The Fusionist Book 2 -- Chapter 13

Chapter 13

As he should’ve guessed, Rheina went first, handing over her bracers and her earrings, keeping her knives with her until he needed them. He supposed that made a bit of sense, because if they were somehow attacked while on the road, then she would need her weapons to defend herself.

Larek moved some of the softer sacks into a large pile behind tall stacks of boxes, creating an alcove where he could sit and have a good portion of his surroundings be blocked off by the supplies that were being transported. It couldn’t do much for the small bumps and gentle swaying of the entire carriage, but even the small time he had been inside the vehicle had allowed him to become largely accustomed to it.

Looking at one of the bracers along the inside, he immediately saw what Rheina had been talking about with the steel rivets; they were punched through the leather underneath and through the steel plate on top, and what was left was smoothed out and nearly flush with the soft leather. From what he could tell, it would be plenty of contact with her skin, so he didn’t see any potential problems.

The first Fusion he did was one that he could practically do in his sleep, Healing Surge +3. He was thankful that he did it first, because he nearly lost concentration during the formation of the pattern formation using his Cohesion; fortunately, the Fusion was so ingrained in his head that even a temporary interruption in the process was easily corrected as he adjusted to the sway and bumps that the carriage passed on to him as it rolled over the countryside. As he finished it about 15 minutes later, Larek had become accustomed enough to the disturbances that it didn’t bother him all that much.

After it was done, he rested for a few minutes before he got started on the other Bracer. This one was going to be a stat boost for Agility, which he’d never done before, but he knew the symbols for the Martial stats he would need for the Effect portions of the grid formation. Strength looked like a stylized upright fist; Body appeared to be the shape of a person with their legs and arms splayed out their side; and Agility looked somewhat like a side view of a person running with straight lines emerging out its backside. He couldn’t help but chuckle when he imagined it, because in one way it almost appeared as though the figure was passing gas.

As this Fusion was going to be a lot more powerful than the ones he was going to fit on the earrings, Larek took his time assembling the different elements of the grid formation and the containment barriers. Using one of the Mage stat boosts as a template, he made the Activation Method permanent, tied it to the Mana Cost, and then tied the rest into the Magnitude and the Effect. Placing the symbol for Agility in its place from his memory of seeing it in the book Nedira had given him, he settled on 7 as a Magnitude.

Theoretically, he could make it much stronger, even past his Magnitude 9 boosts on his own accessories, but he didn’t want to make the area of ambience too large because he was worried it might interfere and clash with one of the knives once it had its own Fusion. Small amounts of interaction between their areas of ambience wouldn’t cause too much problem, but if they overlapped significantly during a few hours of fighting, it could compromise one or the other Fusion.

Taking a deep breath, he triple-checked his design and started to funnel his Mana into it, his Mana pool of 760 rapidly depleting and filling back up constantly as he pushed thousands of Mana into the formation. After a little over 20 minutes of intense concentration and focus on the effect while the rest of the world faded to the background, he felt the last of his Mana filter through the Fusion and it *clicked* into place. Sitting back with a sigh and a smile on his face, he looked at the notification that popped up.

New Fusion Learned!

Agility Boost +7

Activation Method: Permanent

Effect: Increases Agility

Magnitude: 70% increase

Mana Cost: 30,000

Pattern Cohesion: 400

Fusion Time: 85 hours

Nice! It worked.

Not that he doubted that it would, but it was a new version of a Fusion he’d done before, so there was always a risk it wouldn’t work. He was pleased to see that its costs were very similar – if not exactly the same – as the Mage stat boosts, so it was easy enough to estimate what the others would cost, as well.

“Rheina!” he called out. “If you would, come here and try these on to make sure they work.”

The woman was there in front of him a few seconds later, and she immediately strapped both bracers back onto her forearms. Nothing happened when the Healing Surge Fusion came into contact with her skin, but as soon as the one with the Agility Boost touched her, she stumbled to the side and was barely able to catch herself from falling.

“Whoa! What was—no way!” she exclaimed, a huge smile on her face.

“What happened? Are you alright?” Crester asked concernedly.

In answer, she sped across the area where they had all been congregating and sat next to him, moving much faster than before. “I sure am, I was just getting used to the stat increase. You’re not going to believe this, Crester; this thing increased my Agility by 70%! That’s an extra 42 points!”

The armored Martial looked incredulous, before he glanced over at Larek with an expression that he couldn’t place.

“And is this the healing one?” Rheina asked, still excited about her new Agility Boost Fusion. “How do I activate it?”

Fortunately, Nedira was nearby and answered so that Larek didn’t have to, as she explained how it was easy enough to activate with a mental command. As soon as she had that information, the woman whipped out one of her knives and cut her palm before anyone could react, before proceeding to activate the Fusion without any trouble. Just like what had happened with Gharina back in Garventon, the wound healed within seconds, leaving only the blood that had welled out on her palm.

Larek soon tuned them out as he retreated back to his Fusions, his focus now on his next project. Taking one of the earrings, he looked at the purple gem-like object on the stud and found that it was actually inset into what appeared to be silver; unfortunately, it didn’t appear as if it would physically touch any part of her ear once it was back in. Thankfully, the purple gem sat on a flat piece of silver underneath it, keeping it in place with delicate-looking clamps, which he could see through the relatively transparent color of the gem. Hmm… if I place the Fusion on that flat silver piece, that should certainly stay in physical contact with her.

It would be better if he was able to remove the gem so that he could access the silver directly below, but he thought that he could likely work through the purple object to place the Fusion underneath it, as long as he could see it. He didn’t want to break the fragile clamps holding it in place, so he thought this was a good alternative.

Just as he began creating the grid formation for a Strength Boost Fusion, Larek stopped and thought about what he was doing for a moment. Looking at the gem again and how it was part of the earring he was holding, he wondered if the entire thing might just be considered a single object. Thinking about all the Fusions he had seen before, including the ones on the carriage he was riding within, they varied greatly on the size of their coverage; for instance, there was a single Fusion that encompassed the entire interior wheel of the carriage, despite it being made of different parts. Granted, they were all crafted from wood and was therefore the same material, but it also had many different components to it. He had already looked at it and saw that it wasn’t much different from what he could create himself, it was only the Effect that was slightly different because it encompassed the entire wheel instead of individual parts.

Could he do the same thing with the earring?

His first thought was no, of course not; they were two different materials, so such a thing was impossible. But was it really impossible, or was it just that no one had been able to use different materials for the same Fusion?

Time passed as he stared at the earring in his hand, as he contemplated what he would need to do in order to utilize both materials in a single Fusion. None of his knowledge gained from the Academy helped him because they all pointed toward it being an impossibility, but he had a feeling that it was all in the Effect and requiring the proper focus.

After a while, Larek decided to try an experiment. Based on past experiments that had a bit more dangerous than he wanted, he decided to just keep this one at a Magnitude 1 rather than the higher one that he was planning on putting on the earring.

He started with the usual permanent Activated Method and tied it to the Mana Cost, followed by a Magnitude 1 in its usual slot. For the Effect, he added the closed-fist symbol for the Strength stat that he remembered from the Fusion book. Once the formation was complete triple-checked for accuracy, he began to funnel Mana into it.

The biggest difference was in his focus, because while he would normally just be thinking about the effect of increasing the Strength stat, he was also focusing on applying the Fusion to not only the purple gem but to the silver underneath.

It was much harder than he expected.

When he thought of focusing his concentration on something, he thought that he was quite good at coalescing all of his attention on that singular element; when he tried to do focus on two things at once, he found it to be extremely difficult. It was like trying to force his eyes to look in two different directions, which wasn’t something he could do even if he tried; his mind was a little more flexible, though, and after a few minutes of strain as he very slowly fed the Fusion Mana, he felt a brief spike of pain shoot through his head before it disappeared.

What the spike of pain brought with it was exactly what he needed. Afterwards, his focus seemed to split cleanly between the two Effects he was attempting to imprint upon the Fusion, though it still took him another minute for it to feel like his focus had fully clarified. It was almost like his mind was testing a new muscle out, and after thoroughly playing with it, decided that it would do perfectly fine for its intended purpose.

As he felt the Fusion finish and *click* into place, where it seemed to be blended halfway in the silver underneath and the purple gem up top with a surprisingly amount of depth, he was greeted by additional notifications. The first one was the new Fusion he had learned, and while it didn’t look any different than he expected, Larek was 100% confident that it would also effect the entire earring rather than just the silver or the gem.

New Fusion Learned!

Strength Boost +1

Activation Method: Permanent

Effect: Increases Strength

Magnitude: 10% increase

Mana Cost: 50

Pattern Cohesion: 2

Fusion Time: 30 minutes

But that wasn’t the only notification that took up his vision.

Fusion has reached Level 21!

Spellcasting Focus has reached Level 10!

Multi-effect Fusion Focus Skill has been unlocked!

Multi-effect Fusion Focus has reached Level 1!

Not only had he broken through the block he’d been experiencing in his progression of his Fusion and Spellcasting Focus Skills, but he’d unlocked a whole new Skill that he’d never heard of before. Multi-effect Fusion Focus seemed to only be related to Fusions, as he didn’t think it would apply to casting spells – if he ever figured out how to do that one day – but that didn’t bother him in the least. It’s unlocking led him to believe that this was something that should be available to every Fusionist out there, and he wondered why no one had told him about it.

Perhaps they all have the Skill but want to keep it a secret? He wasn’t sure why that would be, but he wasn’t going to worry about it; instead, he was just happy with his discovery.

Rather than having Rheina test the earring out to make sure it work, since he was sure it would, Larek quickly eliminated the Fusion and remade it with a Magnitude 5 Strength Boost, which he found to be a little difficult at first even with his new Skill. After about a minute of splitting his focus, the whole process became a lot smoother and he was able to finish the Fusion without any other troubles.

New Fusion Learned!

Strength Boost +5

Activation Method: Permanent

Effect: Increases Strength

Magnitude: 50% increase

Mana Cost: 5,000

Pattern Cohesion: 150

Fusion Time: 30 hours

Multi-effect Fusion Focus has reached Level 2!

Multi-effect Fusion Focus has reached Level 3!

Very nice!

With the first earring completely finished, he smiled at the result of using his new Skill on the Fusion while he waited for his Pattern Cohesion to regenerate.

Now, on to the next one.

Book 2 Chapter 14: https://www.patreon.com/posts/fusionist-book-2-81944694