While they headed for the southwestern Calamity, Larek took the time to distribute the 36 AP he had just earned.

Strength: 260 [520] (+)

Body: 288 [576] (+)

Agility: 260 [520] (+)

Intellect: 292 [584] (+)

Acuity: 292 [584] (+)

Pneuma: 5,184 [10,368]

Pattern Cohesion: 103,680/103,680

Since he was trying to outrun the two Gergasi chasing him, and what he was hoping to do was somehow find a way to camouflage the unique magical signature that came out of him automatically, he thought it would be a good idea to increase his mental stats once again to see if he could deduce a way out of his current mess. Sticking 8 AP in both Intellect and Acuity brought them both up to 300, 12 AP in Body brought it up to 300, as well, and the remaining 8 AP he split up between Strength and Agility, adding 4 AP to each.

As if he had hit some sort of threshold, Larek felt his mind expand more than he expected, and it was so sudden that he nearly lost the focus needed to maintain his Pattern constructs. Fortunately, he caught himself before he could let them dissipate, but afterward he resolved to never again increase his stats while they were flying through the air at high speed; it was too dangerous otherwise.

Once he recovered, the world took on a whole new layer of detail that he couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen before. Coupled with his Magical Detection Skill, he found that he could look inside of his own body and see the processes that produced the Pure Aetheric Force that leaked out, providing a trail for the Gergasi to follow.

Of course, just because he could see it, that didn’t mean he knew what to do about it. Regardless, he was one step closer to figuring it out, now that everything was becoming a lot more clear. This was even more evident when he looked outside of the Pattern box construct and the world around him, but especially the Apertures that they passed along the way.

In short, he was able to visually witness the flows of energy moving in and out of the different territories like never before. Mana, Stama, Pattern Cohesion, and different degrees of Corrupted and Pure Aetheric Force seemed to pulse as they interacted with the Apertures, the multiple streams of energized particles looking more like the blood vessels in a body than the current magic-infused environment it actually was. It was almost as if the energy that moved around the world through the Apertures was some giant ecosystem of concentrated nodules, all working together for some mysterious purpose.

Like the whole thing was alive.

He wasn’t sure what exactly he was going to do with that new information, but he knew it was important. As they continued to move toward the Calamity, this knowledge and enhanced view of the world was only added to as he saw how the massive territory they were approaching affected the energy of the world to an even greater degree. Even hundreds of miles away, he could see a general flow of Pure Aetheric Force, automatically emerging from people they passed over in various towns and cities, being pulled toward the Calamity. Even his own was starting to be pulled past him, though not enough to disturb the trail he was still leaving behind him, but it made him hope that actually entering its expanded territory might make a difference.

That matched up with what he suspected when he first proposed their destination, but his suspicion was becoming more and more of a fact now that he could see it happening.

“Are they still following us?” Nedira asked after a bit of time had passed. She didn’t have as good of a Magical Detection Skill as he did, so he stretched out his senses to check; he quickly located the two Gergasi following behind them at a distance, and told her so.

“What exactly are you hoping will happen when we get to the Calamity?”

Larek took a few seconds to formulate his answer, putting all he’d learned into a—hopefully—comprehensible concept.

“Apertures are constructed from a combination of energies, many of which flow out of their connection to the world of Corruption, but there is one energy that comes from our world: Pure Aetheric Force. You’ve heard me talk about it before, so I won’t go over it again, but the Apertures somehow absorb it from the environment and use it to stabilize their internal structure and expand after they’ve gathered enough. Think of Pure AF as food that they need to eat to survive and grow stronger.

“Now, the spherical Apertures don’t just randomly absorb the Pure AF that just happens to float through the environment nearby; instead, they actively absorb it at the same rate it expels Corrupted AF and other energies. When it is larger, and therefore has a bigger territory to draw from, the rate in which it absorbs Pure AF increases to keep up with its growth. This wouldn’t be much of an issue for most people, as the amount of Pure AF that they produce and expel naturally into the world is relatively insignificant – at least individually. But someone like myself and other Guardians that have unlocked their full potential, but especially the Gergasi behind us, naturally expel a lot of Pure AF; though my own and yours are only small streams compared to the flood that a Gergasi produces.

“My hope is that when we get inside the Calamity, it will pull away the majority of this Pure AF that you and I expel naturally, thereby eliminating the trail that the Gergasi can follow.”

She thought about what he said for nearly a minute before she asked, “If Pure Aetheric Force is what the Apertures feed on, what happens when a feast of it arrives in the form of the two Gergasi?”

“That’s what I want to find out.” Larek wasn’t sure what would actually happen, as he didn’t know exactly how an Aperture would react to a sudden influx of Pure AF. Given that this was a Calamity, which was many times larger than the other Apertures they passed by, he was sure the result would be dramatic.

Remembering the odd way that the southeastern Calamity had acted once Chinli had shown up, with how the monsters from the gigantic Aperture suddenly stopped spawning, he had to assume something similar would happen with this one. But it also begged the question of why the woman didn’t close the Calamity if she could’ve reached it at any time. That was certainly a mystery, but it was one that he hoped he might be able to solve once these Gergasi passed into its territory.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

In a shorter time than he expected, he could feel the border of the southwestern Calamity approaching, and he stretched his vision to see what it looked like. For some reason, he had never actually asked in detail what this particular one was like, but he put it down to the fact that he hadn’t really been interested in knowing. It hadn’t really been a priority at any time, but now that they were going into it, he wished he had asked ahead of time.

There was a clear delineation between the land outside of the Calamity and the land inside. On the outside, the environment was green, vibrant, and alive; a few steps away, the land was a mixture of brown and black, and the landscape was barren of any life whatsoever. The overall physical appearance hadn’t changed, as there wasn’t the onyx-like stone ground like the Steel Slime Calamity, nor were there massive trees and grassland for miles like the Ghost Raven Calamity. Instead, it simply looked like a wave of death had spread from the center, killing all life in view.

As they passed over the normally invisible threshold into the Calamity, which was now visible to his own perception as a slightly hazy dome ahead of them, he could feel an aura of death slam into his senses, assaulting not only his body but his mind.

“Whoa. What is this?”

Nedira looked at him in confusion, before she chuckled. “You didn’t do any research about this Calamity, did you?” When he shook his head, she took some time to explain as he went deeper toward the center of its territory. “The central Aperture has a powerful Bone Wraith monster that creates this aura of death, slowly killing everything within its reach. Plants, bugs, animals – they’ve all been killed off. You’ll even find that it will kill you if you don’t have a defense against it.”

Even as she spoke, the nauseousness he felt almost immediately going through his body slowly settled down until it didn’t bother him too much anymore. At the same time, he could tell that it was also hurting him, though very slowly; it barely affected him, however, as his Body Regeneration was more than up to the task of counteracting the effects. Looking at Nedira, he could see that she was also being affected, appearing a little worse off than him, but she wasn’t exactly dying.

“It’s a good way to increase my Body Regeneration Skill, at least,” she said with a tinge of discomfort in her tone.

A persistent aura of death that slowly kills you while you’re in the Calamity’s territory? How unfair is that? “This is rough; how do the defenders around the border manage to operate inside the Calamity?”

“Very carefully, and with specialized teams. I don’t know the exact breakdown, but I’ve heard that at least 90% of the defenders around this Calamity are Martials; Mages don’t survive that long without Body Regeneration to keep them alive, and those that do go inside are typically some sort of Healer Specialization.”

Hearing that, Larek was amazed that it hadn’t expanded more than it had with those kinds of restrictions.

Distracted by the Calamity for a moment, he focused on the reason they were there in the first place. A quick observation on the trail he was leaving showed that even more of the Pure Aetheric Force was being pulled away, but it wasn’t yet enough to camouflage his movements completely. He thought he would have to get closer to the center in order for it all to be sucked by the enormous Aperture, where he would then be able to make a break for it. If there wasn’t any of his magical signature left in the environment, the two Gergasi wouldn’t be able to track him.

In the next minute, he sensed the Gergasi disappear from his senses behind him. He wasn’t sure if it was interference from the Calamity that was messing with his Skill or something else, but when he backed up about a half-mile toward where he’d come from, he felt them again.

“They’ve stopped,” he told Nedira by way of explanation of his actions. “I think they’re on the border.”

“Are they going to follow us in?”

He waited to see what the two powerful Gergasi were going to do as his senses detected them at the furthest reaches of his sensory range. He couldn’t visually see them, but he imagined that they were hesitating to follow him inside, which was yet another indication that something odd would happen if a Gergasi entered an Aperture.

As Larek and Nedira hovered in the air, waiting for whatever the two pursuers chose to do, the Fusionist sensed something else. “We’ve got incoming from below.” Looking down, he saw what appeared to be a dozen skeletal figures covered in ragged black cloth with a hood covering their heads, leaving their faces concealed in shadow. They all floated slowly upwards, moving at a little more than a fast walk, but their objective was clear.

“Bone Wraiths,” Nedira informed him. “Their touch will slowly sap the strength of their victims, while they are also strong enough to rip and tear flesh with their bony appendages. They are relatively weak defensive-wise, but they can reconstitute themselves if their bodies aren’t largely destroyed. Fire works well enough for that purpose.”

With that said, the two of them angled their staves downward and unleashed a barrage of flaming balls toward the dozen monsters, lighting them on fire while also bursting apart their skeletal forms. As they fell back down to the dead land below, Larek felt and saw a small amount of Aetheric Force enter his body from their deaths, while some also went toward Nedira. It was purified by his internal core within seconds, showing him that he’d gained approximately 10 AF to use. Looking at his Status, he was grateful for the additional resources, as he saw that he was getting low. While nearly 40,000 AF still sounded like a lot, during the time when he’d been creating so many Fusions, he’d spent a chunk of it increasing his maximum Skill Levels for quite a few of his Skills that were nearing the limit, as well as having used a bit on animated constructs, such as his clones. Increasing maximum Skill Levels really depleted his store quickly, especially considering ones such as Energetic Transmission and Aetheric Authority required tens of thousands of AF for a single maximum Level increase.

As it was, he thought he could probably create a dozen or so animated clones of himself with his current reserve, which wasn’t a lot if it came down to a fight with the Gergasi. Accumulating more while they were in the Calamity was potentially a good idea.

Even as the Bone Wraiths were destroyed, Larek kept his senses on the two figures in the distance that were pursuing him, which was why he felt it when they eventually disappeared from his senses completely. Cautiously moving the Pattern construct they were flying around in back toward the border, he was confident he was in visual range of where he’d last felt them – but they were nowhere to be seen. Stretching his senses to the max, he couldn’t feel them anywhere. Still, he was wary of a trick, as he wasn’t sure if they knew how to camouflage their presence and were just waiting for the Fusionist to let his guard down to attack, but the more he floated there without a single indication of there being an ambush set up, he began to let himself relax a little.

And killed another few dozen Bone Wraiths that attacked them as they waited.

“Do you think they’re gone for good?” he eventually asked Nedira.

She shrugged, which was basically his own response. “Maybe? They could be lying in wait for us to leave, but I’m not sure if we’d be able to tell.” She turned to him. “What now?”

That was a good question. He’d really been wanting to see what would happen if the two Gergasi passed into the Calamity’s territory, but it seemed like the threat of doing that outweighed the need to hunt him down. Still, he wasn’t simply going to exit out of the same place that they entered, as that was just asking to be ambushed. “Let’s go further into the Calamity, kill some monsters, and get some more Aetheric Force while we’re at it. I’m getting low, and I think I may need more for the Fusions I’m going to make in the future.”

“Aetheric Force? Really?”

He shrugged, mimicking her actions from shortly before. “I think so. Regardless, I think it would be best if we kept moving for now. We’ll exit the Calamity somewhere else, before making our way back to Thanesh.”

“I sure hope they’re alright.” She hesitated for a few seconds before she asked, “Do you think the Gergasi will be able to track the city down, now that they know about you?”

“I have no idea, but I don’t think so. I think if they really knew who I was, they would’ve gone there immediately instead of randomly finding me outside of Thanesh.”

With a moment of thought, she nodded and agreed. “Let’s go, then. The sooner we’re back, the better I’ll feel.”

The Fusionist in him couldn’t agree more. He’d learned a lot on this expedition, and while there had been some unexpected developments with the Gergasi chasing them, he was looking forward to experimenting and developing the Fusions that he hoped would prove to be exactly what they all needed.