The Fusionist Book 4 -- Chapter 61

(This is the final chapter of book 4, though I still have an epilogue that I'll be writing on Sunday)

Chapter 61

Unfortunately, as much as Larek wanted to have some sort of control over his body, Tactician Mind apparently only gave him a miniscule amount of influence over it. As soon as Furious Rampage and Consuming Speed activated, he found himself much stronger and moving at three times the speed he normally moved as his Agility was tripled, but this also aided in increasing his Intellect and Acuity, working together to allow his enraged self a clarity that he didn’t have before when he'd lost control of his actions like this.

The increased perception and awareness due to his new Battle Art helped him to determine the ideal way to accomplish his goal, which at the moment was to break out of the monster encirclement. With blinding speed, he moved toward the massive, coiled snake, which began to move as soon as he took a step. While it normally struck so quickly that it was a blur to anyone else watching, the way it moved its fanged jaws toward where he used to be appeared to be moving in slow motion. It didn’t take long before he was close enough to jump, using his boosted Strength, and then cleanly chop off its head with the aid of a single VEGS activation.

Even before the head was completely separated from its body, he twisted in mid-air to land feet first against its upraised neck, using it as a springboard to move toward the next monster in line, a heavily damaged giant scorpion that had taken the brunt of one of his Weaken stones’ explosions but managed to keep one of its claws intact. He quickly landed on its back and chopped down, releasing another VEGS in the process of slicing through its upper back and causing its already-mangled face to explode from the inside. He crouched and then sprang off toward the next monster just in time to avoid the tail and stinger intending to stab him in the back that was already in motion.

Moving from one to another, he was so quick that none of them had a chance to even react more than moving a few feet one way or another by the time he arrived to absolutely demolish whatever defenses they had. Finishing off the last of them, one of the long-tongued frogs, he ran away and looked toward the possessed people, only to find that at some point the massive worm had worked its way in between them and his current position.

The rage was still fueling his actions, and while his mind had been able to influence his body’s angle and method of attack against the other monsters to make better use of positioning and momentum, it could do absolutely nothing to dissuade it from tearing through the worm to get to its goal rather than jump over or run around it, which he would’ve been more than capable of at that point. Instead, he rushed forward and swung his axe into the side of the worm, biting deep, before releasing a trio of VEGS spheres, intending to start cutting his way through to get to the possessed people on the other side.

On the third activation of the powerful Fusion, the little portion of Larek’s mind that was able to process the ever-changing information of the battlefield noticed something worrying. As his body automatically began to withdraw the axe to strike again, his Tactical Mind screamed at him, startling his reflexes so much that he ended up letting the handle of the axe go as he stumbled backwards. The reason for the scream came a split-second later as one of the concerns over Fusion misuse and stress on the VEGS formation was revealed, when his mind detected that the formation had cracked and was in the process of leaking Mana.

Despite the furious rage flowing through almost every fiber of his being, his instincts kicked in as he immediately turned around and fled, using all the Agility he could squeeze out of his body to run away. His muscles were screaming as he pushed them to the edge of what they could handle, but even his frantic run was just barely enough to escape being blown to bits as the Fusion on his best friend fractured completely, releasing all the Mana inside in a massive detonation that shattered the other Fusion on the tool, igniting a chain reaction that expanded outward with such intensity that Larek was lifted off his feet and sent flying – a common occurrence over the last few minutes.

As he tumbled through the air, unable to stop himself, the enraged Combat Fusionist was both extremely satisfied and absolutely devastated to look back and see the enormous worm being completely obliterated.  The explosion was so great that it ended up bowling over every possessed person from the shockwave, though they were saved from the worst of the damage due to the detonation happening from inside the worm.

Even as he landed from where he had been flung, the knowledge that his best friend, the same axe that he had acquired back in the Kingdom in Barrowford, had been irretrievably destroyed in the explosion ignited the rage to a whole new level. His Tactician Mind was barely able to hold onto what little control it had as his body ignored the numerous injuries that he’d sustained from the explosion, as it ran and limped toward the fallen possessed people, intending to kill them all with his bare hands if possible.

His plans were foiled when Consuming Speed wore off, dropping his Agility back down to normal levels, causing him to stumble and fall flat on his face from the abrupt change in his situation. The loss of speed also brought with it an overwhelming exhaustion as all the abuse his body had been put through hit him all at once, and it was all he could do to prevent himself from falling into unconsciousness.

As he dragged himself back to his feet, the anger still raging through every part of his existence, he noticed that the possessed ones were already up and looking straight at him. Before they could begin to attack him utilizing the very Fusions he had created for his companions to use, he began to create a Pattern sun to tear through their shadowy bodies inside their hosts.

However, Larek stopped before he even begun as his Tactician Mind immediately identified a problem.

He didn’t have enough Pattern Cohesion to create and keep the sun going. His Battle Arts, namely Furious Rampage and Consuming Speed, had drained his Body stat by 30% and 60% respectively, which was directly connected to his Pneuma. As a result, he had lost 90% of his Pattern Cohesion, and while it had gained 60% of the maximum back when Consuming Speed ended, it didn’t replace what had been lost. It was currently regenerating, but he barely had a little over 3,600 Pattern Cohesion at the moment.

With a growl, his body got to its feet to enact its plan of ripping everyone apart, but his mind had other plans. Tapping into the desire to kill the Umbral Demons, he leveraged this desire into a new manipulation of his Pattern. Instead of a huge sun that sent his Demon-destroying soul everywhere, he realized he only needed it to go in a certain direction – right toward the possessed people ahead of him. With a thought on the form he wanted, 500 small icicle-like objects appeared in front of him, glowing with the same energy he saw in his Pattern shield and the sun. The use of almost all his Pattern Cohesion nearly made him collapse into unconsciousness yet again, but he managed to hold on by falling back to his knees, his vision going double as exhaustion dragged him down.

I’m only going to get one shot at this….

As the shortswords held by Pyluxa and Hakkin raised up to start filling him full of magical elemental projectiles, Larek infused the 500 floating icicles around him with the function he wanted them perform, and they shot off toward the upright possessed people so quickly that it was barely visible.  They traveled in a flattened cone-like pattern, passing through each and every single one of them without any resistance; once they entered the bodies, the stopped… and then detonated in a shower of shadow-destroying light, shredding the Umbral Demons inside.

Pattern Manipulation has reached Level 30!

You have reached Level 32 and have 23 available AP to distribute!

Congratulations—

Larek dismissed the rest of the notification as the unearthly sounds of every single Demon possessing the bodies screamed in pain as they were essentially erased from existence; it was enough to snap Larek out of the all-consuming anger that had overwhelmed him, while at the same time deactivating his Furious Rampage, making Larek feel weak as he slumped in place. Somehow, he managed to grasp at the fading edges of his consciousness as his body wanted to give up and either die or pass out, and he lifted his head as he heard the last of the Demon screams fade away as they, too, left the world.

*CRACK*

The Combat Fusionist would’ve whipped his head up at the sound if he had been able to move that quickly, but the best he could do was turn slowly toward the Aperture in the distance as it began to make noise.

*CRACK* *CRACK*

The entire cavern began to brighten as the shadowy energy that had seemed to envelop the massive Aperture unfurled from the portal to another world, dissipating like smoke as it released its grip. At the same time, enormous cracks ran through its surface like it was made of glass; it took his exhausted mind a few seconds to realized it was because the Aperture was beginning to expand, swelling in size until its normal exterior couldn’t hold it all in. More and more cracks occurred around the Aperture, reverberating through the cavern with sharp reports, and all Larek could do was watch. He was distantly aware that he was probably in danger, as it seemed as though it was just about to explode, and after suffering from or causing quite a few explosions himself that day, he knew that if it had that same kind of energy released upon detonation, he wasn’t going to survive. In fact, if its physical size was any indication of the size of the explosion, then it was possible that half the underworld tunnels under the desert would collapse. There was no running from it, and he had absolutely nothing left to give to try and prevent it from happening.

If it was going to kill him, then there was nothing he could do.

Growing larger and larger, straining at the invisible bonds that kept it all in one piece, the Aperture expanded until it was half again as large as it started.  Larek expected every moment to be his last, so when it finally happened with the sound of a million glass panes breaking simultaneously, he wasn’t surprised.

What was surprising was that the expected explosion didn’t kill him, nor did it seem to harm anything in the cavern. Instead, what was released wasn’t the destructive energies he was used to in a Weaken stone detonation, but simply an explosion of bound Apertures finally released from their bondage. Just as the people possessed by the Umbral Demons had no choice over their enslavement, so too were the hundreds of Apertures that had originally been found around the underground world of the Lowenthal desert. When what was keeping them there had been broken, they exploded outward in a riot of different colors as they shot by him and out of the cavern, passing through the solid stone as if it wasn’t there. It was as if they had been pulled toward this central Aperture originally by the Demons, but now that their influence was gone, they were snapping back to their original locations.

Best of all, they were all small enough that he was almost positive that they were all in their “closed” state – including the only remaining Aperture in the cavern, which was extremely small and therefore only gave off a little light in the otherwise completely dark space.

Breathing heavily with a shaky breath, Larek closed his eyes and started to drift away, the knowledge of having accomplished his goal relaxing him enough that consciousness just seemed like an unnecessary chore more than anything. However, the acute despair that pierced his mind at what that successful accomplishment had cost him woke him back up. My… axe…. My best friend is gone…. Gharix… Abarcen… Pyluxa… all the others—

At the thought of all the possessed people, his eyes flew open and he groaned as he began to move. Picking himself off the floor to get to his feet was too much for his body at the moment, so he was forced to essentially crawl toward the fallen and alarmingly still people who recently had their Demons exorcised so completely. He could barely even see them because the glow that had lit the area had disappeared along with the massive Aperture, but he fortunately found one of his Adjustable Illumination stones approximately 50 feet away from his position, so once he had it, he used it to see where he was going.

When he finally arrived at the edge of the crowd, he spotted Gharix first, his dual knives seemingly unharmed from everything that had happened, and the Fusions on his armor appeared undamaged. As for the Drekkin himself, he appeared to be breathing, which was a very good sign, though the fact that he nor anyone else had woken up was a great concern. He didn’t stop on his crawl as he passed by the group leader, followed by the familiar faces of Abarcen and the other Martials, as well as the two Mages, Pyluxa and Hakkin. He also crawled around the Drekkin who was holding the bow that had nearly killed him multiple times, but he ignored them almost completely; he had a different goal and didn’t want to be distracted.

Dozens of others he managed to crawl by, though there were a few of them he had to crawl over to get to where he was heading. Like a ray of sunshine peeking out from behind the clouds, he was finally greeted by the sight that had sent him in a fury in the first place. The sprawled figure wasn’t moving, just like all of the other fallen former possessed people he’d passed by, but that only worried him more.

Dragging himself the rest of the distance to his destination, Larek knelt by the figure’s side, before slipping his arm gently under their head, lifting them up so he could get a better look. Other than a few scratches on the face, which were minor and not that concerning to him, there didn’t seem to be anything physically wrong with them. A gentle shake had no response at all, so it didn’t appear as if they – and everyone else – was simply asleep.

Instead, he was worried that the minds and souls of everyone here had been so irreparably damaged that they simply… didn’t exist anymore. He wasn’t planning on giving up, however, as his own experience with a Demon trying to take over his body and the information he gained from them led him to believe that neither the mind nor the body was destroyed – it was simply locked away. Now, he just had to figure out how to unlock whatever was keeping them locked up and free their minds and souls so that they could reestablish a connection with their bodies.

Delicately taking a bit of his Pattern, which had regenerated to just over 250 by this point, he formed it into an insubstantial net and ran it through the small body he was holding in his hands, trying to see if there was any remnant of the Umbral Demon left behind. He figured that if it was some sort of shadow ability, similar to how the monsters had been reformed into solidified shadows, then his Pattern might be able to detect it or possibly even disrupt it. However, a thorough investigation with his Pattern revealed absolutely nothing wrong, no lingering actions by the Umbral Demon being evident no matter where he looked.

Quickly trying everything he could think of to discover a means of waking the former possessed person up with their mind and soul intact, Larek was growing desperate. “No, no, no! This can’t be happening!” he cried, clutching the small body to his chest as he rocked back and forth, unbidden tears tracking down his cheeks.

After a few minutes of wallowing in despair, an idea occurred to him of something he could try, but he almost immediately dismissed it. Not just because he had already told himself that he wouldn’t try and use it again, but because its use was completely unreliable and he didn’t know precisely how to activate it. Looking back down at the slack face in his arms, the practically empty shell of a person that would likely die for real if he didn’t do anything, his resolve crumbled in the face of possibility.

With a deep breath to settle his nerves, he cradled the head of the woman in the crook of his right arm, the reddish-gold hair splayed out over his sleeve and the bare skin of his forearm. The next moment, he bent his head down to her ear and spoke, directing every iota of feeling and instruction into the words.

“Wake up, Nedira. Your body and mind are yours again; you just have to reach out and take it back.”

There was a power completely unrelated to his Mana or Stama that seemed to flow out of his throat when he spoke, and he could almost see it settle upon the delicate woman’s head like a sprinkling of summer rain. The Dominion magic disappeared into her skin, absorbed into her body, and at first nothing happened, leading Larek further into despair.

Just when he had given up hope, he felt a stir along his leg as her hand twitched slightly, rubbing against his knee, and a moment later Nedira’s eyes fluttered open, staring up at the darkness above them before settling on his own eyes.

Smiling dreamily, the woman stared at him lethargically before they opened wide in surprise. “Who—Larek?” she suddenly asked, as if she was just now realizing that she knew his name.  “What are you doing here?”

He smiled down at her, completely overwhelmed with joy that she not only had recovered, but she also seemed to remember him as well.

“I was just about to ask you the same thing.”