“…and that is why it is imperative that you stay completely focused,” Larek loudly announced as he knelt by the unconscious woman; “otherwise, you might end up killing yourself. Fortunately for young Carlexa here, the amount of Pattern Cohesion invested into her Fusion was minimal, so she’ll ultimately be unharmed once her Pattern Restoration goes to work repairing what was done to it due to her lapse in concentration.”
Looking closely at the young woman, using his Magical Detection and his particular affinity for internal patterns, the powerful Fusionist could see that his unfortunate student had damaged her internal pattern when she lost control of her formation during the Fusion-creation process. Fortunately for her, the Pattern Restoration Skill that he had imparted to every single one of his students was already at work, very slowly repairing it. He estimated that it would take a day or two before it was fully restored – at least based on its current rate of improvement. If she increased her Skill Level during the process, that would, of course, repair it even faster – which he was sure she would appreciate.
Shaking his head as he stood up, he gestured to a pair of Volunteers near the door of the classroom, before instructing them to help carry their blood-soaked Carlexa back home, where she could get the rest she desperately needed after the unfortunate accident. As the “excitement” of the temporary tragedy calmed down around the classroom, Larek realized that this was the first time he’d actually seen someone fail in the creation of a Fusion. He seemed to remember seeing or hearing about another student at Copperleaf Academy, who had messed up their formation and damaged their internal pattern, but he didn’t believe he’d actually seen them, let alone talked to them before. He especially didn’t have the same sort of magical senses that he had now, allowing him to see the damage when he focused on it, and that was certainly an eye-opening experience – to say the least.
The Fusionist now knew why his Professors in the past had been so stringent on safety and not pushing the bounds of what was possible in the realm of Fusions: The resulting damage to the Fusionist’s Pattern Cohesion was horrific. While Carlexa had been creating a relatively simple Strengthen Wood +3 Fusion for practice, something she’d done countless times before, when she lost focus and subsequently her control of the nearly complete formation, the resulting explosion of the plank of wood in her hands had mangled her fingers and imbedded slivers of wooden shrapnel into her neck, cheek, and forearms. Healing the unconscious woman was easy enough with a Healing Surge Fusion; her Pattern Cohesion was another matter entirely.
A large chunk of her internal pattern appeared to have been ripped out of her side, leaving a gaping “wound” that would’ve been gushing blood and internal organs if it had been her real body. As it was, the damage was great enough that it would likely reduce her actual Pattern Cohesion significantly, as she’d literally lost it because of her lapse in focus. Larek had never actually experienced that type of damage before, so he didn’t know for certain how bad it would be. When there had been damage to his own internal pattern, it had typically been more along the lines of it being worn down from overuse, or otherwise having it relatively “intact,” but in tatters. It was possible that his own Pattern Cohesion had been reduced after his fight with Chinli, but he’d lost his ability to check his Status while he healed, so he was unsure.
Before the discovery of his Pattern Restoration Skill, that type of damage that he had endured – as well as the damage that poor Carlexa now faced – that damage would’ve been permanent, with the Mage who had suffered such a devastating blow to their Pattern Cohesion having to live with a damaged internal pattern. Fortunately for both of them, along with anyone else who made a mistake in their Fusion formations in the future, the new Skill would help to reverse that damage, even if it took a few days. As long as it wasn’t too powerful for them to physically survive, of course, because restoring an internal pattern after having their body obliterated by an explosion wouldn’t really do all that much.
“On that note, I think I’m going to dismiss class for now,” Larek addressed his other students, all of whom were whispering to each other and barely even looking in his direction. They paid attention when he spoke, but he figured this was a good stopping point, even if it was a few minutes earlier than usual. “Remember to keep practicing what we’ve been working on in your own time, but if you want to attempt something a bit more ambitious, be sure to talk to me first. I want to make sure you have a solid foundation in Basic two-by-two formation Fusions before you start experimenting too far into Intermediate Fusions, though I can tell that many of you are already at that point. Nice work, everyone, and I’ll see you all tomorrow.” As his students began to gather their things in anticipation of leaving, he added loudly enough that they could hear him, “And don’t forget to sleep! I don’t want to see any more napping in the middle of creating a Fusion.”
Larek could see his students taking that seriously, as more than a few of them nodded with a slightly haunted look in their eyes. They didn’t want to suffer from an explosion like Carlexa had, after all, as it was both a risk to their lives and a risk to their Pattern Cohesion. Fortunately, at this point, the damage was relatively minimal, but later on when his students were practicing Intermediate Fusions, it could become a lot more serious – and they might end up hurting more than just themselves if they did something wrong.
He just hoped that they took his suggestion about sleeping to heart, as he had seen more than a few yawns throughout the class while he was teaching them. This was the fourth one of the day, and he’d seen similar yawning throughout all of them. And as much as he wanted to admonish them to make sleeping a priority, he couldn’t completely blame them for the situation they were in. Everyone had lost more than a bit of sleep since their victorious forces had returned a week ago from the former territory of the southwestern Calamity.
Sitting down behind his desk, Larek took advantage of the extra time he had before his next Fusions class to rest a little bit, himself. He felt like he had been constantly on the go or doing something since he’d rejoined Nedira and the rest of the Volunteers after the Calamity had closed, and he hadn’t really had any time to himself to simply do nothing. What was even worse, as far as he was concerned, was that he didn’t even have any time to make any Fusions, other than some random demonstrations for class.
Instead, after they returned to Thanesh, the survivors of the attack against the Hydragon and the Unspoken Response leadership, as well as against the two Gergasi that had been there, had been involved in constant activity, consolidating the Kingdom’s defenses in a myriad of ways. First, a team led by Verne and Teena was distributing all the food-producing Fusions, such as Furrow Field and Strong Watered Growth, to everywhere that was suffering from a food deficit, allowing the towns and cities around the Kingdom to produce what they needed. Despite the efforts of the Volunteers before the latest forays into the northeastern and southwestern Calamities, there were still many pockets of civilization that had been relatively cut off from the rest of the Kingdom, and with the arrival of a Transport vessel with food-producing Fusions given out for free, they were finally becoming sustainable in the long run.
To go along with reaching out to every corner of the Kingdom, Nedira and Norde were in charge of placing additional pairs of Traveling Gates, establishing a system of transportation that was slowly connecting every region in the land. There was a limited number of Gate pairs at the moment, since Larek hadn’t had the opportunity to create any others since he got back. So, they had to be strategic with what they had left, so that every town and city would become accessible somehow. To make it a little easier, most of the larger cities had a Transfer Gate that would be close to a dozen or more towns nearby, and these Gates would link up to one that was a little further along the network, eventually leading them to Thanesh, which was acting as a bit of a hub. At last count, there were a total of a dozen Gates spread around the city, each of them with a map of the Kingdom placed next to them, detailing where they would lead. Sometimes, someone would have to travel through one Gate to reach a city along the path to their destination, and then walk to another Gate in that city to reach another city on the network, and so on until they got close to their destination.
Ideally, Larek would have loved to have supplied every single town with a Traveling Gate, but he both didn’t have the time and he wasn’t sure how having thousands of Gates active in the Kingdom would affect the ambient Mana levels. Each Gate that was large enough to pass people through it consumed a lot of ambient Mana to keep it running, and while it was pulled from further away than the immediate area, he’d already noticed that the ambient Mana around Thanesh – now that it had a dozen Gates active – had a slightly lower amount of ambient Mana in the environment. It wasn’t just Mana, either, as it used Primal Essence to function, which was a combination of all energy types, and while depleting some of that energy might be beneficial – such as Corrupted Aetheric Force – lowering the average amount of ambient Stama or Mana in the environment would start affecting the people.
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Spreading out Gates to other parts of the world would probably help, though even then, they’d need to be cautious no to strain everything too far, especially as the components of Primal Essence were thinner, the further out from the Kingdom one went. In other words, there were only so many that the world could handle being active at one time, so they had to pick and choose where they went to establish an appropriate level of energy expenditure. Unfortunately for anyone but Larek, no one else could sense the changes in ambient energy levels that these Gates affected; thankfully, everyone seemed to believe him when he said that they were starting to hit the limit of what they could easily use up before it might start to affect things negatively.
Once the Gates were established, Bartholomew, Penelope, and Vivienne – along with General Auran – were spreading out and organizing the defenses of the Kingdom against the Apertures that dotted the landscape, concentrating on the areas that had formerly been part of the territory belonging to the Calamities that had been closed. They were especially busy with the southwestern region, where the Undead-based central Aperture of the former Calamity had been, as the defenses there weren’t exactly prepared for its sudden closing.
Fortunately, as they had been doing before they were forced to address the surging Calamity, the Volunteers and the SIC were finally working together, along with the Factions leading each town and city in the Kingdom to establish a more comprehensive defense. Aided by a Shape Material Fusion and the few extra Buoyant Fusions that aided in the creation of airborne Transports, the Mages and Martials struggling to keep up with the changing situation were able to move quickly to each Aperture to keep them from expanding – as well as giving them an opportunity to acquire monster meat to feed their towns and cities with an additional food source.
But those operations didn’t happen overnight, and they were still ongoing even a week later. Kimble, along with the Illusionist Esmer, was in charge of the planning and the logistics of the movement designed to safeguard the entire Kingdom, making them ostensibly the leaders of the entire region – though they were more inclined to label themselves as assistants than leaders. But if that was the case, who was the leader?
Larek. Or so they considered him – but he didn’t want anything to do with that position.
Despite his wishes, he was pulled into meetings and put in charge of planning for the future, while everyone else was focused on the “here and now”. As far as the “future” was considered, it didn’t really mean thinking ahead to what kinds of projects might be nice to work on to improve the economy or infrastructure of the Kingdom as a whole; instead, it was based upon both the response of the Gergasi after the deaths of two more of their number, as well as the upcoming fight to eliminate them from the Kingdom entirely.
They still had his family, after all, and Larek wanted them back.
As far as a response from the Gergasi on the deaths of the two at Larek’s hands, things had been frighteningly silent. That lack of any knowledge of their response was worrying, but it was also likely because the capital and the surrounding lands around the central Calamity were relatively inaccessible at the moment. Any scouts or Transports sent near enough to gather any information were never heard from again, so Kimble stopped sending anyone at all, instructing the Volunteers and the remnants of the SIC to leave it alone; they had more issues they were dealing with that were more important – at least as far as what they could influence.
Larek had considered trying to go investigate by himself, but he held off; he didn’t want to fall into another trap like the one that had been sprung on them in the Calamity, and he wasn’t prepared to face another pair or even more Gergasi right then. He would certainly do so if they had word of Gergasi going out from their Enclave to start slaughtering people, trying to draw him out – which was what he half-expected to happen after what happened a week before – but when that didn’t occur, he was left with a worry about what they were actually doing.
The best thing he could do, for the moment, was to prepare for their own assault on the Gergasi. Unfortunately, based on what he saw Farmas and Syrlia do inside the Calamity, he was 99.9% sure that they were nowhere near ready to tackle even a few more Gergasi, let alone the entire lot of them at once. His trick with the Resonating Mana Siphon to reduce the amount of ambient Mana nearby might not even work very well, so close to the breach in the world, which was said to be near the capital and the Enclave. So, he would have to figure something else out. Blowing them all up, like he did the Hydragon and the Unspoken Response leadership, was an option, but a final option, as his family was likely with the Gergasi. In addition, he didn’t know what that kind of explosion would do, so near the breach in the world, because if it made it worse and somehow caused it to destroy the world – well, that certainly wouldn’t be the best option.
Which meant either a sneaky, clandestine infiltration into the Enclave or a full assault with all the best-equipped forces at his disposal. He couldn’t see a quiet infiltration working very well, as he had no doubt that even with a Fusion to hide the half-breed’s presence, the Gergasi had a fine-enough magical sense to detect him or anyone with him. Even if he was to find his family and escape with them, that still left the Gergasi, who needed to be eliminated one way or another to secure the safety of the Kingdom in the future.
Either way they chose to go, Larek was not prepared to venture into the belly of the beast. His latest experience with the Gergasi had shown him that, while he was better able to defend himself from them (and even that was somewhat ineffective in certain circumstances), he had very little way to hurt them. Inexplicably, his Illuminated Free Will – a Fusion designed to free those using it from any type of mind control – worked against Farmas and Syrlia, but he couldn’t count on being able to slap that kind of Fusion onto the back of every single Gergasi’s head. He still wasn’t entirely sure why those two had exploded afterwards, but he had to consider that it had to do with the fact that they were inside the Calamity’s territory, and he couldn’t expect that same outcome, even in the unlikely event that the Gergasi obediently lined up for him to place Fusions them.
The lack of preparation was what ultimately led to Larek teaching even more Volunteers and SIC members about Fusions. He knew that he couldn’t achieve what he wanted with the Gergasi without the help of the Kingdom’s people, as they had already proven to be more than capable of being a formidable fighting force when facing the challenges of the Calamities. This upcoming foe was so far above the Calamities in difficulty, however, that what they were able to do before wasn’t going to be nearly enough to take down the threats that the Gergasi embodied. As it was, even 1-on-1, the Fusionist wasn’t entirely confident he could win against one of them – so he had trouble imagining that the people helping him would have much more luck, either.
What they had, though, were numbers. They had people, but they didn’t have the supplies that were needed to equip them all. After dumping all of his extra Fusions from his Void Pocket sack, even Larek didn’t have much to provide them; and while he could spend a few weeks creating more – which he was hoping to do sometime soon – it was deemed better to try and train up as many Fusionists as possible to share the load. Even at that moment, some of his earliest students were beginning to take on some of the easier Fusions that he would normally mass produce, though their versions were ostensibly weaker than what he could create – but they still worked for what was needed. His hope was that, as they continued to improve their Skills, they would be able to reproduce at least most of his Fusions, freeing him up to experiment with other ideas, but he needed to get them to that point first.
It was beneficial for everyone if there was more than just Larek creating Fusions, after all; he was powerful and quick, but he also couldn’t spend every single day making Fusions for the entire Kingdom. Therefore, this time spent teaching his new students – which numbered nearly 1,000 by this point – was an investment in the Kingdom, and a way to free up time for him later to create something that would help in his fight against the Gergasi.
Speaking of that investment, Larek let his feet fall off the desk from where he’d put them up as he heard the voices of his next class of students outside the door, and he stood up and smiled at them as they nervously shuffled in a few seconds later. Another new class, huh? I’m surprised there are so many that want to learn from me. He didn’t really have a problem with that, of course, as he discovered that he actually liked to teach others about Fusions, but he remembered his days at both Academies, where very few Mages actually took Fusions seriously.
I guess a lot has changed since then.
Clearing his throat, he continued smiling at his new students as they settled down.
“You all know why you’re here, I suppose?” When they all nodded or said yes, the nervousness and small bit of fear clear in their expressions and body language, he continued with an inward sigh. “First, I’d like to introduce myself properly….”
