The Fusionist Book 4 -- Chapter 36

Chapter 36

Running through the arid landscape outside of Day’s End, Larek thought about the night before and had to shake his head at how it all turned out. His willingness to help someone out of a bad situation had nearly blown up in his face like a stray Fireball, but at least he got information on Lowenthal and a little about the situation back in the Kingdom out of it. From what Serena had mentioned, the land had become so unsafe that the monsters from the Apertures had spread to other nearby lands. That she was supposedly coming to find a new place for the Dyran Hearthwood was in question, giving her nature of being possessed by a monster, but the situation certainly seemed like it was at least mostly true back home.

What confused him the most was why she mistakenly thought he was on the run from the SIC. During the mind-to-mind conversation, Serena had mentioned that she was certain that he had fled from the Kingdom and was hiding out in the Sealance Empire; she said it in a way that made it seem like such a thing was common and so, of course, it made the most sense. But for the SIC members back home to be literally fleeing from the Kingdom, common enough for it to be known by outsiders, then it had to be quite bad.  In addition, it practically confirmed that Larek had been stuck in the void for around four years, because otherwise it wouldn’t have progressed to this point. All of that still didn’t answer the question of how it got as bad as it sounded, but it was a start on the information concerning the Kingdom, at least.

In the end, it didn’t really matter when or how it happened, but he was now even more desperate to get back as soon as possible to find his family and friends. Which was why he was running essentially out in the middle of nowhere to test his new Fusion to see if it would actually do what he designed it to do. He couldn’t safely experiment with it in the town of Day’s End, but out here there were no buildings or people that might get hurt if it didn’t turn out the way he imagined.

Setting down the wooden square that he’d created the new Fusion on, he stepped back a dozen feet and mentally activated it. With a simple mental command of, “Lift 1”, a blast of air shot down into the ground from below the board of wood, kicking up a dust cloud that was blown out in all directions. As the dust blew past him, he held up his arm to protect his face from the cloud, but he took it down as soon as possible to see the results of his test.

It was a good thing that he did, because otherwise he might have missed the wildly flipping square plank a second before it smacked him in the face. Dodging it at the last second by moving his head, Larek whipped his entire body around to watch the flipping wood stabilize a little before shooting off into the distance. It had gone so far at such a speed that it was quickly out of mental command range, and he watched it begin to arc almost straight up into the air. At some point, the wooden plank began to spin again as it flipped out of control, before he saw it stabilize again – but this time it was pointing straight downward toward a pile of sharp, jagged rocks.

“Uh, whoops.”

Throwing himself onto the ground while covering his pack, the inevitable happened. Larek turned away from the explosion that occurred when the wooden board rocketed downward at incredible speed before smashing itself to pieces on the rocks below. While there was a Magnitude 8 strengthening Effect in the Fusion to make the wood stronger, even that couldn’t withstand such an impact against sharp rocks with momentum aiding it in the endeavor.

Thankfully, the explosion was far enough away from Larek that he was only buffeted by a strong blast of wind and small debris that made it through his Repelling Barrier because of the high quantity of it. There wasn’t enough of the explosive force to affect his other Fusions, thankfully, but if it was any closer, he didn’t like his chances of survival.

Picking himself up, he looked to the crater that had been the pile of sharp rocks, and then around him as he saw chunks of those rocks having been blown up to 200 feet away from the site of the explosion. Breathing a sigh of relief that nothing worse had happened, and also thankful that he hadn’t tried this out inside the town, Larek reached inside his pack and pulled out an identical Fusion on a similar board of wood.

“Alright, so what did I learn?” he mused as he stared at the Fusion in his hand. “Well, it obviously works, but the material isn’t necessarily the correct one due to its weight and… shape? The gusts of air shooting up from below are impossible to stabilize because if it’s just a fraction of an inch off, then it sends the whole thing spinning out of control instead of providing simple upward lift.  I can try and stabilize it with the three other gusts I have in place at different angles, but I’m not sure if that will be any more successful.  Weight might help, though.”

While he hadn’t exactly been planning on testing it himself yet, Larek didn’t see any other solution. If he placed something on top of the wooden plank, it would simply fall off as soon as it lifted in the air if it was tilted even slightly. But if he were to stand on top of it, he thought he could adjust his stance and weight enough to keep it stable.

Placing it down on the ground, Larek took a deep breath before he stepped onto the plank of wood. It was only 12 inches wide on each side, so he had to place his feet together to fit, but he managed somehow. Bending his knees to have a better ability to adjust his weight, Larek activated the same mental command as before, and a blast of dust blew out in a ring underneath his feet as he was jerked upward – all of an inch before his upward momentum stopped.

Due to his Agility stat, he was a lot more agile on his feet than he used to be, but even that wasn’t enough to make it easy staying on top of the board as it attempted to slide out from underneath him. Every minute adjustment of his weight had the wooden plank shifting slightly as the air gust constantly pushed at it from below, but he eventually got the hang of it enough that it became easier to keep it level. I’m sure that this would be much easier on something larger. He regretted not building something that would be better suited to utilizing his new Fusion before he started with his testing, but it was a little late for that right now. When he went back to the town, however, he would look into getting something more appropriate.

Once he had it stabilized, Larek increased the strength of the gust of air Effect from below, using the mental phrase, “Lift 2”, and he immediately felt a difference as he rose upwards at a steady pace. That steady pace was only an inch or so every second, but it was still progress – but it also required some additional concentration to keeping the board steady. “Lift 3” was used once he was about a foot above the ground, and he suddenly began rising at a much faster speed at about a foot per second.

I did it! I’m flying!

Using what he’d learned from creating the ferry boat Fusions, Larek had adapted the ideas to create a Fusion that would allow him to lift off into the air. Of course, he was planning on putting it on some sort of… vessel? He wasn’t quite sure about it yet, but just like the ferry boat had utilized the specific Fusions that had been created for it, the Combat Fusionist would have some way to utilize his new creation.

Of course, he wasn’t done yet. Included in the Fusion were three other directional gusts of air Effects, located along the rear of the board, the left side, and the right side. Just like turning the different paddle wheels on the ferry, his air gusts would allow him to move forward or turn depending on which ones he had active.

Once he was approximately 10 feet in the air, he tested out a new mental phrase, “Forward 1” – which was where everything went wrong.

Suddenly thrust forward, Larek was immediately knocked off the small board despite knowing it was coming. As he fell backwards and plummeted to the ground, he looked up to see the board spinning in crazy flips and rotating in wild circles. Remembering to deactivate it this time, the simple mental phrase, “All Off” was enough to shut down both gusts of air, and the plank followed Larek down to the ground.

Landing awkwardly from 10 feet up wasn’t the most comfortable feeling, but his Body stat shrugged off the impact with only a slight twinge in his backside where he hit the ground first. That soon faded as he got up and brushed himself off before retrieving the deactivated Fusion, thankful that it hadn’t slammed itself into a bunch of sharp rocks like the last one. Even falling from a mile up wouldn’t damage the wood too much – as long as it didn’t thrust itself into the ground.

Staring at the Fusion again, he decided that he didn’t want to take the risk of hurting himself more than necessary, so when he got back on the wooden plank he limited himself to Magnitude 2 for the “Lift” portion of the experiment. Strangely enough, a few inches over where he had increased the Lift last time, or at about 14 inches off the ground, Larek didn’t rise into the air any further. Looking below him at the packed dirt beneath the overlayer of dust that had been blown off, he thought he understood what was going on. The air gust, when it blew upwards toward the block of wood, kept up the steady stream of air that he was expecting, but it also had to go somewhere after rebounding off the wooden material. From what he could tell from the dust still being picked up, it spread out to the sides and seemed to curl around itself back to the ground in a sort of flattened sphere that had the Fusion at the apex sitting on top of the upper flattened portion.

He wondered why it didn’t simply spread out constantly before dispersing. It only took a few seconds of watching it at work to realize that the rebounding air was being pulled in by the Fusion’s Effect once it hit the ground and curled in on itself, before being forced back up into the wooden plank in an endless cycle. In other words, the system of recycling rebounding gusts created a cushion of air that the Fusion was riding on top of.

It was at that point where he was bending over and forgetting to pay attention to his balance that he discovered that the cushion seemed to have an unintentional stabilizing effect. As he bent forward to look closer at the recycling air, he half-expected to fall off, but somehow the cushion nudged the block of wood back into the place of equilibrium it preferred on top and flat against the rebounding air. He soon found that there was a limit to the nudging it could do as he bent too far forward and the cushion essentially collapsed, sending him falling forward and the plank shot away uncontrollably. Thankfully, he was able to deactivate it before it went too far, and he was able to try again.

Magnitude 3 brought him up to a dozen feet before it stopped, and again the stabilizing effect was felt as an even larger cushion of air was created, though it didn’t feel quite as stable as the Mag 2 version. Still, he was able to stand on the block of wood without too much trouble by that point, and small shifts of his weight didn’t cause it to tip him off or fly off in crazy directions.

Magnitude 4 shot him up over 50 feet in a matter of seconds, and his balance was lost almost immediately upon acceleration. He deactivated the Fusion while still in the air once again, and he fell back to the ground – though this time he landed on his feet with a small *crack* that he could hear and feel in his ankles and knees. They weren’t severely damaged by the fall, as he essentially just popped his joints from the impact, and any injury that might have been sustained was quickly soothed by his Body Regeneration Skill.

“Well, it looks like Magnitude 3 is the limit – if it’s just me on top of that piece of wood, of course. Once I attach it to something, that could change things.”

Having established a baseline of strength that he could handle at the moment, he continued his experiments. Limiting himself to Mag 2, he initiated the “Forward” gust of air at Magnitude 1 to see if that would allow him to move.

Prepared for the acceleration this time, he bent his knees as he moved forward at what he would consider a fast walk for a normal person. The gust of air coming from behind to push at the wooden board did something to the cushion of air below, as the air rebounded sporadically since it was facing a much smaller edge than the flatter bottom. As a result, the cushion became slightly lopsided as additional air was pushed into the system, causing him to tilt slightly forward. Larek was also physically pushed against by the rebounding air going up and over the upper side of the board, but it had lost most of its power and couldn’t really budge him.

Magnitude 2 Forward gust of air, however, was entirely too much and destabilized everything, causing Larek to fall off again and deactivate the Fusion.

Unperturbed at the failure, he tried again at a Magnitude 3 Lift gust of air, and found that the Forward gust at Mag 1 barely affected the cushion below him. Magnitude 2 Forward gust of air made him tilt a little as he was pushed forward, but he was barely able to hold on – though his speed moving forward had increased to a decent run for a normal person. As soon as he attempted a Mag 3 Forward gust of air, he deactivated the Fusion almost immediately as he was basically pushed off.

Turning a challenge as well, as even a Mag 1 gust of air blasting against the corner of the board was enough to move it – and it was a lot more than could be easily controlled. Keeping the blast of air going for a second sent him spinning around in a circle and was unable to stay balanced. He discovered that if there was some forward momentum the turning wasn’t out of control, though he had to activate and deactivate the right or left gust of air immediately. He thought that he could probably adjust this on his next iteration of the Fusion, because he was already finding things that could be tweaked to improve the whole thing.

With his semi-successful experimentation done, Larek gathered up his things and stored them back in his pack before taking off for Day’s End again. As much as he didn’t want to spend more time in the town than he had to, it was also the only source of the materials he’d need to construct some sort of vessel to carry him across the desert; he had no plans to stand on top of a foot-square piece of wood the entire time, after all. In addition, if he was going to be moving across Lowenthal, which according to Serena didn’t have any aboveground places for him to stop and resupply, he was going to have to bring everything with him – including as much food as would be needed for the trip. Thankfully, he was able to create water so that he stayed hydrated in the heat and dry air that would affect even Larek with his high Body stat, but food was another thing entirely in the barren desert.

Which inevitably meant a larger vessel to hold all of that, and that would take some time to construct. While Larek had a little experience in creating vessels thanks to his time in Swiftwater and the ferry boat, he was by no means an expert. Instead, he thought that he was going to have to contract someone to help him construct it so that it didn’t take days or weeks to finish, because he wanted to leave as soon as possible. And so that it didn’t fall apart along the way, as he wasn’t exactly confident in his construction abilities.

He thought about all this as he saw the walls to the town in the distance, and he slowed down before he was within sight of those watching the road heading off to the west. It just wouldn’t do to be seen running at a speed that likely no other people in the entire Empire could match – at least, not yet. He was sure they would get there eventually, but for now, such a display was out of place…

…and he still wanted to blend in as much as possible. He didn’t need another incident like the ones he’d experienced in Day’s End already.