The Fusionist Book 4 -- Chapter 32

Chapter 32

Stepping off the ferry boat onto the dock at Riverbend, Larek adjusted the over-filled pack to sit comfortably on his back before running his fingers over the special new leather belt he had acquired in Swiftwater. He nodded at the smiling face of the ferry boat captain, who waved at him in return, the enthusiasm of the man infectious enough that there was a spring in the step of the others who disembarked along with the Combat Fusionist, and there was an air of celebration to the whole event.

Trade had resumed along the Swiftwater, which was a momentous occasion for the cities and towns that relied upon it.

For Larek, he was just glad that a way over the fast-flowing river had finally allowed him to cross and resume his journey home. The very faint jingle of coins secured in his pack certainly helped as well, as they would make everything that much easier.

Thinking about earlier that morning, he was greeted at breakfast by Mage Protector Zinnia, who had passed on the good news.

“They’ve agreed,” she had told him. “Though they have some questions. If the answers are satisfactory, they’ll pay the full amount of 75 platinum coins upon receipt of the Fusions, and you’ll be free to leave.”

“What kind of questions do they have?”

She went on to list them from a sheet of paper she pulled out of her pocket, and Larek answered them almost as quickly as she finished. Most of them had to do with how the Fusions worked, which he gave a general idea of but didn’t specify the phrasing needed so that they wouldn’t screw him over. There was only one that he wasn’t sure how to answer truthfully, because he didn’t know.

“…alright, that makes sense. Last question, then: How long will these Fusions last and will they need to be repaired or replaced at some point?”

“I’m… not actually sure how long they will last, because I haven’t seen any of the ones I’ve created degrade yet. As you remember from my training with you, normal Fusions only last a few months to possibly a year at best, but mine are a lot stronger than that.” She’d nodded, so he went on. “As for needing to be repaired or replaced, as far as I can tell there should be no reason for that.  The only thing that could potentially break them down is from rapid overuse as I explained before, so stopping and starting the Fusions at a high ambient Mana draw will begin to degrade the formation over time. Normal use should see them last for decades or longer.” That was what he thought, anyway.

“They will be glad to hear that. As soon as you have the Fusions done, let me know and I’ll—”

“They’re done. Finished them last night and they’re sitting up in my room.”

She had been practically speechless at his statement, but after seeing what he could do, she wasn’t skeptical.

After that, the morning was a rush as he was brought to the Merchant Guild to hand over the Fusions and accept payment, which went much smoother than he thought it would considering their demand to create more ferries. He then spent an hour with a half-dozen boat captains employed by the Guild on the completed ferry as he demonstrated and explained how they controlled the vessel; unsurprisingly, they were leaps and bounds better than him in maneuvering the large boat in the water, despite not having controlled anything like the paddle wheels before, let alone mentally commanding the Fusions.

After that, he went on a shopping spree with his new funds, purchasing supplies that would be needed for traveling through the rest of the Empire, including his new belt. What made it special were the pockets attached to it with simple flaps that kept them closed, but could be tied if it was necessary. He’d already filled a few of them with his different Fusions to make them more accessible, especially in combat, and to keep them separated and easier to pick from rather than in a jumble inside of his pocket. But even with what he’d filled them with, there was still a lot of room for others, which gave him an idea for more Fusions he could create and use now that he had someplace to store and easily access them.

Who knew that a simple leather belt with pockets could be so useful?

His new walking staff-turned-offensive weapon filled with Fusions knocked against the stone of the dock as he moved away from the hustle-and-bustle of the celebratory crowd as crews began to unload the first crates of goods off the boat in weeks. The people of Riverbend noticed him, of course, but they moved out of the way without more than a glance; thanks to the ring he slipped onto his finger as soon as he started moving through the crowd, he was no longer seen as someone 7 feet tall, but was instead under 6 feet – or just a little over the average height of most of the others.

His features didn’t even stand out as being different because he was from the Kingdom, because Larek had altered the Perceptive Misdirection Fusion he had learned from the ring Shinpai had made for him and made it better. It was something that he had been thinking about since he had learned the Advanced Fusion, but hadn’t been able to change anything until he had some time to experiment – which the last few weeks before he had started on the ferry project allowed him to have.

He found that when he increased the Magnitude of the original Perceptive Misdirection Fusion past the 1 it had been at before, it allowed him to do more with the non-invasive mental manipulation of any observers than simply making them think he was a foot shorter. Using what he’d learned from the Automatic Strong Temperature Adjustment Fusion, in regard to identifying the ideal temperature of an individual based on preference, he was able to tap into the expectations of an observer when they looked at him.

The majority of the time, people didn’t expect to see someone walking around who obviously came from some other place in the world, especially when 99.9% of the people they interacted with on a daily basis were locals. With that thought going into the Fusion, he altered what observers saw so that he was not only shorter, but also someone they expected to see walking around – which he figured was probably a Brolencian (the majority of people he saw in the Empire), but he didn’t dictate who they saw, other than it not being someone they were familiar with. He didn’t need random people coming up to him and engaging him in conversation as if they had just seen an old friend, after all.

In addition to being a shorter version of someone they expected to see walking around, he was also able to insert a feeling that he was unremarkable and relatively harmless. It required a Magnitude of 5 to accomplish that successfully, as anything of lower Magnitude wouldn’t seem to take that Effect properly, and he had experimented with it once back in Swiftwater. It was a strangely liberating feeling being able to walk around the city without anyone really noticing him beyond a glance, because even though he wasn’t hated or feared by the general population like he was in the Kingdom, they were still obviously wary of him because of his foreign features and height. When wearing the ring, he found that he could’ve easily walked out at any time without anyone saying anything to him, skipping out on his obligation to teach the Mages of the city about Fusions, but at that point he still didn’t have any way to safely cross over the river.

As he began to discover how effective this non-invasive mental manipulation could be, he worried about going a bit too far with it. How much manipulation of their perception is too much? Could I make people who see me think that I’m a friend or a loved one? Or, turning that around, could I make them become intimidated by me and voluntarily give me all their money in exchange for their lives? The latter thought sickened him, as he wanted nothing to do with something like that, because it sounded entirely too much Dominion magic for his liking. In fact, the entire Effect of the Perceptive Misdirection Fusion felt a bit to manipulative to be comfortable with it beyond what he absolutely needed in order to get around safely. He resolved to keep an eye on its effects on people who observed him, and if it seemed like it was harming them in some way, he would discontinue its use immediately.

Until that happened, though, he would use it to ensure he wasn’t bothered walking through a village, town, or city, because if he didn’t have to travel across the entire Sealance Empire while avoiding populated areas, he wouldn’t. Because his identity was essentially obscured due to the Fusion on his ring, he didn’t have to hide anymore.

With most of the hubbub going on in the town of Riverbend being near the docks, and rightly so, it didn’t take Larek long to navigate his way through the town and out past the last of the buildings there. There was the beginnings of a wall being constructed around the outskirts of the town, as if they were just now responding to the influx of monsters and Apertures throughout the Empire, but it was essentially abandoned at the moment as everyone was located near the docks to see the unusual ferry arrive. The unfinished and unguarded gate proved no hindrance to him as he walked through it, and soon enough he was back on track to getting back home after the lengthy delay.

Running at full speed as soon as he was out of sight of the town, it only took 10 minutes for him to sense the first Aperture nearby, and he immediately switched his course to head toward it. As he approached the obvious edge of the Aperture, he slowed down and came to a stop as he considered what he was looking at. The landscape he was traveling through was rather pretty, with a mountain backdrop in the distance with snow-capped peaks, while around him was a large valley between gentle hills dotted with random tree stands. The knee-high grass he stepped through was waving in the comforting breeze that passed through the valley, and the thousands of multi-colored wildflowers clumped up in various areas gave the whole scene an idyllic quality that was both refreshing and peaceful at the same time.

That was until one came upon the area where the Aperture he sensed was, which appeared like a blight upon the land as it appeared as though a dome of darkness had fallen from the sky and landed inside the valley.  The blackness encompassing the dome was so complete that he couldn’t even see inside of it, like it was a solid wall of shadow that didn’t allow light to penetrate.

What the heck is this?

While his education in both Academies didn’t exactly cover Apertures and the changed environments that were produced, he couldn’t think of any type of monster he’d learned about that would create this dome of darkness. Immediately cautious, he dropped his pack just outside of the dome to ensure he didn’t lose it, because he was unsure of what would happen when he went inside, before bending down and digging into the dirt beneath his feet. With a jagged stone in his hand which he quickly cleaned the dirt off, he sat in the grass and began working on a Fusion. A very short time later, he produced a new version of Illuminate +7, creating a Reactive Intermediate Fusion with mental phrasing commands and multiple Magnitudes so that the illumination Effect could be increased or decreased at a thought. He also added in a directional detection and orientation Input and Variable so that it didn’t simply shine the illumination everywhere, which could blind him, but was instead aimed in a cone-like pattern in a specific direction.

The creation of such a Fusion was coming easier and easier as he was now familiar with mental commands, and the Illuminate Fusion was one that he’d already known well enough to make without too much thought. Directing it toward a specific direction was adapted from all the work he’d done with his staff-based offensive spells and the air gusts used on the ferries, so it all just kind of came together with a few tweaks here and there.

The new Directional Illumination +7 Fusion was approximately twice as expensive in terms of Mana Cost and Pattern Cohesion in comparison to the simple Illuminate +7 Fusion, but that still wasn’t very costly. He was able to finish it off in a few minutes, and it was only when he was standing up that he realized that, for the first time since he’d killed those bandits back near Lakebellow, he wasn’t concerned about Protectors sneaking up on him. Whether it was his relationship with the Protectors of Swiftwater, his new Perceptive Misdirection ring, or because he was more confident in his abilities to avoid their notice, all that mattered to him was that he had finally broken away from his paranoia.

That meant he could finally create Fusions while traveling, even if he wasn’t staying in a town or city. With a smile that turned to a frown as soon as he looked at the dome of darkness nearby, he gripped his staff in his right hand while he held the new Fusion on the stone in his left, angled so that the Fusion was pointing ahead of him.

Taking his first tentative steps inside, he mentally activated his new Directional Illumination Fusion at Magnitude 1, and a conical beam of light shone out of the stone and impacted the dome without any visible effect. Bumping it up to Mag 2 and then 3, he finally saw some of the darkness recede when the light impacted the darkness, though instead of banishing shadowy substance, it sort of diluted it so that it wasn’t as solid-looking. It also didn’t reach that far into the dome, only a foot or so, and Larek increased the Magnitude even further. Each successive increase in the light beam’s strength further diluted the darkness and allowed him to see farther inside, until Magnitude 7 allowed him to see the furthest of all.

It was hard to even look at, though, because the light – even without shining everywhere – was blindingly bright and was almost as bad as the darkness at obscuring what was ahead of him, so he reduced it back down to 6 and found he could handle it much better, even if it came with reduced visibility.

Cautiously moving inside the dome with the Mag 6 cone of light extended ahead of him, as soon as he passed through the edge of the Aperture’s environment he felt the darkness closing around him like he’d just jumped into a pool of inky blackness. It was oppressive-feeling, like it was trying to push into him even as he waded through it, but he shrugged off the sensation because it wasn’t debilitating in the least. Just.. slightly uncomfortable.

His new illumination Fusion was the only thing that made the experience bearable, as it pushed back the darkness wherever he pointed it. The first thing he noticed was that the actual environment hadn’t changed compared to outside the dome, though all the grass and wildflowers were dead and crunched under his feet as he moved through it. He could immediately tell that it wasn’t due to lack of water or due to a monster killing them, but because they had a complete lack of sunlight due to the oppressive darkness.

It only took him a minute to discover the first of the monsters that inhabited the Aperture, though he didn’t really get a good look at it before it disappeared. As soon as his light shone upon the dark splotch that looked like the living shadow of some sort of large, hovering rodent, it screeched briefly before being abruptly cut off, dispersing into a shadowy smoke that evaporated before his eyes. A second later, he acquired a total of 2 Aetheric Force, surprising him at its sudden acquisition.

I killed it? With the light?

Given that the environment was dark, and the monster looked like a shadow, he supposed it made sense that light would harm it – and a bright light like the one he had even more than usual.

Larek ended up inadvertently killing two more of the strange shadowy monsters on his way to the actual Aperture, which took him longer than he expected. He hadn’t really noticed it from the outside, but the Aperture’s territory was huge, as if it had been allowed to expand since it was first formed. Given the nature of the monsters inside and the environment itself, he thought it likely that none of the nearby towns or cities had been able to close it before now.

I guess it’s good that I’m here, then.

Finally reaching the floating sphere that marked the entrance of the Aperture, he bonked it sharply with his staff, and then waited for the onslaught to begin. He didn’t have long to wait, as it seemed as though the shadowy rodents could move extremely quickly through the darkness of the environment, and soon enough Larek was swarmed with dozens and then hundreds of the things from all sides.

Using his new Fusion, he swept it in an arc around him, but it couldn’t be everywhere at once. Within seconds, even as he took to firing out fiery and stony projectiles from his staff wherever he could (which seemed to have an effect on what he was calling the Shadow Rats, though not as much as his light), he experienced what felt like cold scratches all over his legs and back, which passed completely through his Repelling Barrier without triggering anything, as well as his clothing as if it wasn’t even there.

He could tell that these scratches were only barely breaking the surface of his skin and weren’t deep, but there were certainly a lot of them. Thankfully, the attacks lessened as he continued to sweep his light in a circle, killing dozens of the Rats at a time; at one point, he attempted to sweep through one right at the edge of his vision with his staff, but the wooden weapon simply passed through it without seeming to harm the shadowy figure.

It took nearly 10 minutes for the last of the Shadow Rats to disperse into nothing once his light passed through it, and it was at that point that Larek healed himself. His legs and back felt like he had jumped into a thorn bush and rolled around a couple hundred times, as they were covered in shallow scratches that drew a little blood, but nothing serious. He knew that if he’d had a lower Body stat, he’d have suffered a lot more; as it was, it was annoying more than anything, as his Pain Immunity Skill essentially numbed any pain after the initial scratches.

He was then slammed with a large amount of Aetheric Force that he later saw was worth 524 AF once it was all purified, bringing him to a new total of 603 AF. Not bad for about 30 minutes of work.

After smashing the Aperture to temporarily close it, he made his way out of the area, finding that the dome of darkness had shrunk considerably in size, until it was only about a quarter of the area it held when he first went in. As he departed the Aperture’s territory, he saw the dead grass and wildflowers outside in the sunlight for the first time, and there was a clear delineation of time expanding away from the dome. The vegetation inside the dome of darkness and right outside of it was the most decayed, showing that it had been dead longer, while near where the edge used to be before he closed the Aperture, it was only “recently” dead.

Given that it’s been about 2 months or so since the change and the Apertures arrived in the Empire, that is a significant amount of growth if it hadn’t been closed before this. He dreaded what it would look like if it was allowed to continue growing for a year or more. I wonder if that’s what happened back in the Kingdom? Was one or more Apertures allowed to grow out of control?

It was too soon to tell, but he suspected that this was the case, given how quickly things got out of control.  If one of the Apertures back home grew larger for multiple years, then that could mean one of their territories might be so large that it was overtaking entire cities in its expansion. It was all the more reason to return to the Kingdom, because the people he cared for were there, and if there was a threat like this happening, then he needed to help stop it in order to keep them safe. If he didn’t and it was allowed to continue expanding, then it was only a matter of time before it consumed the entire world, flooding enough Corruption into the environment to kill everything living.

As much as he didn’t desire to be a hero destined to save the world, he couldn’t just sit back and watch it burn all around him.