The Fusionist Book 3 -- Chapter 44

Chapter 44

For the first time, Larek got to see what happens when experienced members of the SIC applied his powerful Fusions in combat against deadly monsters. Granted, he’d seen what his bodyguards could do with a 100% increase to their stats, but they technically weren’t even graduates yet; they had gotten a bit of practice fighting monsters over the last week or so, but that couldn’t really compare to those with higher Skill levels, higher stats, and actual experience fighting against all the monsters coming out of a Scission as part of a decently sized SIC force.

The difference was obvious from the first seconds of the fight, and he was immediately glad that they hadn’t been forced to actually fight these people – because he was fairly certain they would’ve lost.  He wasn’t talking about losing after a prolonged battle, but within seconds of the fight starting, despite having the Repelling Barrier Fusion to help fend off attacks. They were just that good at what they did, and considering that they were stationed in what was a relatively small town before it ballooned up in size lately, there was a likelihood that they weren’t the best around.

But that certainly wasn’t obvious when he saw them in action.

As if they had practiced such a maneuver before, three heavily armored Corpsmen raced to the front of the first Greater Trizard with their large shields held out in front of them. As they moved into position close to the dangerous monster, all three of the Trizard’s heads audibly inhaled a second before they breathed out a combination of flames, brown gas, and a white fog that slammed into the shields presented to them. Just before they hit, there was a glow that surrounded each of the shields that Larek recognized as some sort of defensive Battle Art due to the Stama usage; while he didn’t know exactly what it did, he could see that the elemental breath of the Trizard had absolutely no effect upon the shields as they seemed to splash off without harm.

Seeing that it had done no damage via its breath attacks, which cut off after 5 seconds, the Trizard seemed to ready itself to pounce upon its victims, but a battleaxe seemed to come out of nowhere as another of the SIC fighters in chainmail appeared by its side, slamming the weapon into one of its long necks and decapitating the frozen-breathed head with ease. The shearing sound of the attack as the battleaxe cut through its hard scales was certainly audible to everyone, and Larek looked at the weapon the individual was wielding afterwards, only to see that its edge and handle had been bent out of shape from the blow.

What that meant to Larek was that the battleaxe-wielding Corpsmen’s Strength stat was apparently so high that it didn’t matter that its weapon wasn’t technically sharp enough to cut through the scales of the Trizard; he simply forced it through with his prodigious strength regardless of his weapon’s non-ability to cut. It was similar to how Larek used his axe to cut down trees back when he was a Logger with his family; the only reason the axe survived his greater strength was because of the Fusions – but this man had a Strength stat that far outstripped what the Fusionist used to wield back then. His battleaxe might have been sturdy enough for his previous Strength, but when that Strength literally doubled? The steel that went into the axe had the physical characteristics of copper by that point.

The decapitations didn’t stop there, however, as a glowing arrow slammed into the eye of the petrification head, before it exploded from the inside of its brain. The last head, the one that breathed flames, was suddenly impacted by a barrage of sharp stone slivers and blades of ice that didn’t do too much individually, but the sudden onslaught battered and then broke through the hard scales and then punctured through its neck in multiple places. While it wasn’t exactly a clean decapitation, its head was essentially only attached to the rest of its body by a few strands of skin and muscle.

Regardless, it was quite dead.

Those quick and effective attacks were just the start of the combat prowess he was witnessing, especially as the clearing began to fill up with more and more of the Greater Trizards. They only emerged one at a time from the sphere, but with an additional monster appearing every second or two, there was more than enough to go around for the SIC members to unleash their physical and magical attacks against them.

Explosions blew off heads in ones or twos as the Mages tore into their advance, while at the same time large boulders flew through the air and shattered upon contact with the Trizards, shredding scales and embedding their tough hides with shrapnel. Fist-thick beams of water sheared through the defenses of the three-headed lizards, cutting through their bodies if the spell was concentrated enough in a particular area for long enough. Projectiles made of pure light slammed into the faces of the Trizards, doing some damage but also blinding the monsters and preventing them from being able to dodge future unseen attacks.

Larek saw other large lizards struggling to break free from their bodies being incased in thick ice, while others were slowly torn apart by tornados of whirling blades of air, their scales sheared off by the dozens and exposing the more vulnerable hide and flesh beneath. There was one Illusionist who used illusions to distract a pair of Trizards and eventually had them assaulting each other with their breath attacks, though that didn’t last long when they realized what had happened to them.

By that time, however, one of them seemingly had the shadow underneath it reach up and grab hold if its legs before ripping them off with a spell Larek had never even heard of before. It came from a Mage who had a black robe, which made him immediately think of his Professors back in Copperleaf, but it was somehow different – almost darker than the ones his instructors wore.

The other Trizard that had been caught in the illusion fared just as poorly, as the legs that had been ripped off the other one with shadows were somehow levitated up and used as bludgeoning projectiles. The flew through the air with such speed that they practically whistled, and when they smashed into the other Trizard’s head, two of them were obliterated immediately, while the third managed to dodge the initial attack. Its reprieve was short-lived as the legs stopped in mid-flight before moving back toward its head, surrounded it on four sides, and then its head was smashed like a ripe melon as the legs all came together in the blink of an eye.

There was even a Naturalist among the Mages that entangled the legs of a half-dozen Trizards as roots emerged from the ground, before turning into pincushions as those roots extended thousands of sharp thorns that dug even into the hard scales of the lizard monsters. One of the Trizards was killed when a huge cloud of a green fog was inhaled by the monster in anticipation of a breath attack; the breath attack was immediately stopped as the green fog immediately started to eat away at the Trizard’s insides, and it flailed around in helplessness as it slowly perished because of the nasty spell.

Each of the Mages’ attacks were strong, much stronger than Larek had ever seen before. While there weren’t any large-scale spells that covered half the clearing, which he was sure they could cast if it was necessary, the ones they did cast were enhanced by their additional Intellect granted to them because of Larek’s Fusions. When he added in the staccato barrage of staff-created projectiles also fueled by his Fusions, it was a symphony of elemental destruction that was only complemented by the efforts of the Martials.

Battle Arts were on display by the now-powerful individuals wielding their melee weapons and bows, as exploding arrows, piercing stabs, enhanced chops, and incredibly quick movements allowed the Martials to get their attacks in with deadly efficiency and power before removing themselves from retaliatory attacks by dodging or simply moving fast enough that they couldn’t be hit. They largely acted defensively by corralling the new arrivals into attempting to attack their shield-bearing members, who were able to withstand their best efforts to breathe their deadly breath all over them, while at the same time doing something to gain and hold their attention rather than go after the more vulnerable members of their group.

The Mages might have flashier spells, resulting in more monsters deaths, but the Martials were the ones that took the brunt of the attacks and ensured that the spellcasting group was allowed to attack freely. That didn’t mean there weren’t any injuries, of course, because with dozens of the Greater Trizards swarming around the clearing, avoiding every attack because impossible. He saw who he thought was Rhylla fly across the clearing when she was slammed in the back by a tail whip by one of the Trizards, her leather outfit pierced by the spikes on the tip of the monster’s tail. The impact was so strong that she was almost bent backwards as her spine was partially shattered, and it couldn’t have felt good when she impacted a tree at the end of her flight.

No more than 2 minutes later, however, she was up and throwing herself back into the fight, having used her Healing Surge Fusion that Larek had provided for all the Martials, though with that amount of internal healing, she was already looking exhausted and in need of a large meal to replace whatever bodily reserves had been consumed by the healing process.

There were other injuries as time went on, including those who were hit by a breath attack they weren’t expecting, or practically eviscerated by a claw strike, but each and every one of them were able to heal and get back into the fight within a minute or less. Whenever this happened to one of the SIC Martials, the Major was the one that rushed in from place to place, pulling the wounded out while they healed themselves, while using her spear in a blur of attacks that impaled more than a few of the Trizards through their durable scales like they didn’t exist. She was a force of nature all by herself, killing dozens of the Trizards herself within the first few minutes, and she didn’t look like she was planning on stopping anytime soon.

The same couldn’t be said for the rest of the SIC force. After 10 minutes of non-stop fighting, the flow of Trizards didn’t seem destined to slacken, and the bodies of the slain were starting to fill up the clearing, making maneuvering around the area quite dangerous, while also presenting inadvertent walls to help protect the emerging monsters coming from the sphere. The flow of the battle had been easily in the SIC’s favor up to that point, as everything was quickly killed shortly after emerging, but it slowly shifted until they were forced to fight more and more defensively as the Trizards got a foothold by inadvertently using nearby corpses as shields to block many of the long-range attacks sent their way.

On top of that, despite double the stats they used to have, the rapid expenditure of Mana and Stama was taking a toll on the fighter’s reserves. The inexhaustible staff projectiles helped to alleviate that a little, especially as it allowed the Mages’ Mana to regenerate while they used the staves’ Fusions, but the Martials had no such reprieve. Low on Stama, the first of the Martials to get seriously hurt by the Trizards when they couldn’t use a Battle Art to dodge in time was evidence that they were fighting a losing battle; while they were able to be healed, the process was so intensive that the individual could barely stand up because of their body’s exhaustion, let alone fight.

Larek was startled when Major Kuama appeared next to him, the strange blue blood of the Trizards liberally dripping off the spearhead of her weapon. “It’s not closing. What kind of Scission is this?”

Again, Larek said, “It’s not a Scission. It’s something else.”

“Well then, how do we stop whatever this is? We can’t keep going like this forever.”

The Fusionist didn’t know why he was being asked, but he eventually concluded that it was due to him being adamant that this wasn’t a Scission. It was obvious that it wasn’t the same, but apparently the Major thought he knew something different about it than actually did. In that respect, the local SIC leader was partially correct; Larek had an idea, but wasn’t sure if it would work.

“Attack the sphere,” he said. “It’s possible that it can be destabilized and therefore prevent any more of these Greater Trizards from being pushed out.”

The Major shook her head. “Scissions are invulnerable. We’ve tried to do that in the past—” she said, before pausing. “But this isn’t a Scission, is it? So it might work.” She paused for another few seconds before looking straight at Larek. “Would you be able to lend your help to attack the sphere? We’re already overextended as it is.”

Larek nodded as he glanced at his group. “Absolutely.”

The next moment, the Major was gone and back into the thick of the fighting. “We’re attacking from a distance,” Larek said, looking straight at Penelope. As the only one that didn’t have a long-range attack, she was the most vulnerable if she tried to aid the SIC by moving ahead into the larger battle. “Something tells me that they aren’t going to like this, so I need you here to protect us.”

She just nodded as Larek, Kimble, Nedira, Verne, and Norde lifted their staves and aimed at the sphere, while Bartholomew rotated his spear so that the butt of it was facing forward, and Vivienne readied her bow. As if they had practiced it, each of them released an attack near-simultaneously, and as balls of flames, icy spikes, stone fragments, and a Stama-infused arrow shot across the space toward the sphere, he could see Nedira and Kimble already casting additional spells to add to the damage. With a deft rotation of their staves, all five of the Mages fired another projectile from the other end just as the first of their attacks landed on their target – only for them to be sucked into it with no apparent damage.

While there was no visible damage to it, there was a very imperceptible change in the dark glow around it. If Larek hadn’t been looking for it, he probably wouldn’t have noticed it; as it was, there was just enough of a difference that it registered to his sight.  “It’s working! I’ll probably take a lot more than that, but—”

As if the sphere had some sort of awareness, Larek felt its attention lock onto him even as he released another projectile from his staff. Out of the corner of his eye, he could tell that the others felt it, too.

“What is that? What is it doing?” Verne asked, his voice shaking slightly.

Larek didn’t have to answer that, because a second later it became obvious. Whereas previously the Greater Trizards had been essentially been spreading out randomly to attack whoever was closest to them, there was a visible shift in their direction as they emerged from the sphere.

They were heading straight toward Larek and his group.