The Fusionist Book 2 -- Chapter 48

Chapter 48

The Dean leaned back in her chair, a smirk on her face as she glanced at Shinpai. “Oh, you’re no fun. He gave it away, didn’t he? He never could bluff his way out of a pot in Bruha, so why should I expect anything different?”

“I’ll have you know that I play Bruha quite well, and I have absolutely no tells to take advantage of. You just happen to have an uncanny ability to tell when I’m bluffing.”

Larek just sat there, more confused than ever. He vaguely knew about Bruha as some sort of card game, but what did that have to do with what was going on?

Dean Lorraine looked at Larek again, sighing as her expression became serious again. “Fine, you got me. Time to come clean.” She waved at the Grandmaster Fusionist. “Yes, Shinpai told me about your healing Fusion, and while it is obviously dangerous to use for long periods of time, especially for a Mage or anyone without potential, it could be remarkably effective to keep Martials alive.

“Now, I’m not an expert in Fusions nor claim to be; I can produce an Intermediate Fusion if I really put my mind to it, but by focus is in other areas. That being said, what you can create is incredible,” she said, emphasizing her point by tapping on the desk, “if only because of the potential applications in the future. However, given how strong the Fusions you’ve created appear to be, their longevity is something that Fusionists have been searching for ever since they were discovered. I’m hoping that you’ll be able to teach some of our aspiring students – and faculty, such as this old man here,” she continued, clearly indicating Shinpai, “how to do even a fraction of what you’ve been able to accomplish in such a short time.”

Larek shook his head, though not in denial; he was just a little overwhelmed by the abrupt change in the way this discussion was going. “You want me to… teach? But what about the abduction and—”

“Yes, teach. Well, eventually; there’s still a lot for you to learn, but we don’t want to squander what you can do.” She paused for a second. “As for your abduction, we will get to the bottom of it, following up with Ricardo as we assess the truth of the situation. Unfortunately, given how highly placed he is in Noble circles here in the Kingdom, any punishment will likely be a slap on the wrist.  The most likely outcome is that he will be transferred to a different Academy until he graduates later this year, or simply graduates early and enters the SIC without any of the usual fanfare. The Martial trainees, depending on who they are, could suffer some harsher penalties, but until we discover their identities, I can’t speak to what will happen to them.”

It’s just as I thought. Ricardo wasn’t going to be punished for what he did to my friends and I, and he would’ve had ample opportunity before his role was discovered to find a way to kill me and potentially order the deaths of my family.  He had to die to keep them safe.

The justification felt hollow in his head, but he still maintained that what happened was the only way it could’ve ended up. It was either kill or be killed, and he wasn’t prepared to give his life to a psychotic Noble like Ricardo.

“That being said, we need to talk about something a little more… delicate,” the Dean went on, which snapped his attention from his internal thoughts to what she was saying. It wasn’t so much the words that she said, but the tone behind them that raised the hair on the back of his neck. “Larek… we know who you are. Or, to be more specific, we know what you are.”

That declaration by the Dean caused the bottom to fall out of his world, and the hyper-focused state that he was already having difficulty maintaining cracked and broke at the sudden revelation. At first, he tried to brush it off as simply a guess on her part, but another glance at Shinpai’s grave expression made him consider that it might be true. His instructor already seemed to know something about him that made him dangerous to interact with, which was why he had told him to stay away; but did that actually mean he knew that Larek might be a half-breed?

“What are you talking about?” he asked, stalling for time as he tried to figure out what to do.

The Grandmaster Fusionist responded this time instead of the Dean. “When you first demonstrated what you could do in my class, I thought you were simply a Fusionist prodigy unlike the world had ever seen before. It was only after you asked about someone having both sets of stats, Mage and Martial, that I began to have suspicions. When you revealed to me your Healing Surge Fusion, which could artificially apply the principles behind the Body Regeneration Martial Skill – something that even I, with all my knowledge – would have a difficult time replicating because I don’t have experience with it, it only confirmed my suspicions.

“Or so I thought.

“You see, I’ve been around a long time, and over the years I’ve learned some things that are better to stay hidden, and the continued presence of the Gergasi, though now dramatically transformed into what the Nobles refer to as the Great Ones, is one of them. Knowledge of them outside of specific circles is forbidden, and when I thought you might be one in disguise, sent to trick me into revealing my familiarity of their existence, I began to panic.

“To have the attention of a powerful entity like the Gergasi on you is like the sun looking down upon you. There is every possibility that if you stay in its sights long enough you’ll get burned, and fighting against it is nearly impossible. Even those with high Levels in the Kingdom would be no match for even a single Gergasi, as they are both Mage and Martial all rolled up in one – just like you, Larek. When you tack on the fact that they have been around for more than 1,000 years, it is inevitable that they would become powerful enough to challenge anyone or anything that might oppose them.

“Therefore, it might make sense why I panicked. However, instead of you being a full Gergasi, I realized that either you were the greatest deceiver ever to have lived, hiding your enormous power so that only a trickle of it showed itself to me, or you genuinely had no idea why I was in a panic. I was confused, which is why I wanted you to stay away until I could think about how this could come about, but then the Scissions appeared and distracted me. It was only when I came back and overheard the report given to Lorraine about what happened to you that I realized the truth.

“You aren’t a Gergasi, or a ‘Great One’; you absolutely couldn’t be, because it was almost a guarantee that a Noble had hurt you. They literally can’t hurt one of their Great Ones because their slavery bond will physically stop them; if they inadvertently hurt one, such as due to an accident as a result of their actions, they would suffer unbelievable pain throughout their entire body until they begged for death.

“All of which led to only two other explanations. Since you weren’t a full Gergasi, you are either a wild anomaly that just so happens to match some of the physical characteristics of one of them, a proposition that is almost impossible to countenance, or you’re what I’ve heard referred to as a ‘half-breed’, which is a derogatory term for those who are born from the mating of a Human and a Gergasi.

“From what I understand, these ‘half-breeds’ are kept secluded in the Enclave below Andrin, as they are rumored to be weak and sickly because they share the worst negative traits of both races. I’ve only heard rumors about them, but the biggest one I’ve heard is that they are only kept around because they are the only offspring that the Gergasi are able to produce, as they all became infertile at some point in their past. Most likely after they caused the Transition a thousand years ago, but no one can say for sure.

“But you…” Here, Larek’s Fusions instructor paused as he looked his student over. “You embody all the positive traits between Humans and Gergasi, as far as I can tell. How that is possible, I don’t know, but that’s the only reasonable explanation. Who are your parents?”

The question caught him off-guard as he was reeling from everything that Shinpai had told him; it was especially significant because it matched most of what Ricardo had told him. Maybe I really am one of these half-breeds? No, it can’t be; I know who my parents are, after all, and neither of them is a 7-foot-tall Gergasi.

Larek told him who his parents were, which made him nostalgic for home. Just thinking about his mother and father back in their small-yet-cozy house, along with his brother and sister— His thoughts stopped at the memory of his siblings, their features stark in his memory. Both Marco and Kendee resembled both his parents in one way or another in terms of physical features, but when Larek compared himself to his parents, he couldn’t see his father in himself… anywhere. Sure, there were similarities, but when he really looked into it, they were more of something he’d probably gained from his mother than from his male parent.

Am I missing something? Is there anything of my father in my features?

The more he considered it, the more he was convinced.

Janek Holsten is not my father. But if not, then who is?

That wasn’t something he necessarily wanted to know.

Throughout his contemplation of his parents, the Dean and Shinpai were quiet. Seeing a change come over him, his instructor asked, “Do you see it now?”

Slowly, Larek nodded. “I don’t think my father is… my biological father.”

“That’s what I believe, as well. That brings us to a few other questions: Why aren’t you in the Enclave? Why did you grow up as a Logger, not knowing who you were? There are plenty more, I’m sure, but those aren’t something we can easily gain answers to at this point. We can only move on from here and deal with what we do know, which is that you have an exceptional ability to create Fusions that we would be fools not to encourage and utilize to save lives.”

“You’re not going to lock me in a basement somewhere and force me to produce Fusion after Fusion, are you?” he asked jokingly, remembering that being one of the worries he’d had when he first learned about his abilities with Fusions.

Thankfully, neither of them seemed inclined to do that. His instructor reassured him that doing something like that would only hurt the Kingdom, because the more Larek was free to explore his limits and create powerful Fusions, the better everyone would be because of it. “We do want your help teaching what you can of your methods, but otherwise we’re looking forward to seeing what you can create in a year, five years, or even decades from now!”

That was encouraging, at least, and was something he’d been hoping to have since he’d first been forced to attend Crystalview Academy. To be free to create what he wanted and not have to hide who he—

“Of course, we’re going to have to keep who you are a secret, because if word gets back to the Gergasi about your presence, I have no doubt that they would do anything they could to snatch you up and hide you away in their Enclave,” Shinpai added, cutting through his thoughts as if he could hear them. “If you are, indeed, at least partially one of their own, and their first ‘success’ at reproduction, then they wouldn’t want you out of their sight for a second. While I doubt that they would treat you as a prisoner or an experimental subject to be studied, poked, and prodded, it is highly likely that they would monitor you to ensure you didn’t do anything dangerous, such as creating Fusions. From what I’ve heard, they look down on the craft, treating it as nothing but fancy tricks, because they place much more value on spells and physical abilities.”

That definitely didn’t sound like he wanted to ever be discovered by the Gergasi, even if they could technically be “family”. He’d probably be a prisoner in everything but name, which was directly the opposite of the freedom he desired.

“As a result, I need you to do your absolute best not to demonstrate any type of aptitude in the Martial realm, as we don’t want any others to put together who you are. It’s a little worrying how Ricardo, or whoever it actually is, was able to piece together your origins, but given that he’s one of the most-highly placed Nobles in the entire Academy and Fort, it’s possible that he had some other sources of information that we don’t.”

That brought up something that had been bothering him ever since Shinpai started explaining things to him. “How is it that you know so much about what it supposed to be a secret?”

He shrugged. “I’ve been around a long time and pick things up here and there.” Then he waved toward the Dean and grinned. “Plus, I’ve learned most of that from Lorraine here.”

Larek looked over at the Dean and saw an awkward smile on her face. “It’s true, unfortunately.”

“How do you know so much? I thought only Nobles knew about it.”

She was slow to respond, but when she did, it wasn’t what he was expecting. “That’s because I’m also enslaved to the Great Ones.”

Book 2 Chapter 49: https://www.patreon.com/posts/fusionist-book-2-84265904