The Fusionist Book 5 -- Chapter 22

Chapter 22

“This is taking more getting used to than I thought it would, but I think I’m getting the hang of it.” Larek fired another barrage of flaming balls out of his staff toward the Ethertoads down below the Pattern box, and fortunately one of them managed to clip the leg of the jumping monster as it attempted to flee. The oily substance that covered its entire body immediately lit on fire and a second later – while it was still airborne – the Ethertoad was engulfed in flames. As soon as it landed on the scorched rock it had been jumping toward, it exploded, sending flaming globs of its body in every direction.

The Fusionist ducked down below the edge of the box, which was higher up on his body than he was used to, and he avoided the bodily assault on their transportation. The Ethertoads were dangerous only if you got too close, because they tended to explode naturally when they were killed, as a fire was released from inside to light the highly flammable substance covering their bodies. Nedira said that the most common way of defeating them was to light them on fire ahead of time from afar, though that was easier said than done when the 5-foot-tall monsters could jump up to 250 feet horizontally in a single bound. Thankfully, they couldn’t reach past about 60 feet vertically, but that also meant that Larek had to hold the Pattern box up higher, which strained his focus a bit. Thankfully, it wasn’t nearly as bad as it was when he had fled from the two groups wanting to kill him the day before, but it was something he couldn’t hold for more than an hour without needing a rest.

But it was necessary, because Larek needed to practice using his new body.  While it was the same shape, being shorter also meant slightly shorter arms, hands, and fingers, which messed with his aim when using the staff. Even holding his new axe was slightly odd, but his Axe Handling Skill helped to bridge the gap between his experience and the unfamiliar grip; his experience with the staff and the VREP Fusion on it was something else entirely.

Over the last half hour, he had practiced against the Ethertoads along the edge of the large, dry, desert-like territory of this Aperture to make himself more familiar with using it. He wasn’t completely comfortable yet, but even that little bit of practice had been able to improve the handling of his staff and his aim.

“I can tell,” Nedira said, looking over the side at the still-flaming devastation below. “Want to keep practicing or should we work on closing the Aperture?” she asked.

Larek thought about it for a moment before deciding to move on. He directed the Pattern box outside of the territory and set it down, allowing himself a few minutes of rest before he reconstructed it for their push toward the center of the territory.

Ideally, the Fusionist would’ve liked to spend a little more time practicing, if for only one reason: this was the only Aperture they had detected along their route east. That wasn’t entirely true, of course, because it was hard to ignore the feeling of the Calamity to the north, but that wasn’t something that either of them wanted to tackle at the moment. It was also why there were going east instead of northeast for the time, because they were attempting to go around the large Aperture in order to get to Rushwood instead of traveling through it.

But going east quickly revealed that most of the Apertures in the area were already closed. If he was understanding the situation correctly, then he could only assume that the people who had been so nasty to him the day before were part of the force that were containing the Calamity so that it didn’t become any bigger; at the same time, they were likely keeping all of the nearby Apertures closed so that they ensured the surrounding land was as safe as possible. It made sense, he supposed, because as long as their “base” was secured, they could venture into the Calamity’s territory without fear of what they would find when they came back.

It was smart; Larek just wished those people hadn’t been so blindly stupid when they had met with him. But it wasn’t like he was going to go back to them now that he was shorter and unlikely to raise their ire; they had burnt that bridge with their attitudes, and unfortunately for them and their people, they would have to live with the consequences. He frankly didn’t have the patience to deal with them again, so he decided that there was no reason to.

But that didn’t mean he would treat everyone they came across the same way. Nedira mentioned that it was a strong possibility that if those people had been watching over that portion of the Calamity, then it stood to reason that there would be more along the perimeter. That seemed to be the case because even though they had traveled for dozens of miles since they left early that morning, all of the nearby Apertures were closed. It was only this single one with the Ethertoads that had caught his attention as they floated along, which was why they were set to close it.

Not only was closing it beneficial for anyone living nearby, but he still needed more Aetheric Force. This manipulation of his internal Pattern had given him an additional 4 Levels in his Pattern Manipulation Skill, bringing it to its recently increased max of 55, so he needed to up it yet again so that he could keep gaining Levels. Already he’d gained enough from his target practice against the Ethertoads to bring the maximum up to 56, but he wanted to get it to at least 60 as soon as possible.

Larek ignored the few Ethertoads he saw on his way toward the center of the territory, arriving at their destination within a few minutes. Without hesitation, he sent a flaming ball toward the Aperture, causing it to shrink by the tiniest amount – and the fight was on. Within seconds, the hoppy monsters came bounding toward them, their jumps carrying them hundreds of feet at a time. Before long, there were dozens of them all clustered together underneath the Pattern box, but none of them could reach the two up above, as they were approximately 100 feet above the ground and out of their vertical jumping range.

Not that they didn’t try, of course, as they continued to jump in attempts to get to Larek and Nedira, but whatever they did was futile.

“Think that’s all of them?” he asked, looking down next to the powerful Naturalist.

“Hmm… I think so,” she answered. As he began to aim his staff downward, she stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Are you sure this thing can handle it?”

He didn’t answer right away, even though he was confident that the strength of his Pattern box – with 11,250 of his Pattern Cohesion invested into it – could handle just about anything. Instead, he simply rose the box into the air another 30 feet. “Should be fine, but it doesn’t hurt to be too careful.”

With only another second of hesitation, he unleashed a barrage of over 20 flaming balls downward in a random pattern, before pulling the staff back up and ducking down below the edge. For two seconds, nothing happened, and he worried that he had completely missed every single Ethertoad down below. Just as he was shifting to get up in order to try again, he heard the first explosion and saw burning toad parts flying past the box in the distance, as the explosion sent them careening far and wide.

But that was just the start.

One explosion after another, each of them coming within seconds of each other battered at their eardrums, the horrific sound of monsters exploding all clustered together creating a cacophony of death that was difficult to listen to. Looking above the edge of the box, he saw hundreds of flaming globs of body parts rocketing by, and dozens more he could feel impacting the bottom and sides of his Pattern construct. As he had thought, it held up remarkably well against the burning projectiles, though he wondered how well it would handle the actual explosions if they were a lot closer—

Something out of the corner of his eye made him quickly react to shield Nedira with his body. A dead-but-not-yet-exploded Ethertoad passed closely by the Pattern box, which he could only guess was launched upward from the force of the other explosions, but he didn’t get a chance to wonder anymore on how it got up there, as he felt and heard it detonate only about 25 feet away from them. His Agility stat was high enough that he was able to move and cover most of Nedira as the force wave of the explosion pushed him slightly into her, but fortunately he was strong enough to keep himself from squishing her.

That was only the start, however, as burning body parts from the monster slammed into him, his Automatic Ice Repulsion Field Fusion on his clothes activating to deflect most of them away. Even Nedira’s Fusion activated a few times on the parts of her body that weren’t covered by Larek, but they could only do so much against the sheer number of flaming globs that seemed to target them. His Field ran out of charges just before the end and he was hit by a piece of burning bone and slimy flesh in the back, and he could feel it try and penetrate his clothing, but ultimately failed to cut through – but the pressure was enough to mess up his flesh and even create a small crack in one of his ribs.

When it was all over a few seconds later, he collapsed to the side, already activating his Healing Surge to fix the damage. Lared picked up and threw out the few burning pieces of toad flesh that managed to land inside the box, which had fortunately missed their Void Pocket bags, and he looked over to ensure that Nedira had come away unscathed. She was already getting to her feet and looking over the side when he did the same, and she started laughing as she stared at the scene down below. He joined her a second later as he looked at the absolute carnage that had been wrought upon the Ethertoad population, as well as the landscape, which had a literal crater where the monsters had been the most concentrated. Even better, the explosion was so violent that it ended up closing the Aperture, meaning that their job there was done.

A few seconds into their laughter, Larek was suddenly inundated with Corrupted Aetheric Force that came from the slain Ethertoads, as his actions had directly led to their deaths, even though it was technically a chain reaction caused by a single one exploding. Based on how much it was, he thought that he would have at least enough to bring Pattern Manipulation’s maximum Level up a few more times once it was available for him to use.

“I guess that’s one way to do it,” Nedira said, still giggling at the chaotic scene. “This feels like it’s cheating, but it certainly did contain a bit of danger there at the end.”

He nodded, amazed at how quickly it had all happened. At the same time, he knew that if he had been even a tiny bit slower in shielding Nedira, she might have been seriously hurt or killed if her Automatic Ice Repulsion Field had run out of charges. He resolved to rework the Fusion a little, because now that they were in the Kingdom with a higher Mana density, it could afford to last longer before it shut down. It still used a bit of ambient Mana to power it, but so far they hadn’t had any problems with sucking an entire area dry of Mana.

“Are you alright?” she asked, turning away from the destruction. “Thank you for protecting me, by the way.”

He shrugged, giving her a smile at the same time. “I’m fine. I was hit once by a piece of that one, but I’m already healed.” Looking her over, he spotted a few drops of blood that seemed to have leaked from her ears. Reaching up, he moved her hair aside and wiped it away as he looked for the injury. “The better question is, are you alright?”

“Oh, I’m fine. The explosion blasted my eardrums wide open from its proximity, but the Graduated Parahealing took care of it quickly.”

“Ah, good.” While he knew that it was loud, his body – even his ears – had been able to withstand the sound shockwave without any problems. Thankfully, she seemed fairly nonchalant after having her ears blown out.

“So, where to next?”

The answer to that was to continue heading east, which he quickly started them heading that way once he brought them back down to a cruising altitude of only about 15 feet above the surface. It didn’t take long for them to exit the Ethertoads’ territory, and they skirted the edge of the Calamity, which was always present in his awareness.  He was still shocked at how powerful it was, but after a while it had faded into the background; he knew where it was at all times, but it didn’t consume his complete attention anymore like when he first felt it.

Three hours later, as they passed over gently rolling hills, grasslands, and random stands of trees, they finally spotted an overgrown dirt road. Following it for the next few minutes, they came across an abandoned village containing around a dozen buildings, most of them half-destroyed or even burned down to their foundations.  While Nedira didn’t seem too shocked to see it, this was the first example that Larek had seen in person of the devastation that had rocked the Kingdom over the last few years. Sure, he’d seen the refugees back in Tarvada, but he hadn’t actually seen the destruction that had been visited upon Harvana – where those refugees had come from.

He couldn’t help but think of Rushwood suffering the same fate, and he was even more eager to head north and ensure that his family was safe.

Another few minutes past the sad sight of the destroyed village saw a slight change in the overall landscape, as they passed abandoned farmsteads along the road they followed that seemed to have been sandwiched in between Aperture territories, reaching out toward the horizon. It took another few hours as the sun was getting low in the sky before they finally saw something a bit more substantial in the distance.

A walled city.

As much as he wanted to keep moving and get to his family after seeing the devastation that had been enacted over the countryside, he was aware that it was already getting late in the day and it was just about time that he set down and rest his focus after traveling via Pattern box for so long.

Besides, stopping and visiting the city would give them an opportunity to potentially sleep in a real bed, buy some new clothes to replace his now too-large attire, and to discover any information that could be had about the area and the Calamity in general. Plus, he really wanted to see how his new appearance held up to the general population; being able to move freely through a city without having to worry about being assaulted by everyone would be a novel experience. Sure, he’d experienced something similar with the ring that Shinpai had given him, but there was also the paranoia of being found out by those with strong enough minds to see through the Fusion’s effects.

But now he didn’t have to worry about that. He actually was his current height and there was no misdirection or illusion involved.

“Given that they seem more organized than the last city we stayed in, I’m hoping that they might even have some information about my brother’s whereabouts,” Nedira mentioned as they were setting down about two miles out from the city. They would have to walk the rest of the way, of course, but he didn’t want to appear in the middle of the city in the middle of a flying, glowing box. While he wasn’t exactly trying to remain inconspicuous, there was a difference between not trying to stand out and announcing his presence to everyone inside the city.

“That would be great! They might even have information on where to find Verne or the others, though don’t get your hopes up too far,” he cautioned her. “This is only the first place that doesn’t appear to be completely cut off from everything else, so it might take a little longer to find them. But rest assured,” he said, putting his hand on her shoulder, “I will do whatever I can to find them.”

“I know you will, Larek.  I’m just worried that it’s already too late.”

He gently squeezed her shoulder as she stared at the city in the distance. “Don’t lose hope; we’ll find them.”

Nedira just nodded, before leading the way toward the city, her Void Pocket bag over her shoulder. Larek quickly caught up to her and slung his own Void Pocket sack over his shoulder after storing his staff inside, as he matched her walking speed on her right. Before they had gone more than a hundred feet, Nedira reached out and caught his empty left hand, holding it tightly at first as if she was afraid to let go. He gently squeezed it back, nonverbally letting her know that he understood her worries, but that he was there to help her. She eventually relaxed and simply held his hand after a while without it feeling like she was trying to strangle the life out of it, and Larek realized that simply holding hands with her would’ve been a bit more difficult if he was still a foot and a half taller.

Yet another reason it was a smart idea to reduce my height.

A smile crossed his face as he walked hand in hand with Nedira toward the bustling city in the distance.