The Fusionist Book 5 -- Chapter 35

Chapter 35

Larek reviewed his schedule again as he finished up with breakfast. Fortunately, it wasn’t that hard to remember, as more than half of it was working directly with Senior Instructor Torge. As he looked around the sparsely populated Dining Hall, he wondered if anyone else received this kind of one-on-one attention; immediately, he knew that it was unlikely that they didn’t, so that could be another source of contention between him and the other students. He already had his higher stats that made him stand out, but now with getting personal training from the Senior Instructor?

Yeah, that is probably going to be a problem.

While it had been a while since he’d been at Copperleaf Academy, let alone Crystalview, he still remembered how busy the Dining Halls were during mealtimes – and this was definitely only a fraction of the sometimes-crazy breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. The biggest difference between his previous experiences and this wasn’t that they were Martials instead of Mages, but rather it was that they were a larger variety of ages. He didn’t feel out of place for his age now, as he saw trainees ranging from age 12 or 13 to nearly 30, nor was he uncomfortable because of his height; instead, he felt slightly out of place because he was the newest arrival, sat by himself, and was the only one not dressed in at least some sort of protective armor – whether leather or something sturdier – and didn’t have a weapon on him. He, again, left his favorite axe in his room instead of bringing it with him, not because he didn’t like it anymore, but because he figured he would be learning how to use something else.

Such as an actual weapon as defined by Martial Skills.

Larek could hear a few conversations about him coming from the different cliques that seemed to have formed between the trainees, though he fortunately didn’t have to put up with any of them coming over and attempting to bully the new kid like Nedira warned him might happen—

“Hey, newbie!”

Larek closed his eyes and sighed, completely aware that he just jinxed himself with his thoughts. He opened them a moment later and glanced over at the one who had spoken, discovering him to be a young man who appeared to be around Larek’s age, surrounded by three women from the Kingdom at another table.

“My name is Larek. How may I help you?” he asked politely, hoping to head off whatever confrontation this was going to turn out to be before it happened.

“Larek, huh? Lemme ask you sumptin’, alright?” The young man’s accent was strange, but he understood it well enough; it was much better than the speech he heard from the Ectorians back in the Empire, at least.

He really wanted to respond to the question with, “You just did,” but he held his tongue. “Go ahead,” he said instead.

“Do you wanna to spar with us later? Anastasia needs ‘nother Brawler to test herself against, and she’s too shy to ask.”

That was not anything like what he was expecting. He was so shocked that he paused for a second to collect his thoughts before responding. “Brawler?”

“Yeah, ya know, someone who uses they fists to fight? I figured since ain’t got no weapon that ya punch things, like our ‘Stasia here.”

Larek looked at the women that were sharing the table with him, and he immediately picked out the one who the man was likely referring to. She was staring at the table and not looking at him, as if she was too afraid to meet his eyes. A sudden memory of his own social ineptitude back when he first attended Crystalview Academy flashed through his mind; while he wasn’t completely over those types of things, he remembered being shy and worried that he would cause offense if he simply spoke to someone. He immediately felt bad for her, knowing firsthand how much that could affect your interactions with other people… but he wasn’t exactly sure if he was the right person for it.

“I wouldn’t mind that sometime, but this is technically my first real day here. I guarantee I would not be a proper sparring partner right now, but hopefully when I’ve had a chance to learn more I would be more fitting.”

“Ah, I’m sure ya will be fine! You made it here, afta all!”

He shook his head. “I’m here as, well, a special case. And I’m technically not even a Brawler; I just don’t have a weapon that I’m proficient in yet.”

The four of them looked at him, even the shy Anastasia, in disbelief, which quickly turned to anger in the case of the young man. “If you don’t wanna to spar, you don’t have to lie ‘bout yaself.  C’mon, let’s go,” he said, addressing the women, and they got up to leave after giving him frosty glares.

And here I was thinking it was that woman that had a bit of social ineptitude. Apparently, I still know how to put my foot in my mouth without even trying.

Disappointed in his first real interaction with the other trainees, Larek did his best to ignore the looks as he finally decided where to put his available AP. He had managed to increase his Throwing and Body Regeneration Skills each by one the day before, bringing them to 21 and 40 respectively; it was also enough to push him over into personal Level 36, netting him an additional 25 AP to spend on his stats. As directed, he’d spent most of the remaining day before attempting to control or subjugate his Stama, with no luck; he held off spending his AP until he had time to think about it – and to review his upcoming training schedule.

Based on what he thought he would be doing, as well as considering what he was doing here at the Fort in the first place, he ended up placing 24 AP into his Martials stats, divided equally among them – bringing them all to 133. As a result of his Body stat increasing, so too did his Pneuma, bringing it to 4,788 and 47,880 Pattern Cohesion when he had all of his boosts active. His extra single AP he kept in reserve in case he found a need for it at some point in the future.

Overall, it was what he needed in order to survive his jam-packed training schedule.

Monster Knowledge/Aperture Closure – 9am to 9:50am

Classroom 102

Group Tactics – 10am to 10:50am

Training Hall 110

Stama and Battle Arts – 11am to 11:50am

Training Hall 115

Lunch – 12pm to 12:50pm

Dining Hall 1

Private Instruction/Strength and Body Training – 1pm to 1:50pm

Workout Gym B

Private Instruction/Agility Training – 2pm to 2:50pm

Obstacle Course A

Private Instruction/Weapon Training – 3pm to 3:50pm

Mock Arena 5

Private Instruction/Combat Awareness – 4pm to 4:50pm

Mock Arena 5

Private Instruction/Stama Subjugation – 5pm to 5:50pm

Training Hall 205

Independent Training – 6pm to 9pm

His schedule was dropped off by none other than the Senior Instructor the night before, who went over it with him briefly before leaving. The main point that his new “mentor” of sorts wanted to impart to him was that while he would be attending a group Stama and Battle Arts class which was mandatory, Larek would use it more for an opportunity to see the two  being used than to participate himself. For attempts to learn how to control his own, that would wait until the end of the day.

Larek finished going over everything and judging by the time, it was time for him to head to his first class. As he left the Dining Hall, he received some additional glances in his direction from those that witnessed the confrontation earlier, but thankfully none of them appeared too hostile – more curious as to what had happened.

Finding his first class was easy, as most of the classrooms and training areas that were being used were on the first floor; he had some private instruction from Senior Instructor Torge later on the second floor, but for the most part his training would be handled either on the first floor or in the outside training areas. For Monster Knowledge/Aperture Closure, which he supposed was designed to teach trainees about the monsters they might face and the basics of closing Apertures, his lessons were inside a rather large classroom.

It turned out that the classroom was big enough to fit every single trainee at the Fort, all 286 of them once they all filed in to start the class. Larek was wondering how this was going to work because everyone started at different times; that question was quickly answered as the entire trainee population was broken up into 10 different sections within the room, all but Larek knowing where they were supposed to sit. Each section contained those who arrived around the same time or had knowledge around the same levels, and 10 different Instructors oversaw these different sections.

It was confusing at first, as it didn’t make sense to have everyone in the same classroom when they could’ve easily found different classrooms for each section. Again, that was answered when the first 10 minutes was taken over by Senior Instructor Torge, who addressed the entire trainee population with news of the Kingdom, the state of the Calamities, and any new information regarding the nearby Apertures that might be pertinent.

“…and so advancements have been made in suppressing the Calamity in the northeastern portion of the Kingdom, with the eventual goal of closing it. The push toward those efforts have been a long time coming, but through the coordination of the remaining members of the SIC, in conjunction with local defensive forces, a plan has been put into place toward an all-or-nothing push toward the center. For those graduating from your training in the next few months, this is likely the general area where you will be assigned, as any and all forces are going to be needed to ensure success.”

That was definitely news to Larek, and it seemed to be news to quite a few of the other trainees. Many didn’t look happy to hear the information, and he could only assume that they were more inclined toward the ideals of the Defend Faction and liked the status quo, but he could be wrong. They could also dislike the fact that they would be assigned to a place that was going to see a lot of dangerous action over the next few months, as that definitely would’ve made him angry if he learned about that when he was originally learning how to be a Mage. Now, of course, he couldn’t care less about that kind of thing, because he was training in order to become stronger, and to eventually take on the Gergasi to get his family back.

If anything, that was going to be even more dangerous than trying to close one of the Calamities.

Larek discovered that the other reason they were in a big classroom was because the different section groups weren’t exactly static. Individuals would drift from one section to another as they jumped ahead in some areas, or went back to a previous one for more information that they might have been lacking.

Naturally, his own section was basically the beginner course, and it was also the largest with a total of 39 people – including himself. Instructor Paldin, the Instructor in charge of those who had been there less than a month, essentially handed out books that everyone had to study and went over the bare-bones basics of Apertures, which seemed like it was familiar information for some of them, but new to others. For Larek, it was all easy enough to follow and the knowledge about common monster types was more of a refresher than anything new; for the information about Apertures, it was all unnecessary.

If anything, with Larek being there during the first Aperture appearance and his experiences closing dozens of them all by himself, he could probably teach this portion of the class. For now, though, he didn’t say anything about his knowledge as he didn’t want to cause more of a scene than he already had in the Dining Hall, especially since he saw the strange-talking young man and the three women with him in a different section earlier.

After Monster Knowledge/Aperture Closure class came something called Group Tactics. This took place in a similar Training Hall as the one he had performed for his evaluation, but this time it wasn’t the entire Fort’s worth of trainees. Instead, just over 60 of them were in his class with him, and it consisted of demonstrations and discussions of tactics that would be best used in a group setting. These included – or was told would eventually include in the future – formations for the best offensive placement, formations for the best defensive placement, strategies for taking down larger monsters, strategies for corralling and eliminating faster monsters, what to do when faced with a flying monster that is out of reach, how to overcome seemingly invulnerable opponents that are immune to physical damage, roles for Martials among a small group, tactics for handling damage output and defense while participating in much larger groups, proper defense priorities if forced to retreat, and identifying targets to ensure maximum damage output while protecting the more vulnerable members of the group.

While only a small portion of that was covered during this first class, what Larek learned was eye-opening; he’d been part of groups before, of course, but he hadn’t really understood the nuances of group cohesion and strategies that the Martial Instructors taught. He, at least, didn’t think he’d made any major mistakes in the past, but he was beginning to see that he definitely could’ve changed his role in the group at times, which would’ve improved the dynamic between them dramatically.

The only drawback to the class was that it was taught by Instructor Hasat, the same sword-wielding Instructor that didn’t like Larek during his evaluation. Fortunately, other than a few disapproving looks in his direction when he arrived, he didn’t have to suffer through any embarrassment or harassment from the Instructor, so he could only hope that the man had put aside his personal feelings for now.

His last class before lunch, and before he started his private instruction with Senior Instructor Torge later, was Stama and Battle Arts – a class he was dreading because he couldn’t participate. Fortunately for him, the even smaller class – around 30 trainees – in another Training Hall was taught by none other than Instructor Wendie, who was already aware of his inability to control his Stama. As a result, he wasn’t called on at all, though this made him stand out a little; given that it was his first day, it wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been, however.

As for the class itself… it was worlds better than he expected. Being able to use his Magical Detection Skill to accurately pinpoint the use of Stama inside of what turned out to be a beginner class of Martials, let him see the beginning stages of Stama Subjugation inside the body.  Of course, even though his fellow trainees were “beginners”, they were still able to cycle their Stama around their bodies, which he quickly learned was used to strengthen their bodies to better utilize the Stama when used in Battle Arts. They could also direct it toward a body part to temporarily enhance its strength or durability by a small amount, like having a minor Boost Fusion for a specific arm or a leg. He was really beginning to understand what he had been told before back when he attended Crystalview, when he learned that Mana was manipulated outside of the body, while Stama was manipulated within.

Yes, as much as he observed, he was still frustrated in his attempts to do the same thing. Sure, he could sense the Stama within his body, but whenever he attempted to grasp it to do what he wanted, it slipped through his mental control like it was a misty cloud. The only time he actually had any kind of control was when he was activating his Battle Arts, and that was what he would consider to be a minor influence; it still seemed to have a mind of its own, but he had at least been able to direct it toward keeping him conscious and away from a scenario that promised certain death the last time he used it. That small win wasn’t exactly what he called control, however.

Despite his failure to get anything going, he still felt like he was making progress as he watched the others directing their Stama around their bodies. That, along with some thoughts on the process from the night before, made him curious to see what he could accomplish once he met with Senior Instructor Torge later.

As if thinking about it made it happen, his Stama and Battle Arts class finished before he knew it, and he was off to lunch. The Dining Hall was again only partially full, and while he didn’t garner any significant attention from those eating or hanging out until their next class, Larek still left as soon as possible so that he wouldn’t be late for his first private instruction class, Strength and Body Training.

I wonder what this class is all about? I mean, I’m already strong and quite durable, so what is this supposed to train?

As he arrived and then waited in Workout Gym B, which seemed to be full of various contraptions, weights, and – for want of a better name – torture devices, he began to have an inkling of what was in store for him.

The sight of the Drekkin’s now-familiar, vicious smile when he walked into the gym only confirmed that Larek was in for a rough time.