The Fusionist Book 4 -- Chapter 42

Chapter 42

“Well, that was much harder than I expected.”

Breathing hard for the first time in months, Larek finished healing his leg via his a few small activations of his Healing Surge Fusion and slogged his way through the sand back to the Air Skimmer, leaving the blood that had pooled out of his lower extremities to soak into and slowly disappear into the desert. Putting his axe back on his belt, he climbed over the side of the vessel and practically collapsed inside, before picking up some food from his supplies and shoving his face full to replenish his energy. This was quickly followed by some water as he felt thirsty enough to drink an entire lake, and it was all due to the fact that the area around him was almost been completely depleted of ambient Mana. It was filling back up slowly, but even with the increased density that he’d seen, it would still be at least another hour or so before it was back to normal.

It turned out that despite not being able to pierce through his pants with their teeth, the Barbed Gators could still tear through his flesh from the pressure of their jaws against his leg and their head movements designed to rip their victims apart. He nearly had his left leg ripped completely off his body just a minute ago, and if he hadn’t somehow decapitated the Gator that had his jaws locked around his knee, he would even now see if his healing Fusion was good enough to reattach a missing limb of that size. He thought it might, especially if the wound was fresh enough, but he had no desire to try it at the moment. Of course, that was all dependent upon whether he would’ve been able to survive without a second leg, which wasn’t a guarantee.

A few seconds into the main axe-to-Gator fight, he’d had to deactivate the remaining Binding Thorns Fusions because at that point the ambient Mana was getting dangerously close to being used up completely. Another few seconds after tearing through one Gator after another, he was forced to deactivate his Secure Hideaway surrounding the Air Skimmer, mainly because he was beginning to feel the Fusions on his clothes and even his axe start to run into Mana supply problems.

If he suddenly lost all his boosts and his best friend wasn’t as sharp as before, then he’d be in real trouble. Thankfully, by deactivating the Secure Hideaway, the Mana stabilized enough that it wasn’t going away any faster than it was being used, so he didn’t run into any problems with his closely held Fusions being unable to operate – but it was close.

What was more of a concern was the onslaught of just over 20 uninjured Barbed Gators swarming toward him with the intent to rip him limb from limb. At first, he was able to nimbly dodge out of the way of their relatively slow movements despite the fact that they could whip their heads (and the jaws attached to them) around with incredible speed, and he was able to kill a half-dozen of them with no issues. Unfortunately, the problems started as he killed more and more of them, as the sand underneath his feet began to lose its firmness, causing his boots to sink further into it with each death.

This inevitably led to Larek not being able to move quite at fast, but he adapted by continuing to put some distance between him and the Gators by backing up and leading them in a circle, striking out whenever one of them got close. With his axe being able to shear through their hide and bones without too much effort, he found that it was fairly easy to kill them – as long as he wasn’t already surrounded.

Of course, once he was down to only 5 Gators left, his feet were essentially sinking down at least 20 inches with each step, and he was eventually forced to stand his ground and let the beasts surround him. With a coordination that appeared planned, they attacked simultaneously like a pack of wolves, and that was when one of them caught ahold of his left arm and nearly tore it off before Larek cut through both of its jaws in one slice just past his arm, which was torn open to the bone in just the second it had been enclosed in the mouth of the Gator. It was when he was distracted that the other Gator nearly ripped his leg off, but he managed to decapitate it with a return swing.

In mid-attack, he was forced to heal himself because it was too distracting for him to fight as wounded as he was – though it fortunately didn’t hurt any after the initial attack thanks to Pain Immunity – and the healing depleted the ambient Mana even further than it was. He struggled to fight off the other Gators as they continued to move over the sand as if it was solid under their claws, feeling some of his Fusions stutter for a half-second or so before the ambient Mana density ticked up a little bit to keep them stable. Those distractions made the last 3 Barbed Gators much more difficult to kill than all the rest, and he nearly had his face bitten off when he bent down to kill one of them, only to jerk his head back in time to avoid the teeth that snapped in front of his face.

Now, as he laid himself down to recover from the ordeal on the floor of the Air Skimmer, he thought about the end of the battle and what he now knew about the beasts that attacked him. The first thing he discovered was that the Barbed Gators were indeed monsters, as they all expelled Corrupted Aetheric Force that Larek absorbed and was still in the process of being purified into normal Aetheric Force for him to use for his Skill maximums.

Secondly, the Gators were much stronger and faster than what he remembered being taught in class; if he was to guess, then these ones were something he would expect to see out of a Category 3 or 4 Scission rather than Category 2 as he had been taught. Just a single one of them was a match for an entire Aperture’s worth of monsters in the Empire, and their strength was able to largely able to withstand the downward force of his Repelling Barrier when it initiated during the battle – which was partly why he had been injured, because the expected “repelling” had only thrown off their aim instead of moving them away completely. Of course, if they hadn’t been redirected, he likely would’ve been hurt even further, but the fact remained that his protective Fusion just wasn’t able to hold up to a stronger monster’s attacks the way it could with most others.

That, and when the ambient Mana density was so low, the Repelling Barrier didn’t work nearly as well as it should’ve. The strong gusts that normally would’ve slammed them hard into the sand hadn’t done more than shift them a little bit, and that was due to not being able to absorb enough Mana from the environment to create a Magnitude 10 gust in an instant.

The final thing that he learned after the fight and before he made his way back to the Air Skimmer was that these Gators had some sort of connection to the woman back in Day’s End that he had been willing to try and free but had ended up killing, Serena Grovewhisperer. The reason he had a feeling they were connected was the way the first of the Gators he killed during the battle had started to dissipate into a dark-green and black smoke the same way that her body had after her death, and were, in fact still dissipating while he finished munching away at food. It was slightly disappointing because he had hoped to butcher a few of them to eat the meat they would’ve provided, but that hope disappeared as soon as he saw the first one disappearing.

Added up all together, with the fact that they were monsters with Corrupted Aetheric Force, were stronger than they should’ve been, had some sort of ability to manipulate sand so that it either acted like water or a solid surface, and dissipated into essentially nothing after death, he wasn’t sure what to make of the situation. Was it just coincidence that they were similar to the woman/monster he killed in Day’s End? Or was it a sign of something more?

It was definitely a mystery that seemed to go right along with the whole desert shifting during the night thing, and any other time he might actually look into it if only out of curiosity’s sake. As it was, all he wanted to do was get out of the desert and back to the Kingdom. It’s not my problem nor my responsibility.

Once he was as fully recovered as possible as it was to be after all the battle, something occurred to Larek as he finally felt as if his energy had come back. Standing up inside the Air Skimmer and looking out into the nearby sand, he absently noticed that there was now barely a trace that anything had happened; the Gator bodies and blood had disappeared entirely as it dissipated into smoke, the blood from his wounds was entirely gone as it seemed as though the desert had swallowed all, and even his footsteps through the sand were almost entirely filled in or smoothed out. In the same fashion, the stones that he threw out with his offensive Fusions on them…

…had also disappeared.

Jumping back out of his vessel, he worked his way over to where he was fairly sure he had tossed them as he used his Magical Detection Skill to try and sense them nearby, hoping that they had simply fell a few inches into the sand. He could usually detect Fusions – especially his own – at quite a distance, even through solid rock, but he found not even a hint of them within at least 100 feet below the surface, which meant that they were somehow further down than even that. What is going on here?

Frustrated and more than a bit angry at the loss of his Fusions, Larek made it back to his Air Skimmer and wondered if he could create some more before he left, as he was all out of them now that he had essentially thrown them all away. As he looked around the area with his Magical Detection, he estimated that it would be at least another 40 minutes until the Mana density had recovered enough to try something like that, because his natural Mana regeneration would affect the speed of its recovery, and he really wanted to be on his way. He wouldn’t be able to use his vessel for at least another 10 or 15 minutes because of the draw of ambient Mana the gusts of air took in to operate. Once he was on the move, it wasn’t that big of a deal because he’d be moving to areas with higher density, but it was getting there that would be the initial difficulty.

Therefore, he decided to wait until he stopped for the evening later that night, because he’d rather be gone as soon as possible rather than wait at the site of the recent attack in case there were any more monsters out there. He had barely survived the first attack and wasn’t sure if he would live through another before the Mana density recovered, especially since he was now out of all offensive Fusions except for the one on his staff. He still had his Secure Hideaway, of course, but it would only protect him so far and he was fairly certain that if another group of Gators attacked him again, it wouldn’t last long before they managed to get through.

As he sat there waiting for the density to improve before he took off again, he saw that he had a few notifications he’d received during combat with the Gators but had ignored.

Throwing has reached Level 12!

Dodge has reached Level 20!

Axe Handling has reached Level 91!

Body Regeneration has reached Level 33!

Most of them were Martial Skills, with only Axe Handling being a General Skill. Both Dodge and Body Regeneration had hit their maximum along with his Mage Skills, so they wouldn’t be increasing until he was able to raise their maximums. Speaking of which, he sensed that the Corrupted Aetheric Force had finished purifying for him to use, and he was surprised to see that each of the Barbed Gators had been worth 100 AF each, which gave him an additional 5,000 AF added to his previous total of 1,047 AF he had available. Not only that, but when he looked at his Status, he remembered that he had Advancement Points from recent personal Level increases, because he had apparently increased in Level at some point to Level 29.

Larek Holsten

Combat Fusionist

Healer

Level 29

Advancement Points (AP): 3/22

Available AP to Distribute: 123

Available Aetheric Force (AF): 6047

Stama: 1500/1500

Mana: 2340/2340

Strength: 75 [150] (+)

Body: 75 [150] (+)

Agility: 75 [150] (+)

Intellect: 117 [234] (+)

Acuity: 114 [228] (+)

Pneuma: 1,350 [2,700]

Pattern Cohesion: 27,000/27,000

Mage Skills:

Pattern Recognition Level 35/35 (350 AF)

Magical Detection Level 35/35 (350 AF)

Spellcasting Focus Level 35/35 (350 AF)

Multi-effect Fusion Focus Level 40/40 (400 AF)

Focused Division Level 45/45 (450 AF)

Mana Control Level 50/50 (500 AF)

Fusion Level 50/50 (500 AF)

Pattern Formation Level 50/50 (500 AF)

Martial Skills:

Stama Subjugation Level 1/20 (200 AF)

Blunt Weapon Expertise Level 1/20 (200 AF)

Bladed Weapon Expertise Level 2/20 (200 AF)

Unarmed Fighting Level 3/20 (200 AF)

Throwing Level 12/20 (200 AF)

Dodge Level 20/20 (200 AF)

Pain Immunity Level 20/20 (N/A)

Body Regeneration Level 33/33 (330 AF)

General Skills:

Cooking Level 8

Bargaining Level 9

Beast Control Level 9

Leadership Level 11

Writing Level 11

Saw Handling Level 15

Reading Level 17

Speaking Level 18

Long-Distance Running Level 20

Listening Level 43

Axe Handling Level 91

Since he didn’t have anything better to do while he waited, he figured he might as well spend some of his available resources to improve himself. The easiest to do was the Aetheric Force, because he’d been thinking about it for a while now. Previously, he’d spent most of his AF on his Mage Skills, but with all the combat he’d been participating in lately, and especially this last battle against the Gators, he was realizing more and more that he needed his Martial Skills to improve to stay alive. The two most useful Skills, Dodge and Body Regeneration had both just hit their maximums, which he figured would happen at some point, and he wanted to be able to improve them in the future: one to avoid the hits that might hurt him and the other to fix him up when he couldn’t avoid such an outcome.

Therefore, he bumped the maximum Level for Dodgeto Level 30 and Body Regeneration to Level 40, spending 4,970 of his available 6,047 AF in the process. Leaving him with just over 1,000 AF, he spent all but 27 AF on raising Pattern Recognition, Magical Detection, and Spellcasting Focus one Level to 36; he eventually wanted to get every Mage Skill to at least 40 before adding more to his Fusion and Pattern Formation Skills, because he felt like a few of his Skills they were lagging behind and had already proved beneficial to keeping him alive.

His Advancement Points was something a little bit tougher. Although he didn’t think that he’d completely adjusted to his physical stats quite yet, especially while they were boosted, this last fight with the Gators had proven that he could probably benefit from being even stronger, sturdier, and faster. Of course, increases in his Strength, Body, and Agility didn’t necessarily mean he would be a better fighter, considering that it didn’t come with improvements in his techniques (such as they were) and ability to fight, but he was hoping that it would still give him at least a little advantage.

Therefore, over the next 10 minutes, he slowly added an AP to Strength, Body, and Agility one-by-one; he went slow so as not to overload his body from the sudden increase, though he didn’t think he had that kind of problem ever since he had his Martial side of things “unlocked”, but he was feeling somewhat vulnerable in the middle of a desert after just being attacked by monsters that were far harder to kill than what he was used to.

It was a bit of a jump, but Larek eventually decided to take all three stats all the way to 100. Once that was done, he stood up and jumped back outside the Air Skimmer to test out his new increases, which he immediately found to be disorienting as he got used to what felt like an entirely new body. He jerkily trudged through the sand as he fell a few times, his speed fluctuating as if his body felt as if it should be going faster but it wasn’t used to the changes yet; thankfully, this was helped by the fact that he could now lift his feet out of the sand much faster because of his increased strength, making movement much smoother once he figured out how to regulate his speed.

Larek also noticed that he sunk at least another inch or two deeper than before, as if he weighed more than he did just a few minutes before.  He figured that this might indeed be the case, as when he had been increasing his Body stat, it felt like his very bones were condensing and becoming that much stronger in the process; it was entirely possible that this had added some weight to him.

He ended up spending a little more time than he had originally planned testing out his new physical stats, but it was time well spent because he thought it would be better to work it out now rather than in the middle of a fight. By the end of approximately 30 minutes, he was feeling much better about his movements than he did when he started, though he thought it would take some time to get fully comfortable.

As for the rest of his AP, he debated keeping them until he found something he might need them for, but eventually decided to put the rest into Intellect to increase his Mana pool, as that had proven to be useful while creating Fusions when the regeneration rate was so low due to ambient Mana density issues. Now at a base 165 in Intellect, he had a total of 3,300 Mana with his Boost, and looking at his Mage stats…

…Pneuma was all the way up to 3,600 because of boosts and the increase in his Body stat with its multiplicative effect on Pneuma. Now with 36,000 Pattern Cohesion, he felt like he could make just about any Fusion he could think of and have plenty of Cohesion left over.

With nothing else to distribute and having used more than an hour getting all of that done, the ambient Mana density had finally returned to normal. With a thought of how close he was getting to reaching home, he activated the Multi-Thruster on his Air Skimmer and lifted off from the sands. Soon enough, he was leaving the site of the Gator behind, with not a single trace that anything had even happened.