The Fusionist Book 4 -- Chapter 48

Chapter 48

A few hours later, Larek paused after absolutely obliterating a veritable horde of Flojiggers. Over 500 of the 2-foot-wide abominations had attempted to ambush him from above, descending from the sand stripe at the top of the tunnel he was traveling through, but his aim and significant amount of practice lately let him pick them off in the air. It helped that their stretched skin surrounding their spherical-shaped bodies was highly flammable, and the poisonous gas that they expelled when they burst apart exploded upon contact with a flame.

Watching them go up in flames with a chain reaction put a smile on his face, as he particularly didn’t like the dozens of tiny eyes that surrounded their bodies, looking every which way simultaneously, nor the 100 wavy, needle-like appendages that were used to inject their poisonous gas into a victim. When he added in their coloring, which was a mixture of black with a hint of dark-green at the tips of their slimy appendages, he could only shudder in repulsion at the thought of them trying to touch him; they were creepy to the extreme, and he was only glad that he didn’t have to get near them.

Fortunately, the explosions followed by their complete dispersion into shadows meant that there were no remains left for him to look at after they were destroyed, and only his memories of their attempted ambush and the Corrupted Aetheric Force that was currently being purified was left over from the exchange. That latter thought forced Larek to realize that he hadn’t allocated his AF in a while, as he had been inundated by one group of Umbral Demon-touched monsters after another without too much time to rest. The Combat Fusionist felt like he was swimming against a current as he traveled through the vast tunnel system, but he pushed on because he felt like he was getting close to something. This was compounded by the fact that the walls of the tunnel seemed to be changing, growing slightly wider in diameter, and the glowing crystal veins that illuminated the passageway had become slightly more structured and refined.

Taking a look at his Status, Larek was surprised to see that he had accumulated over 18,000 AF from all the fighting he had done, which was more than he expected, if he was being honest with himself. Almost all the monsters he encountered after the horse apes had been what he was used to seeing in the Sealance Empire; in other words, they were relatively weak and easy to kill – even if they came in large numbers. Only one other fight had been challenging at all, and it wasn’t even because the monsters he fought were powerful; rather, it was simply that they were a bit more resilient than the others.

Over 200 Stone Chuckers had rolled toward him, their 3-foot-wide cylindrical bodies looking like dark wooden logs rather than the stone that they were. At only 6 inches wide, they weren’t very intimidating as it appeared as though anyone could just jump over them, but when they stopped rolling and somehow propped themselves on one of their flat end, he discovered that they were relatively formidable as they stretched their stone bodies backwards… before snapping forwards quickly, chucking a small, jagged stone approximately 4 inches in diameter at Larek in his Air Skimmer.

They weren’t particularly dangerous to him, as even if he was hit by a few of them, they wouldn’t do much damage; his vessel was a different story altogether. As one of the upright wooden frame pieces took a beating from at least a dozen stones pummeling it, cracking it just as slight bit more, Larek jumped out and landed on the tunnel floor, moving quickly forward to take the fight to the monsters rather than let them damage his Skimmer further. He first began to try and burn them with Flaming Balls, but after they appeared unharmed other than some scorch marks, he was forced to switch up his attack.

Flying Stones were out of the question because not only were these things already made of stone, but they likely had that same manipulation ability as the other monsters he’d fought down in the bowels of Lowenthal. Icy Spike proved to be largely ineffective as well, as while the higher Magnitude variety of icicle projectiles could crack them apart upon impact, causing the Chuckers to crumble into death, anything less simply shattered against their stony exteriors.

Only Water Stream seemed to be effective at a distance, as he was able to sweep through the monsters and cut them apart – but he had to do it on a lower Magnitude. Only constant pressure rather than strong bursts of high-velocity water that the higher Magnitudes produced was able to cut through them, and even then it required a few seconds to cut through one of them completely. After some quick trial-and-error as they continued to chuck stones at him, which he either dodged by rolling out of their path or let his Repelling Barrier deflect some of them, he discovered that a Mag 4 Water Stream was the most effective, though it still wasn’t very fast.

After killing a quarter of the Stone Chuckers with his staff, he began to take some hits to his body. Where the barrage of projectiles had at first been coordinated and simultaneous, it had changed to be more sporadic and unpredictable, leading him to have to avoid a dozen different stones every second, coming from slightly different directions and angles. After one that he didn’t see coming hit him in the face because his Barrier was already overworked by deflecting multiple projectiles simultaneously, he growled in anger and rushed forward, tossing his staff back up into the Air Skimmer. He wasn’t necessarily hurt by the stone hitting his face, but the unexpected impact wasn’t pleasant.

Time to work on my Pattern Manipulation, I guess.

Pulling out his axe, he moved quickly to the closest Chucker and used it to easily bisect the monster in half, but that was only of a secondary concern for him. Pulling his Pattern Cohesion out of his body so that it could be manipulated, he created a flat square grid-like net in front of his face as another barrage of about a dozen stone attempted to smash his head in. A few of the stones either flew around the square net made out of his Pattern or underneath it, with only a few making it through his Barrier to hit his Multi-Resistance protected clothing; the impacts were felt but didn’t hurt him, though it did make it slightly harder to concentrate on what he was doing with his Pattern.

As for the other stones that hit his floating square net, he watched as it flexed a bit with each impact but held up remarkably well as the projectiles’ momentum was entirely arrested. He had expected them to bounce off and possibly ricochet after hitting his Pattern, but it was almost as if they hit a super-soft pillow. He contrasted the last time he had used his Pattern in this way against the horse apes, where his square net had barely slowed the blows from the apes down; the difference was obviously due to the force behind the impact with his Pattern, as the horse apes were quite strong compared to the stone projectiles, but it also showed Larek something else.

His floating shield made out of Pattern was weak. Sure, it had blocked the stones easily enough, but they weren’t really a threat all by themselves when pitted against his Body stat. The Stone Chuckers were relatively weak and weren’t necessarily a problem for most Mages and Martials in the SIC because there wasn’t a significant amount of strength behind the projectiles they threw at their victims, and they only had the one attack – unless someone were to stand in front of them and get rolled over when they moved. There were multiple ways he could think of for anyone who had graduated from an Academy or Fort to destroy them without too much effort; as a result, simply blocking their attacks with his defenses wasn’t that much of a victory.

At that point, his Pattern was only slightly useful against weaker monsters all because weaker monsters weren’t really a threat to him even if they were able to attack him through his Repelling Barrier. If he wanted it to be worth using, it would have to be able to stand up to an attack by something stronger, such as the horse apes or against a projectile that could actually do him serious harm. Thinking about his fight with the giant scorpion, what he could create now would’ve been almost entirely useless.

Therefore, it needed to be stronger. But how am I supposed to do that?

As he rolled to the side and sliced through another Stone Chucker with his axe, his Pattern net maintained its position in the air where he had left it; when he moved more than 10 feet away it popped and disappeared like a soap bubble, and he felt that the Pattern Cohesion that he had invested into it had been lost to him. An extremely brief flash of his Status showed that his Pattern Cohesion was down approximately 10 points, which wasn’t a significant amount – and less than he was expecting. It was already regenerating, of course, but he remembered that he had been able to reabsorb most if not all of it when he had been fighting the horse apes.

Keeping all of that in mind, he rebuilt another Pattern net to block another round of stone projectiles, and this time he imagined pulling even more Pattern Cohesion out of his body to fill square. For some reason it was a struggle, something he’d never experienced before when working with his Cohesion outside of his body either for Fusion purposes or for spellcasting – during the few failed times he had attempted the latter, of course. He thought he pulled out a little bit more, but it was as if there was a block on the amount of Pattern Cohesion he could pull out for this method at one time.

He couldn’t see much difference in the protective net shield he created when it blocked even more of the Stone Chuckers’ projectiles, and he rolled away afterwards to cut through another monster and to quickly check his Status. 15 Pattern Cohesion this time was lost when his net disappeared, which was still not much in the scheme of things – especially considering his 36,000 Pattern Cohesion.

What am I missing?

Another few experiments with trying to push more and more into the net had no discernable change other than an increase in his Skill to Level 12. After the Skill increased, he was able to push a little bit more out of his body, making the square net approximately 2 inches wider and taller, but it still didn’t have the type of resiliency he wanted.

Thinking about what made his Pattern Cohesion so strong in Fusions and – unfortunately – in spell patterns, he thought that perhaps it wasn’t necessarily his Cohesion alone that made it strong, but it strength was only fully represented when introduced to Mana. However, just thinking about his Skill a little more made him fairly confident that this wasn’t the case, as it seemed to imply that he could accomplish what it promised using Pattern Cohesion alone. Besides, he didn’t want to add Mana to something that could become permanent like a spell pattern—

Wait. That’s it!

It wasn’t a spell pattern, or a formation like a Fusion, or even Mana that he was missing; instead, it was something similar to a spell pattern or Fusion formation, but entirely different. With spells and Fusions, what he created was essentially a list of instructions that was powered by the Mana that was pushed into it; they had a symbiotic relationship that meant that one was essentially useless without the other. However, that wasn’t quite as true as it sounded, as Pattern Cohesion had a spiritual weight behind it that was different from pure Mana, something that he had certainly seen as it had counterattacked the Umbral Demon as it attempted to possess his soul. It also had a physicality that could be made manifest through the use of Fusions, though it was largely secondary in nature to its function in a formation.

And that word, function, was exactly what was missing in his attempts in manipulating his Pattern Cohesion for use in a protective shield. There was no specific function that the Cohesion he was pulling out was supposed to follow, meaning that it had no strength behind it. As it was, he was essentially just pulling it out and throwing it up in the air, with just a basic grid-like net as its form; it was likely that the only reason that it didn’t get completely shredded whenever it stopped a projectile was due to the innate strength in his Pattern Cohesion. Since it looked like a net, that was how it acted, and as a net typically flexed when pushed against, that was exactly what it did. From what he could tell, this was its basic, default shape when he simply pushed it outside his body, a blank slate with no instructions of what function it was designed for.

Therefore, it needed an appropriate form to replace that blank slate in order for it to carry out the function he wanted it to perform. This wasn’t the same as a formation in a Fusion, of course, but more of a flex of an intent or will to create what was needed, something that would take intense concentration and focus to hold in place while he fought.

Thankfully, being able to become hyper-focused was something of a specialty of his.

As he was battered by a few dozen more stones, Larek stood stock still as he focused on pulling his Pattern Cohesion back out and directing it in front of him. Rather than letting it do what it wanted, he instead focused on creating something else, using his actual Pattern Manipulation Skill to form a specific shape out of the Cohesion. In more time than he would’ve liked, especially as he was still being hit by chucked stones, he finally formed a large shield similar to the ones he’d seen some Martials wearing on their left arms for defense. It was approximately 3 feet tall and 2 feet wide, tapering down to a point on the bottom and slightly curved on top – or at least that was what he was aiming for.

In reality, it was slightly more than a hunk of Pattern Cohesion in the general form of a steel shield, misshapen in a few areas and not very precise in its measurements or angles. What was more important, however, was that it was solid rather than being a net, though it was largely transparent. That only lasted for a second, though, as he knew how to fix that.

Pulling out even more Pattern Cohesion, he smiled grimly as another stone smacked him in the chin, nearly breaking his concentration; fortunately, the shield he had formed in the air filled in over the next few seconds with the influx of Cohesion, until it was completely opaque. When he focused on it further, he found that he could move the shield around with just a thought – though it required quite a bit of his concentration…

…but it was worth it.

Pattern Manipulation has reached Level 13!

Pattern Manipulation has reached Level 14!

It seemed he was doing something right, as he increased his Skill by two Levels within only a few seconds of each other. It wasn’t just that he had succeeded in creating something with an actual form and function to it, but that it worked. As he moved it around him with a thought as he stood still, every stone projectile that it intercepted bounced off and ricocheted just as it would against a physical shield, thought there was no sound of impact like it would if it hit iron or steel. Instead, the only sound that was made was when the stone hit the ground after it bounced off, which was slightly eerie, but he didn’t care overly much at the lack of sound.

It was the fact that his shield now had 10% of his maximum 36,000 Pattern Cohesion in it: A full 3,600 that made it extremely durable. From what he could tell, none of the attacks coming from the Stone Chuckers put so much as a scratch on his floating shield, and he was fairly certain that anything that hit it would have to be incredibly powerful to damage it in any way. It was possible that some of the Gergasi could do it, as he didn’t actually know how powerful they were other than what he’d seen his father and Chinli do, but he was unsure how that translated to sheer physical damage.

It wasn’t perfect, either, or at least it wasn’t perfect yet; while he could move the shield around with a thought, as soon as he tried to move it was locked into place as he had difficulty concentrating on two things at once. It shouldn’t have been that much of a problem because his Acuity was so high and his Skills aided in focusing on multiple things at once, but that didn’t seem to matter to the shield made of Pattern Cohesion.

Pattern Manipulation has reached Level 15!

You have reached Level 30 and have 22 available AP to distribute!

Pattern Manipulation has reached Level 16!

As he increased his Pattern Manipulation Skill Level twice more over the next few minutes of deflecting stones that were chucked at him, as well as reaching a personal Level of 30, he found that his control over the shield improved slightly. It got to the point where he could move his arms and flex his fingers as he used his thoughts to direct the Pattern shield around, so he had some hope that it would improve as the Skill continued to increase.

After playing with it some more over the next hour, he was only able to increase the Skill one more time before nothing else he did with the shield seemed likely to bump it up anymore, so he relaxed his focus and let it dissipate, absorbing the Pattern Cohesion back into his body. Once it was gone, the bombardment continued unabated, but he was already on the move. Using the Skill to create an unfocused net like before, he kept it active as he went on a killing spree, rapidly cutting through the Chuckers with his axe. His net shield wasn’t as effective nor as large as the one he had to focus on, and he was hit dozens of times by stones as he finished them off, but he was almost completely unhurt other than a few bruises that healed themselves within seconds of them being inflicted.

After they were all dead and he had continued on, he didn’t really get a chance to practice with the Skill any further as the monsters continued to appear one after another as he moved down the tunnel. As they were all weak enough that he could kill them from inside his Air Skimmer with his staff, there was no need to use it, though he had some thoughts on a few more experiments he’d like to try at some point. He felt that the Skill could be incredibly powerful once he mastered its use, though he was also aware that it wouldn’t be as easy or quick to improve as had his ability with Fusions.

But now that he had a bit of a breather, he had a chance to evaluate his Status and see where he could allocate the 18,075 Aetheric Force he had accumulated – as well as the AP that had come from his recent Level increase. He might even be able to play with his Pattern Manipulation Skill outside of combat and see what it could do.

As he leaned over on the Skimmer’s handlebars, contemplating where to put everything, movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. With a sigh, he closed his Status and brought down the tip of his staff in anticipation of firing some more magical projectiles on some monsters, but he stopped and raised it again in confusion after a brief look at what awaited him in the tunnel.

Expecting a horde of monsters, he was presented by a relatively organized, armed and armored group of what he could only describe as 3-foot-tall, upright-walking lizard-people with long, thick tails positioned behind them on the ground. That wasn’t what made him hesitate, because he’d killed armed and armored monsters before, such as the Bog Goblins, though they were rare. No, it was the fact that as he looked at them, he could sense a connection to them that could only be explained by the fact that half of them had the feel of a Martial, while the other half had the feel of a Mage.

Those definitely aren’t monsters. Drekkin, perhaps?

He was about to say something to them when they suddenly burst into motion and attacked without a word.