Chapter 24
In addition to developing a way to move monsters through the new Traveling Gates he’d finished late the night before, there were two major problems that Larek needed to solve. First and foremost among those problems was finding a way to survive an attack against a Gergasi. Not only was this important for himself, as he was fairly certain he would’ve died if he had confronted the pair of Gergasi that had been chasing him a few days before; but if the Volunteers were attacked while the Gergasi were looking for him, the carnage would be catastrophic. Granted, it wasn’t like he could protect everyone, but he could at least try to do what he could to save as many of them as possible.
And even if the Gergasi didn’t end up finding Thanesh and attacking it in an effort to find Larek, there was still the threat of the Unspoken Response to deal with. He still had vivid memories of the death and destruction they had caused back in Dreenwood, and he didn’t want the same thing happening to his people here. There were just too many abnormally strong groups out there that could pose a danger to the Volunteers, as well as his friends, and he needed to start thinking about defense before he went out and dealt with other issues like the SIC.
The last thing he wanted to do was leave Thanesh again and come back to find it a smoking ruin because one group or another decided that the city and the Volunteers needed to be destroyed. The assassins hunting him had already proven that they didn’t care about innocent casualties, and the Gergasi had never been known for their gentle nature when it came to people they considered slaves.
After some sort of strong defense came, obviously, a strong offense. Just because someone could temporarily weather an attack by one of these groups didn’t mean they would survive, especially if the threat wasn’t eliminated as soon as possible. Now, he didn’t reasonably think that he could find a way to kill any Gergasi that came snooping around the city, but he figured he could develop some sort of offensive Fusion that could at least make them think twice about sticking around. The same went for any powerful groups that tried to attack the city and its people; he’d prefer to eliminate them so there was a guarantee that they wouldn’t be back, but he would settle for chasing them off and presenting a front that was too risky to attack.
But before he dug into those types of Fusions, he had to complete his project with the Gates. With at least the bare minimum completed to stop the Factions from attacking, he had to figure out a way to move monsters safely. His first and most obvious idea that he’d originally had, back when they were putting together this plan, was to use some sort of container made of hardened air to transport them, but that wasn’t necessarily needed with the Gates working the way they should be. However, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t still an idea he could expand upon, especially with his experience using air, and especially buoyancy, in his past Fusions.
Taking the basic concept of his offensive staves, in particular the Variable Elemental Destruction variety, he eliminated the destructive effects, such as the shattering stones and explosive detonations, but he kept the targeting system he’d developed for them. By aiming the orientation of the Fusion toward a distant object, it would lock onto that object and—normally—cause the Effect to appear and explode or whatnot. Instead of that type of destruction, what he wanted was for a bubble of buoyancy to appear around the target, reducing their weight by 99%. True weightlessness wasn’t a necessity, especially with how he would design the method that would then move the objects inside the bubble.
Air gusts.
On The Hopper and the other Transport vehicles that the Volunteers used, Buoyant-Thrusters were placed along the outer shell to move the entire structure, which worked well enough on something that large. For his new Fusion, he would have to do something similar, but it would have to be contained within the same formation as the bubble. In short, by using the activation of the buoyancy bubble as a trigger, the Fusion would then create an invisible, secondary bubble inside of that one that could project air gusts dependent upon the orientation of the Fusion formation. In other words, if it was on a staff, then moving the staff to the left would create gusts of air that would blow from the right-hand side of the interior bubble, making the nearly weightless object move to the left because of the air blowing against them. If the staff was angled upwards, a gust from below would blow the object into the air. It would also attempt to stay at the same distance from the Fusion location, so someone could drag it along with them simply by moving away.
It was a more intuitive design than the ones that the Transport used, and he wished he could retrofit all of the airborne vehicles with this type of Fusion, but that would have to wait. He somewhat wished that he’d thought of this way back when he was creating those Fusions in the first place, but it hadn’t really occurred to him until recently. He could only thank his recent Skill Level increases, as well as the stat points he’d received not only from his Specializations, but from his work in creating so many of the Gates the day before.
Strength: 320 [640]
Body: 375 [750]
Agility: 320 [640]
Intellect: 375 [750]
Acuity: 375 [750]
Pneuma: 6,750 [13,500]
Pattern Cohesion: 135,000/135,000
Mage Skills:
Pattern Restoration Level 73
Spellcasting Focus Level 87[97]
Pattern Recognition Level 97[107]
Magical Detection Level 101[111]
Pattern Manipulation Level 105
Multi-effect Fusion Focus Level 105
Focused Division Level 105
Mana Control Level 106[116]
Fusion Level 108[118]
Pattern Formation Level 108[118]
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Martial Skills:
Ranged Weapon Expertise Level 10
Unarmed Fighting Level 13[23]
Blunt Weapon Expertise Level 15
Throwing Level 29[39]
Dodge Level 68[78]
Pain Immunity Level 20
Bladed Weapon Expertise Level 71[81]
Body Regeneration Level 72[82]
Stama Subjugation Level 92
Guardian Skills:
Energetic Transmission Level 9
Aetheric Authority Level 11
Primal Essence Mastery Level 5
He was now Level 61, having increased his personal Level twice over the last day, and with the AP he’d gained after reaching Level 59, he had been able to spend a total of 112 AP on his stats. The distribution was fairly easy for him to decide, as he still wanted to largely focus on his mental stats because of his Fusions, but he didn’t want to completely neglect his Strength and Agility. Still, he added 30 AP to Body, Intellect, and Acuity, with the remaining 22 split evenly across his other Martial stats. They were lagging behind the others by 55 now, but he thought it was more than worth it. He could feel the extra mental stats helping him think of new Fusion designs and execute them with a speed that he never would’ve dreamed of before, as different Effects and how to accomplish them with his formations seemed to snap into place with a few thoughts.
As for his Skills, it seemed as though getting past the Level 100 barrier helped his development immensely, as Fusion and Pattern Formation were already Level 108, with the others related to Fusion creation not too far behind. His Guardian Skills also shot up again, now that there was no barrier to maximum Skill Level anymore, though in general, they seemed to be more difficult to raise.
All of which meant that his creation of a Fusion that applied similar Effects to those he’d used before, and which didn’t need the more complicated combination of Primal Essence as one of its energy sources, was fairly simple to design and whip together in a formation. In total, he spent no more than 10 minutes thinking about what he wanted it to do, as well as the limitations and methods that needed to be applied to make it happen, before designing the whole thing in his head.
Taking one of the wooden staves he’d brought over from the barrel to his pillow throne, Larek started creating his design but stopped.
He shook his head as he looked at the long piece of wood. “No, not a staff. Too easy to get confused with the others.” Taking his axe off his belt, he chopped off about a foot’s length of the staff and put the rest aside. With a much shorter piece of wood, it would be much more recognizable as something different than the destructive staves that most of the Volunteers still primarily used.
No more than 30 seconds later, he had his new Fusion in his hand.
New Fusion Learned!
Portable Lifter +8
Activation Method(s): Activatable, Reactive
Effect(s): Camouflages Fusion using a void carrier shroud
Effect(s): Creates a sphere made of condensed air at a distant target that reduces the weight of everything contained in its interior
Effect(s): Forcefully pushes against nearby contained objects using gusts of wind in a circular formation
Effect(s): Using non-invasive mental manipulation, activates or deactivates Activatable Activation Method upon detection of mental phrasing by individual in direct contact with object
Effect(s): Strengthens wood
Variable(s): Mental phrasing “Lift” and “Release”, sphere diameter of 5 feet, 10 feet, 15 feet, 20 feet, and 25 feet, relational angle of air gusts with 50%, 100%, 200%, 300%, 400%, and 500% strength
Input(s): Directional orientation in a narrow beam, relational orientation and speed of formation, identification of distant targets, size determination, mental phrasing
Magnitude(s): Targets up to 150 feet away, 99% weight reduction, sphere diameter of up to 25 feet, 25% to 500% elemental air gust strength, 1,000% wood material strength
Mana Cost: 425,000
Pattern Cohesion: 8,100
Fusion Time: 100 hours
Fusion has reached Level 109!
Pattern Formation has reached Level 109!
The Portable Lifter +8 Fusion was exactly what he had designed, though of course he still needed to test it. Taking it in hand, Larek threw one of his nearby pillows on the floor in front of him before aiming his new creation at it. Thinking, “Lift”, he felt and saw the Fusion activate, the area of ambience absorbing Mana nowhere in sight as he designed it to be located approximately a mile up above his location.
He frowned in consternation when nothing seemed to happen to the pillow, despite observing a 5-foot-wide sphere of magically moving air around the pillow, the size of which had been automatically determined by the Fusion; it could grow up to 25 feet in diameter, at least in this version. It wasn’t until he twitched the wooden rod in his hand that it moved when a small gust of air blew it sideways, the weight reduction causing it to skim over the floor. Delighted that it was working, he played around with it, finding that his idea of smaller movements of the wooden rod creating smaller air gusts and larger movements subsequently creating larger gusts had been a success. After a few minutes of experimentation, he found that he was able to flick the pillow up and pull the rod toward him, before thinking, “Release”, which launched the pillow back toward him, where he could then place it back into his comfortable throne.
Huh. This could actually be a handy tool for use in other jobs unrelated to chucking monsters through a Traveling Gate. Imagine how much easier it would’ve been to move trees back in my old job if I had one of these.
Of course, in order to move one of the giant trees he’d cut down, he would need the sphere to be much larger, or perhaps one that was simply cylindrically shaped and longer, instead.
Just when he finished with that and was about to start making copies, Kevara walked in, the smile on her face matching his own.
“Just the person I wanted to see!” Larek said, beckoning his Fusion assistant over. When she arrived, he asked her to start cutting down a bunch of the wooden staves to the same length as the rod he’d used for his new Fusion. As an afterthought, and noticing that the potential in her had been unlocked, he touched her arm and imparted some of the Pattern-based Skills to her that she didn’t have.
“Whoa! What—? Oh. What was that for?” she asked, taken aback at the sudden unlocking of three new Skills.
“Have you thought about taking my Fusions class? You’ve seen me do this so many times that I’m sure you’ll pick it up quickly.”
She chuckled and waved his question away. “I thought about it, but the competition among all the Volunteers who wanted to get into your class was fierce. I didn’t want to stick my hand into the figurative brawl and pull back a nub.”
Larek hadn’t realized that his Fusions class was all that popular. It hadn’t really been that way in the Academies, after all.
“Oh. Do you still want to take it, though?”
Kevara nodded. “Absolutely. But I think I can wait until your next round, as I can learn quite a bit simply by watching you.”
“Well, if you’re sure? I can probably get you into it if you want; I know the one teaching it, after all,” he said with a chuckle.
“No, it’s fine. The others who managed to make their way into your class will be much more devoted to it than I will; I was thinking about Fusions as more of a side project than my main focus. I’m more interested in casting spells, especially any that have to do with healing and nature.”
“That’s a great focus,” the Fusionist remarked. “Let me know if you change your mind about the class, though, but for now, you can just watch me. In fact, I’ve just made a new Fusion that I need to make a bunch of copies of, so you’ll have plenty of opportunity to study what I do – though it will be faster and more complicated than would be easy to learn from.”
He felt a bit of warmth in his chest when he thought about teaching Fusions to not only his students in class, but his assistant. It felt like he was adding to the knowledge base of those who never would’ve had the opportunity to learn, and if he could pass on as much as he could to what were ostensibly “his people” in the Volunteers, then it was like a little bit of him was passed on, as well. He wondered if this was how trainers and Professors felt to pass on their own knowledge to the next generation, and if so, he could now see why they did it.
Of course, if he wanted them all to have a safe and decent future, he had to keep working to achieve that for them…
…which meant making copies of the Fusion he’d just made, before moving on to the ones still on his list.