Settling in deeper inside of his pillow throne, Larek considered what exactly he needed to create. Before he got to that, he mentally listed the upcoming objectives and the subsequent problems that he needed to solve.

  First, to ensure the safety of the Kingdom’s population, as well as making the assault on the Gergasi later have fewer obstacles, the central Calamity needed to be closed. While significantly smaller than any of the other Calamities he’d faced throughout the Kingdom, the central Calamity was also reportedly the most difficult to assault, and therefore the most difficult to close. There was an information packet about it that he never got around to reading, but as he picked it up from where he’d stored it near his pillow throne, he swiftly perused it to make sure he understood what they were up against. From the gist of the information, he didn’t think it would be much more difficult to face than the undead Calamity had been, though it would require some preparation. Ultimately, the key to success had to do with the speed at which they could accomplish the task, so they needed to act quickly and decisively once they passed into its territory.

  Granted, if the Gergasi involved themselves inside the Calamity like Farmas and Syrlia had, that could lead to a much more chaotic experience than expected when closing the Calamity; but as of now, he had no evidence that such a thing was likely to happen.

  Therefore, Larek needed to ensure that the Volunteers and former SIC members who accompanied him into the Calamity were sufficiently equipped with Fusions that would not only allow them to quickly subjugate the subservient Apertures, but would also nominally protect them from an attack if the Gergasi decided to interfere again. It wasn’t necessarily an easy problem to solve, but it wasn’t impossible, either.

  The second objective, once the Calamity was closed, was to assault the Enclave, where they would eliminate the Gergasi inside and rescue his family. This was easier said than done, of course, because killing even a single one of them was extremely difficult or impossible, even with thousands of Volunteers beside him, lending their aid – or at least it was right now. When he added in the fact that they would be venturing into the Gergasi’s home territory, where they would undoubtedly have an environmental advantage, then the whole situation became a lesson in futility, as success seemed impossible without something extra to nudge it in their favor.

  There was also the overwhelming feeling of rage that he’d felt when he got near Sidleton, which was close enough to the capitol to feel it coming from the Gergasi. It was a form of Dominion magic that even he didn’t have a defense against, so Larek would have to figure out how to neutralize the feeling. Otherwise his allies were likely to cut and run as soon as they felt it too strongly.

  As a result, he would have to create something that would not only keep the people helping him alive, but would keep himself alive, as well. His fighting experience against the Gergasi thus far had proven that his Fusions had been largely futile against them, and while they helped, nothing he used to defend against them or to attack them had been largely effective. In his opinion, the only reason he’d survived was his own inherent strength and speed, with a hefty dose of luck, which weren’t necessarily available to those who accompanied him on his journey to take down the Gergasi. While he was ultimately thinking about all of the Volunteers and former SIC members when he thought about those accompanying him, the reality of the situation was that he was more focused on his friends and his betrothed; a thought about any one of them facing off against a Gergasi frightened him, regarding how lopsided the confrontation would be.

  And lastly, if fighting the Gergasi wasn’t enough, once they were gone, he had to decide what to do about the tear in the world, the Diregate that supposedly existed near the capitol, and the Apertures that could be found everywhere. After all of his research and looking into the openings that led to another world, he was fairly confident that he could find a way to close them permanently – if that was what he chose to do. It would take a unique Fusion in order to accomplish such a task, and while he wasn’t 100% sure it could be done, it was enough of a reality that it had to be considered.

  Of course, this final decision wasn’t something he thought he should make on his own. While he might be able to come up with the solution, actually using it was something that he didn’t think was his decision to make. He would have to speak to his friends and whoever ended up being in charge of the Kingdom, after everything was said and done, in order to come up with a consensus.

  Taking things one at a time, Larek turned to the first problem that he needed to solve, which was the central Calamity. Looking at the information packet again, he dug further into what they would be facing once they arrived.

  The Aperture at the heart of the Calamity had been relatively innocuous when it first appeared, which was likely what led the earliest defenders in the area to put it at the bottom of their priority list until it was too late. The monsters that initially emerged from the Aperture were simple Clockwork Rabbits, a relatively small mechanical monster made out of a weak and thin tin material that was easily dented with a simple stick in the hands of a child. The Rabbits themselves were relatively quick for their size, being only about the size of a loaf of bread, and the most dangerous parts about them were their long, razor-sharp front teeth and an ability to kick their victims with their hind legs. In all, they weren’t very strong or resilient, as even a semi-competent, low-Level Martial could wipe out every Rabbit within the Aperture’s original territory in a few hours by themselves.

  Unfortunately, due to a mix-up at some point, while the SIC scrambled to figure out what to do after the Apertures started to appear, the leadership of the area decided to prioritize the Apertures closer to the capitol, rather than the Clockwork Rabbit one, which was nearly 250 miles away at that point. To be fair, the monsters in the Apertures near Andrin were significantly scarier and more dangerous, so their priority made sense at the time.

  But as a result, what was now dubbed the Clockwork Calamity was born.

  Left alone for too long, the Clockwork Rabbits mimicked what happened with real rabbits when ignored for too long, and they began to breed. Except that it wasn’t a biological function that allowed them to reproduce so quickly, but a mechanical one; reports after the fact described groups of Rabbits somehow merging together into an abstract-looking cube for a short while, before breaking apart at some point with twice the number of Rabbits than had been there before.

  That on its own wouldn’t have been too bad, as the Rabbits were still relatively weak by themselves – even in greater numbers – but the rapid reproduction led to an unprecedented, quick expansion of the Aperture’s territory. Before anyone in authority could react to the expansion, the next tier of monster emerged from the future Clockwork Calamity, which proved to be too much for the scattered and still-adjusting local defenders.

  Clockwork Gargoyles.

  While the new Gargoyles were only the size of a small child, they emerged from the Aperture in groups of 5, with each group acting as a cohesive whole, allowing them to work together like fingers on a hand. With the ability for flight, which was always a complication for many land-based defenders, and a more-robust metal plating surrounding their bodies and comprising their wings, the imp-like Gargoyles were a menace to the various teams of Martials and Mages that finally arrived to try to cull them.

  The problem the teams faced were manyfold, but primary among them was the fact that the Gargoyles were fast through the air and were difficult to hit, and even when a spell impacted them, their metal plating absorbed most forms of elemental damage. Weapon impacts and other types of projectile damage still took them out, but it took a while for the defending teams to figure that out and to mount an effective barrage that was guaranteed to hit them. Because of this delay in adaptation, the Clockwork Aperture expanded again, thanks to the Gargoyles also being able to join together in a cocoon of metal, before emerging with twice their number.

  When it rapidly expanded again, the SIC had finally realized the threat it posed, but the SIC had been unable to stop the third tier evolution of the Clockwork monsters from emerging out of the Calamity. It was this third tier, the Clockwork Elemental, that spelled the end of the SIC’s chances of containing the Calamity. At 12 feet in width, the spherical Clockwork Elemental was constructed of relatively thin steel that contained the clockwork mechanisms inside of its form; its material defenses were relatively weak, and the teams sent against these Elementals should’ve had no problems destroying it.

  Unfortunately, the SIC soon discovered that the spherical Elemental had a few tricks up its sleeve that they weren’t prepared for and couldn’t figure out how to beat. First, beams of powerful light emerged from numerous holes in the sphere’s outer shell, each of them strong enough to punch through skin, leather, and even weak metal, though stronger metal with reflective surfaces could deflect a portion of the beam away from the target. These beams could reach up to 1,000 feet away, and many a Mage was suddenly hit from what they thought was a safe distance, dead almost instantly when a light beam passed through their head.

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  But even that was manageable for those smart enough to figure out how to defend against the beams. The real problem came from the Clockwork Elementals’ other ability – which was to turn back time.

  That wasn’t actually quite true, as they didn’t suddenly stop time and reverse it; instead, they could reverse any damage done to them, if the attacks against their spherical shell stopped for longer than a second. If the attacks stopped, the damaged sections would appear to flow backwards in time, reforming themselves into pristine condition, and even pieces that had been flung away would return, reattaching themselves as if the Elemental was brand-new. This made them extremely difficult to kill, to the point where only one of them had been destroyed since the Calamity’s inception, when hundreds of Faction members attempted to do just that, though it resulted in the loss of dozens of defenders during the successful attempt – which prevented them from wanting to do it again.

  But even that wasn’t what allowed the Clockwork Calamity to grow so large. The Clockwork Elementals also had another purpose, which was related to the subservient Apertures inside of the Calamity. By approaching those that had been temporarily culled by a team of defenders, they would essentially “speed up time” inside the Aperture, which would repopulate the territory in a fraction of the time it normally would take. Larek suspected that the Elementals had some way to collect and then project Pure AF into the Apertures at a distance, which would allow them to repopulate quickly, but he didn’t know for sure.

  The Calamity wasn’t thought to contain a fourth-tier evolved monster, as it wasn’t large enough for that, but as no one had been near the center in years, that couldn’t be confirmed. The Clockwork Calamity didn’t need it, however, as it was enough of a handful as it was, just trying to contain the rapid reproduction of the Clockwork monsters inside, as well as the repeated culling of the Apertures located around the edges of the territory.

  It was this ability of the Elementals that Larek was considering when he thought that closing the Calamity would have to be done quickly. As soon as they started the assault, they would have to contend with the Elementals speeding up the repopulation of the subservient Apertures inside its territory; with how dangerous and hard-to-kill the monsters were, he couldn’t count on those coming with him on the assault being able to wipe them out before the repopulation began.

  Instead, it was more likely that they would have to rush toward the central Clockwork Aperture and assault it first, forcing all of the monsters from the Apertures to rush toward it, similar to what happened in the Slime Calamity when the Defend Faction containing Verne attacked it. With the ability to fly straight toward the center of the Calamity, it would save time and shut down the repopulation of the monsters elsewhere. Thankfully, it was a relatively small territory, so there weren’t as many Apertures contained within it, so they wouldn’t have to wait days for the monsters to reach them, and teams could be sent out to deal with them once they started moving.

  But now Larek needed to find a way to defend against the Clockwork Elementals themselves. With how strong they were, as well as the range of their deadly light beams, they could pose a threat to the transports that would carry the Volunteers and SIC members in their assault on the Calamity.

  Fortunately, the Fusionist had some ideas that would help with that. Pulling over a square steel blank from the stack nearby, he began formulating a Fusion based on reflecting the light beam that the Elementals possessed. Theoretically, Protection of the Void would likely be able to absorb the light beam for anyone using the Fusion, but he couldn’t count on that after it had shown some vulnerabilities over the last few weeks. In addition, that particular Fusion was so resource-heavy that he couldn’t create tens of thousands of them easily enough to outfit everyone without weeks of time to work on them, so even if they did work, not everyone would have one.

  But what he was more concerned about were the transports carrying the people, as they wouldn’t have any defense against the light beams. There was a nightmarish possibility that one of the beams could pass through the shell of one of the transports and hit the Fusions located inside that allowed it to function; if that were to happen, the explosive release of the Mana inside the Fusion would obliterate anyone inside.

  Therefore, he needed something that would cover the entire vessel. He instinctively knew that creating a version of Protection of the Void large enough to protect a transport would be almost impossible, given the fact that it was already hard enough to cover a person; the Pattern Cohesion requirements would outstrip even his large pool of the resource. Instead, he was going to lean into what the information packet had said about reflecting the light beams from the Elementals, and he would design something that would accomplish that.

  Considering what kinds of Fusion Effects Larek had created in the past based on the spells to which he had access, he thought that he had the perfect idea. He’d already created a Camouflage Sphere Fusion that bent the light in a spherical area, hiding what was underneath it – so why couldn’t it be converted into a reflective Effect, as well?

  The actual creation of the new Fusion only took a few minutes, as he already had the overall formation created with Camouflage Sphere, so Reflection Sphere wasn’t that much of a stretch. He kept it small to begin with, as he wanted to test it out without having to leave the building, and as soon as he activated it, a 6-foot-wide, mirror-like sphere of reflective light sat in front of him, doing exactly as he had hoped. Of course, whether or not it worked against Clockwork Elemental beams of light was something else entirely, but he had no way to test it…

  …which led him to his next Fusion. Larek already had a light-based Fusion in Illuminate’s various forms, but other than as a way to blind a victim, it had never been weaponized.

  He supposed it was time to change that – especially as he needed it to test his new Reflection Sphere.

  Taking the formation for Directional Illumination, Larek considered how to make the light conform itself into a beam, where he could concentrate the illumination to such a point where it could punch through skin and leather. He knew it was possible, as he’d seen sunlight pass through curved glass before, where it concentrated to a point that was hot enough to start a fire; what he didn’t know, however, was how exactly that worked. After some thought, he could only assume that it was the glass itself that was focusing the light so that it came out through a specific point.

  While he didn’t necessarily have a bunch of curved glass nearby that he could experiment with, what he did have was the ability to bend and theoretically focus light. In fact, it was, in some ways, the opposite of what he’d done with the Reflective Sphere, as he didn’t want to reflect and diffuse the light outward; instead, he wanted to concentrate it into a small point.

  Taking one of short steel rods from his stockpile nearby, Larek combined two types of Fusions into one, with the first Effect being a Directed Illumination that would emerge out of the end of the rod – creating a strong, diffuse beam of light that would be blinding, but wasn’t necessarily concentrated like he wanted. After that, he used the principles of Light Bending to create another Effect, which formed a thick, circular section of bent light right past where the light emerged from the tip of the rod.

  There. Let’s see what that does.

  Unfortunately, his attempt at creating a Focused Light Beam Fusion failed spectacularly. When the light emerged, he was nearly blinded as the light seemed to sporadically shoot everywhere instead of being focused in one place, and he had to deactivate it immediately.

  His second attempt was a little better, as his focused intent on the bent light Effect formed a curved section that formed an almost perfect cone of light, but it was the opposite of what he wanted. Inverting the curved section on his third attempt was much closer to what he wanted, as the light seemed to converge on a single spot approximately 10 feet ahead of the rod before spreading apart again; while that convergence spot was hot, it wasn’t exactly hot enough to burn through leather, let alone skin.

  Over 50 iterations of the Fusion later, he finally figured it out. Instead of a single curved piece of bent light, he formed 100 small, circular sections of bent light that focused inward, where they combined together before exiting through a final, larger piece of bent light that gathered it all together and wove the smaller beams of light into a complex strand of concentrated illumination that was so densely packed together that the beams were indistinguishable from each other. Like a rope that was stronger than its individual strands, the woven column of light emerged from the tip of the steel rod with incredible heat, focused in a beam that was so tiny that it produced holes in the wall that an ant could barely pass through them.

  But it worked, nonetheless.

  And that was when he hadn’t even ramped up the Magnitude to the point where he thought the beam could become even larger.

  Unfortunately, when he attempted to use it against the Reflection Sphere, which had been the entire point of developing the Focused Light Beam Fusion, the results were less than spectacular. Instead of fully reflecting the focused light completely, the Sphere only diffused it partly, sending a myriad of weakened beams out in all directions, while at least half of the beam’s original strength punched through its exterior. Given that his beam was only a fraction of the strength reportedly used by the Clockwork Elementals, he had a feeling that his defensive Fusion would fail spectacularly and not stop the attack from passing through its exterior. He thought that it might have something to do with there being a physical component to the reports that shiny metal was able to reflect the beams, and with his bent light Reflection Sphere being non-physical in nature, he figured there was something else he was missing.

  Time to try something else.