The Fusionist Book 3 -- Chapter 15

Chapter 15

The next few weeks were more of the same – though that wasn’t a bad thing at all. Larek continued to create more Fusions in his morning Fusions classes, though his production ramped up significantly; it got to the point where he could tell that Shinpai and – in the few times she visited – Dean Lorraine were astonished at the rate he was pushing them out. While he didn’t necessarily notice it when it was there, there was a distinct lessening of tension in their whole demeanor once he began producing higher quantities of Fusions. Neither of them pestered him about teaching other Professors about the Focused Division Skill, for which he was grateful, and things seemed to be running a lot more smoothly as a result.

His Intermediate Mana Manipulation class was a bit less productive – but that didn’t mean it didn’t provide any value to his magical education. Professor Norreen had him working on specific exercises that condensed his Mana funnels into a tighter spiral, which was a lot more difficult than he expected. The problem was that he was used to his previous method of simply shoving the Mana into his Fusions by the easiest and simplest means, and changing it up was something he had to actively think concentrate on – which distracted him from holding together the formation. He never lost control of it entirely, but he came close a couple of times.

Still, despite the difficulty, he was making some progress in tightening the spiral in his Mana funnels, which he could immediately tell was making a difference in the speed at which he could fill his Fusion. He likened the difference to his normal method acting like trying to fill an empty pool with a waterfall pouring on the Mana Cost section of the Fusion with extra Mana going everywhere, wasting time as he had to gather it back up and force it in; but a tighter spiral to the funnel focused the stream of Mana to flow within a more consistent pathway, meaning that less of it splashed outside of the pool and what did land in the pool was contained much faster. It wasn’t the best analogy, but he thought it explained what was happening fairly well.

That was all he had a chance to practice with in his Mana Manipulation class, however, as the Professor was still trying to determine if infusing the entire Fusion all at once was even possible. His method of filling a Fusion was already out of the norm, as the Mana that Fusionist typically fed into a Fusion was more like a steady trickle rather than a waterfall like what Larek did, so she was a bit out of her element. Regardless, it was still useful, and he figured that once he got the knack of tightening his Mana funnel, his speed would increase significantly.

His Scissions class was more of the same as his first day, meaning that it was more descriptions of what they might face outside the walls of the city. Toward the end of the few weeks, however, the curriculum was getting more into group formations and tactics used against different types of monsters, most of which were still in the experimental stages because these circumstances were so new.

Larek could well understand that almost everything had to be experimental, as most of the SIC was used to defending towns and cities, standing on the wall or just outside of it in a defensive formation – and not wandering around hunting down roaming monsters throughout the Kingdom.

He listened to the lectures about tactics and other strategies being employed, but didn’t really pay attention to them all that much. Larek wasn’t planning on being in a situation where he would have utilize them after all. Dean Lorraine might have some lofty plans for him in the future, but all that Larek ultimately wanted to do was stay safe behind sturdy walls and create Fusions to help protect his friends. That might change in the future, but that still didn’t mean he was planning on joining one of these “Hunting Parties” that were quick becoming a popular strategy to combat the monsters threatening the Kingdom.

As for his free time, after increasing his new Focused Division Skill to its current maximum Level of 30 and exploring its limits, he turned to something that he’d been thinking about for a while. Namely, it was whether or not he could apply Fusions to more pliable materials such as cloth and leather, or even something thinner and more flexible such as paper.

His first experiment was with a scrap of cured leather approximately a foot square in size. He figured that if the firmer material of the leather wasn’t able to maintain the Fusion on it, then anything softer or thinner wouldn’t be able to, either.

Using a Strengthen Fusion, he changed the Effect so that it applied to leather rather than iron, steel, stone, or wood like the Fusions he knew already.  With the Magnitude at just 1 rather than anything stronger, he was hoping that if the formation fell apart, the aftereffects wouldn’t be as dangerous as something with a lot more Mana invested in it.

New Fusion Learned!

Strengthen Leather +1

Activation Method: Permanent

Effect: Strengthens leather

Magnitude: 100% increased durability

Mana Cost: 22

Pattern Cohesion: 1

Fusion Time: 21 minutes

Creating the Fusion and placing it on the scrap of leather was amazingly easy. The material took the formation easily enough and it settled into the leather without any problems at all.

The problem with it immediately came apparent when he started to manipulate the scrap. First, the 100% increased durability that the Fusion imparted upon the leather simply made it, for lack of a better description, more stiff. Where as before it was fairly flexible, the scrap of leather was now harder to bend; that meant that it was also harder to pierce, which was exactly what he was intending with the Fusion.

Now, all of that might sound good, but the benefit of leather armor over something like full-scale plate armor was its flexibility. At Magnitude 1, many of the Martial members of the SIC would likely still be able to maintain a decent range of movement in some armor with this Fusion applied to it, but anything more would result in them being hindered in one way or another. Still, it was something that could be added to be beneficial – if it wasn’t for its glaring weakness.

When he bent the scrap of leather in the area where the Fusion’s formation was located, the pattern snapped apart and the Mana infused in its construction was released. Thankfully, there was no sudden explosion that he had to contend with, though the leather was slightly scorched where the rapidly disappearing Fusion used to be. The sudden release of so much Mana from a structured formation caused a bit of heat, it appeared, which should have been obvious with how one of his failed Fusions exploded in his face. In this case, there was no explosion because the Mana wasn’t released all at once, but instead was forced out of the pattern as multiple breakages in the formation snapped in succession.

With those glaring weaknesses, it didn’t seem as if his experiment to strengthen softer materials would work.

…Or would it?

Perhaps I’m looking at this the wrong way.

In actuality, he was looking at the problem in a couple of wrong ways. The first, and most obvious, was that he didn’t necessarily need to “strengthen” the leather; harder materials needed that strengthening to ensure they couldn’t be broken or deformed, which would also prevent the Fusion from snapping like he had done with the leather. But softer materials needed something else to make them more effective, more resistant—

That was it. Leather and cloth didn’t need strength; they needed resistance. They just needed to be able to resist being cut through by a monster’s claw, weapon, or any other cutting implement. He briefly thought about trying to find a way to stop even blunt damage, but couldn’t think of a way; even the Strengthen Fusions didn’t stop something like that, as they only prevented the material from bending, cracking, or breaking.

But why stop there? Why make it only resistant to cutting, when I could make it resistant to many other types of damage?

If he stopped thinking about the leather he was working with which might be used in an armor piece used to protect someone, and instead thought of the material alone, then what would he want his Fusion to do? Just thinking of the fighting he’d seen in the past, weather it was person-on-person or person-on-monster, and then took into account the information he’d gained in his first year at the Academy in his Monster Knowledge class, he knew that simple cutting and blunt damage was the least of the attacks most SIC members would face. Elemental effects, either from natural elements associated with a monster such as a Lava Salamander or a Windblade Hawk (which used lava and projectile blades made from wind to attack), were more common than not, but actual magical attacks like a Fireball or Water Jet could be resisted as well. While they weren’t commonly utilized by monsters, the effects that these types of spells produced were still something that was copied on one way or another by some monsters.

Therefore, if there was a way to resist being affected by these attacks, it would serve exactly the purpose the material needed to fulfill. Ideally, he would love to be able to completely negate the attacks, which might even help to reduce impact damage for whatever was underneath the material, but that seemed like it was beyond him at this time. What he thought he could do was increase the resistance of the material so it could withstand just about anything without being damaged in the process.

That just left the biggest – and less obvious – problem with this type of Fusion. If he was able to work out a resistance effect that maintained the material’s flexibility, then it would be much easier for the formation to bend and ultimately snap apart. He could certainly increase the resistance of leather, for instance, but as soon as the Fusion was bent past a certain point, all that protection would go away.

At first, he thought about a way to simply attach something made from a stronger material – such as steel – to the other material and use his Multi-effect Fusion Focus to ultimately affect both materials – just like he did with Rheina’s earrings on the Network carriage months ago. The problem with that was that he wouldn’t be able to strengthen the steel where the Fusion was placed at the same time; if he was able to incorporate the strengthening Effect into the resistance Fusion, then he would end up with a stiff leather or cloth as well. If the steel wasn’t strengthened, then a hard enough hit to it would deform the metal and cause the Fusion to break. What he needed was to figure out a way to make his Fusion flexible so that it was nearly impossible to break apart when it was bent out of shape.

It took him 2 weeks of constantly trying different techniques to figure it out.

In the end, through attempting more and more elaborate ideas, the answer was – as seemed to be the norm for him once he made a discovery – quite simple, yet was also something that he wouldn’t have even considered trying if he wasn’t looking for this particular solution. The answer?

Plants.

He actually got the idea from Nedira and her Naturalist Specialization, after watching her practice with her Rapid Plant Growth spell. At one point, she had used the spell to grow a small fern into something that was 12 feet tall and just as wide, with its multitude of long, thin leaves forming massive fans. Using a higher-tier spell that Larek was unable to learn, she was able to strengthen the plant to the point where it could withstand the blows of Penelope, who was using a blunted sword in their practice bout to get to the Naturalist hiding behind the fern.

Instead of the plant being ripped apart by the powerful sword blows, it instead bent out of the way with the attacks, bouncing back after the initial blow and appeared seemingly unharmed. The resiliency of the fern was amazing as it was able to stand up to the attacks, and Nedira explained that it was simply a part of its nature to bend without breaking. It, of course, couldn’t stand up to being seriously cut apart or any massive blunt damage that might crush the entire plant, even with the extra strength she infused into it, but it could still stand up to a lot.

That was exactly what Larek needed for his Fusion. Once he figured out what he wanted, it took him a couple of days to incorporate it into his Fusion. All it took was a change in his perception of the Pattern Cohesion he was constructing the formation from.

Normally, the lines of his Fusions were a pure white color, something that he hadn’t really thought about before that point. But when he applied the idea of growth and natural resiliency to the lines he used to construct the formation, they slowly changed into a bright green color that reflected the thought of nature and the flexibility of the fern he had observed.

Miraculously, it worked. Once his Fusion was on a scrap of leather, he was able to bend the material in half without it breaking, and he could even seen the lines of the Fusion stretch and warp slightly while still maintaining its overall formation. There was a limit, he found, because as soon as he began poking holes in the leather, it would collapse as it begun missing key parts that were keeping it intact. He also found that if he were to stretch and squish and ball up the leather scrap to the point where the Fusion was pushed and pulled in different directions, even the strength of his normally strong Fusions couldn’t handle the strain.

Overall, though, it was exactly what he needed and would work more than well enough for his purposes.

As opposed to the weeks used to discover a way to make his Fusions flexible, it only took a few days to design an Effect that would for the softer materials. In essence, he started with the idea behind Strengthen as a base, but then used the principles behind the Localized Anesthesia spell he learned earlier to enhance it to the point he required. By the end, he wound up with a 3-by-3 Lesser Intermediate Fusion that had a Reactive Activation Method, an Input that detected the severity of the incoming damage, two Variables that led to different levels of Activation depending on what needed to be resisted, an Amplifier for the most serious of damage, and an Effect that essentially increased the resistance of the material to the point where it wouldn’t be negatively affected by the incoming damage.

In other words, using the idea of Localized Anesthesia and Strengthen Fusions, he made the material numb to anything trying to affect it while strengthening it to the point where it could shrug off that attack. The blend of ideas was unique, he had to admit… but it worked.

New Fusion Learned!

Multi-Resistance Leather +2

Activation Method: Reactive

Effect: Causes leather to resist most forms of damage

Magnitude: 100%/200% increased resistance

Mana Cost: 500

Pattern Cohesion: 25

Fusion Time: 100 minutes

His initial Fusion only used a Magnitude of 1 and 2, resulting in a 100% or 200% increased resistance – which wasn’t too bad all on its own. When he experimented with it, the leather was certainly much harder to punch any holes through with a sharp implement, and he even had Kimble try one of his Fireballs against it; the leather still burned up after a while, but it took three times as long before it did compared to a scrap of leather with no Fusion on it. When he tried a higher Magnitude of 7 and 5 inside the Fusion, the leather got to the point where it was able to resist a cut from his axe!

New Fusion Learned!

Multi-Resistance Leather +7

Activation Method: Reactive

Effect: Causes leather to resist most forms of damage

Magnitude: 500%/700% increased resistance

Mana Cost: 60,000

Pattern Cohesion: 1,000

Fusion Time: 113 hours

“Why the different Magnitudes? Why not just a single one that blocks everything?” Nedira asked when he described to her later in his room what he had created.

“Well, for one, it’s to cut down on the Mana and Pattern Cohesion cost. Using the Amplifier to pump more Mana into the Magnitude 7 threshold enhances the resistance Effect rather than simply making a higher Magnitude Fusion, which costs more. Second, the area of ambience is much higher in the Magnitude 7 Effect, meaning that it can end up interfering with other Fusions nearby – especially once the Amplifier goes into effect; to reduce the strain on other Fusions, less-damaging attacks can be resisted with the smaller Magnitude, thereby lessening the amount of ambient Mana that is absorbed to do so.

“Thirdly… I needed to balance out the Fusion, and it looked more aesthetically pleasing to me,” he added with a smirk.

She sighed in mock exasperation before playfully smacking him on the arm. “Only you would make a Fusion more complicated because it ‘looked better’.”

Shrugging, he couldn’t help but keep the smile off his face. “It works, at least. Now I need to try it on cloth and—"

“Larek!” Verne shouted as he ran inside their room, Norde hot on his heels. Larek immediately noticed the panicked expression on his face and became concerned.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

He barely got the words out before he felt something outside the Academy, like a pressure in the air that was trying to envelop him with a persistent force. In some ways, it was similar to what he felt when a Scission appeared nearby, but it was also vastly different; it was as if a Scission was more general pressure that promised danger, while this was something more… personal. Regardless, it was something he’d never felt before, and by the looks on the faces of the others, he could tell that it was new to them, as well.

But if I’ve never felt something like this before, why does it feel so familiar?

Book 3 Chapter 16