The Fusionist Book 4 -- Chapter 47

(Only 1 chapter today, but it's a bit longer than usual :) )

Chapter 47

The feeling of being strangely energized with his newfound determination to fight against the Umbral Demons lasted until he got back to his Air Skimmer and lifted it up, before trying to figure out what to do next. It was at that point that he recalled the information that he had gained from the Demon’s mind that he was connected to, and he shuddered at the recollection of helplessness that he felt at that point. Pushing past that, he worked on understanding exactly what it was he was up against, and he immediately felt overwhelmed.

The information was sadly incomplete and viewed from a perspective that was extremely foreign to Larek, but from what he could pull from it matched what the original notification had told him about the situation under the desert. At one point, hundreds of Apertures had opened all around the underground world of Lowenthal, with the Drekkin who were changed into Mages and Martials working even faster than the people in the Empire had to understand their new status and abilities, as they immediately fought the monsters and temporarily closed Apertures within a day or two of everything happening.

It was at that point that the Umbral Demons discovered the monsters as well, locating an Aperture found in an out-of-the way area near the center of Lowenthal, and they immediately pounced upon their first victims. From the scattered information about these first monsters, they had apparently been some sort of burrowing worms he had never learned about which had an ability to pass through sand or dirt with ease, as well as being able to harden it with just as much ease.

Once the Demons captured every single monster from the Aperture, they turned there attention to the Aperture and did… something to it. Either the one he had killed hadn’t been there or the information was fragmented enough that he couldn’t remember it clearly. Regardless of whatever the reason, what the shadowy Demons did acted as some sort of anchor, so that when they ventured out with their converted monsters and attacked the next-nearest Aperture, they connected their original “anchored” Aperture to the newest one and it somehow pulled the newest one into the first. Again, it wasn’t exactly clear how this had been done, but the end result was that the original Aperture with the burrowing worms absorbed the other Aperture and grew larger and stronger…

…as well as being able to additionally produce the absorbed Aperture’s monsters. These newer monsters adapted some of the characteristics of the burrowing worms, most notably the ability to move through sand and dirt like it was water and to harden it just as easily. That explained why the Barbed Gators and the giant scorpion had been strangely able to do such a thing, which he had originally thought to be impossible that two different monsters could do the same exact thing.

From there, they expanded their collection of Apertures, feeding them all into the original one, as they built their army. The Drekkin apparently fought them every step of the way as soon as they learned what was going on, going so far as to collapse the tunnels leading out of their domain, to keep them trapped under the desert. At least, that was his understanding, because the impression he had received from the mind was that the Demons were extremely angry that this had been done, and he could only assume it had been done with that exact purpose in mind.

After that, the information became quite hazy, but one thing that he did understand about that Aperture that was under the control of the Umbral Demons was huge. Not just in appearance, but in total territory; currently, the territory of the giant Aperture comprised around 90% of the entire desert of Lowenthal. Because almost all of the sand up above was inside the territory, which was based upon the environment where the burrowing worms were accustomed to, they had the ability to manipulate the sand to a certain degree, though only at certain times of day. They used the sand to pull anything that might have been traveling over the desert toward their main Aperture so that they could capture and convert it to their cause, as they weren’t quite able to break free yet of the underground tunnels because of the Drekkin.

That information explained a lot to Larek, as it solved the mystery of being transported at night, but at the same time he was left with the same questions in his head. Where do I go to stop them?

Unfortunately, things like directions and locations within the tunnels were either completely unknown to the Demon, or they were so foreign that they made no sense to his mind. For instance, instead of different places that could help him understand where he was in relation to where either the Drekkin or the Aperture was located, all he had received were impressions of areas with different darkness “flavors”, for want of a better word. The tunnel he had just left was something he could only classify as, well, tasting new and expectant, like it had been recently created and was expected to accomplish something. What that was, he didn’t know, and it didn’t help that all the other impressions of different areas were associated with these odd flavors, where one was a taste of old, dusty stone and another had the coppery taste of blood.

Where those places actually were, he had absolutely no idea.

He thought he might be able to use the sense of the gigantic Aperture to find his way to it, but even though he acknowledged that he felt it, pinpointing exactly where it was located was impossible. He could only assume that it was so powerful, and its territory was so large, that the feeling of it suffused the very air around him rather than giving him a trackable location.

The only real solution by that point was to venture off like he had been doing before he discovered the dark tunnel and hope that, instead of finding a way out, he discovered a way to the Aperture and the Demons that he needed to destroy. How exactly he would do that was a bridge that he’d have to cross once he got there, as he wasn’t sure how to go about handling so many of them.

Moving back down the main tunnel, it only took a half-hour before he found something. Or to be more accurate, something found him.

Larek slowed his Air Skimmer when he noticed dark shapes emerging from the sand above, a swarm of black-colored, fluttering forms that immediately swooped down toward his vessel. It took a moment to recognize the Dusty Butterflies that they were because instead of being in a riot of flamboyantly varied colors, these particular Butterflies were various shades of black that made them look like some sort of “death” Butterflies rather than the Dusty variety. What convinced him of their actual type was the cloud of pollen they left behind as they fluttered toward him, which was both an irritant and a poison that could kill someone who was unprepared for it.

As he brought the Skimmer to a stop, Larek brought his staff up and aimed it toward the descending swarm, noticing that they emerged from the sand above without a single granule falling through the opening, which told him that these were monsters created by the Aperture since they could manipulate the sand to a point that it was no longer an impediment to them.

So, he just started blasting.

Knowing that his Flying Stones wouldn’t be as effective now that he had some inside information on the abilities of the monsters he would be facing down below the desert, he instead switched to a barrage of Flaming Balls that rocketed out from the end of his staff toward the swarm of Dusty Butterflies, and at Magnitude 2, they were flying out at 10 per second. He needed to eliminate the pollen they were spreading, which had grown into an alarming cloud by that point, because there had to have been at least 150 Butterflies in the swarm.

With each of them with bodies that were a foot long and wingspans that topped 3 feet wide, his barrage of Flaming Balls easily found targets as they slammed into the front ranks of the flying insects. Each one that was hit was knocked backwards and lit on fire, quickly plummeting to the ground as their wings went up in flames. Killing nearly a dozen in them in less than a second, he was beginning to strafe his staff over the Butterflies to encompass as many as he could, when one of the Flaming Balls missed one of the leading monsters and passed behind it…

…right into the cloud of pollen. Unbeknownst to him, but probably should’ve been if he had paid more attention in his classes, was that the poison pollen in large concentrations was flammable. When an entire ball of flames appeared in the middle of the deadly cloud, there was an audible *whump* right before it ignited in a flash, enveloping all the nearby Butterflies in the radius of its effect. It didn’t explode like one of his Weaken Fusions did, but instead produced an extremely hot conflagration that burned through the pollen and burned over 100 Butterflies simultaneously, to the point where their delicate wings were destroyed to the point where they followed the previous ones that Larek had hit down to the ground.

Taken aback at the sudden destruction, the Combat Fusionist hesitated for a few moments, which allowed the remaining few dozen monsters to get close, but he managed to move his staff in the way of the incoming Butterflies to knock a few more out of the air. When the others were within 10 feet or so, he set his staff down and pulled out a Fusion he hadn’t used lately because it was of less use against things like a Barbed Gator or a giant scorpion, and it also had a stone quality to it that he had recognized as not being beneficial.

However, even if the sharp slivers of stone being pushed around by his Stone Shredder Dome +6 Fusion didn’t hurt the Butterflies, the powerful gusts of wind inside the dome should handle them well enough.

So it proved to be, as he held the stone in front of him and directed the dome out in front of the Air Skimmer. As the monsters dove in to cover him in poisonous pollen, they smashed into the dome and were ripped apart by the air gusts inside the dome, along with the stones that weren’t manipulated fast enough by the Butterflies to avoid being hurt.  In a few seconds, the last of the attackers had disappeared into chunks on the floor, but even that quickly disappeared as the solidified shadows they were made from dissipated.

After absorbing the Corrupted Aetheric Force that they provided, he realized that he hadn’t ever checked to see how much he had finally received from the scorpion up on the surface. He was surprised yet again when he saw that the powerful arachnid had provided him with 2,000 AF! It was more than he expected, but it also made sense because it had been an extremely strong monster… which made him worry that there were more of them nearby, as he knew that they would be a challenge to defeat even now that he knew about them.

What else is down here?

As he let the Aetheric Force he accumulated from the Butterflies add to his available AF, which turned out to be 167 AF – or 1 AF per monster he had killed – Larek started to spend what he had to improve his maximums Skills once again. With an eventual 2,194 AF (once the Corrupted Aetheric Force was converted), he increased the maximum Level for Pattern Recognition, Magical Detection, and Spellcasting Focus to Level 38, leaving him with a whole 4 AF remaining. He was still planning on bringing them up to the same Levels as his Fusion-based Skills and was making good progress in that regard, though looking at his new Pattern Manipulation Skill with a maximum Level of 20, he knew that he would have to work on improving that just as much as the others – if not more.

He just had to figure out how to go about that, but he had some ideas that he thought might work.

Continuing to move down the tunnel after the relatively brief interruption, he was attacked yet again by another group of monsters, but this time they didn’t come from the ceiling and the sand layer up there, but from below.  He didn’t recognize the half-dozen hulking monsters that were at least 6 feet tall even while they ran hunched over, but they closely resembled a cross between a horse and an ape. With a head that had the length of a horse but had their eyes on the front like a predator, accompanied by a pair of powerfully muscled arms on top of their torso, the monsters ran quickly at him as their four skinny-yet-strong cantered through the tunnel, their odd hooves striking up sparks as they went.

It didn’t take much to identify them as monsters, because the same dark skin and hair covering them similar to the others he’d killed made it obvious, and he had to assume that the color change was a result of them being made of solidified shadows. Larek also hazarded to guess that Serena wasn’t exactly the same as the monsters because she had a soul that allowed her to maintain her normal appearance.

Regardless of the reason, Larek once again used his staff on the galloping monsters headed his way, their intimidating hands squeezing together rhythmically as if they wanted to ring his neck – which he assumed they did. Instead of Flaming Balls, he filled them full of Magnitude 4 Ice Spikes before changing tactics after they didn’t slow the charging horse apes down at all. Despite the shards of ice stuck into their chests, they didn’t seem to care or even be hurt by them all that much, so Larek switched to a Mag 6 Water Stream. Rather than aim for their easier to hit chest, he moved the line of powerfully cutting water downwards toward their legs.

He remembered a few years ago when one of their mules back home had broken its legs after it had fallen into a hole, and there had been no way to heal it completely; they’d had to put it down because of that, which he recalled being a sad time because he cared for all the mules they possessed. He nearly didn’t want to do the same to these monsters because just thinking about it was depressing, but he hardened his heart and cut through and snapped the forelegs of the horse apes mercilessly. One by one, they collapsed and rolled forward as their support was literally cut from underneath them – but that didn’t mean they were any less dangerous. Leaning forward on their larger arms, the monsters continued running forward once they were able to pick themselves up off the floor of the tunnel.

Larek once again switched up his attacks and shot a Mag 5 Flaming Ball at two of them in quicky succession, only for the horse apes to reach up with their arms as the projectiles came close and literally punch the ball of fire apart. The flames washed over them, singeing patches of hair as it surrounded them momentarily, but they appeared to be largely unhurt. Swapping back to Ice Spikes at a higher Magnitude than before resulted in nearly the same action as against the Flaming Ball, though this time the icy projectile shattered and flung shards of ice everywhere.

It was at this point that he noticed a dull shine reflecting off of the fingers of the monsters’ hands, and he knew he might be in trouble. Whether they were coated in steel or some other strong metal, if they were able to punch magical projectiles out of the air, they would likely be able to wreck the thin plates of Strengthened iron that comprised the shell of his vessel.

With only a slight hesitation after seeing this, Larek jumped out of his Air Skimmer and rolled forward when he landed, bringing his staff to bear and pointed toward the closest horse ape. A split-second after he activated a Water Stream at Magnitude 8 and shot it toward the monster’s face, the strange beast flexed its back legs, bending them in a way that looked unnatural, before it jumped a dozen feet in the air as it attempted to pounce on him. He was suddenly glad that he had vacated his Skimmer because it was obvious that these things could reach him even in the air.

Thankfully, the horse ape that jumped had completed the maneuver slightly too late as Larek’s attack hit it in its face and Icy Spike-covered chest, and the rapid-fire water projectiles ripped through its head, neck, and chest, opening a massive hole as it pushed and then shattered the ice shards stuck in it. It died a second after jumping in the air toward him, and he moved quickly out of the way of its eventual landing.

Dodge has reached Level 22!

The instant Larek could target another of the monsters he did so, and he managed to score a wound in the upper chest of a second before a metal-covered fist came up and deflected the Water Stream he was aiming at it. Before he could try and maneuver around the blocking fist, it and the other horse apes jumped at him, prompting Larek to toss his staff to the side, pull out his offensive Fusions and drop them at his feet after activating them, and then roll out of the way.

Jumping to his feet and out of range of his Fusions, Larek grabbed the axe off his belt and stood ready as the monsters landed right where he had been and then turned toward him. The Fusions still had a few seconds before they activated, so he moved to just outside of their range and raised his axe defensively as a fist came toward his chest; he grunted as he was pushed back, after blocking the hit with the haft of his axe, and he heard a worrying creak in the wood along with the impact. He also felt his Repelling Barrier Fusion activate, attempting to push the attack away, but all that happened was that the fist was pushed downward a fraction of an inch.

I can’t do that again—wait! My new Skill!

Larek went on the offensive as another horse ape attempted to flank him and completely destroy his ribs with a powerful punch, but he swung around and deflected its fist as the edge of his axe sliced through the fingers with a screech of protest and a few sparks to go along with the counterattack. He was happy to see that the fist was only covered in a thick coating of metal rather than being fully metal, as he wasn’t sure if he’d have been able to cut through them all.

Even as he did that, he could sense another blow from the first horse ape heading for his right hip, but he was already accessing what he knew about his new Pattern Manipulation Skill. Already being somewhat of an expert on directing his Pattern Cohesion outside of his body, he was only momentarily stifled as he figured out how to direct a bunch of it into a shape that he hoped would resemble a square piece of metal that floated approximately 6 inches away from his right hip. There was a drain on his Pattern Cohesion as he did this, and while he couldn’t look to see how much had been used, he estimated it to be a few hundred.

Along his side, a faintly glowing square of something appeared, though it wasn’t exactly how he pictured it.  Instead of a solid piece of Pattern Cohesion, it was more of a grid-like net without any depth to it, almost like an odd Fusion formation that hadn’t been filled in with any components.

Unable to do anything about it in the heat of battle, he turned his head enough to watch the blow from the horse ape strike the square dead-on, and he silently cheered as it flexed inward with the punch. At least, he cheered until he saw that it was flexing too much, and the impact when it finally hit him snapped something in his hip as he was propelled away in an uncontrolled tumble.

Activating his Healing Surge Fusion before he even stopped tumbling away, he felt the fractured hip bone knit itself together even as the crushed flesh repaired itself. By the time he stopped rolling, he was able to stand back up on his legs without any debilitation, as the injury hadn’t been that bad.

His attempt at stopping the blow hadn’t worked entirely, but it did soften it somewhat. He wanted to stop and contemplate what he did wrong, but the horse ape that had hit him was already leaping toward his location. As he looked back at the other monsters, he saw that his offensive Fusions had finally activated simultaneously, and the result was disturbing. Roots full of thorns shot out of the ground to quickly wrap around the hindquarters of the horse apes, before they completely froze as the area was flash-frozen in an instant. The Healing Shelter then took effect and attempted to heal the freezing and cracking bodies of the monsters, only for them to freeze once they were healed, leaving them in a cycle of death and healing that was hard to look at.

Mentally deactivating the Healing Shelter and Binding Thorns from a distance, the others simply froze to death as they were already caught and couldn’t escape.

Meanwhile, the last horse ape nearly pounded him into the ground as it landed on him, distracted as he was with the Fusions dealing death to the others, and only his Repelling Barrier activating at just the right time shifted the blow that would’ve caved in his head. Instead, it smacked and then bounced off his shoulder as he felt his collarbone snap, but he pushed through the discomfort as he brought his axe around to lop off an arm.

The horse ape roared in pain right into his face and he was practically drenched in foul-smelling spittle, but he managed to throw himself backwards to avoid a retaliatory strike by the monster’s other fist. As he landed backwards, his Healing Surge finishing up the repair of his clavicle, he realized that he wouldn’t be able to avoid another blow that was coming to smash into his legs, so he attempted another block with his Pattern Manipulation Skill.

What formed as he pulled the Pattern Cohesion out of his body was thicker and less transparent than what he’d done before, but it was essentially still a grid-like net; as a result, as the horse ape pounded down on it with its only remaining fist, it stretched nearly to the breaking point, hitting his leg and smashing into his flesh beneath his pants… but he didn’t feel that his leg broke or even fractured, though it did seem to flex a little from the pressure of the horse ape’s fist.

Pattern Manipulation has reached Level 11!

Body Regeneration has reached Level 35!

Even in its anger at losing an arm, the monster looked at the square net that had essentially stopped its fist from crushing Larek’s leg in confusion for an entire second. That was all the Combat Fusionist needed as he swung his axe while still on his back, detaching the other limb at the elbow; before it could scream in pain and anger again, Larek sat up and sliced through the thick neck of the horse ape with a Strength-enhanced slice of his axe, killing it instantly. Its body collapsed heavily on his lower legs, splashing blood from its open neck all over him, but he simply waited as it dissipated into the same dark greenish-black smoke that he was expecting, freeing him to get up and take stock of his situation.

The ambient Mana density was beginning to become a problem from the use of so many Mana-intensive Fusions, so he mentally deactivated the Frozen Zone Fusion and then brought his Air Skimmer back down to the floor. As he climbed aboard after collecting his staff and the wooden offensive Fusions, he grabbed something to eat while he let he density climb back up to normal.

This new Skill can be a great asset… as long as I figure it out. I think I’m going to have to practice with it a lot to make sure it does what I want, but I can definitely see the possibilities it has opened for me.

Just as he was about to leave a little time later, he spotted yet another group of monsters heading his way from down the tunnel, the same direction that the horse apes had come from.

I guess that means I’m going the right way?

That was the only conclusion he could come up with as he pulled out his staff once again and aimed it at what appeared to be a small horde of Bog Goblins, or at least whatever the equivalent ones were that composed of all black and dark-grey skin and clothing.

Regardless of whether this is the right way or not, it’s at least a good way to gather Aetheric Force.

With that thought in mind, he smiled as he released a barrage of Mag 1 Flaming Balls at the weak Bog Goblins heading his way.