The Fusionist Book 3 -- Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Larek struggled to move, panic flowing through him as he expected the knife to either stab him in the chest or cut his throat in the next few seconds. He managed to vaguely feel his arms rising slightly out of the water of the bath where they had fallen, but he instantly knew it wasn’t going to be enough. His body felt numb and unresponsive, as any sensations were muted and nearly imperceptible.  Larek was as helpless as a newborn due to whatever had been pressed against his neck, and he didn’t even know who it was that was about to kill him.  Then again, I suppose it doesn’t matter because I’ll be dead.

Suddenly, his view of the ceiling was blocked as the shape of a figure looked down at him; he was shocked as he immediately recognized their familiar face. It was hard not to, given that he saw it every day.

It was Vivienne, the Martial trainee and Ranger that had been a part of Team Fusion in the Skirmish and had become one of Larek’s protection detail.  She was also supposedly Penelope’s lover, though he hadn’t dug too far into that, preferring to keep his distance from their private lives.

Has she been planning this the entire time? Why go through with all this—?

“Phew, that’s some tough skin, Larek,” she said with a creepy smile as she looked down at him. It was only at that point that he realized that the trainee had released his mouth, though he was still finding it impossible to move. “I thought for a moment that my needle wouldn’t be able to penetrate your neck, but fortunately I planned ahead and used the heavy duty one because I’ve seen how durable you are. Hopefully any other assassins in the future won’t have that kind of foresight.”

What? What is she talking about? What’s going on?

He tried to speak in order to ask those questions out loud, but even his vocal cords seemed to be paralyzed, and all that came out was a wheezing groan.

“Oh, sorry about that,” she responded to his groan. “The Deepfang Venom is quite potent, but it also doesn’t last too long. Some say that it just means that the Deepfangs are weaker monsters because of that, but I think it’s because the massive snakes that utilize this venom prefer to feel their prey squirming around after they’re ingested.” Horror spread through his paralyzed body at her words. “Fortunately, it only lasts about a minute and there are no long-term side-effects, so you should be able to move—”

As if a huge weight had been lifted off of him, Larek suddenly felt his strength come back. Without hesitation, he whipped his hands up to grab onto the Ranger, intending to prevent her from following through with whatever she had planned, but his hands met empty air as she moved away.

“Whoa! Not only do you have thick skin, but you were able to shrug off the Venom far faster than expected,” she said, standing up and stepping out of reach of even his long arms. “However, you’re going to need to camouflage your recovery if something like this happens again, because your body practically shouted that you were about to move.”

Rage threatened to flood his mind as his victim escaped his clutches, but reason suddenly eclipsed his violent urge to kill the young woman who had nearly killed him. Or did she? With her making no move to attack him, and in fact visibly sliding her knife back into a sheath strapped to her arm, she didn’t seem like she was intending to follow through on her plans. Even as he shot to his feet inside of the bathtub, sloshing huge waves of water onto the floor, he hesitated as confusion wracked his mind. The only thing he consciously did was wrap his hand around the lower haft of his axe, but he wasn’t even sure what he was going to do with it.

Frozen in indecision, he heard the door to the bathing room swing open, before he heard Bartholomew’s voice. “Vivienne? What are you doing here?”

Testing out his voice, Larek hoarsely shouted, “She’s trying to kill me!”

For some reason, this caused the both of them to laugh. “Kill you?” the would-be assassin asked with a chuckle. “Far from it, Larek; I’m here to protect you, after all.”

“But you paralyzed me and threatened to cut my throat!” He didn’t actually know that his throat was going to be cut, but it made sense with how his head was held back.

“Is that true, Viv?” the other Martial trainee asked, suspicious.

The Ranger hmphed, as if she was annoyed at being found out… or was annoyed at someone who just didn’t seem to be understanding something she was trying to convey. “Yes and no. I did paralyze you with the Deepfang Venom, as well as flash my knife, but it was only to show you that even when you think you’re completely safe, tragedy can strike when you least expect it.” She looked past Larek at Bartholomew. “It’s also a lesson for you; did you even check to see if anyone was hiding inside the bathing tubs? I have to say, it was quite easy to sneak in here and lie in wait for you to arrive, especially considering that it would be simple enough to identify Larek’s schedule and plan accordingly. Just like on the walls of a town or city, you have to be looking for a threat to arrive at any point; you can’t always rely on a glance to tell you that there is no danger – especially with how the Scissions are starting to act up out there now.”

Larek understood the last part she mentioned, as rumors of Scissions appearing scattered around the countryside had even penetrated his relatively secluded schedule lately. While there were still a few reports of Scissions appearing relatively close to inhabited areas, most of them were apparently opening up in the middle of nowhere as they released their monsters.  These monsters would eventually turn up to attack a town or city suddenly, though with how scattered their numbers were, they weren’t typically as much of a threat as a full-scale Scission right outside the walls; the danger came when the SIC members there to protect them weren’t prepared for such an attack, especially if it came in the dead of night, as they didn’t have the feeling of a Scission opening to warn them. He hadn’t heard specifics about how many towns and cities unfortunately realized this was happening too late, but he suspected that it was more than enough to cause the information to spread far and wide.

But everything else she said? “Wait… so you aren’t trying to kill me?”

She shook her head in obvious exasperation. “Of course not, Larek. I did this to prove a point to you that you’re not invulnerable and to let us do our jobs. Besides, we’ve already caught a couple of people trying to sneak in while you were sleeping and even inside of Grandmaster Fusionist Shinpai’s classroom while you were creating Fusions; it was only a matter of time before someone decided to try something here in the bathing room.”

“…huh? Really?” Larek hadn’t heard anything about that.

Bartholomew spoke up from the entrance, where he was still hanging onto the door he had pushed open. “Yes. After they were caught, they revealed that they were just trying to speak to you personally about making a Fusion for them, but they could’ve just as easily been there to cause you harm.”

Again, he hadn’t known any of that, which made him wonder what else his “bodyguards” were keeping from him. He was actually about to ask that when the Martial trainee by the doorway cleared his throat. “Anyway, I’ll leave you both to whatever you’re doing, and I’ll be right outside,” Bartholomew said, his voice sounding a little uncomfortable. “I’ll keep in mind what you said, Vivienne; let me know when you’ve left and I’ll come back and keep my eye on him.”

Out of the corner of Larek’s eye, he watched the younger Martial trainee exit the bathing room, a blush reddening his cheeks. He was perplexed at why he had a blush for a moment, but fortunately Vivienne cleared it up quite swiftly.

“You know, you may not be my type, Larek, but you sure are an impressive specimen,” she said, a throaty chuckle escaping in the process. “Why don’t you wrap all this up and get some sleep; you’ve had an eventful night already.”

Shocked, Larek looked down at the same moment he realized he was naked, having simply stood up out of the bathtub without a thought about his state of undress. He quickly covered himself up, but it didn’t really matter all that much since by the time he looked up, Vivienne was already near the entrance. She looked back at him and smirked. “See you tomorrow, Larek.” As she exited, Bartholomew came inside no more than two seconds later, standing against the wall in his “normal” position as a bodyguard.

“I don’t think I can handle all this,” Larek said to the room, shaking his head. As he grabbed a towel he had left on the floor, which was half-soaked from the wave of water he had expelled when he stood up, the young Martial trainee spoke up.

“She’s right, you know—as much as you don’t want to hear it,” he said with a soft, serious voice. “There are some out there that don’t want you around or don’t want you to succeed, and if one of them had been in here instead of her, they might’ve killed you.”

Larek still had trouble understanding why someone would want to kill him – unless they knew of his real origins, of course – but he knew that his bodyguards were only trying to keep him safe.  As much as he was getting tired of constantly being watched, his earlier scare when he was paralyzed and helpless had made the possibility of being killed by some sort of assassin more of a reality than he cared to admit.

For now, he needed their help to ensure his safety, but there was no way he could live like this for multiple months or years, let alone for the rest of his life. There had to be something he could do to protect himself; the Fusions he’d been able to make were powerful, of course, but taking them off at any point made him vulnerable. Then there were some, such as his Repelling Barrier, which were powerful but had flaws and were cumbersome to keep active indefinitely; for instance, the slow movement of Vivienne’s hand holding a needle filled with Deepfang Venom approaching his neck wouldn’t have triggered the Fusion, even if he had been wearing it – which he hadn’t, as it was dangerous to use outside of the arena. There was just too much risk of someone accidentally bumping into him and being smashed into the ground with bone-crushing force in response to keep it active all the time.

As he dried off, contemplating Bartholomew’s words, he couldn’t help but look down at his body again, thinking of ways to protect it. I wonder if there is another Fusion I could make that would work better than Repelling Barrier? But then there’s the problem of if I have to take it off, such as in a bath; can it be something that can be shoved under my skin, where it would always be touching me? Or… can I add Fusions to my skin?

He hadn’t heard of that being possible by any other Fusionist, mainly because skin was a poor material because it was too soft and flexible to maintain the formation of a Fusion for long. But he had already contemplated using leather for a medium, given that his style of creating Fusions produced a much stronger formation than normal, and leather was like the skin of an animal, right? If he could get one to work, then why not the other?

He wasn’t going to experiment on his own skin – or anyone else’s – anytime soon, though leather and perhaps even cloth was certainly something to consider. Before he could even think of anything like that, however, he needed to finish his current project with the healing Fusion first.

Dressing quickly and reequipping his powerful Fusion accessories, he felt almost back to normal as he nodded at Bartholomew as his bodyguard led him out of the bathing room and escorted him to his room.  After arriving to see that Verne and Norde were starting to nod off as they studied a few books, Larek thought that was probably a good idea as well. Taking one of his books on Advanced Fusions, he flipped through it for what seemed like the hundredth time, hoping that it would all suddenly make sense. Unfortunately, no matter how many times he read through it, the usual instinctive connection with the knowledge he gained from the books he read on Advanced Fusions just wasn’t there. Basic and Intermediate Fusions, when he learned about them from books or from being taught about them directly by Shinpai, seemed to come naturally to him; they were just so simple, even the more complicated ones, that they required very little effort to understand and incorporate into his abilities with Fusions.

But Advanced Fusions was different. It was almost as if there was some sort of transparent veil covering the knowledge he gained.  It was seated firmly in his mind to the point where felt like a part of him, so that wasn’t the problem.  The issue came about when he tried to access it in relation to creating Fusions; in other words, he could see it, but he couldn’t touch it.  It was frustrating to the extreme, but he was trying to be patient because his Advanced Fusions Professor told him that he was simply at a threshold in his Skills that he needed to breakthrough in order to handle these types of Fusions. Even with his high Mage stats, he couldn’t do what he felt he should be able to do, which was highly annoying to say the least.

Intellect: 70 [133]

Acuity: 104 [198]

Pneuma: 299 [568]

Pattern Cohesion: 5,680/5,680

Mage Skills:

Multi-effect Fusion Focus Level 10

Pattern Recognition Level 18

Magical Detection Level 18

Spellcasting Focus Level 20

Mana Control Level 30

Fusion Level 30

Pattern Formation Level 30

Even after gaining another Skill Level in Pattern Recognition and Magical Detection over the last few weeks, bringing them both to 18, Larek was no closer to understanding Advanced Fusions than he was when he first started learning about them. Of course, the Skills that really affected his ability to comprehend what he had learned were Fusion, Pattern Formation, and his Mana Control – all of which were stuck at Level 30 with no sign of budging. If he was able to break through those thresholds, Grandmaster Fusionist Shinpai indicated that he would finally be able to create Advanced Fusions, but thus far he hadn’t been able to discover a way to do that. Most of his advances in Skill Levels had come from either repetition or gaining some new understanding of the Skill, but neither of those methods seemed to affect these Skills at the threshold.

I’ll get there eventually. It’ll just take some time, that’s all.

Still a little shaken from his near-death experience in the bathing room earlier, he couldn’t focus on the book in his lap, so he put it away after a few minutes. As he thought about the next day and his attempt to assemble all he had learned about healing lately into a Fusion, he thought about the paralyzing venom that had completely numbed and immobilized his body, leaving him vulnerable to the knife that his assailant wielded – and he had an epiphany.

Settling down to sleep a little later after spending some time reworking his original plan for the morrow, he couldn’t keep the smile off his face as he realized that his chances of success had suddenly increased by tenfold.