just too big to keep them completely within the boundaries an offensive Fusion that he could move around on a small disc – but that didn’t mean he couldn’t try.

As he set the Pattern box on a course that would backtrack their route instead of pushing forward, as he didn’t want to trigger another round of reinforcements from a different subservient Aperture, he prepared to start blasting what he was dubbing Flying Shappos out of the sky. With one of his Frozen Zone Fusions on a floating disk following behind them, he looked over at Nedira and saw the determined look on her face; knowing that she was with him in this endeavor meant more than he could describe. It was both worrying and exciting at the same time – a strange confluence of emotions that made his heart race.

“Target the same one to take it down faster,” the Naturalist said calmly. “Follow my lead.”

He just nodded and adjusted his grip on the staves underneath his arms, waiting for the incoming Flying Shappos to get within range. When the one in the lead passed an invisible threshold, around 100 feet away, Nedira started firing out large stone shards from the end of her staff and Larek immediately matched her. The sharp stones impacted the incoming monster around its face and some of its neck when it banked sharply to avoid the barrage, and Larek could see that their projectiles only penetrated its thick skin a few inches. Not enough to injure it seriously, or even inconvenience it.

“The wings!” she shouted, and they both attempted to shred its wings with lines of stone shards whizzing across the distance. He definitely saw them hit the outstretched appendages, but other than a few small tears in the thinner wing material, it didn’t seem to do much damage. It was probably due to the fact that they couldn’t concentrate their fire on a single wing because it flapped and moved around too much.

By that time, it was already approaching the 50-foot mark, and Larek moved up his Frozen Zone Fusion on the Pattern disc and basically shoved it in its face. It seemed to work for a moment before it jerked away, moving much faster and smoother than he expected, as it dove down below the Fusion and seemed to recover within seconds.

Next, he attempted to freeze one of its wings, but it was moving too fast and was too large to affect easily, and the Flying Shappo simply kept flapping its wings quickly enough that any of the freezing effects were nullified.

In other words, this wasn’t going well.

Nedira changed to flaming balls instead of stone shards, making them much larger than they usually did when sending out so many elemental projectiles, and these ones finally seemed to make a difference. At Magnitude 8, the flaming balls were hefty enough to burn through the monster’s skin, scorching the flesh underneath and causing the Shappo to roar in pain; when it opened its mouth, he saw that it had spread them wide enough to fit a good portion of himself, Nedira, and the Pattern box at the same time.  The multiple rows of large, serrated teeth made him doubt they would survive such a circumstance unscathed.

The problem with Magnitude 8 flaming balls was that they didn’t fire nearly as fast out of the staves as the others; they only came out once every few seconds, in fact. That meant that they had to be quite accurate in their shots, and if they missed one they would risk being unable to kill them before they caught up. Of course, Larek could simply speed them up to keep ahead of them, which was what he did once it was too close for comfort, but he couldn’t keep that up indefinitely.

Instead of trying to be accurate with the flaming balls, he decided to go another route. Using the water stream attack from the staves, he targeted the burnt section of the Flying Shappo and dug further into the flesh; when it rolled and dove to avoid the powerful jet of water, he could see that it did absolutely nothing against its normal skin. Only by eliminating its outer layer of protection could he do more damage, and he kept up the barrage as well as he could as it continued to avoid at least half of the strikes sent its way. Nedira did the same, and they were slowly wearing it down bit by bit – but this type of thing wasn’t sustainable. While they could eventually kill it this way, they were already backtracking further than he wanted to, which would simply add even more length to their journey that they couldn’t afford.

There were still 11 of them left after this first one died, and then another one might even appear after 20 minutes from the Aperture it was spawned; he wasn’t exactly sure on the evolved monster respawn rate, but he was erring on the side of caution.

The problem was that he wasn’t taking advantage of his Skills in this instance; more accurately, he wasn’t using any of his newly acquired Martial Skills. Sure, he was using Fusions right now, but they weren’t cutting it; he made a mental note to see about making improved versions of the staves and the offensive Fusions to utilize on stronger monsters, but that didn’t help him right now.

With a growl at how annoying these Flying Shappos were being, he told Nedira, “Keep firing and support me.”

“What? What are you doing—?” she started to ask, watching him dump both staves into his Void Pocket sack and pull out his halberd.

Before he could think too much about it, Larek vaulted over the side of the Pattern box. In mid-leap, he absorbed the Pattern Cohesion from the disc that was moving his Frozen Zone Fusion around, letting it fall to the ground; simultaneously, he then formed a larger disc under his own feet, which he landed on a split-second later. He landed awkwardly, almost causing him to fall off, but he managed to regain his balance before that embarrassing event could occur.

He began to move the disc under his feet and it took him a few precious seconds to become accustomed to its rapid movements, but his Agility and Body – which had been honed at Fort Hilltower’s obstacle course – allowed him to manage it without too many issues. When he felt like he had a handle on it, he adjusted his grip on his halberd and shot toward the battered, burnt, and slowly dying Flying Shappo.

“Larek! Are you sure about this?” Nedira shouted behind him, and Larek made sure to dedicate a portion of his focus to keep the Pattern box steadily moving in the same direction. He just had to ensure that he didn’t get too far away from it, otherwise he might lose control.

“Nope! But I’m doing it anyway!” he shouted back, a grin flashing across his face briefly as he closed with the pursuing monster.

He might not have wings that gave him the ability to dive and bank and avoid projectiles like the airborne Shappo did, but he had something the massive monster didn’t: An ability to move the disc beneath him with just a thought.  And since it was his thoughts moving it, he could also change his stance to adjust his balance and move with it to avoid getting knocked off – which was exactly what he did against his dying opponent.

Dropping below it, he changed the momentum of the disc to bring him upwards toward the dangerous predator, with his halberd poised to cut it from its neck to its rear fin. The Shappo sensed him coming and attempted to dive straight toward him, its mouth open as if to swallow him whole. Seeing it move like that, he quickly crouched, shifted the disc to rise even more rapidly, and then jumped, physically leaving the platform he had been standing upon.

The Shappo didn’t have time to react as two things happened at once. Flipping his halberd over, the Martial Fusionist caught the upper edge of its open mouth as he jumped over it, and the extremely sharp blade cut through its teeth, skin, flesh, and even bone with ease; the Shappo’s downward momentum was enough to force the weapon through its skull and brain, killing it instantly.

At the same time, Larek continued his disc’s flight upward, and it entered the monster’s open jaws and forced itself down its throat. While he couldn’t see it inside of the monster, he could feel it because it was connected to him, and it cleaved through its throat and obliterated its internal organs, the edge of the disc being unintentionally sharp when he first created it.

Even if Larek hadn’t managed to land his blow on its head and cut through its brain, there was so much damage to the rest of its body that it wouldn’t have survived much longer. Ripping though an upper portion of its back, the disc popped out and the Fusionist brought it back beneath his feet as he began to descend from his impromptu jump. He stumbled a little as he landed, but he quickly recovered and looked back, watching the corpse of the Flying Shappo slam messily into the hard obsidian below.

“That’s… alright. I guess you do know what you’re doing,” Nedira shouted in disbelief at what he’d just done.

“Sometimes. Only sometimes,” he said with a chuckle, eyeing the next Flying Shappo in his sights.

Bladed Weapon Expertise has reached Level 36!

Bladed Weapon Expertise has reached Level 37!

Ten minutes later, the last of the airborne monsters that had been following them was dead and plummeting to the ground below, each one taking less time than the one before as Larek continued to accustom himself to his new fighting style. He quickly learned that a fully “healthy” Flying Shappo wasn’t as easy to kill as the first one that had been heavily damaged, as it was both faster and seemed to have a preternatural ability to dodge his strikes even with his added versatility. Thankfully, it didn’t take long before he and Nedira were able to work together to herd each one into a position where it would take a few full-power flaming balls to its face, side, or even wings; each hit slowed it down and made it easier for Larek to finish it off with a few swings of his halberd, or even ramming it with his disc when all else failed.

“That was impressive, I must say,” Nedira told him as soon as he rejoined her in the Pattern box. He found that it was easy enough to keep it moving while he was out fighting on the disc, though if he’d had to make evasive maneuvers during that time he might have lost control of it. This style of fighting wasn’t exactly ideal when he was also operating the Pattern box, but it worked well enough for this circumstance.  “What made you decide to do that?”

“Impatience,” he replied with a small grin, before sobering up. “But we need to consider what to do when we encounter even more of these evolved monsters. The Fusions we’ve been using have been enough for now, but I find it hard to believe that this is the worst of those that we’ll encounter.”

She was silent for a moment before nodding, even as the Martial Fusionist sent the Pattern box toward the Shappo Aperture. “You’re most likely correct. We’re not strong enough as it is to handle something even more powerful than these Flying Shappos. What do you propose we do? We can always head straight east or west and hope to avoid the worst of them; that, of course, would negate all the work we did against those subservient Apertures because their reinforcements would likely be able to reach us.”

She had a point, of course, and that didn’t seem like the best solution. Neither did moving north without a plan to combat stronger monsters in place. Turning back south was technically another option, but that was fraught with the same issues of reinforcements as going east or west.

He thought about it for a while, considering all the options and even took a mental inventory of their Void Pocket storage to see if there was any solutions within. After a few minutes, the travel time being enough to encounter the large herd of landbound River Shappos, Larek eventually determined that there was really only one solution.

“We go northeast like we were planning,” he stated.

“What about the evolved monsters?”

He nodded, acknowledging her worry, even while he mentally planned out what he was going to do. “I have an idea for that. As well as an idea that might make securing the perimeter around the Apertures even better.”

“Oh, really? Just like that, you have a solution?”

He shrugged. “Maybe? We won’t know if we don’t try.”

“What is your plan, if you don’t mind me asking? Actually, even if you do mind, I should probably know since we’re in this together.”

“Fusions.”

She waited for him to say more, but when he was silent after that, she exasperatingly asked, “What Fusions? We’ve already tried everything.”

“Ah, yes, well… I’m not talking about the Fusions I already have. I’m talking about new ones.”

“Newones?” she prompted, when he didn’t elaborate.

Nodding, he said, “Exactly.” Before she could ask again, he finally explained. “See, I made many of my offensive Fusions, including Frozen Zone and the current iteration of the staves, during my time in the Sealance Empire or in Lowenthal. Both of those places had a lower ambient Mana density that I had to accommodate into the designs, because otherwise the density would deplete to the point where they wouldn’t work anymore. The same thing happens here, as you know, but it is much less pronounced.

“But I hadn’t really thought about changing my existing Fusions because they seemed to work just fine for what we needed them for. That, unfortunately, doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. Now that these stronger, evolved monsters are likely to be the norm rather than the exception, we need something to counter them.

“Not only have I increased my Skills since I first made these types of Fusions, but I’ve expanded my knowledge of how to customize them so that they did exactly what I wanted.” He held up the Void Pocket sack at his feet as an example. “So, I think there might be a way to enhance our capabilities when it comes to damaging these types of monsters, as well as controlling what comes out of the Apertures.  I just need some time to work on them.”

“I… see. If you can do that, it would be worth it, but it all depends on how often these Flying Shappos appear as reinforcements. I don’t think I can kill one by myself.”

That was certainly an issue, because once he was hyper-focused on creating a new Fusion or two, he couldn’t wrench himself away to fight or risk injuring or killing himself. “Well, let’s see if we can find out that information.” Larek stored his halberd in his Void Pocket sack and took out two of his staves. “Shall we?” he asked, indicating the large herd of River Shappos below them.

Her answer was to start raining down streams of stone shards upon the monsters, the projectiles easily penetrating their flesh compared to their larger, flying cousins.