The Fusionist Book 4 -- Chapter 41

Chapter 41

The next day was just as quiet as the one before, but the night saw another movement of his Air Skimmer. At least, that was what he assumed happened, as he didn’t stay awake to watch it happen; he needed sleep after not getting any the day before, and by the end of the day he was practically falling asleep on his feet. He thought that it was strange how exhausted he could get from basically just standing around all day, but it almost felt even worse than if he had been running the entire time.

It was just after deactivating his Secure Hideout while he was eating some breakfast in the morning that something finally changed.

It was subtle enough at first that he didn’t really register what it was that he sensed, and his mind practically ignored it. That lasted for about a minute before a rumbling that was on the edge of his hearing started to shake his vessel; needless to say, that finally got his full attention. The next moment, out from under the sand – approximately 50 feet away from the Skimmer – came a dark spherical shape that shot into the air a dozen feet before landing on top of the sand. When it landed, the spherical shape spread out to reveal what it really was, and Larek was able to recognize it from his Monster Knowledge class at Copperleaf Academy.

Standing only 3 feet tall, the Barbed Gator was just as wide but four times as long at 12 feet – and every inch of it was covered in small-but-sharp barbs that stuck out from its hide. Reptilian in appearance, the four-legged Gator had a massive set of jaws that could nearly fit a 5-foot-tall person into it, and it was able to snap it closed with incredible force. That would be unpleasant for anything that got caught in its mouth because it had sharp, 3-inch-long teeth that could rend flesh, and once it grabbed ahold of something, it was able to use its powerful back and neck muscles to rend and tear its victims by moving most of its upper body.

Two things about this Barbed Gator stood out to Larek immediately. The first thing was that this particular monster was not what anyone would consider a Category 1-type of monster, which was the only type of monster he had encountered while in the Sealance Empire. Larek could only conclude that if there were monsters, Scissions, and Apertures in the desert environment of Lowenthal, then it was possible that the general strength of them all was higher than the Empire.

The second oddity about the Barbed Gator was the fact that it was in the desert at all. From what he remembered from his classes, the Gator usually appeared in Scissions that had more of a water-based bent to them, along with frogs and lizards as well as crabs and other monsters that were at home near bodies of water. If it was from a Scission, then how was it able to pass through the sand as if it were water? If it was from an Aperture, where was it and why didn’t the environment change to suit it like almost every other one he’d seen starting in the Kingdom and continuing into the Sealance Empire?

Those things made him think that this Barbed Gator was actually a native of the desert and not a “monster” as he knew it, though it looked extremely out of place and had abilities outside of what he knew about them. It’s movement through the sand was one thing, but when it took a single step toward him in the Skimmer, the sand seemed to firm up under its feet and deadly sharp claws, so that it walked on top of it as if it was completely solid ground.

As he brought his staff around to fire at the incoming enemy, Larek realized the rumbling hadn’t stopped, as more and more of the Gators burst out of the desert curled up in a strange ball, before splaying their legs apart to land upright on top of the sand. One after another appeared in quick succession, encircling his vessel as if they were working together to surround him. This only enforced his thought that these might be natural beasts instead of monsters, because such strategy coming from relatively unintelligent monsters was practically unheard of.

Regardless of where they came from, it was obvious to Larek that they didn’t simply appear so that they could have a pleasant chat with him. With there being so many of them instead of just the one he was planning on killing, he mentally activated his Air Skimmer and pushed the lifting gust of air to Magnitude in order to get him off the ground. Unfortunately, a few precious seconds as the Gators approached were wasted when he realized that the sand underneath the vessel seemed to have hardened around its outer frame, trapping it in place. He thought he might be able to break free if he pushed the lifting gust further, but he also didn’t want to accidentally rip his only conveyance over the desert apart in the process.

Resolved that he’d need to fight his way out, brought his staff to bear on the first Gator again and started to release a barrage of magical projectiles at the one that appeared first. Going with an Icy Spike with a Magnitude of 3, which fired out at a rate of 5 per second, the stream of moderately sized icicles flying through the air impacted the head and back of the charging Gator, piercing through and inch or two of flesh. Unfortunately, the barbs worked against Larek as they helped to slow down the projectiles and even shattered a few of them, causing much less damage than he expected.

Changing his method of attack on the fly, he instead started launching out Flaming Balls at Magnitude 1; 20 fist-sized balls of flame shot out per second, and he was pleased to see that when they hit the barbs covering the Gator, instead of them being deflected or reduced in efficiency, they broke apart and seemed to spread over the barbs, the hide, and the flesh underneath. Concentrating on the head of his target, the heat and flames from his projectiles completely engulfed its upper body and it soon couldn’t see or move as its eyes were literally melted out of its head. It attempted to dodge away from the stream of fiery death being shot at it, but while a few dozen of the flaming balls missed, it couldn’t get away from the majority of his attacks.

It wasn’t dead yet, but it was incapacitated enough that it could barely move, so he switched to the next in line, switching to a Flying Stone at Magnitude 4 to see what it would do, but that quickly proved to be ineffective. As in, completely ineffective, because as soon as the large stone slivers got close to any part of the Gator, the stone was pushed to the side, missing it completely. The only explanation he had for that was that it was using the same ability to pass through sand against the stones that were flying toward it, though how long they could keep that up was something he didn’t have time to experiment with.

Instead, he switched to Water Stream at Magnitude 7, which was slightly different in its Interval composition inside the VREP Fusion formation than the others – it was, in fact, the complete opposite. The reason for this was that Water Stream typically relied on a steady stream of water at a constant pressure against a target rather than individual projectiles; as a result, a Magnitude 1 Water Stream that turned on and off 20 seconds in a second wasn’t as effective compared to if it was simply left active for longer. Therefore, the connection between Magnitude 1, the Water Stream Effect, and the Interval was actually the same as the Magnitude 8 Interval for the other Effects: 10 seconds. This essentially meant that it would be active for 10 seconds before deactivating, and then activating again almost immediately thereafter.

Obviously, at higher Magnitudes such as Mag 8, this would cause the Water Stream to activate 20 times a second, which might seem like it would have the opposite purpose behind regulating the amount of ambient Mana being pulled into the Fusion. However, Larek had discovered that with an Effect that was essentially being channeled over time, such as Water Stream and even something like Healing Surge, the amount of ambient Mana it used was entirely dependent on how long it was active, and it seemed to increase the ambient Mana draw the longer it kept channeling. During the initial activation, the draw was actually at its lowest and was nearly negligible, so activating a channeled Effect like Water Stream 20 times a second was approximately the equivalent to a Flying Stone at Magnitude 1.

At Magnitude 7, what the Water Stream Effect did was activate 10 times every second.  This essentially created 10 individual, high-velocity streams of water that moved so fast that nearly blended together from a visual perspective. Each strike by another segment of the Stream was like an additional punch into whatever it impacted, though it was much less precise and therefore made his usual method of cutting through flesh less reliable because they rarely hit in the same place as the one before unless one were very steady in holding the staff.

That didn’t seem to matter against the Gators, however, as each impact by the powerful streams of water broke the sharp barbs and punched through to the flesh beneath the hide, leaving what were essentially finger-width craters over every area he targeted with the Effect.  Seeing the effectiveness of Magnitude 7, he upped it to Mag 8 and saw the holes become smaller but penetrated further, even slightly cutting through bone when multiple streams impacted the same spot.

Unfortunately, the Gator moved so fast that hitting the same spot more than once was difficult if not impossible, and while he essentially chewed up the hide and flesh of his target, especially around the head where he aimed, it wasn’t enough damage to do more than slow it down temporarily.

But it was enough of a delay that he was able to switch to the next, which was already halfway to his Air Skimmer, at about 25 feet away.  Foregoing the barrage route, a Magnitude 8 Flaming Ball was shot at the next Gator, and while the barbed beast could move its body quickly, if not its feet, it was unable to avoid the 2-foot-wide ball of flames as it slammed into its head, just past its eyes. As it broke apart upon impact with the barbs, the flames spread over the entirety of its head and half of its upper body, effectively halting it in place.

With that Gator effectively halted, if not completely dead yet, he moved on and switched up his projectile to the Icy Spike yet again at Magnitude 8, as it had proven to be effective as a Flaming Ball. The large chunk of ice that sprang out of the end of the staff practically crushed the head of the Gator he aimed at, prompting him to move on – which was when he realized he would quickly run out of time before at least a few dozen Gators arrived at his vessel. He realized that they were large enough that they could easily reach inside the Air Skimmer and attack him directly, and the last thing he wanted to do was fight where all his supplies were located. In addition, while it wasn’t likely because of how strong the materials it was made out of was, the potential for his vessel to be damaged in such a fight was greater than no chance at all.

Unfortunately, after launching a Mag 8 Flaming Ball and Ice Spike at two different Gators, they were both now on “Cooldown” because of the Fusion – so he couldn’t use either projectile until 10 seconds had passed for each of them. Throwing himself out of vessel, he hit the sand and nearly fell flat on his face as he realized that the ground was hard, as if he had landed on stone instead of small granules of sand. It seemed as though whatever the Gators had done to allow them to walk through the desert without them sinking into it had affected the whole area, and it was what had obviously kept his vessel trapped. Their appearance 50 feet away in a circle made a little more sense to him, as it was obviously used as a means of preventing his escape into the air.

Getting his feet under him, he slipped his axe out of the holder on his side and held it ready to attack while simultaneously firing his staff toward the nearest Gator to him, using a Water Stream at Mag 8 to completely ruin its face as it was filled with small-but-deep holes. That stopped that particular Gator and he turned to blast another with water when he sensed that the Flaming Ball was ready to go once again. As it was closer to him now, a Mag 7 Flaming Ball impacted the nearest Gator at almost point-blank range, and he felt a wave of heat wash over him as his target was lit on fire.

He had the time to switch to an Icy Spike at Magnitude 8 and impale the head of the next-nearest Gator, and for once it actually went into and through the eye socket of his target, piercing through its brain, killing it instantly.

With the distance between him and danger running out, he quickly tossed the staff back into the Skimmer as he reached down to pull out a few things from his belt pouches. The first was a Secure Hideaway, which he activated and tossed into his vessel, protecting it from being harmed for a while; he was fairly certain that the Gators could break through the dome surrounding it given enough time, but it would hold them off for a little while.

Secondly, he tossed a total of 12 Frozen Zone, Healing Shelter, and Binding Thorn Fusions out toward the nearest Gators, hoping that they would take care of a few of them so that he wasn’t overwhelmed, and then threw a single Weaken stone at the furthest one, which was on the opposite side of the Skimmer and approximately 70 feet away. As it flew through the air, he activated the Effect and dropped to the ground, looking the other direction as it exploded.

Larek was sent tumbling from the force of the explosion, though he managed to keep ahold of his axe. When he got back to his feet, he immediately looked to see what had happened and saw that a large crater had formed in the hard sand, and at least 10 of the Gators had been caught close enough to the blast that they were blown apart. Unfortunately, there were also a few significant chunks of hardened sand stuck in the strengthened iron shell of the Air Skimmer, as the force of the blast had been such that not even his newly created vessel could survive it intact.

That was too close. If it had hit the Fusion on the back….

It appeared as though Larek would have to fight this the old-fashioned way, he risked further damaging his airborne conveyance further. Thankfully, his offensive Fusions had done their job as they activated. Being flesh and blood beasts, the Gators were greatly affected by the cold and immediately froze, killing a half dozen of them caught in his Frozen Zones; another half-dozen were killed as they were healed too much by his Healing Shelters; and another four were caught in roots that sprang up from underneath the hard sands and began to wrap them up and cut into them with their thorns. They didn’t die right away, but they also didn’t seem strong enough to break free.

Unfortunately, they wouldn’t stay caught for too long, because Larek could already feel a lessening of the Mana density all around him. Mentally deactivating the Frozen Zone and Healing Zone Fusions to stop them from using too much of what was left, he left the Binding Thorn Fusions running while he moved toward the Gators he had incapacitated earlier. Using his best friend, he swiftly swung down at the head of one of the beasts he had originally burned badly with a Flaming Ball, and the blade of the axe passed into and through flesh and bone with relative ease.

As it fell to the sand shortly thereafter, he had to dive away and roll to avoid a second Gator blindly snapping at his leg, as Larek had drilled Water Stream holes in its eyes before he moved out of the Skimmer. Thankfully, his practice killing monsters in the Empire made moving away from the Gator fairly easy, because even though its attacking movements were quick, it couldn’t walk quickly to get to him. As it attempted to snap at him again, he sheared through its descending upper jaw and took it clean off with another swing of his axe; before he could finish it off, he had to dodge away again as he was nearly caught from behind.

Tapping into his Agility, he moved out of the encircling Gators by quickly cutting down yet another one of the previously wounded beasts and passing through the gap it made. Now out of immediate danger, he turned back toward the approaching Gators and held up his axe, practically inviting them to get closer so that he could chop them to pieces.

He had confidence he could do it, too… as long as he didn’t get ripped to pieces in the process.