The camp was relatively subdued later that night, with good reason, as Larek finally got a chance to rest. They had moved approximately 100 miles away from Dreenwood after searching the destroyed ruins of the town, using Larek’s Pattern box construct for transport, and they had made their camp just outside of an Aperture located in a dense forest. The Fusionist thought the proximity would help to camouflage his presence if the Gergasi came looking for him again, though he had no doubt that if they looked hard enough, they could find him.

Everyone else was nearly as exhausted as he was, though his exhaustion was more due to the focus he’d stressed bringing everyone there after the search – because it had been semi-successful. He didn’t have to make as large of a box as he had when escaping the Calamity, but it was still larger than he was used to in order to fit Larek, Nedira, Penelope, Vivienne, Nance, and the eight survivors they managed to find trapped underneath the rubble. From what he could tell, most of them had only survived because some of the buildings had basements that they just happened to be in at the time of the explosion, and while the main structure had collapsed above them, they just happened to be in a place below where nothing managed to fall right on top of them.

8 out of 735 people. That was what Penelope said that the population of the mid-sized town used to be, and that didn’t even include the Faction members that protected it. Unfortunately, they didn’t find a single member of that Faction alive other than Penelope and the others, which also included Faction members from Wilfirth, the nearest town. Thankfully, Vivienne mentioned that not all of the Faction members from the other town had been there, though their numbers were now cut dramatically from what they were before.

Everyone they had found, which included 1 man, 2 women, and 5 children under the age of 10, were now safe, healthy, and fed, but they all looked lost and devastated from the events that happened in the town. The only fortunate thing about it all, if there was anything, was that they were traumatized enough that they had absolutely no problem collapsing once they landed in the forest and fell asleep almost instantly, which was sorely needed by everyone involved. Vivienne volunteered to keep first watch while everyone else got sleep, followed by Nance and Nedira, the only two people who hadn’t been injured during any of the fights or as a result of the explosion.

Larek didn’t argue, as he really needed to sleep the entire night through.

He didn’t think he even dreamed as he slept deeply enough that time seemed to pass in an instant, but by the time dawn was poking its way into the world, he felt extremely refreshed from the rest and ready to take on the day. Once he was wide awake, he checked his notifications, something that he didn’t have the energy to do the night before.

Magical Detection has reached Level 99!

Pattern Manipulation has reached Level 99!

Dodge has reached Level 68!

Body Regeneration has reached Level 72!

Pattern Restoration has reached Level 59!

…..

Pattern Restoration has reached Level 65!

The results weren’t as impressive as some of the times he’d checked his notifications, but for the first time he was able to push two of his Skills to Level 99. He felt like there was a large hurdle between Level 99 and 100, though he was sure that he would get there eventually.

As he continued to lie on the bedroll he had used the prior night, cognizant of Nedira keeping watch on the camp nearby, Larek finally let himself think about what had happened in the town of Dreenwood. At least, he thought about everything before the explosion, as he didn’t want to bring the horror of what he’d seen while sifting through the rubble to the forefront of his mind.

His first thoughts were the same ones he’d had the prior night about the presence of the Unspoken Response assassins – or at least he assumed that was who it was. There wasn’t any proof, at least none that had survived, but he couldn’t think of anyone else that would deliberately attack him in such a fashion. But what concerned him the most about the whole thing was how they had not only managed to track him down, but to be in a place where he would’ve thought was impossible to predict. Just as he’d thought last night, even Larek didn’t know he was going to Dreenwood before they were already on the way, as it likely wouldn’t have been on their previous path out of the Calamity if they hadn’t met up with Penelope and Vivienne’s Faction group.

Could they have unknowingly been directed inside by the assassins? Had the Faction Leader in charge of Dreenwood been working with them?

Neither of those seemed likely, as it would’ve taken knowing not only that Larek had entered the Calamity, but where he entered it and the reason he entered it in the first place, before then deducing where he might leave it. Then, even if they discovered all that, they would have to somehow know that Larek personally knew Penelope and Vivienne and considered them friends, who then could be used to lure the Fusionist to follow them out. But then they would’ve had to have known that Larek would enter the Calamity that morning, as Penelope and her group had been inside since just after dawn. At dawn, Larek hadn’t even decided to leave to visit an Aperture yet, so that seemed so implausible that it beggared belief.

Even allowing that all of that was somehow known, and that Penelope and her group just happened to be sent out as a lure for Larek, the assassins would still have needed to get to Dreenwood in time for the ambush. For all that they should’ve known, Larek was supposed to still be in or around Thanesh, which was nowhere near the town he ended up in last night – so that, again, seemed impossible.

All of which made him believe that there was no way they would’ve been able to predict and arrange all of that just to ambush Larek. Instead, the only way he thought they might have been able to be in the right place at the right time was that they were tracking him somehow. Not only that, but they had a means of transportation that was extremely fast in order to get there in time for his arrival, because it was extremely doubtful that one of the Assassin teams just so happened to be nearby at the time. It wasn’t impossible, of course, but it was very, very unlikely.

It wasn’t a mystery that he could simply think about to solve, however, so without any other information on how they did it, he was forced to move on and simply keep it in the back of his mind. If he simply considered that they were tracking him and could appear at any time, then he would always be on guard against them.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Speaking of being on guard against them, his senses had failed to find them in the first place. Or, more likely, they had been able to do something that obscured their presence from his senses, meaning that he had no idea they were even there before they attacked. The previous team of assassins had relied on illusion and the fact that he was distracted in order to get the drop on him, but by the admission of the woman he’d captured, they were the worst of the bunch. At this point, he could only assume that any other Unspoken Response assassins could also hide themselves from his senses.

But how? Is it a spell? A certain technique unique to the Unspoken Response? A hidden Fusion that I didn’t detect?

He doubted it was the latter, as he was fairly confident he would’ve found something like that with his senses even before they attacked, so he figured it was something else entirely. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t adapt the idea of hiding one’s presence from the senses of another into a Fusion. While he normally relied on using and altering the principles behind some of the spells he knew in order to design an Effect for a Fusion, there were other cases – especially in some of his newest ones – where all it needed was to see a practical application of the Effect and then to replicate it in a Fusion formation.

As he began to think back at exactly what he saw and sensed during the admittedly short fight with these latest assassins, he began to pick out certain details that hadn’t occurred to him at the time. First and foremost were the spells that the Mages on the roof had cast. While he had visually seen them casting, the spell patterns forming blindingly fast in front of them, he realized that he hadn’t actually sensed their Mana flowing through the pattern to initiate the spells. If it wasn’t for the fact that he was absolutely, 100% positive that they were there, he could almost believe that what he had seen was an illusion, as nothing seemed to have a substance to it.

The few body parts they had managed to locate that belonged to the assassins appeared to agree that they were physically present, as well.

Extending his memories from there, he also realized that not only did they not have any magical presence to his senses, but – at least for the assassins that directly attacked and poisoned him – they also didn’t seem to absorb the energy in the environment around them… or so he was meant to believe. Everyone, even those without potential, affected the energy around them simply by passing through it – even if the effect was very minimal – though it was only those with potential that actually absorbed it. He’d seen it enough times that he was nearly blind to it by that point, but he knew it well enough to know what it looked like when different people passed through the natural energy around them.

The problem with how the assassins interacted with that energy was that it was almost a perfect recreation of what a normal person without potential would look like if they were passing through it. But that recreation couldn’t stand up to greater scrutiny, as it quickly became clear to someone like Larek that there was something else going on – and it was one that he wouldn’t have noticed unless he was looking for it. It was also something that, if he was able to apply it to his Fusions, could fundamentally change his understanding of a certain aspect of Fusions that he thought was impossible.

In short, the assassins he saw weren’t absorbing energy from directly around them, like a normal person with potential would do, including himself. Instead, they were pulling it from somewhere else, and it only seemed like they weren’t disturbing the energy around them as someone with no potential.

Looking back at his memories as they played through his mind, he remembered seeing something small that hadn’t been important at the time, but now that he could focus on it, that little thing could make all the difference. When he had been looking at the Mages on the roof, he had also technically been looking above one of the assassins’ heads at the time, and he observed a disturbance in the energy approximately 40 feet in the air. While he hadn’t gotten a good look at it, as his attention had necessarily been elsewhere, what he remembered of it looked exactly like a Mage or a Martial absorbing large amounts of energy from the environment – and it shifted when the assassin shifted.

Now, he wasn’t sure exactly how it was possible, but it appeared as though those who belonged to the Unspoken Response had found some way to absorb energy from a distant point other than their body. He wasn’t looking hard enough to know how that energy was actually transferred for their use, but the fact that it seemed to work was proof enough that it was happening.

Extrapolating from this new information, the Fusionist concluded that this technique – or whatever it was – used in reverse was likely how they also hid themselves from his senses. If they could absorb energy from a distant location, what would prevent them from expelling their magical signature to an equally distant location… or even locations? If he was able to figure this out, he could imagine being able to send his signature out to dozens or even hundreds of small locations all around him, dispersing it until there wasn’t enough to provide a solid chunk of it to detect easily.

It also made sense that he had only been attacked in a city or a town, as dispersing a relatively powerful magical signature throughout an area where there were dozens or hundreds of people with potential, their signature would be so diluted that it would be essentially unnoticeable. They could sneak through an inhabited town or city, appearing like a normal person without any potential, and no one would be the wiser; Larek certainly hadn’t been the night before, as he had been completely blind to their presence, despite being slightly on edge because of their current circumstances with the Faction. He had been prepared for a surprise attack by the Faction, even if he didn’t think it would happen, but he had his senses roaming for any abrupt attacks; that obviously hadn’t been enough when the assassins had basically been invisible to him.

Of course, that same dispersion of their magical signature wouldn’t be as beneficial outside of a town or city, as Larek – or any other target that could detect magical disturbances – would be able to detect it when there weren’t many other people nearby; he figured that was why they hadn’t been attacked in their camp, especially if the Unspoken Response organization had some way to transport people quickly from one place to another. He would’ve felt them coming, otherwise.

Even though he was pretty sure he’d solved that mystery, he still had to figure out how to apply it to himself. He thought that, if given enough time, he might be able to naturally do it like the assassins seemed to be able to, but his initial attempts to absorb energy from a distant location were a failure. He’d already tried hiding his magical signature by trying to alter it as it was naturally expelled from him, and even though he knew it could be done now, he was no closer to learning how it was accomplished.

Therefore, logically, he decided to turn this problem over to his Fusion-focused specialty. Knowing what needed to be accomplished with its Effects, he began designing it in his mind, creating something brand-new from scratch. There was a lot to consider, and because he didn’t exactly know how it all worked, he was forced to adapt some other principles he did know about in order to get it to work.

But before he went about trying to alter how he absorbed and expelled energy, he needed a test to see if the Effect could even be replicated. He didn’t want to inadvertently harm himself or someone else with an unknown and untested Fusion that he was relatively dubious about, so he figured he might as well be cautious now, rather than sorry later.

As a result, he turned to one of the easiest and simplest Fusions he could think of: Illuminate. In this case, he was going to add a Fusion to a simple stone he found on the ground nearby, but there needed to be one particularly huge difference to it. The Effect, Magnitude, and Activation Method were going to be exactly identical to its original formation. He’d played around with these sections in the past in other Fusions in a number of ways, but there was one section that he’d really only altered once in the past: Mana Cost. The Fusion in his body, surrounding his Stama pool, had been changed to work with Stama rather than Mana, but that was a relatively simple switch compared to what he was going to be doing now.

Because now he was going to try and fundamentally change how a Fusion absorbed ambient Mana.

Nedira came by at that moment, having seen that he was up already, and quietly asked what he was doing. Not wanting to wake the others, who were still asleep, he told her he needed to try an experiment, something that would hopefully help him escape detection by the Gergasi if it worked.

Getting up and moving slightly through the trees to put some distance between him and the others, just in case something went wrong, the Fusionist sat down and stared at the stone in his hands, feeling like he was on the cusp of something new and incredibly exciting.

With a deep breath, he began to fundamentally change the way he thought about Fusions forever.