The Fusionist Book 3 -- Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Larek’s assumptions about being corralled into producing dozens of his new Graduated Parahealing Fusions on everything from metal medallions that could be worn around someone’s neck to being added to Mage staves turned out to be absolutely true. No longer was he making stat boosts for unknown people, but was instead creating life-saving Fusions that – while still for unknown people – let gave him a proud feeling in his chest knowing that what he was making was going to help people.

Sure, stat boosts, strengthening armor, and sharpening the edges of weapons were beneficial, but creating something that could literally mean the difference between life and death made a huge difference. He had felt a bit of the same way when he had originally designed his Healing Surge Fusion back at Crystalview Academy, but he’d also had to keep it secret; now that this particular secret was out in the open and his new healing Fusion was being distributed to people who would use it to heal their wounds when fighting monsters, the satisfaction in his accomplishment was on a whole new level.

Unfortunately, his production of the Graduated Parahealing Fusions cut into his time to begin experimenting with anything else.

“It’s only for a little while, Larek,” Shinpai assured him a few days after his successful creation of the healing Fusion. “These are very important to the SIC defenders in the city, especially as they’ve been sending out groups to scour the local countryside to locate and kill any monsters from the scattered Scissions that keep opening up without our knowledge. Just one of these Fusions you’re creating could spell the difference between success and failure.”

When his Professor put it that way, it was difficult for Larek to find a reason to complain. Even in his semi-secluded state he had heard about multiple SIC groups that had set out from Thanchet and never returned. While he still didn’t particularly care about the normal people of the city all that much because of their past treatment of him, the Mages and Martials he’d encountered since he was introduced to the larger world had been, generally, good people and were relatively quick to eschew their prejudices once they got to know him. There were, of course, plenty of those – such as the late Ricardo – who were an exception to the rule, but there weren’t enough to want any harm to come to them. He was a part of this community now, for good or ill, and he wanted to do his part to save as many of them as possible.

Only a week after he began creating Graduated Parahealing Fusions in all his free time as well in his Advanced Fusions class, he received the go-ahead to begin adding Healing Surge Fusions to the list of ones he was making. Within a day of that happening, he got into a rhythm where he would make one of the new healing Fusions followed by one of the old healing Fusions, therefore splitting up his time to produce a relatively equal number of them every day. Within a few days, he was creating 50 of each type every single day – and yet, he wasn’t instructed to stop or slow down.

In fact, he even overheard the Dean and Shinpai at one point mentioning that they might take him out of his other classes entirely once he reached his second year, so that he would have more time to devote to Fusions. At first, he thought that this was an excellent idea, as it would give him additional time to experiment and learn what he could about other spells; however, thinking deeper on the way it was phrased made him think that the idea wasn’t designed to expand his repertoire of Fusions, but to turn him into a Fusion-creating maniac that they couldn’t allow to stop.

“What changed?” he muttered to himself when an entire month went by without any change to his schedule. As of yet, he was still going to classes, but he could feel an invisible pressure on him coming from his Professor and the Dean; it might have been his imagination, but it almost felt like they were desperate and were willing him to work faster. He was tempted to try and speed up his process by ditching classes to create more Fusions despite already using almost all of his free time already, but hadn’t taken that step yet.

Nedira was sitting on the edge of his bed as he laid down to relax from the busy day before getting some sleep, his body tired from the hunched-over position he’d adopted while creating Fusions. A quick burst of his Healing Surge Fusion would take care of any soreness from the position, as well as his Body Regeneration Skill, but neither of them helped with the weariness he felt.  She heard his muttering and answered him, even if he hadn’t been meaning to ask her.

“I had a chance to go on an excursion outside the walls earlier today to experiment with a few spells in the forest, along with about 100 other Naturalists from the Academy, and I heard some worrying rumors from the city,” she said softly, her voice loud enough that Larek could hear it but Verne and Norde – who were studying together across the room – would have trouble catching her words.

“Like what?” he asked, sitting up.

“Just that the situation throughout the Kingdom is worse than what we’ve heard here in the Academy,” Nedira explained. “Apparently, after the first wave of towns were caught unawares and destroyed by random rampaging monsters, the drop-off of attacks against the walls of prepared towns and cities fell to next to nothing. Instead, travel around the Kingdom, even through the SIC Transportation Network of Canniks and carriages, has been reduced to a minimum as almost everything moving out on the roads is a target. Merchant caravans are having difficulty reaching their destinations unscathed, and the normal caravan guard organizations don’t have enough people to handle their needs – not to mention that casualties among the guards they do employ have increased significantly.”

Larek shrugged, as he really didn’t care that the caravans were having difficulty moving around. His experience with them in the past was less than flattering when he thought about them, and while he didn’t necessarily want them all to die, he wasn’t going to go out of his way to help them. The only ones he sort of felt bad for were the guards, because the ones he had met were either indifferent to his appearance and at least courteous enough not to say anything derogatory toward him; they were at least doing a job and protecting the ones that had hired them, making them similar in ways to the SIC.

Nedira looked at him strangely, as if she couldn’t figure out why he didn’t seem to care. After a few seconds, a look of understanding flowed over her features. “Ah, that’s right; I remember what you told me of your experiences with them,” she said, nodding slightly. “However, while I know it doesn’t excuse their behavior toward you, the caravans that travel around the Kingdom of Androthe are literally the lifeblood of the people. Not only is commerce important to the economy, but how do you think all the food that feeds the people of the Kingdom move from the farms where they are produced to the towns and cities? Not all of it can be produced nearby major cities and is instead produced in the large open spaces in between, where it has been relatively safe for them to operate without fear of being overrun by monsters.

“But now the safety of being away from the walls of a nearby town or city is disappearing, as monsters are rampaging throughout the countryside. From what I overheard, many of the food producing farms haven’t been affected too much, as there are still too few of them gathered together to be of major interest to the monster hordes roaming around, but it’s been said that it’s only a matter of time before they are threatened. Meanwhile, even if they are able to produce the food, they can’t transport it to the people who need it if the caravans aren’t able to travel.”

Larek hadn’t thought too much about where all the food that he ate in the Academy came from, nor was he ever too curious about the origins of the food he ate back at home; his family had always been provided more food than they could possibly need, as it was supplied by the local Baron. He’d seen plenty of farms as he passed through the Kingdom in his travels to the different Academies that he’d attended, but other than noting that they were there, he didn’t think about them all that much.

“Where did you learn about all this stuff?” he asked.

She looked at him strangely again, before shaking her head with exasperation. “It’s common knowledge, Larek.  For those with their heads in the clouds or with your unique history living in the middle of an information void, there are third and fourth-year classes here at the Academy that go into more detail about how the Kingdom functions. Those classes aren’t just to educate the SIC members that most of the people will become after they graduate, but with the presence of so many Nobles among the student body, it’s necessary knowledge for when most of them retire and rejoin their family holdings.”

“They can retire?” Larek thought he heard somewhere that the positions in the SIC were essentially for life.

“Nobles can retire, if they choose to. I believe they are required to put anywhere between 10 and 20 years of service in the SIC, depending on how important they are. Commoners, on the other hand, are required to serve for at least 35 years before they can think of retiring, though I’ve heard that many simply stay as part of the SIC until they are too old to safely defend the walls because for most of them it is the only life they’ve known for the majority of their lives.”

35 years? Will I even make it that long? Especially with what the Dean and Shinpai want me to do? He didn’t want to think about that, however, as he still needed to live long enough to get to that point. With the way the Scissions and the monsters they expelled were changing, 35 years might be an impossibility; if the SIC couldn’t get a handle on things, then there soon might not be anything to defend.

Larek also tried not to think about his family far to the north, helpless if a Scission or two opened nearby – or if food suddenly stopped flowing to them from the Baron. He’d already considered that if he was somehow able to escape the Academy and the SIC, it would still be weeks or months until he could make his way up there. Now, with the state of the roads and countryside being what it was with roaming monsters everywhere, he wasn’t sure if he would even survive the journey. As loathe as he was to say it, even in his mind… they were on their own.

Regardless of his own personal worries, Nedira’s information made his contributions to the fight against the roaming monsters even more important. She also mentioned that it was likely that even more of the standing force of SIC defenders in the city would be sent out in an effort to patrolling the road to make it safer for travel, but only a small portion of the SIC had experience outside of the walls of a town or city. Those with experience, such as the group they had met who traveled with them in the Network carriage on their way to Thanchet, were still out there, far busier than normal – but they apparently weren’t very numerous. Because of their inexperience traveling around and hunting down monsters throughout the Kingdom, the SIC members were going to need all the extra help they could get – which, for Larek at least, meant they would be carrying one or more of his healing Fusions with them.

But at his current speed of making Fusions, it was barely enough to keep up with current demand. Just thinking about groups of SIC defenders running around with one or two of his healing Fusions amongst them made Larek realize that he could do so much more for them to survive. Defensive Fusions like Repelling Barriercould minimize the need to heal in the first place, while stat boost Fusions could aid in making the Martials stronger and faster, while the Mages could cast stronger spells for longer. Fusions that made armor stronger or weapons sharper could also aid in killing monsters while keeping Martial defenders alive, while possessing something like a Camouflage Sphere Fusion for Mages could allow them to stay unseen while they attacked from a distance.

Then, apart from defensive or supporting Fusions, there were always offensive Fusions to consider. A reluctance to revisit the memory of Ricardo’s death along with the other two Martial trainees who had abducted Larek made him hesitate to even mention the Fusions he had created at that time, but he couldn’t deny that they might be useful. Possessing a Fusion that could theoretically cast a spell like Fireball over and over without having to worry about running out of Mana could be invaluable, and could even be used by Martials. More than that, they could theoretically be used by anyone, even the common people of the Kingdom, giving them a power that could potentially rival an inexperienced Mage.

Needless to say, even though it might be beneficial to the common people to possess something like that, his viewpoint toward them hadn’t improved enough for him to want to give them that kind of power. It wasn’t that he thought he and the SIC were better than them and they didn’t deserve it; rather, it was because he still didn’t care all that much about them. It was probably wrong to view them all as being horrible people, given what he’d learned about their inherited hatred of tall people, but that didn’t change how he felt deep down. His emotional psyche had been battered enough that it would probably be a while until he was ready to forgive them.

Over the next couple of months, his routine became a little more varied as he was eventually asked to split his focus between the two healing Fusions and more stat boosts on various items. Somewhere in the third month, Larek was taken out of his Scissions class, as the previous knowledge known about them had changed so much over the last few months that it was no longer as useful to most students. This gave him essentially another hour at the end of the school day to get started on creating Fusions even earlier, which helped with his production numbers.

Also around that time, he began to incorporate Sharpen and Strengthen Fusions into his rotation, creating a multitude of swords and other edged weapons with the same sort of deadly cutting ability as his own axe, as well as reinforcing a different set of steel armor pieces every day. The addition of these different Fusions meant that he was making fewer that were for healing, but from what he was told, they were still in high demand. There were a few times when he asked what the plan was for all these different Fusions, but was only told by the Dean that it was being handled by the SIC General in charge of Thanchet’s defenses. It was an eye-opening explanation, because all this time he had thought it had been the Dean and Shinpai that had dictated what he needed to create, but that turned out not to be the case. After that, he put his head down and focused on his work, cognizant that what he was creating was saving lives – even if he didn’t see it happening directly.

Fortunately, thanks to his friends and bodyguards keeping him aware of his mental state, he didn’t fall into anything similar to what he’d experienced before when he threw himself into a certain project. His hyper-focused state was moderated by a purpose, leaving him to concentrate on that while still trying to enjoy himself outside of his work. It wasn’t perfect, because he still wanted to branch out and experiment a little, or learn something else that might help him break through his current limitations. That was because, even after making thousands of Fusions over the months, none of his Skills improved… at all.  Not just his Mage Skill, either, but his Martial Skills had stagnated because he wasn’t doing anything to improve them, and even his General Skills hadn’t budged from where they were before.

After a while, it felt like it wasn’t just his body that was a prisoner inside the Academy, but that his Skills were also confined and blocked from any kind of advancement – as unlikely as that sounded. Still, the fact that he hadn’t been able to increase the Level of anything in months was a good sign that something was, if not wrong, then at least abnormal for him.

The months passed in a blur and Larek was barely even aware of how much time had gone by when he heard Verne and Norde mentioning something to each other in their room that surprised him.

“Of course! It won’t be quite as exciting without Larek participating, naturally, but I’m still going,” the tree-like boy said.

Norde countered with, “Yes, but Larek was kind of a cheat—no offense, Larek—so it’ll be good to see a Skirmish that is a bit more balanced.”

Larek spoke up at that. “Skirmish?”

Verne nodded. “Yep! It’s the end-of-the-year Skirmish!”

“End of the year?”

Verne and Norde both looked at him and chuckled. “You’re not even aware that our first year is almost finished, are you?” Verne asked with amusement in his voice.

Larek thought hard about it, but he had to admit in the end that he wasn’t. “I… didn’t even know that much time had passed.”

“Well, it did, and in a week we’ll officially be second-year students at the Academy!”

Wow. Really? It’s been a whole year already?

He doubted that his roommates would be trying to trick him, so he had to take their word for it.

The next day, Verne, Norde, and Nedira went to watch the Skirmish since classes were cancelled for the duration – to Larek’s additional surprise – but instead of watching the competition himself, he used that time to make more Fusions. He had no desire to watch them all fighting against each other in an arena when there was so much danger lurking outside the walls; his work was too important to interrupt, after all.

After the Skirmish was over, there were two more days of classes, each of which had some sort of end-of-year test that every first-year had to take to demonstrate the knowledge that they had learned; thankfully, there were no requirements for him to cast a spell, which meant that most of the tests were knowledge-based. While not the smartest student when it came to memorizing all of the information he had gained over the year, he thought he did fairly well being able to demonstrate his manipulation of Mana along with his knowledge of Specializations, geography, and monsters that could be found coming out of Scissions.

Finally, classes ended for the year, freeing him up for two weeks before the next year began. As he threw himself into the Fusions he was repeatedly making, he wished he could clone himself so that it wasn’t just him creating everything; the more he made, the more he realized that what he had made was just a small portion of what was needed to outfit all the SIC members heading out to kill monsters. There was only so much that he, personally, could create, and he feared that it wouldn’t be enough.