Chapter 25

The only thing that prevented Larek from making tens of thousands of copies of the Portable Lifter Fusion was the lack of materials available to him. Kevara did her best to keep up with his production of Fusions by chopping up the wooden staves that were stored in the barrels, as well as getting a quick delivery of more an hour later, but he only ended up creating just under 1,000 copies. He kept a dozen of them or so for his own use and stuck them into his Void Pocket sack, as he could imagine quite a few uses for them. The rest went to Kimble, who came by briefly for a quick overview of how the Fusion worked, before taking them all for use by the Volunteers who had already started setting up the Gates near random, scattered Apertures.

Larek’s old Pyromancer bodyguard also took a stockpile of his trap Fusions, which he was planning on placing and activating near the Aperture side if any Faction members decided to brave the Gates and step through them. It was a bit of an extreme measure, but they didn’t want to risk them shutting down the whole operation before they could really get it running.

“I think this will work, Larek,” Kimble assured him. “Already, we’ve gotten reports of the Factions preparing for an attack by manning their walls, looking out at the Traveling Gates that we’ve dropped off approximately a half-mile from the towns. They’re wary of it and seem to have held back from beginning any journeys toward Volunteer-held towns, so I’d call it a win already.”

The Fusionist was glad to hear that the plan seemed to be working so far, and the new Portable Lifters should facilitate the rest of the plan once they were fully activated.

As he loaded up the last of the rods into a small cart he had brought for that purpose, Kimble asked, “What’s up next for you?”

“Offense and defense,” Larek replied quickly, his mind already switching from the Portable Lifters to more Fusions. “I’ll let you know what I come up with.”

“I’m excited to see them. Thank you again for these; from what I’ve been told of the first few that have been tested, they should work perfectly for our purposes.”

He just nodded, turning toward the small, circular piece of glass sitting on his lapdesk as he vaguely heard Kimble leave. Kevara was sitting off to the side, waiting for him to ask for any help, but at the moment, he was too engrossed in his Fusion ideas to need anything.

He wasn’t sure why he chose the small glass circle to add some sort of defensive formation to, but for some reason it seemed like the right choice to put him in the right frame of mind.

Thinking about ways to defend himself or others, he’d already tried air in the form of his Personal Air Deflection Barrier and frozen water with his Automatic Ice Repulsion Field, and he had the Multi-Resistance Fusion on his clothes to help with both light elemental attacks and piercing damage. Against most monsters, especially those that weren’t evolved like he saw coming from heavily expanded Apertures, these defenses were perfectly fine. Even against some larger and deadlier evolved monsters, they were adequate enough, in combination, to keep him alive if he ended up getting hit.

But against the assassins that had been sent to target him, as well as against a Gergasi, they were practically as useless as paper armor.

The only thing that had been relatively useful against them had been his Pattern constructs, and while his Skills and Specializations had made his constructs even more durable and useful, he was fairly certain that even his strongest Pattern shield construct would crumple under the assault of that Gergasi with the warhammer he’d seen a few days before.

What he needed was something stronger and better able to withstand just about any attack thrown at it. Of course, based on his recent Fusions, he immediately thought about designing something that was made of Primal Essence, as the energy had proven to be fairly impervious to damage, as the Apertures had shown. He mentally thought about how to apply the energy to some sort of shielding or barrier, perhaps something that could conform to someone’s body, and he went through some designs in his head.

The first problem he ran into was powering the Fusion with the different types of energy that went into creating Primal Essence. After making the Traveling Gates and some additional Skill Levels in Primal Essence Mastery, he began to have a much better idea of how the different energies bonded together to create Primal Essence, complete with its benefits… and weaknesses. First, the larger the amount of Essence that needed to be created, the longer it would take to gather the necessary energy from the environment; that much he had quickly learned directly after testing the Gates. For something like a full-body barrier made of the stuff, he estimated that the energy draw to initially power it would be equivalent to a Magnitude 5 or possibly 6 Traveling Gate, if only because it would have to be similar to the rigid ring that was similar to condensed Primal Essence, instead of the malleable curtain in its center, which was more “free-flowing” – if that term worked for an energy like this.

If it was the case that it took that much energy to form, then it would take two-thirds of a day to a full day to coalesce into existence, and from there it would need to have a constant stream of energy to maintain it. There was one main issue with this, and it had to do with Pure Aetheric Force. In short, the amount of Pure AF in the environment was the limiting factor in how fast Primal Essence could be created, and finding enough of it to fully power of bunch of Primal Essence shields in a limited area, such as the city of Thanesh, would be difficult, even if he spread out the areas of ambience to pull from as many different places as he could.

That being said, it was still possible, but the general density of Pure AF in the area would start to decline rapidly, meaning that it might eventually make keeping them all powered nearly impossible. It was already going to be a strain if the Volunteers placed numerous Gates in or near the city to act as a travel hub to different towns around the region, but that was almost nothing compared to keeping the Primal Essence shields of 1,000 or more people running all the time.

The second problem he encountered, which basically killed the idea before he could fully flesh it out, was related to the rigidity of Primal Essence. From what he had learned about it, Primal Essence could be condensed in a number of different ways, but pared down a bit, there were two basic states it conformed to: rigid and malleable. If it was malleable, like the Gate curtains and the overall “glue” of the Apertures, it wouldn’t prevent much or any damage, as it was too soft to do much. When it was rigid, it would prevent pretty much any damage from passing through it, but it was inflexible; the issue here was that it would essentially act like a bubble around someone that nothing could pass through, meaning that whoever was “protected” inside of it, they would be essentially be cut off from the rest of the world. They wouldn’t be able to move around without the shield running into things, they wouldn’t be able to touch or pick up objects such as something as basic as food or water, and it was also possible that they might not be able to see very well through the shielding, let alone be able to attack back at anyone trying to attack them.

Overall, though, the problem with this idea was one of powering the defensive Fusion utilizing Primal Essence – at least from the environment. Theoretically, he thought that it might be possible for someone to create Primal Essence without needing a Fusion, or even to aid in supplying the Pure Aetheric Force to speed up the process, but he hadn’t figured that out yet. There was a balance that needed to be maintained between the different types of energies involved in its creation, and attempting to do that while pulling from different sources was an obstacle he wasn’t sure he could overcome at the moment.

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With Primal Essence being out of the running, at least for now, for a potential solution to a defensive Fusion, he turned to some other options.

For some type of elemental defense, creating a shield made of stone had issues akin to those of his Automatic Ice Repulsion Field, in that it was slow to form and wasn’t necessarily strong enough to stop or deflect some of the most powerful strikes that could be sent against it. Not only that, but having a wall of stone in front of someone would not only block their sight, but if it was shattered by a strong blow, the shrapnel from the destroyed barrier could cause as much as, or even more damage than, the blow it blocked.

As for some sort of fire-based defense, he wasn’t even sure how that would work. Creating a super-heated wall of flames might make someone think twice about moving through it, but it didn’t have the tangibility to stop many attacks, making it nearly useless as an actual defense. Natural defenses, such as ones that stemmed from something like the Wall of Thorns spell, could be altered to have stronger resistances and would stop some attacks, but they were also constrained by their material, which tended to be largely living materials of some kind, which weren’t necessarily going to prevent a huge sword swung by a Gergasi, or a deadly explosive spell cast by an assassin.

Light and illusion… well, he couldn’t think of a way to turn light into a defensive Fusion, other than to blind someone so that they couldn’t see you. An illusion might do something similar, but neither of those would actually prevent someone from being hurt by an attack. Healing and/or paralyzing someone nearby would also be limited in effectiveness, as all it would take was someone casting a spell from afar or firing off a projectile to make it not do much of anything. Extending the range of these – as well as some others – might be possible, meaning that they could reach someone 100, 200, or even 500 feet away, but then there would be an issue with harming allies nearby, which would sort of defeat the purpose of the defense in the first place.

What he needed was something that could be brought close to the person being defended, wouldn’t interfere with or harm allies, allowed them to move without being locked down, could be utilized near-instantly or even consistently to repel attacks by incredibly fast enemies, and didn’t need to be formed of different energies like Primal Essence. It was a tall order, and he wasn’t sure if there was a perfect solution that would work for every situation.

So, he branched out into different possibilities, getting away from strictly elemental defenses.

The first one he thought about was Pattern Cohesion, which was a versatile energy that could be manipulated in multiple ways, as evidenced by his constructs. Now that he knew that he could have a Fusion absorb it from the environment before using it for a certain purpose, he thought there might be a way to utilize it as a resource in a Fusion. This was his go-to protective method, and while it worked to keep him safe most of the time, it wasn’t exactly the strongest defense. Still, he took the time to design a Fusion that could potentially utilize Pattern Cohesion to form barriers to stop some attacks, which he then tied to the Pattern Manipulation Skill. Just as Healing Surge relied on a person’s Body Regeneration Skill to heal them, this particular Fusion would use the Pattern Manipulation Skill of the user of the Fusion to direct where and what kind of construct they wanted to form out of Pattern Cohesion absorbed by the formation.

Unfortunately, he decided that how effective it would be depended upon their Skill Level, and while it would still technically work even if they were at Level 1, the strength of the Pattern constructs were reliant on the Skill, so it wouldn’t be that strong. For someone like Larek, it would be similar to what he could form now by himself, but would be much stronger; despite that, it still wouldn’t be enough to stop a powerful attack. Regardless, he stored this idea in the back of his mind for a later date, as he had a feeling that a Fusion that could make Pattern constructs out of nothing but the will of the user could be useful in other ways.

He also thought about something that might alter the person using the Fusion, not like a boost would alter their stats, but something like the Tree Skin Fusion he’d learned back at Copperleaf Academy from Nedira. At the time, the design of that particular formation had been more of a novelty than anything else, as while it worked, at higher Magnitudes it basically turned someone into an immobile tree. A strong, durable tree, but immobility wasn’t what he was looking for. But what if he could change the skin of someone into something not so rigid?

Primal Essence would be an ideal material, but he had already decided that malleability in the substance would be relatively useless. The same went with stone, metal, and wood, as he couldn’t think of a way to make those materials flexible enough to allow someone to move about freely while still being strong enough to defend against an attack. He could certainly Strengthen a material to incredible heights, so he was fairly sure someone covered in stone or steel skin with a Magnitude 20 Strengthen Effect would be nigh invulnerable, but would that even allow them to move? Not likely, but it was still an idea he figured he might want to pursue.

Along those lines, he thought about how Stama was used by Martials – typically through Battle Arts, but also through directing it toward where they needed it – to temporarily enhance their speed, strength, or especially durability. It wasn’t usually enough to make them invulnerable by themselves, but what if he found a way to boost the amount of Stama they were able to apply to their body, using their Stama Subjugation Skill to direct it where they needed it? It was definitely something he’d have to try eventually, but he was wary of pushing anyone’s body too far; he still remembered when he recently had 270 stat points added to his body all at once, and pumping that much Stama into a relatively weak person’s body might do more harm than good.

Unfortunately, none of those ideas appeared to be the one that would solve his defensive problem, though he thought that perhaps if he combined enough of them together? He still wasn’t sure whether that would work, but he would be willing to try it if he couldn’t think of anything else.

Looking at his Fusion list for any ideas that he might have overlooked, he nearly closed it when he saw one on the very end that he hadn’t even considered until now.

Void Pocket.

His understanding of the void had grown extensively since he’d applied his knowledge toward developing a way to store items in an expandable pocket of the void. He’d originally created it simply so that he could transport food and other things when he was journeying around the Kingdom with Nedira, but it had been an integral part of his repertoire ever since. Other than using a curtain of void to disguise the presence of his Fusions from prying eyes, he hadn’t really used it for any other purpose since then.

He thought it was about time to change that.

The void was a tricky substance to work with, as it wasn’t exactly a material or an energy; instead, it was basically an absence of everything, including time, which was why he could store things like food or Fusions in his Void Pocket and they would be exactly the same as they were when he put them in when he eventually took them out. Fortunately, despite the void being what was essentially an amorphous mass of “nothing”, it could still be contained by Pattern Cohesion, which was how he’d been able to utilize it in the first place.

Therefore, why not try to use it for a different purpose? A defensive shield, for instance.

Some problems arose immediately upon his first considerations of how to put such a defense together. First and foremost, if he was containing the void with a net of Pattern Cohesion, what was to prevent that net from being destroyed by a simple attack, unleashing the void everywhere into the world? Next, if the void was surrounding someone to protect them, how would they be able to see through the inherent darkness of the substance that represented an absence of light? Lastly, it seemed like there was a similar issue with it that Primal Essence possessed, which boiled down to how would someone counter-attack if they were enveloped in a void?

He began working through each problem one-by-one, trying to find a different solution for them all, but a combination of his previous ideas turned out to be what he was looking for. His final design was wild and revolutionary, and he wasn’t sure how well it would work for those who didn’t have the Pattern Manipulation Skill, but he wouldn’t really know until it was run through some tests.

Triple-checking through the design in his head, he made absolutely sure that he’d included every single Effect that it needed to function properly, before he started on the real thing. Larek smiled to himself as he began laying the formation onto the circular glass blank on his lapdesk, realizing that it was a relatively fitting material for his new Fusion.

Once it was complete, Larek would move onto the offensive Fusions he was planning on creating, and with all the thinking he’d been doing lately, he had some awfully devious ideas….