The Fusionist Book 5 -- Chapter 46

Chapter 46

It turned out that Larek could keep ahead of the Razor Locust swarm that followed them, and even get so far ahead of them that they disappeared over the horizon, but they quickly discovered that it didn’t matter.

Because they didn’t stop coming. Being in the territory of the Calamity, the Locusts could apparently track them everywhere and anywhere they went. The only way to lose them completely was to exit the Calamity, but that was impossible at the moment; they were over a day away from the border, and Larek couldn’t concentrate on his Pattern box that long without resting. If they rested, then the Locust swarm would catch up.

And there were tens of thousands of the flying insects, so many to the point where they would blot out the sun if they flew overhead. From what he knew about them, which Nedira confirmed after he questioned if she had any other information on them, they normally attacked in small swarms of 25 to 50, even in the days of Scissions appearing around the Kingdom, using their razor-sharp legs to slice up their victims with vicious speed. The behavior of them when acting as subservient reinforcements to the Calamity’s own monsters was more proof that attacking the Aperture in the center was foolish without thousands of Mages and Martials all participating simultaneously.

But all the local Strike Faction had was less than 100 people with them – which was definitely not enough.

“If we can’t outrun them or hide, we might as well kill them,” Larek said after an hour of trying to flee from the Locusts, grabbing two Mage staves – a pair from a different bunch which hadn’t been damaged from his earlier stunt against the Steel Slimes – from his sack.

“Fine by me,” Nedira said, as Larek slowed the box’s movement down, allowing them to float gently north as he began matching speed with the pursuing bugs. Soon enough, the buzzing of what seemed like countless wings hit them like a wall of sound, but Larek pushed through the slight disturbance in his focus and maintained a distance of approximately 50 feet from the leading edge of the swarm.

At that distance, he could see the movement of the Locusts’ legs, as they rubbed back and forth like two knives sharpening each other, and he could practically taste the monsters’ desire to dismember the two of them. It was slightly intimidating, to say the least, because he was facing a veritable wall of dangerous insects that would obliterate them if they faltered for even a moment. Individually, they weren’t that strong, but that was why they attacked in a swarm.

Unfortunately for them, they were going to learn that was a bad idea when they bunched up like they were.

While Nedira alternated casting Pyroblasts, which enveloped dozens of Locusts at a time in a fiery explosion, and slinging out flaming balls from her staff, Larek took both staves he brought out of his sack and held them against his body, one in each arm, as he aimed toward the swarm. Since most of his focus was on maintaining his Pattern box and moving it away from the Locusts, the best he could do as far as aiming was to gently strafe the wall of bugs with a Magnitude 2 barrage of flaming balls coming out of both staves. Within seconds they were punching holes in the formation of the swarm, igniting the individually weak Locusts as they were impacted by the projectiles, before falling from the sky in a fiery conflagration, plummeting down to the ground below. Because they were constantly moving, they didn’t have to worry about using up the ambient Mana, and with them separated instead of next to each other, there was no risk of what happened to the other bundle of staves happening with these two.

It didn’t take more than five minutes of constantly strafing the swarm before they began to see results. The density of the insects following them thinned significantly, making it slightly harder for all of their shots to hit their targets as they spread out, but the advantage of using Fusions for this purpose was that they weren’t going to run out of Mana anytime soon.

In addition to thinning the numbers by killing literally tens of thousands of the flying bugs, Larek was also slowly acquiring Aetheric Force. It was hard to tell how much he was receiving, as some was constantly streaming into him, but he didn’t think it was much per Locust he killed; he decided that it was only a fraction of a single AF, and that only after killing 15 to 20 of them would he receive a full AF.

But when he was killing thousands of them, the numbers added up. By the time there were only a few hundred of them left, still following them ineffectually but with small enough brain function that they didn’t know it was futile, he had gained a few hundred AF. It wasn’t a ton, but considering that Nedira was killing probably twice the number of Locusts as he was with her better aim and Pyroblast spells, he thought it was more than worth it.

As the last dozen or so fell, their burning bodies plummeting to the ground below, Larek stopped the Pattern box with a relieved sigh, before leaning forward and looked over the edge to watch them fall with satisfaction. That satisfaction abruptly disappeared as, when he looked down, he didn’t see the black obsidian he was expecting; instead, he saw that they were over a vibrant field of green, filled with a riot of different wildflowers dotting the landscape. It was actually quite beautiful in comparison to the rest of the environment they had been passing through, and it looked like a nice, peaceful place to rest, relax, and plan what they were going to do now that they weren’t being chased by a massive swarm of Razor Locusts.

Unfortunately for the two of them, that just wasn’t going to happen.  While the rest of the burning swarm fell harmlessly along the grass and wildflowers below, one of them crash-landed on top of a red-petaled sunflower-looking plant that was at least three times the size and height of any of the others. The dead bug bounced off one of the larger flower’s petals before falling into the grass below.

That was when the center of the red-petaled sunflower transformed from a circular orange color to one that was darker in the center, and for all intents and purposes Larek thought it looked like an eye. When the colors rapidly shifted a second later, almost like the flower had just blinked, it wouldn’t surprise him if that was exactly what it was.

“Uh, Nedira?” Larek asked, the pitch of his voice rising as he saw the red-petaled flower begin to move. “What is that?”

Hearing the urgency in his voice, the Naturalist looked over the side of the box and she sucked in her breath. “A Red Spring Daisy. We should probably go before we provoke it.”

“Too late for that.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw more movement, and a quick step to the other side of the box showed the whole beautiful landscape filled with flowers stretching off into the distance. At the same time, it also showed movement coming from sporadic places all over as more red-petaled flowers suddenly shifted so that their centers were looking at the floating box filled with two people. As they all “blinked” simultaneously, he realized that the simple act of a burning Locust hitting one of these Red Spring Daisies had inadvertently caused the entire population of this subservient Aperture to rise against them.

Larek didn’t know anything about what these Red Spring Daisies were, but as they were plants that were stuck in the ground, he figured they couldn’t be thatbad.  They could easily fly past them and be just fine, right?

“Great. It’s time to run again,” Nedira said, seeing the same thing he was as she came up next to him.

“But—”

His protestation died on his lips as he saw one of the red-petaled flowers uproot itself, until it grew to over 15 feet in height, utilizing its extremely long roots as a set of legs. Even as that one emerged from the ground, every other one he could see, which numbered at least 100, had done the same as they stared at Larek’s box.

“Still, what—”

“Go! Don’t you know why they’re called Red Spring Daisies?”

Rather than argue, he got the Pattern box moving, retracing the path they had taken to get there. It was just in time, too, as he narrowly avoided the red, green, and brown shape that flew through the space that they had just abandoned. As he looked back and up at the red-petaled flower that had shot past them he saw the wickedly sharp green leaves along its stem that looked like multiple arms and the orange “eye” that looked at them with a sudden blink. That wasn’t what caught his attention, though, as it was the multiple brown roots that extended below the stem.

Curled up like a snake, the roots formed what could only be described as multiple springs that were at least twice as large as the rest of the mobile monster plant. It didn’t take an expert in monsters to realize why the Red Spring Daisy was called that, as it seemed to be able to use its roots to jump high into the air. How high into the air was something he didn’t know, but as Larek’s Pattern box was around 50 feet off the ground and the Daisy had shot past them, he thought it was likely that they could reach 100 feet or higher.

So, he turned his two staves toward the flower that was hitting the top of its arc and blasted it with a stream of flaming balls.

“That won’t work,” Nedira immediately said after Larek started his attack. “They’re immune to fire.”

As she said, the flaming balls that hit the now-falling Red Spring Daisy didn’t do anything; instead, they were absorbed into its petals, stem, leaves, and even its roots as he attempted to hit all of it. If anything, the fire seemed to rejuvenate the monster, as it seemed to glow.

Actually, that turned out to be the start of its own attack. A triplicate of sharp, 3-foot-long leaves were suddenly launched from its stem, chasing after them in the Pattern box. They flew through the air quickly, but not fast enough to take Larek by surprise; he formed a Pattern shield in front of the incoming leaves, and they impacted the barrier before crumpling up like a piece of paper, falling to the ground a second later. When he looked back at the descending Daisy, he could see tiny buds growing out from where the leaves had been launched, meaning that the attack wasn’t a one-time thing.

“How do we kill them—hold on!”

In his peripheral vision, he saw more Daisies jumping along the sides of the Pattern box, their spring-like roots allowing them even more horizontal momentum than vertical, and over a dozen Daisies launched volleys of sharp leaves at them. He abruptly took them up while still moving away from the attacks, increasing the strain on his focus, but it caused the leafy projectiles to pass by harmlessly underneath.

Unfortunately, when he looked back and below, he saw dozens of the Daisy monsters springing after them, moving quickly enough that they were keeping up with his current speed. He could go faster, of course, but that would also put even more strain on his focus, meaning that he wouldn’t be able to keep it up for long; if he doubled his speed at that height, he estimated he could keep it up for an hour or so. But if he was forced to stop, and these Daisies followed them as incessantly as the Locusts, then it would only be a matter of time before they caught up.

“Being a plant, they also absorb water, so no water stream, but the icy spikes and flying stones should work. Martials have the easiest time against them though, because they don’t have as much physical resistance as magical,” Nedira informed him.

“Well, attacking them with my halberd doesn’t seem likely right now, so its back to filling them full of stones, I guess.”

As he kept the Pattern box moving away, speeding it up slightly so that he kept ahead of the springing Daisies, Larek and Nedira started firing off flying slivers of stone, aiming to cut through the bouncing flowers. It was surprisingly difficult, because the Daisies were apparently much more intelligent than the Locusts, as they could twist themselves in the air to avoid the projectiles, and even when taking a hit was inevitable, they used their petals and eye as a shield, causing the stone shards they shot to bounce off. They didn’t do no damage, but it was negligible even when they increased the Magnitude and had larger projectiles.

So, they switched to Icy Spikes, which had the benefit of breaking apart when they were blocked, which seemed to slow down the red flowers for a few seconds before the ice particles melted and were absorbed. With them moving slower, they were able to work together to finally cut through the stem of one of the Daisies, and it fell to the ground cut in half, mostly dead even before it made impact.

But the process was slow-going, especially once the pursuing Daisies got into a rhythm with each other and there was a constant barrage of sharp leaves shot out at them every few seconds. He was able to block a few of them with his Pattern shield, but he found that simply moving the box was easier and less strain on his focus; at the same time, though, it also made coordinating their own attacks difficult if they were forced to move all the time.

“This isn’t working,” Larek shouted, the wind whipping past them making it hard to speak other than by yelling. “There’s just too many of them.” He began to think about what he might have in his Void Pocket pack that might help them, but he couldn’t think of any Fusions that would work properly in the current situation. One example was the Stone Shredder Dome, which could help them deflect some of the leaves, but that would be purely defensive in nature; the problem wasn’t defense, but offense. He could protect them with a number of different Fusions, but their main offensive Fusion – the VREP on their staves – wasn’t working as well as they would’ve liked.

He had over 100 of his Weaken Fusions on some stones that would explode when he threw them, but getting the range and his aim correct when he was constantly having to move around the Pattern box would be extremely difficult. Even if he managed to perfectly throw each one, he didn’t have enough to get them all. He wasn’t sure of their numbers, but he counted at least half again as many as the Weaken stones he had, so it would only slow down the inevitable.

Most of his powerful offensive Fusions weren’t designed for a situation like this.

Now, if they were on the ground, then that would be a completely different story… hmm, that might work.

“I’m setting down!”

She looked at him like he was crazy. “What?! No!”

“It’s our only chance! Don’t worry, I’ll keep you safe!”

Before he did that, he dug into his sack and pulled out a few Fusions, slipping them into his belt pockets so that he didn’t have to go looking for them later. Once they were secured, he warned Nedira to hold on as he sped up considerably, using his focus to widen the lead they had on the flowers, until they were almost imperceptible along the horizon. At that point, he set down the box.

“This is going to be a little uncomfortable, but it’s the only way I can ensure that you’re safe.” He explained what he was planning, and despite her unhappy look, she didn’t protest. As she sat on the ground and crossed her legs maintaining a comfortable position, he formed a simple dome made of Pattern Cohesion and placed it over her, leaving small, randomly placed holes in the dome so that she could both see out of it and breath. When that was formed, he also placed a Secure Hideaway Fusion nearby and activated it, making her disappear and with an extra measure of safety.

Quickly running 50 feet away, he maintained the Pattern dome while he dug out more Fusions from his belt pockets and started setting everything up. He finished just before the first of the Red Spring Daisies arrived, and he pulled his halberd out of his Void Pocket sack, ready to show these stupid flowers why they shouldn’t mess with someone who had spent a good portion of their life cutting down plants much tougher than them.