The Fusionist Book 3 -- Chapter 28

Chapter 28

It turned out that Larek had killed 134 of the Dirt Golems himself – if he was correct in his assumption that he had received 2 AF per kill. It wasn’t long in the resumption of their trek through the forest that the process of purifying the Corrupted Aetheric Force had finished, giving him an extra 268 AF to add to his previous 12 he had left over from killing the Jumping Squirrels. His new total of 280 AF was enough to raise the maximum Level for some of his Mage Skills that were lower-Level, but he held off for now. As for his Martial Skills, they were stuck where they were; instead of there being a cost to them increasing their maximum Level, they just said “N/A”.

“Why do you think that is?” he asked Nedira as they walked northeast through the rapidly thinning forest. At first, the trees had been thick in the valley and mountain range that circled most of the area where Thanchet was located, but the further north they traveled, the density of the forest diminished rapidly. From what he remembered of his Geography class, as well as the little he saw on his original journey to Copperleaf Academy more than half a year ago, the trees would eventually fade away, revealing gently rolling foothills where miles and miles of farms were placed, with the main north-south road passing directly through them. Depending upon which direction you went, you would eventually hit a vast scattering of lakes and ponds to the west, flatter wild grasslands to the north, or a drier plain to the east.

“I don’t know, Larek,” the Naturalist answered after a moment of thought. “There’s so much we don’t know about what this Aetheric Force is that it could be anything.”

Penelope, having overheard the question, ventured her own thoughts on the answer. “It could be because your Martial side hasn’t been cracked open yet.”

It took him a few seconds of pondering her statement before he concluded that he had no idea what she was talking about. “Uh… what?”

“Cracked open,” she restated, before she glanced at the incomprehension on his face. “Kicked awake? Forcibly initiated?  Activated? Any of these ring a bell?”

“Do you mean like what happened on the first day of classes when my new stats were unlocked?” he asked, beginning to understand what she was trying to say.

“Yes! Exactly!”

Confusion colored his thoughts. “But I have the Martial stats and can unlock and improve Martial Skills; I even have a Battle Art, as I showed you. Shouldn’t that have… cracked me open?”

The blue-haired Martial chuckled. “Not cracked you open, Larek,” she explained. “It refers to the opening of access to your Stama. Like cracking open an egg to get to the yolk inside, the same thing happens during this process that every Martial goes through as soon as they arrive at the Fort. However, Stama isn’t exactly as docile as the yolk of an egg, as it will begin fighting you as soon as your body has access to it.”

Larek had heard that before, but wasn’t exactly sure what it meant. With Mana, it was easy enough to manipulate it because it was just there, hanging around his entire body ready to be used.  He knew his Stama was located in a condensed ball of power in his chest, but had never figured out how to use it. Unlocking his Battle Art at Crystalview had seemingly been a fluke, as he hadn’t been able to activate it or do anything with his Stama that wasn’t automatic like his Body Regeneration Skill.

“What do you mean?”

Stepping over a dead branch in her path, Penelope looked over at him with a serious expression on her face. “Stama is dangerous if it is allowed to do what it wants, which is why the first and only Skill we unlock after having it cracked open helps with reigning it in.” A few seconds later, something appeared in front of her that he immediately recognized as a very small portion of her Status.

Stama Subjugation Level 8

“It didn’t occur to me until later, but I don’t remember seeing this extremely important Martial Skill when you displayed your Status to us before,” she explained. “At that point, I thought that you might have simply left it off for some reason, but now it’s obvious that you don’t even have it. I don’t even know how it is possible that you don’t, by this point, but it would explain your inability to use your Battle Art. And why you can’t increase your Skill Level maximums, I suppose. It’s like your Stama is locked behind a door and you haven’t been given a key; some of it leaks out from underneath, supplying you enough to aid in Body Regeneration, for example. As for how you utilized it to create a Battle Art, I think that is a result of the danger inherent in Stama in the first place.”

“Danger? Is it going to hurt him?” Nedira asked with concern in her voice.

But Penelope just shrugged. “Who’s to say? This is all new to me as well, but the dangers of letting Stama get away from us was drilled into our minds almost every day of training. At first, with our Stama pools so low, there isn’t too much to worry about; as we increase in Levels and apply AP to our stats, our Stama pools grow in relation to them, heightening the danger it poses. Without a proper Stama Subjugation Skill Level, it can start to act on its own, sometimes reacting to our subconscious thoughts or simply acting out wildly. This can be as harmless as it flooding your eyes with Stama to temporarily let you see better in low-light situations, to being horrifically damaging by sending a flood of wild Stama into your arm when you’re trying to hit someone. The rapid influx of energy can literally make your muscles explode if it is uncontrolled, or even kill you if that muscle is your heart or brain.

“It can also, as you discovered, create a Battle Art – but Battle Arts created in this manner are typically worse than anything you could create with your conscious direction, and almost always have a downside. Is that the same with your Battle Art? Furious Rampage isn’t something I’ve heard of before.”

Larek had to think back at what his Battle Art did, and he had to agree with her. While the ability doubled his Strength, it also reduced his Body stat by 30%. He thought that it was a worthwhile exchange, but perhaps he was biased because he didn’t really know much about Battle Arts in the first place.

He explained what it did to her, and she nodded. “That’s not actually as bad as I feared, but it’s still worse than if you had consciously formed the Battle Art yourself. That’s the importance of Stama Subjugation, as it will prevent something like that – or worse – from happening on its own in the future.”

That made sense, he supposed, but there was an even more important question to ask. “Could you crack open my Stama to give me the necessary Skill?”

She immediately shook her head. “Nope. It’s not something that is taught to trainees, as far as I know. I’ll ask the others, but I’m pretty sure it has to be forcibly activated by an Instructor, or at least by someone who knows the correct technique. I’m sure there might be a way to crack it open on your own, but I don’t know the way.”

Disappointment and worry flooded Larek as soon as she denied being able to help, though he knew it wasn’t her fault. She even briefly explained what occurred during the process with her, which Bartholomew quickly confirmed was the same for him; Vivienne was out scouting, so she wasn’t there to chime in, but he could only assume it was similar for her, too.

Basically, instead of a spell being cast that affected everyone within range, unlocking their Mage stats and Skills, one of the Instructors held their hand against the new trainee’s chest and forced their own Stama out of their bodies and into the trainee’s. Whatever process this Stama did effectively “cracked open” the trainee’s Stama, giving them Level 1 in Stama Subjugation and allowing them to access the energy at will.

When he proposed having one of the Martial trainees doing the same thing to him, they all immediately refused. “No way. Especially not now,” Penelope said, waving her hands in the air in emphasis to her words. “The only things I know for certain is that the one doing it needs to have incredible control over their Stama, not only in their body, but externally; more than that, they need to be stronger than the one they are doing it to, which is the only way their Stama can interact with the foreign Stama.  As it is, while the boosts you provided us increased our maximum Stama enough that it tops your own maximum, none of us have enough Stama Subjugation to do something like that. I don’t even know how I would even transfer my Stama into your body, for instance, even if my Skill Level is relatively high for a trainee.”

“Level 8 is high?”

“For this Skill, yes,” Bartholomew interjected. “I’m only at Level 4. It’s also one of the few Skills that can’t be improved artificially through the use of a Fusion, so there’s no getting around that limitation.”

That was exactly what he thought he might be able to do, but to have that hope dashed before it could come to fruition wasn’t all bad. Regardless, he wasn’t even sure he could make a Fusion for it, given that he had never seen a symbol for it in all the books he’d read, and he didn’t have it himself to apply the Effect to a Fusion.

“So, what you’re saying is that I need to find someone with an exceptional Stama Subjugation Skill Level and the knowledge of how to use it to crack open my own Stama so I can use it? So… like at the Fort we’re going to?”

“In short, yes.”

Larek’s wavering on whether to go to Fort Ironwall as the Dean wanted was starting to become less of a choice and more of a necessity.

“But you might be able to find some veteran SIC members that could do it, if you were able to convince them somehow to do it.”

Now that was a good alternative. Whether he’d be able to find someone like that was the largest obstacle, given that they were going to try and avoid towns and cities on their journey to Silverledge Academy and Fort Ironwall.

Regardless, it wasn’t something that he could do much about at the moment, given that there was no one but them around and the Fort was many, many miles away on the eastern side of the Kingdom. He still had some time to search for someone that could help him or, barring that, decide to attend the Martial training school at their eventual destination.

Larek just hoped that his Stama behaved and didn’t try and influence his body before he was able to get a handle on it; however, with the amount of fighting he was going to have to do, he didn’t have a lot of confidence that it wouldn’t be trying to do something.

The next few hours of their trek through the trees was relatively quiet, with only one other interruption. Shortly after sprinting across the clear road in their bid to head to the northeast, they entered the sparse trees again and were immediately set upon by a swarm of Snow Spiders, which were 2-foot-wide and 1-foot-tall 8-legged monsters that only vaguely resembled the spiders they were names after. Rather than thin, spindly limbs, each of the Snow Spider’s legs were thick chunks of ice that squealed when they rubbed against each other, and their bodies were round like a spherical snowball. Instead of webbing, everywhere their legs touched was temporarily flash-frozen in a layer of ice, which could’ve been a problem for the group if it wasn’t for their defenses – and the warning given by Vivienne at their presence, which was easily spotted since 200 feet into the tree line the forest was half-frozen.

The Snow Spiders were remarkably fast, which was a detriment on their part, because the Repelling Barriers the group possessed smashed them apart when they tried stabbing their victims – because they were also remarkably fragile. The ice that comprised their legs would shatter like glass when the gusts of air slammed them into the ground, and even a swing by one of the Mages’ staves was enough to shatter them. When a few of the snowy monsters managed to make it through the Barrier, their robes were resistant enough that the flash-freeze would only make the material stiff for a short time, leaving the bodies beneath it unaffected other than being a little chilly from the contact.

Kimble had a blast fighting against the Snow Spiders, given that his Pyromancer Specialization was uniquely suited toward absolutely devastating them. The red-robed Mage ended up killing approximately a third of the attacking monsters, which numbered around 300, while another third was killed by the others, leaving Larek to finish off the rest for their Aetheric Force. These, too, ended up providing 2 AF per kill, netting him just under an additional 200 AF to use in raising his maximum Skill Levels. With 476 AF now available to him once it was done purifying, he used 300 of it to increase his Pattern Formation Skill maximum. The Skill didn’t automatically increase, of course, as he’d have to use the Skill later to raise it, but if he could continue raising the maximum Level of all his Skills, he thought he could knock out a few Level increases when they stopped for the night.

The sun was beginning to set by the time they passed through the last of the trees, arriving at the edge of the gently rolling hills they had been expecting to see, and the fields of grain that was planted by a nearby farm butted right up to its edge. Instead of pushing it any further that night, they decided to retreat slightly into the trees and find someplace to camp for the night. With no nearby cave to huddle into, their camp was exposed, but Vivienne spent some time checking the nearby area and confirmed that there was nothing dangerous nearby. They still kept a watch throughout the night, but everyone else was so exhausted that they fell into a deep sleep within minutes of flopping themselves down on the ground.

It was with great disappointment when he felt someone shaking him awake in what felt like an hour later. He opened his eyes, expecting to see the pre-dawn light of morning, but to his surprise it was almost entirely dark outside. The sliver of the moon in the sky barely illuminated the surrounding area underneath the trees, but Larek was able to spot everyone else up and crouched around each other; a quick glance at who had woken him up revealed itself to be Vivienne, who held a finger against her lips for silence.

“Monsters in the field. Small. Hard to see. Dangerous,” she whispered, just barely loud enough for him to make out. For her to say that they were dangerous worried him, because to date she hadn’t seemed worried about anything they had fought up to that point.

As he slowly got up and crept to the others as silently as possible, he met the barely visible eyes of his companions as they looked back at him. He nodded in what he hoped was assurance as he looked toward the north, where the edge of the fields were approximately 150 feet away. Vivienne disappeared from sight into the shadows, and Larek activated his own Camouflage Sphere on his staff; seeing him do it, the other Mages did the same, which covered not only them but Penelope and Bartholomew waiting right next to them.

The wait for something to happen was almost torture, but when he saw the Ranger speeding back to their location with the slightest bit of fear in her eyes, something he’d never witnessed before from the normally taciturn Martial, he knew they were in for a fight.