As he had hoped, the growth of the Illuminate Fusion to Magnitude 10 went off without a hitch. Once it reached the incredible brightness at its upper strength, he deactivated it to observe the movement of energy around the formation, looking for any evidence that it was still trying to grow; it didn’t take long to confirm that the only energy movement was a tiny bit of ambient Mana that the Fusion was very slowly absorbing to maintain the formation structure – which was completely normal.
“What was that bright light?!” he heard from behind him as Nedira stumbled out of bed. “What did you do?”
As she collapsed next to him on his pillow throne, still groggy from being woken from her nap, he quickly apologized. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you; it was just the easiest and clearest way to test my theory. You can go back to your nap if you want; I won’t disturb you anymore.”
“No, no, I’m up already,” she replied, shaking her head as she rubbed her eyes, still obviously waking up. “Besides, what do you mean? Did whatever your theory was work?”
Larek couldn’t help but let the excitement he’d felt at successfully unlocking his new Skill leak into his voice. “Yes, it did! You’re now looking at someone who has unlocked all of the Fusion Skills, which includes a brand-new one named ‘Fusional Growth’!”
“Uh… what?” It looked like it took a few seconds for his statement to penetrate her sleep-deprived brain. “You unlocked a new Skill? When? How come you always seem to do the impossible?” she joked, again shaking her head, but this time in apparent disbelief. “You’re not kidding, are you?”
“No, I really did unlock a new Skill.” While she continued to wake up, he began to explain his processes in creating the new portion of the formation, while also explaining exactly what it did – and he also mentioned the potential that it had for future Fusions.
“Let me get this straight,” she said at the end of his speech, finally awake as she sat down next to him. “You created something that allows any Fusionist to create powerful Fusions, and all it will take is time for the Fusion to grow into its power? Are there any limitations?”
Larek was immediately ready to tell reply, “Yes,” to the first question, but the second question made him pause. Are there any limitations to this new Skill? he asked himself.
“Hold on a moment; let me check,” he told her, before he really dug into the Fusional Growth Skill. Pulling up his Status, he concentrated on the new Skill, trying to get a better feel for exactly what it did. While there was no convenient explanation, simply focusing on it was enough to tell him a few things about it that he hadn’t realized.
The first thing that he’d learned about the Skill was that he essentially brute-forced it to work as well as it did on the Illuminate Fusion. That somewhat made sense, as it was his first attempt to make something like the new containment line, and with his superior understanding of energy manipulation, he had essentially upgraded it past how it normally would’ve performed. He thought that he only got away with the sheer speed of the growth it showed because of his incredibly powerful Pattern Cohesion and perfected formation; if it hadn’t been for that, even the 20 Pattern Cohesion a minute being infused into the Fusion might have caused it to become unstable.
From what little he could gather from focusing on it, someone with the Skill at Level 1 and without the extremely fine energy manipulation abilities that Larek possessed, would utilize the Skill to form a very basic containment/absorption/conversion line around the Fusion. This basic line would grow the Fusion at a rate of approximately 1 Pattern Cohesion per minute, with Mana being infused at a rate of around 25 per minute. Once they Leveled-up the Skill, this rate of growth would increase as the process became more refined and regulated, allowing for more Pattern Cohesion to be infused as the flow between the incoming converted Cohesion and the formation strengthened, which would provide greater stability overall.
It seemed as though he was being a bit presumptuous with how quickly he increased the growth, though he was fairly sure he could take a few shortcuts to ensure it happened – at least for himself. His brute-force approach was likely what led to him gain so many Levels in the Skill to start out with, as he had done some advanced energy manipulation that was far from normal. For everyone else just learning this Skill, they would have to begin with what the Skill taught them to do, starting from scratch at Level 1 with a basic addition to their formations. That being said, he didn’t think it would take most experienced Fusionists long to start Leveling-up the Skill, as they would simply need to create dozens of inexpensive Fusions relatively quickly, all while utilizing the Fusional Growth Skill to make them more powerful.
They might not be able to increase the Level of the Skill as quickly as he did, but it would still help them immensely in the long run.
When he dug into the Skill, there was something else that tempered down his excitement a little further. In addition to the speed at which the growth could occur, based on the Skill Level, there was also a limit to how far they could be grown – at least initially. At Level 1, a normal Fusionist could only grow a Fusion the equivalent of about 200 Pattern Cohesion; with a simple Fusion that had a base Pattern Cohesion of 1 at Magnitude 1, it would allow them to grow it to Magnitude 7 – which would cost exactly 200. It would take a few hours to get to that point at only 1 Pattern Cohesion being infused each minute, but it was also a huge time and resource saver since they didn’t have to spend the time paying for the Magnitude 7 Fusion themselves.
Of course, with a Fusion that required a higher Cohesion cost at Magnitude 1, even just 2 instead of 1, they would only be able to bring it up to Magnitude 5. A Cohesion cost of 4 at its base would only allow the Fusion to grow to Magnitude 4, and so on.
This all changed once the Skill increased in Level, fortunately, as the growth limit of 200 Pattern Cohesion would also increase. Larek didn’t have any definite information on just how much it would increase per Level, but he expected it to only be minor increases at first, at least until the Skill was Level 20 and higher.
“So, there are some downsides to the Skill,” he told Nedira once he’d finished evaluating it on his Status. He then told her about the speed and limitations on them, but instead of being slightly disappointed like he was beginning to be, she waved off the drawbacks as if they were unimportant.
“It seems like it’s just a matter of increasing the Skill to a decent Level before it becomes incredibly powerful – just like any other Skill that we possess,” she explained. “Not everyone can go around and break the rules of magical manipulation like you can, so this is actually a good way for everyone else to gradually build up to a point where this new Skill will make a huge difference. Actually, if what you said was correct, then even at Level 1, the ability to create, at most, a Magnitude 7 Fusion at very little cost is incredible; that alone would make it worth learning the Skill, even if it did nothing else.”
Once he stopped to think about it, he supposed that she had a point. He had almost always had so much Pattern Cohesion to spare that he hadn’t really thought about it that way; he’d just been comparing it to what he could do, which wasn’t fair when considering other Fusionists. An extra 200 Pattern Cohesion added to a Fusion was actually quite a lot, at least for some of the more basic formations.
“I guess that’s true. And hopefully, once I raise the Skill up some more, I’ll be able to impart the Skill to anyone who can use it.”
Which was exactly what he did once Nedira left a few minutes later to get them something to eat. He first started with some simpler Fusions added to some weapons stored in the room, such as Strengthen and Sharpen Edge; he wanted to test how the actual Skill worked when he was being directed by it, and he immediately felt the difference as he initiated the containment line he’d developed. Through the Skill’s efforts to guide his creation of the thick line, he could feel that it was much less dense than he would’ve created on his own, and it only had a small portion of the intention strength that he’d put in the original Illuminate Fusion that he’d grown. In addition, he attempted to make these first Fusions grow into a Magnitude 10, but the Skill nudged his mind while in the process of developing the formation; through mentally picking a few smaller numbers, he eventually had to drop it down to Magnitude 7.
Somehow, the Level 23 Skill knew that it wouldn’t be able to grow the Fusion past that Magnitude, which was actually a relief; he didn’t need those who just received the Skill to wildly try and create Magnitude 20 Fusions and expect them to grow, after all. Plus, if he was understanding the limitations correctly, then attempting to grow a Fusion past its maximum growth potential could result in the destruction of the formation, once it hit its Pattern Cohesion wall.
He continued to experiment with different Fusions, testing the limits of the Skill itself, while at the same time, its Level gradually increased.
Fusional Growth has reached Level 24!
Fusional Growth has reached Level 25!
Fusional Growth has reached Level 26!
Fusional Growth has reached Level 27!
Because he was “playing by the rules” with his application of the Skill and its limitations, the development of his Skill was a lot slower than the initial chunk of Levels he’d received from his first growing Fusion. Still, within an hour of experimenting with it and creating hundreds of Fusions that were in the process of growing stronger, he managed to hit Level 27 in Fusional Growth.
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It wasn’t until he decided to go outside the bounds of the Skill and reinforce the outer containment line the way he wanted it to look like that he saw some massive improvement. He started first with a VREP staff and essentially forced it to grow to Magnitude 12, though even there he felt like he was straining the process. He could tell that the Skill was somewhat smoothing out some of the rougher edges of his intent and stabilized the formation a lot more than he could do himself, but the majority of the effort was through his own ability to manipulate energy so effectively. Even so, there were clearly still limitations, as he didn’t think he could push the VREP Fusion past Magnitude 12, possibly Magnitude 13, without it destabilizing.
At least, not at a Skill Level of 27. Once he finished that Fusion and put it aside while it grew into its eventual strength, Fusional Growth had its own spectacular growth from just that one formation.
Fusional Growth has reached Level 28!
…..
Fusional Growth has reached Level 35!
By pushing the boundaries of what the Skill said was possible, it achieved the developmental growth he was looking for. It matched up with the way he’d pushed his other Skills; by trying to do more than was probably safe at times, or developing new ways to apply his Skills, they had all seen explosive growth from those situations. Like anything else, what he put into improving the Skill would be rewarded with it being able to do even more in the Future.
Larek, of course, wasn’t going to stop there. Now that he found a way to rapidly progress the development of the Skill, he started making more and more growing Fusions, using his knowledge of energy manipulation to expand what was normally possible. After another half-dozen Fusions that he pushed to the limit, he started incorporating his Focused Division Skill to produce even more at a time; with how inexpensive making Magnitude 1 Fusions were, he could make hundreds of copies within seconds. What was even better was that once the Fusions were created, he didn’t actually need to keep them around to grow in order to take advantage of the Skill Level increases, so he was able to easily eliminate their formations before they could start actually growing, leaving the materials ready to accept yet another Fusion.
He could feel his Level advancing rapidly, as the smoothness with which he was able to create the containment line increased as time went on, and the automatic process that the Skill provided became more streamlined in his creations. At one point, he was able to push the growth potential so far that an Omni-Boost Fusion was able to be pushed all the way to Magnitude 29, something that he knew he would probably never be able to afford to create normally.
The biggest drawback to the Skill, once he let a few start growing a little before he got rid of their formations, was that he still wasn’t able to speed up the infusion of Pattern Cohesion into the formations to the point where it could easily keep up with the extremely powerful Fusions he was creating. What started at about 20 Pattern Cohesion a minute rose to around 80 Cohesion a minute, and that was with all of his knowledge of Patterns and energy manipulation pushing the limits of how much could be infused in a formation without destabilizing it. Once he started getting to the point where the formations required millions of Pattern Cohesion to grow to a specific Magnitude, he wasn’t looking at hours to fully grow it to completion, but weeks or months. It was possible that this limitation might change in the future as he became better acquainted with his new Skill, but he didn’t think it would amount to a large difference.
That being said, Larek continued to utilize his new Skill as he transitioned to making copies of existing Fusions that the Volunteers and the former SIC used to help defend the Kingdom against the Apertures scattered throughout the land. After a few hours of this, as he was about to restart his original goal of creating a Magical Energy Negation Sphere that would cover an entire transport, he was interrupted yet again when something cut through his intense focus on Fusions and wouldn’t allow itself to be ignored any longer – as he’d been ignoring his notifications while he’d been creating more and more growth Fusions.
Fusion has reached Level 122!
Pattern Recognition has reached Level 122!
Pattern Restoration has reached Level 95!
Mana Control has reached Level 125!
Multi-effect Fusion Focus has reached Level 117!
Fusional Growth has reached Level 36!
…..
Fusional Growth has reached Level 50!
Congratulations!
You have unlocked the Intense Fusionary Specialization!
Requirements:
Prodigal Fusionary Specialization
Fusion Skill of 50
Multi-effect Fusion Focus Skill of 50
Fusional Growth Skill of 50
Mana Control Skill of 50
Focused Division Skill of 50
Intellect of at least 100
Acuity of at least 100
Pneuma of at least 100
The Intense Fusionary Specialization also provides these benefits:
Ability to manipulate/alter existing Fusions in unique ways
Ability to create custom Fusions with unique Effects
Ability to impart any Fusion-related Skill to those with the capacity
Enhances the strength of all Fusions by 20%
The Intense Fusionary Specialization automatically replaces the Prodigal Fusionary Specialization!
Fusional Growth has reached Level 51!
You have reached Level 70 and have 84 available AP to distribute!
Fusion has reached Level 123!
…..
Fusion has reached Level 125!
Pattern Recognition has reached Level 123!
…..
Pattern Recognition has reached Level 125!
Pattern Formation has reached Level 122!
…..
Pattern Formation has reached Level 125!
Pattern Manipulation has reached Level 125!
Mana Control has reached Level 125!
Mana Control has reached Level 126!
Multi-effect Fusion Focus has reached Level 117!
…..
Multi-effect Fusion Focus has reached Level 120!
Focused Division has reached Level 114!
…..
Focused Division has reached Level 120!
Pattern Restoration has reached Level 96!
…..
Pattern Restoration has reached Level 101!
Congratulations!
Due to your mastery of everything pattern-related, you have unlocked the Pattern Savior Specialization!
Requirements:
Pattern Savant Specialization
All 4 Pattern-related Skills at 100
Fusion Skill of 80
Magical Detection Skill of 80
Mana Control Skill of 80
Intellect of at least 250
Acuity of at least 250
Pneuma of at least 250
The Pattern Savior Specialization also provides these benefits:
Ability to utilize Pattern Cohesion in unique ways
Ability to manipulate up to 95% of your Pattern Cohesion outside of spell patterns and Fusion formations
Ability to impart any Pattern-related Skill to those with the capability
Heightened ability to manipulate your internal pattern
40% reduction in Pattern Cohesion requirements for all spells and Fusions
Enhances the strength of all spells, Fusions, or pattern constructs by 30%
The Pattern Savior Specialization automatically replaces the Pattern Savant Specialization!
Fusional Growth has reached Level 52!
…..
Fusional Growth has reached Level 64!
You have reached Level 71 and have 127 available AP to distribute!
Fusional Growth has reached Level 65!
…..
Fusional Growth has reached Level 100!
Congratulations!
You have unlocked the Grandmaster Fusionary Specialization!
Requirements:
Intense Fusionary Specialization
Fusion Skill of 100
Multi-effect Fusion Focus Skill of 100
Fusional Growth Skill of 100
Mana Control Skill of 80
Focused Division Skill of 80
Pattern Formation Skill of 80
Intellect of at least 250
Acuity of at least 250
Pneuma of at least 250
The Grandmaster Fusionary Specialization also provides these benefits:
Ability to manipulate/alter existing Fusions in unique ways
Ability to create custom Fusions with unique Effects
Ability to impart any Fusion-related Skill to those with the capacity
Enhances the strength of all Fusions by 40%
The Grandmaster Fusionary Specialization automatically replaces the Intense Fusionary Specialization!
Congratulations!
You have unlocked the Ultimate Skillsage Specialization!
Requirements:
Magical Skillsage Specialization
Any 10 Mage Skills at or above 100
Intellect of at least 500
Acuity of at least 500
Pneuma of at least 500
The Ultimate Skillsage Specialization also provides these benefits:
50% increase in efficiency for all Mage Skills at Level 100 or above
50% increase in Mage Skill improvement speed
The Ultimate Skillsage Specialization automatically replaces the Magical Skillsage Specialization!
There was a temporary pause in his notifications, as well as a pregnant pause in which the world felt suddenly heavy around Larek, as if the air was slowly pushing down on him. After a few seconds, one more notification appeared under everything else he’d just looked at.
Congratulations! You have met the requirements for evolution. Prepare for absorption and transformation…
Larek didn’t have a chance to do more than read the notification before it felt like his entire body and mind were being ripped apart.
