The Fusionist Book 4 -- Chapter 59

Chapter 59

While the glow from the stones he had left behind him helped to illuminate the tunnel for a ways, a few of them extremely bright at Magnitude 10 that allowed the light to reach up to 500 feet away, as soon as the passageway he was traveling down began to curve to the right, Larek was forced to use more of the stones to light the way. He only dropped one of them before he decided to keep the rest, using it similarly to his Directional Illumination stone rods, though he kept the Magnitude to no higher than 3. It fortunately wasn’t necessary, as there didn’t seem to be any of the artificially thick darkness in the tunnel, so it was more than enough to light the way.

As he passed through the eerily empty passage, he looked at the walls and noticed that they were filled with Luxite, similar to the ones that comprised almost every other tunnel he’d seen down below the desert; just as the Luxite in the sanctuary had its glow sucked away, so too was the crystal completely inert, as if all the energy keeping it going had been depleted. He made a mental note to ask Gharix what exactly Luxite was and what made it glow, but he was interrupted when, through the normal darkness of the underground tunnel, Larek saw that he was coming to an opening as the walls fell away to either side.

Stepping past the threshold and into what he immediately identified as an enormous, roughly circular cavern, approximately 2,000 feet in diameter. It had an extremely tall ceiling to it, at least 700 feet above the floor if he was to estimate it properly, and the appearance of darkened Luxite continued along the walls and ceiling, though rather than simply looking “dead”, most of it was cracked or damaged in some way.

The floor began to gradually dip down a few dozen feet from the tunnel’s entrance where Larek was standing, and looking around the cavern he could see that the general shape was one of a flat-bottomed bowl, as the center was about 100 feet lower than the edges, forming a perfectly flat, circular stone floor that was about a quarter of the diameter of the entire cavern.

How was he able to see all this, given that everything else was extensively dark up until this point?

The answer to that was the immense Aperture floating 5 feet above the floor, located in the exact center of the cavern, as it stretched to a size larger than anything he’d seen before at 100 feet in diameter. It was a chaotic riot of hundreds of different colors all attempting to compete with each other as they swirled around inside the sphere-shaped Aperture, straining at its boundaries.

While it technically glowed from the chaotic mixture of colors, which was what gave the cavern enough illumination for him to see its full extent, the glow that it gave off was somehow tinged with a darkness, as if the light it gave off was tinted with shadows. It was like looking at the sun giving off its life-giving rays and seeing it altered in a way that it provided no heat and only provided light as an unwanted side effect.

It was uncomfortable to look at directly, as if it was a perversion of nature itself – which was a funny notion in an of itself, considering that the Apertures led to a world of Corruption. Regardless, the shadow-tinted glow was somehow even worse, and even if he hadn’t already been planning on closing it, just the sight of it would prompt just about anyone to do the same.

The Aperture was such a draw to his eye that it momentarily distracted him from what filled the rest of the cavern. As he forced his attention away from the floating portal into another world, he immediately focused on the large number of monsters arrayed in front and around the Aperture, waiting silently where they stood or hovered in the air.

Compared to the darkened tunnel and the hordes of monsters he and the Drekkin had fought, there weren’t that many of them – only about 100. Unfortunately, what they lost in quantity they had gained in quality, as from his position he saw not just 1, but 5 giant scorpions identical to the one he fought up on the surface of the desert, along with small groupings of other large monsters, such as a dozen of the six-legged frogs that had used its tongue to send Larek flying not that long ago, a dozen flying lizards that reminded him of a miniature Cloud Dragon (like the one he had seen outside the walls of Peratin), hulking feathered beasts that looked like a mixture between a bear and an owl, and even a half-dozen coiled snakes that he judged were at least 70 feet long and 3 feet wide as their widest.

But that wasn’t even the worst of them, as there was a single eyeless worm that sat essentially wrapped around the bottom of the Aperture, its girth so hefty that he judged it to be nearly 30 feet in diameter. It wasn’t comparatively long given its width, only about 120 feet or so, but it exuded a palpable strength that Larek could sense even from more than a thousand feet away. The fact that it, along with the rest of the monsters he saw, were colored in dark greys and black chitin, fur, feathers, or scales only enhanced the danger, because he knew that these monsters were all influenced and controlled by the Umbral Demons. After the tunnel where he had used his Pattern sun to wipe out any trace of the Demons there, he thought that he might have killed them all, leaving the monsters he saw unable to move without orders, but now that he was inside the cavern with the Aperture, he was quickly disabused of that notion.

That was because standing in random order down below in the bowl was a large group of peoplestanding unnaturally still as they stared up at the entrance. While he was still far enough away that he couldn’t see many of them clearly, he recognized that almost every single one of them were Drekkin, most with some sort of weapon or armor that they had equipped. A quick look over them with his Magical Detection revealed a half-dozen of them wearing or wielding weapons that had a familiar magical signature to them, which he quickly identified as his own Fusions. It didn’t take long for him to realize that Gharix and the other members of his recent group had already been dragged down below and possessed, with their souls having been replaced by an Umbral Demon.

Anger and disappointment at himself warred within his mind as he looked at the Drekkin, as the ones that he had specifically told he would protect had fallen victim to the very enemy he had been so confident in being able to handle. The burning need to not only close the Aperture but also destroy the Demons actively controlling the figures down below flowed through his mind, but a sobering thought suddenly occurred to him.

If I free them from the Demons, will they even survive the process?

Knowing that the horrid shadow entities essentially replaced their souls, he had no idea if simply getting rid of them would bring them back. Were they gone forever at this point? Or was there some hope that they might be able to recover?

Regardless of the answer, what he saw down below was enough evidence that he hadn’t killed all the Umbral Demons yet, and that had been his ultimate goal after his own personal assault on his soul. Even if the Drekkin group that he had journeyed with were lost forever, that wouldn’t stop him from destroying the Demons that were controlling their bodies.

Checking his Pattern Cohesion, he saw that he hadn’t completely regenerated from his usage earlier, which had been a significant chunk of his maximum Cohesion at the time. Given another 5 minutes or so, he would be back to full, and then he would be able to create another Pattern sun to penetrate the bodies of the Demons’ victims, destroying their shadowy parasites in the process. He would probably have to get a little closer, as he didn’t think his sun’s rays of soul energy could effectively reach from the edge of the cavern, but that shouldn’t be too much of a—

Larek was interrupted mid-thought as the monsters down below began to move, their frozen states shattered by some inaudible order to attack. It seemed as though the Demons weren’t going to allow him the time to prepare, showing that they were smarter than he gave them credit for. That was unfortunate, because with very little in the way of offensive capabilities right now, he wasn’t in any way confident that he could survive the upcoming onslaught. The five giant scorpions alone were likely more than he could handle, considering that he had barely survived against one of them up above.

However, he did have one thing going for him that was a change from the usual.

The Mana density in the cavern was extremely thick. For the first time since he wound up in the Sealance Empire, he had the feeling that his Mana regeneration would be so fast that it would be indistinguishable from that of the Kingdom. The reason for that fact was obvious, as well, because the Aperture practically pulsed with the energy he saw flowing rapidly out of it. Close proximity to such a source of Mana certainly had its benefits, though now he had to figure out how to take advantage of it.

The few things that would’ve benefitted from an abundance of ambient Mana were all left back in the tunnel, surrounded by a horde of monsters; he couldn’t suddenly create any more of them because he would need at least a few minutes to create even one of them, and he had only a fraction of that before the first of the monsters arrived to try and kill him.  After his destruction of the other Demons, he didn’t for a second think that the ones controlling the people down below would risk keeping him alive to possess his body, so he could only assume that they were going to try and take him down for good.

So, what else could he do with abundant Mana? Casting unending spells would certainly be something that he’d like to be able to do, but that was also not possible. Creating spell patterns and making them act as Mana bombs similar to his Weaken Fusions was certainly possible, but it was also so physically draining that he would rather avoid that unless it was used as a last resort.

Quickly taking stock of his Fusions, looking for something that he might have missed, he was met with the same result as he expected: 5 Adjustable Illumination and 10 Weaken Fusions on stones, his clothing that held his boosts, protective, and healing Fusions, and his axe that was both sharp and had a VEGS Fusion that would certainly help against the stronger monsters. The latter Fusion was important because there really wouldn’t be too much restriction to its use, as he could theoretically create as many of the destructive spheres as he wanted without having to worry about using too much ambient Mana. Unfortunately, it still had the Intervals on it that the Drekkin’s weapons possessed, so it wouldn’t be as effective as he might hope because it was designed not to completely deplete the nearby ambient Mana as well as reduce stress on the Fusion’s formation through normal use.

But I wonder….

Larek was running out of time before he was suddenly attacked by nearly 100 strong monsters, but a thought had him looking closer at the Variable Elemental Gust Sphere on his axe. It was certainly an effective Fusion, that much had been proven already, but the Intervals made it less useful especially when he wanted to use higher Magnitude spheres. If he wanted to use a Magnitude 7 sphere, for example, he would have to wait another 7 seconds before using it again. It made sense in a low ambient Mana environment, but at the current density in the cavern, draining the ambient Mana wouldn’t be an issue.

Before he could think twice about what he was doing, Larek blocked out his surroundings as he turned his hyper-focused attention on the VEGS Fusion on his axe. Finding what he was looking for, he tapped into his new Pattern Manipulation Skill and used it to alter the Pattern Cohesion infused into the Fusion’s formation. There was a heavy resistance at first, as the strength of his Fusion was so great that it didn’t want to be changed, but he persisted and bent all his concentration on altering just one little thing inside the Interval section he had targeted. Eventually, there was a sudden audible *snap* as the 7-second Interval he was targeting began to break apart; it was a split second from causing a cascading reaction that would’ve caused the entire Fusion to fall apart when Larek caught it with his focus and bent his Skill toward simply altering it rather than trying to eliminate it like he thought might work at first.

With agonizingly slow and delicate manipulation of the Pattern already invested in the Fusion, he changed the 7-second Interval to one that was quite a bit faster: 0.1 seconds.

As he let it go, the new Interval slid into place like it had always been that way, and Larek pulled himself from the hyper-focused state he was in to see that he had succeeded. Or at least he hoped he had, though he was encouraged when he suddenly received some notifications.

Pattern Manipulation has reached Level 27!

…..

Pattern Manipulation has reached Level 29!

The Combat Fusionist didn’t have any more time than that, however, as by the time he looked up from his efforts the first of the giant scorpions – which were extremely fast – was already closing with him. Rather than wait for himself to get surrounded, he ran toward the rapidly moving scorpion and leaped toward it, his axe ready to inflict some serious damage to it. As he flew through the air, the massive arachnid suddenly stopped and reached up with its right claw to snatch him out of the air, but Larek swung his axe at it and felt the edge bite deep into the chitin, stopping it in place as his momentum kept him moving forward. He activated the Magnitude 7 version of the VEGS Fusion with ice as the element, before activating it with fire, and then orbs of light – all in less than half a second.

The combination of all three together was enough to completely obliterate the scorpion’s claw as he yanked his axe out on his way by. While the light orbs hadn’t proven to be quite as effective as he originally thought they might, given that the monsters were made from solidified shadow, they certainly did have some effect on a monster’s body. Unfortunately, it was more of a poison than directly damaging them as the others did, but just because it didn’t kill something right away didn’t mean it had no uses.

And when combined with both ice and fire, it’s efficacy seemed to increase substantially for some reason. Even as he brought his axe around to cleave through the disgusting face of the scorpion, he could see that the light orbs from his first attack had spread from the claw and to the right half of the monster’s body, seeming to rapidly disintegrate the shadowy substance as it progressed. It wasn’t enough to finish it off before the head of his axe buried itself into the scorpion’s eyes and mouth, followed by another triple activation of the VEGS, however. He was sure if he gave it more time, then he wouldn’t have had to bother killing it a different way.

As he stopped himself from crashing into the large arachnid by planting his feet against its upper body, he kicked off backwards just in time to avoid being speared by the dying scorpion’s stinger. Landing with a crouch, he stood back up just in time to swat at one of the flying lizards he’d seen earlier in the air, but he was just barely out of reach.

Thankfully, that didn’t matter as much as he triple activated his VEGS again, which appeared right in the middle of the flying monster’s torso, ripping it apart in a spray of gore as it plummeted to the floor in death, splashing Larek’s face in the process.

Quickly wiping the dark blood from out of his eyes, he braced himself for his next victim.