The Fusionist Book 4 -- Chapter 22

Chapter 22

Thankfully, Larek wasn’t knocked flat on his back like usual when he was bombarded by notifications of Skill Level-ups and unlocking new Fusions, but it was still a heady feeling and slightly uncomfortable – which was also accompanied by the fact that he used around a quarter of his Pattern Cohesion for the Fusion. The feeling passed quickly, and he was able to concentrate on looking at what he had achieved with his new Advanced Fusion, Automatic Strong Temperature Adjustment.

New Fusion Learned!

Automatic Strong Temperature Adjustment +10

Activation Method(s): Permanent, Reactive

Effect(s): Identifies the origin of individuals using a pulsing wave of Mana

Effect(s): Conceals the pulsing wave of Mana by using a void carrier

Effect(s): Determines the ideal temperature for identified individuals by non-invasive mental manipulation based on preference

Effect(s): Cools the air temperature around individuals

Effect(s): Heats the air temperature around individuals

Effect(s): Strengthens stone

Input(s): Individual ideal temperature preference

Magnitude(s): Envelops individuals in a 100-foot diameter

Magnitude(s): Changes temperature up to a 60-degree difference from ambient temperature

Magnitude(s): 500% increased durability

Variable 1: Number of individuals within designated space

Regulator(s): Dependent upon Variable 1 and utilized Limiter capacity

Limiter(s): 100 Mana/s

Mana Cost: 250,000

Pattern Cohesion: 5,750

Fusion Time: 273 hours

Multi-effect Fusion Focus has reached Level 21!

Multi-effect Fusion Focus has reached Level 22!

Pattern Recognition has reached Level 22!

Spellcasting Focus has reached Level 22!

Spellcasting Focus has reached Level 23!

Mana Control has reached Level 38!

Mana Control has reached Level 39!

Fusion has reached Level 41!

Pattern Formation has reached Level 41!

That single Fusion managed to increase most of his Mage Skills a total of 9 Levels, which was incredible. More than that, he could feel that the complete Fusion would do exactly what he wanted, including the mental feedback portion of it, which was something brand-new for him and he hadn’t been entirely sure it would work. Activating it on his bed after deactivating the Space Heater, his new creation was proven to work exactly as he intended, and he experimented with thinking about changing the temperature around him so that it was cold enough to see his breath, to hot enough that he was on the verge of sweating. His stats wouldn’t allow that to happen without being in an area that was even hotter, but he could at least feel the heat even if it didn’t affect him like that.

Looking over the new Fusion, he noticed that there were a few additions he hadn’t seen before written out at is was. The first was the Limiter, which he had simply applied to his understanding of the local capacity for using ambient Mana, but it seemed to have converted to an actual number: 100 Mana/s. There was some tolerance to that, of course, since he was also thinking about his existing Fusions at the time and the draw of ambient Mana they possessed, so the actual limit against the ambient Mana in the Sealance Empire was probably around 400 to 500 Mana/s before it started to drain too much.

Then there was the Regulator, which was dependent on the Variable concerning the number of individuals present, as well as the amount of ambient Mana being drawn in, as notated by what was being utilized by the Limiter and the Mana Cost component of the Fusion. Since there was no way for it to evaluate each instance of the Fusion and search for if there were too many fluctuations, it instead simply based how much regulation of Mana flow was needed depending on how many individuals were present, which was a factor of how much Mana was being drawn in.

In all, this Fusion had 6 different Effects, the most he’d even put together before, which copied two of the same Effects as Perceptive Misdirection as it searched for individuals, but the mental manipulation Effect was limited to simply evaluating the preferred temperature and giving the Fusion feedback. The next two were the most important, as it was what cooled or heated the air around the individuals depending on their preference. The last Effect was almost an afterthought, but having the stone he placed the Fusion on break at some point, releasing the Mana inside of it, would’ve been bad; therefore, he added a Magnitude 5 Strengthen Stone Effect to ensure that didn’t casually happen.

With the number of Effects, multiple Mana Costs to handle those different Effects, a total of 10 Magnitudes to handle extreme fluctuations in temperature, and the other components needed to make it work, the Fusion ended up being a 6-by-6 grid, for a total of 36 different components – by far the largest one he’d ever created. Looking at all the lines of the Fusion, he noticed that more than a few of them weren’t as perfect as he usually liked to create, as they were thinner in places or not as straight as normal, but there was nothing he saw that would compromise the efficacy of the Fusion. He put the inconsistencies down to the fact that this was his first real attempt at a powerful and complicated Advanced Fusion like this and was likely a result of losing his concentration a few times during the process, but after his Skill Level increases, he felt that next time he would have an easier time of it.

More than all of that, his ability to alter an unfamiliar Effect that he’d never actually used in a Fusion before gave him some other ideas for experiments, as well as knowing that he had just discovered something about mental feedback that would be immensely useful going forward. For instance, spoken phrases to activate or deactivate a Fusion? That was a thing of the past, as he was fairly certain he could simply have the Fusion turn on or off with a mental command at a distance.

There were already plenty of Fusions that relied on a mental nudge to activate and deactivate them at a touch, so why not at a distance? The sheer potential for that kind of accessibility was enormous, and he began reconstructing almost all of his offensive Fusions for this new function – as well as thinking of even more that could be just as, or even more, effective than the ones he already had. There were defensive Fusions that could benefit from it as well, though he’d have to think about how exactly to utilize them, especially for ones that worked with a Reactive Activation Method such as his Repelling Barrier.

But before he did anything else, there was one other thing he needed to accomplish before he went to sleep. In short, he needed better protection against anyone who might wish to cause him harm. The Healing Shelter Fusion he had set up in his room near the door was all well and good, but it didn’t protect him from everything – for the same reason he hadn’t used it extensively while traveling to help guard him from the environment when he made camp for the night. There were flaws in it that would allow non-biological monsters to pass through it unharmed, and there were a few instances where he’d used it before that a monster had passed through its area of effect entirely too fast to be severely harmed by it.

There was one instance where he was fighting around an Aperture that was protected by Spring Serpents, which were 6-foot-long snakes with a flared hood of skin around their head that made them look almost like a dinner plate on the end of a stick. What gave them their name, however, and what he hadn’t observed killing a few of them when he ventured toward the Aperture, was that they could coil their bodies tightly into a pile like a tightly wound spring, before releasing the coil and launching themselves at great speed in an arcing horizontal direction. When he hit the Aperture and the Serpents converged on his location, they had demonstrated this by essentially propelling themselves at him from over 30 feet away at incredible speed, their 3-inch-long fangs dripping a greenish venom that acted more like a strong acid against his skin.

Larek had prepared for the fight by placing down a Healing Shelter, as they were biological and would succumb to the extreme healing of the Fusion, but they sprang through it so quickly that they were only marginally affected by the time they reached the other side of the area of effect. At that point, he’d had to use his Stone Shredder Dome in a panic to start chewing through the onslaught of springing monsters, as Frozen Zone also wouldn’t have enough time to properly freeze them before they passed through, and the same went with Binding Thorns.

He ended up killing them fairly easily after that, suffering only a few bites and injuries from their acidic venom, as his Repelling Barrier was enough to knock most of them down once they got close, only to be finished off with a clean axe strike that cut off their oversized heads. What he learned from that was yet another flaw in his Fusions, and that also applied to his current situation in his underground room.

If someone were able to open up his door and attack him from the hallway while he was sleeping, such as with a projectile weapon of some kind, his Healing Shelter would do absolutely nothing. Of course, Larek never slept without his Repelling Barrier active and ready to stop anything from hitting him like that, but the defensive Fusion wasn’t perfect either. What if they threw in a bag of a substance that filled the air with a potent, poisonous gas? Neither Fusion would detect and therefore not protect against it, and he could die in his sleep if he breathed it in and his Body Regeneration wasn’t able to keep up while he was unconscious.

There were a myriad of ways that Larek could think of that someone of ill intent could exploit to kill him while he slept or was in the middle of making Fusions, but there was no way he could find a way to defend against them all. What he could do was formulate a way to eliminate or lessen the flaws in his current protection. If he was careful about it, his new Fusion would be useful not only for his room down in the Underworld Society’s secret hideaway, but also while he resumed traveling on the other side of the Swiftwater.

The problem was that he’d already exhausted most of his ideas for defensive Fusions during his preparation for the Skirmish at Copperleaf Academy. There were only a certain number of spells he knew that he could draw inspiration from for defensive purposes, and the Effects that he’d developed from other ideas weren’t exactly suited to keeping him perfectly safe from any harm.

But he didn’t need a perfect defense, because he was doubtful that any such thing existed. There would always be something that he hadn’t thought of to protect against, and it was a fallacy to think that there wouldn’t be someone or something smarter or stronger than him that could navigate their way through his defenses. What he needed was something that would get him through the majority of situations he could think of and shore up his weaknesses, leaving him to deal with anything else that might arise in the future.

The first element of that defense was something he hadn’t included in his arsenal when he created his new staff, and later regretted it: Camouflage Sphere. He’d been only thinking about the offensive properties of the staff at the time and the idea that he’d be going after Apertures and their monsters, so who needed to be hidden? It was only after what happened outside of Lakebellow and being chased by the Protectors that he had wished he had placed it back on the staff, but was unable to do the Fusion for it while he traveled.

But now he had the chance to fix that, though not necessarily as part of his staff; he had other ideas of what to put on his long-range offensive weapon that might make it even more useful in a fight.

Being hidden from sight was only the first step in the defense, because by itself the Fusion didn’t necessarily “protect” him from anything but prying eyes. Monsters that relied on hunting by smell or sound could still detect him even if he wasn’t visible, and if some person knew he was there, then it didn’t stop them from approaching the Sphere and entering it to find him. Therefore, he needed a physical aspect of his defense that would prevent that from happening.

He immediately thought of his Stone Shredder Dome, as it did a good job of keeping things from passing through it, but if he used something like that, the sound of it being activated would be like a signal fire to those looking for him – because it was far from silent. The rushing of the air as well as the whistle of the rocks as they flew through the Dome was actually quite loud, and using it to try and stay hidden and safe was the last thing he wanted.

Instead of a violent dome of hardened air and stones, Larek thought about something he had created back at Copperleaf while preparing for the Skirmish. The Muffling Air Deflection Barrier Fusion had been used to deaden the sound of his teammates practicing from reaching him while he worked on Fusions as well as preventing stray projectiles from hitting him.

Muffling Air Deflection Barrier +6

Activation Method(s): Activatable, Reactive

Effect(s): Muffles sound coming from outside variable space; creates a stationary barrier of hardened air around a variable space

Input(s): Sound waves impacting perimeter of variable space, external object at speed

Variable(s): 8 X 10 X 8 foot space, speed detection over 10 miles per hour, speed detection over 80 miles per hour

Magnitude: 100% reduction in sound, 300 damage resistance

Mana Cost: 130,000

Pattern Cohesion: 500

Fusion Time: 179 hours

This was certainly an option, as he could turn the muffling effect around and keep any sounds from escaping the area around him instead of reaching him, though he wasn’t sure if he could prevent the absence of external sounds of reaching him while inside. The hardened air was certainly enough to prevent most attacks against it, unless it was swarmed or hit with something powerful, but he could also increase the Magnitude and make it able to withstand even more damage.

There were two problems with it as far as he could see. The first was the same one that he’d been struggling with ever since coming to the Sealance Empire, in that keeping even a lower-Magnitude version active for hours on end would consume quite a bit of ambient Mana to keep it running. The second problem tied into the first, as it would draw even more Mana once the Reactive portion of the Fusion detected a projectile at speed, stopping it before it could pass through. That wasn’t a big deal, but the wall of hardened air wasn’t present at all times, only when it was needed to prevent a projectile from passing through – which meant that someone could walk right through it with only a little resistance from the muffling Effect.

So, what he needed to figure out was how to reduce the draw of ambient Mana, incorporate a camouflage aspect to the Muffling Air Deflection Barrier, and figure out a way that something wouldn’t be able to reach him just by walking up to him. The solution, at least for the latter problem but also helped with the others, was an adaptation of what he used in his Paralytic Light Fusions, as “light” was already a component of the Camouflage Sphere because it bent the light to disguise what was inside the sphere.

In effect, the Fusion he designed started with a camouflaging dome of bent light in a 20-foot radius around its origin, followed by a barrier of dense air that muffled any sound from escaping, which was consequently much easier – and required less ambient Mana to maintain – than blocking sounds from outside of the dome. As for the protective barrier of hardened air, he utilized the outer dome of bent light camouflaging what was inside as a trigger, as anything that disturbed the light would cause it to activate. By keeping the thickness of the camouflaging light rather thin, as he didn’t intend to use it while on the move, it cut the cost of ambient Mana needed to maintain it – which he hoped solved that problem, as well.

Secure Hideaway +10

Activation Method(s): Activatable, Reactive

Effect(s): Muffles sound and prevents it from escaping designated space

Effect(s): Creates a stationary barrier of hardened air around a variable space

Effect(s): Bends light in a dome shape around Fusion location, camouflaging everything living inside from outside visual detection

Effect(s): Using non-invasive mental manipulation, activates or deactivates Activatable Activation Method upon detection of mental phrasing by specific individual

Input(s): Sound waves impacting inside perimeter of variable space

Input(s): Ambient light detection

Input(s): Bent light disturbance detection

Input(s): Individual-specific mental phrasing

Variable(s): Light fluctuations of up to 5,000 lumens

Variable(s): Mental phrasing of “Activate Secure Hideaway” or “Deactivate Secure Hideaway” by Larek Holsten

Magnitude(s): 20-foot radius dome, 100% reduction in escaping sound, 500 damage resistance

Mana Cost: 187,500

Pattern Cohesion: 5,175

Fusion Time: 287 hours

Multi-effect Fusion Focus has reached Level 23!

Pattern Recognition has reached Level 23!

Spellcasting Focus has reached Level 24!

Mana Control has reached Level 40!

Fusion has reached Level 42!

Pattern Formation has reached Level 42!

This Fusion only took him about 45 minutes to finish, but it was yet another successful experiment! With another 6 Skill Level increases, bringing him to a personal Level of 24 and 19 more AP to spend – which he held off on spending for the moment – he was quickly becoming more and more proficient in creating Advanced Fusions. A perusal of his work showed that it was slightly better than his first Advanced Fusion, but still not perfect; it was nonetheless evidence that he would continue to improve.

Verbally deactivating the Healing Shelter Fusion that had previously been there to protect him, he placed his newest Fusion on the floor of his room so that it enveloped both his bed and the edge of the doorway, and then settled down to sleep, relaxing fully in confidence for his safety for the first time since leaving home.