This is going too slowly, Larek thought as he safely caught yet another SIC captive falling from above in his curved Pattern constructs. He was more than halfway through freeing them, but the situation with the Dryads and other monsters protecting the central Aperture was becoming worse by the moment.
Therefore, he ramped up his captive-freeing process to a speed that stretched his focus to the limits. He had originally begun freeing them one at a time by creating a small Pattern-based construct in the shape of a funnel near each victim, where he could see the Aetheric Force being slowly sucked out of them by the root. When the construct was formed, he would use his Aetheric Authority Skill to transfer a few points of his accumulated Pure Aetheric Force through the funnel, passing straight into the root; it only took a few because of its sheer concentration, and he thankfully had plenty to spare, with him having over 1.5 million AF in reserve.
Those few points were all it took for the root to automatically reject what it saw as the source of the too-pure AF, releasing the captives in the same way his Felis Stalker construct had been released when the root had attempted to drain it. Fortunately, his Magical Detection Skill and his own perception were able to visually see that not only were the captives released, but whatever had been keeping them paralyzed and alive was also stopped, though that didn’t mean they were instantly able to move around. It would take a small amount of time before their bodies would flush it all out, though it would be faster with the Martials because of their higher physical stats. Already, the first of the released captives were looking more “normal” than they did when they were still stuck to the roots, but only a few of them seemed to have limited use of movement as of yet.
He couldn’t imagine the torment that they had gone through, being stuck to the roots for who knew how long, as what he quickly discovered was that all of them had been awake during the whole process – which meant that they were fully conscious of what was happening to them, with them being unable to do anything about it. Now that they were freed, he expected that some of them might have some mental problems from the paralyzed imprisonment, but that was something to worry about later.
But they would only have the chance to work through those problems if he was able to save them all and get them away from the root-filled space alive. Therefore, he sped up his process by creating multiple funnels as he stared upwards at the remaining captives, rapidly filling them with small injections of Pure AF, and he had to divide his focus between creating even more funnels, creating additional curved constructs that would catch and deliver the still-paralyzed bodies to the ground safely, and dodging and attacking the roots around him that were spasming from the addition of so much concentrated Pure AF. His halberd was working overtime to cut through any roots that got close to him or the prone captives, but it was made harder when the natural appendages seemed to regenerate what he cut off within seconds.
Larek’s sped-up process was bearing fruit, however, as he was quickly sweeping over the massive cluster where the remaining captives were still being held, and the bodies were falling like rain around him. Despite the challenge of having to split his focus in so many directions, he was doing it; he only needed about a minute more and he’d have freed them all.
The explosive creak of wood splintering off to his left caught his attention, and as he looked that direction through his peripheral vision, he saw one of the large Nature Elementals attacking a Volunteer – only to be blown apart by a destructive explosion from his staff. Unfortunately, the Volunteer – Johani, if he remembered the name correctly – didn’t see a second Elemental behind him; normally that wouldn’t have been a big deal, as Johani’s Protection of the Void Fusion would essentially nullify any attacks sent in his direction, but something unexpected happened.
Instead of trying to strike out with sharp branches or attempting to pound Johani into a flattened pile of goo with its appendages, the Nature Elemental somehow launched itself into the air, likely intending to get closer to the Volunteer to strike at a closer range. Unfortunately for Johani, he moved back a few steps to give himself some breathing room, which ended up placing him right underneath the falling Elemental. Its bulk landed on top of the Void Fusion, and parts of the monster began to disappear as the Fusion did its work; however, after a short pause as the monster fully enveloped the Volunteer, his Magical Detection Skill saw something happen to his Fusion that shouldn’t have been possible.
It broke.
More accurately, as far as he could tell, since it happened so quickly that he had to piece it together afterwards, the sheer amount of sustained contact with the Nature Elemental’s physical bulk overloaded the Void aspect of the Fusion’s Effect, causing it to crack and fracture – which spelled the end of the Fusion formation’s structure. At that point, Larek realized at that point that the defensive protection of the Fusion wasn’t absolute, as there was a way to overload even the void barrier he’d made it form, as he had to add safeguards in place to keep the void contained. Once those safeguards were overwhelmed, instead of the void being released entirely, the feedback from the Effect would transfer to the Fusion’s formation itself. He had figured that his abnormally resilient Fusion would be able to handle that kind of feedback, but apparently, he’d been wrong.
Fortunately for Johani, he didn’t have to suffer being squished by the Nature Elemental, nor even have a prolonged death; instead, the poor Volunteer was obliterated entirely as the Protection of the Void formation exploded violently, with the remnants of the void barrier keeping it largely contained in the split-second it took to disappear. When the protective barrier faded, however, the remnants of the explosion destroyed the Nature Elemental that landed on Johani, but that was a poor exchange for the death of one of his Volunteers.
Larek felt horrible for the death of the Volunteer, but his mind had already moved on to the implications of his Fusion’s weakness. He recalled not wanting to be hit by one of the Treehemoth’s massive roots outside. At the time, he had simply not wanted to test whether his protective Fusion would be enough to save him; but now, he was 99% sure that if he had been hit by it, he would’ve suffered a similar fate as Johani.
More than that realization came a spike of worry for his companions, especially for Nedira. He had thought that they were virtually invulnerable, fighting against the Dryads and the Elementals, but now it was clear that there was a danger to them that he hadn’t expected – and he wasn’t willing to risk them any further.
To him, they were much more important than the SIC he had come to save. That wasn’t to say that he was planning on letting them all die, but he was going to have to take some risks that he’d avoided before because they could potentially put them in danger.
Rerouting his focus, he caught the last few captives that plummeted from where the roots had released them, before forming a small platform made of Pattern underneath his feet. Using the platform construct, he quickly sped around to all of the roots that seemed to contain the SIC members and sliced through their ends with his halberd, leaving them leaking what looked like some sort of dark sap. He knew from experience that the sap would eventually form into a regenerated root end again if given enough time, but he wasn’t about to let that happen. Instead, he formed additional Pattern constructs on the ends of each root, right where he''d cut them, capping them with a funnel-like projection. This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Then he started pumping them all full of Pure Aetheric Force.
This time, it wasn’t just a few points of AF that he was injecting into each one, such as what he’d done to free the other captives. Tens of thousands of points of AF flowed out of him within seconds, forcefully flowing into the raw root ends, which had no other option but to follow their natural instincts to absorb it all.
It took a few seconds for the massive amount of AF to flow up the roots and into the tree proper, but it only took a half-second for the roots to begin thrashing wildly, slamming into the ground and lashing out at everything around them. He personally witnessed at least a dozen SIC members splattered into paste from the strength of the roots’ impacts, but there wasn’t anything he could do to stop it from happening, as all his focus was on feeding the Treehemoth full of what essentially amounted to concentrated poison.
Other than the thrashing, the effects on the remaining captives were immediate, and Larek stashed his halberd away with his remaining concentration and pulled out two Portable Lifter Fusions out from his Void Pocket Sack, and he dual-wielded them to start grabbing the avalanche of falling bodies out of the air to slow them down. He didn’t have enough time or concentration to fully guide them safely to the floor of the wooden sphere, but decelerating them instantly before they hit the hard surface was enough to save those with weaker physical bodies from breaking all their bones upon impact.
It took all of 10 seconds before the results of his poisoning efforts on the Treehemoth finally presented themselves, as a large groan of wood moving and splintering reverberated through the wooden sphere, followed by a shaking as the entire structure vibrated under his feet. There was an unnatural, deep screaming as the Treehemoth began suffering from the infusion of Pure AF and the room began to shake even more in heavy bursts. Larek could picture the massive tree monster slamming its roots down outside in a panic; he just hoped that The Hopper and those inside of it were safe and had avoided the sudden display of pain-fueled reaction.
The last of the captives finally landed, with the majority suffering only a few injuries and a few with more serious ones, but there was no time to heal them. Thankfully, all of them landed in a relatively small area and had nearly piled up on each other, which made his next move slightly easier.
Releasing all of his focus from everything else, he strained himself slightly to form a platform underneath all of the bodies, even though a quarter of them were starting to rouse and attempt to get to their feet. With a use of the Command Shout Battle Art, which he’d fortunately learned very recently, he yelled, “Time to leave!”
Larek was glad to see that everyone heard him as he sent his piled-upon platform toward the entrance from which they’d arrived, and it took everything he had to move that many people at such a speed. His internal Pattern was taking a bit of a beating from everything he’d done up to this point, splitting his focus so much, but he just needed to hold on a little bit longer and he’d be able to let his Pattern Restoration heal him afterwards.
With a sudden barrage of explosions, his friends and the Volunteers managed to extricate themselves from the horde of monsters after them, and they just barely beat him to the exit because he couldn’t move quite as fast as them. As he sent the platform through the entrance, he moved it around the corner before he turned back and reached into his sack one more time.
Pulling out a handful of Fusions, he quickly tossed one at his feet before launching the others high above his head and into the mass of roots above as he activated them. As he ran to catch up with the others, a bright, blinding light washed over the entire tunnel as the wooden sphere lit up with a half-dozen Blinding Heat Fusions going off simultaneously. He rushed the platform slightly up the sloping tunnel as a wash of heat emerged from behind him, and while he couldn’t feel it, the SIC members certainly could – and he didn’t want them cooking alive.
The sound and smell of burning wood, followed by the cracking of bursting monsters that were set on fire and turned to ash, flowed through the tunnel as thousands of wide, frightened eyes turned in his direction. Ignoring them, he set down the platform after another hundred feet or so because it was getting too hard to move it with his dwindling focus capacity. Fortunately, by that point many of the former captives were able to move around and stand, primarily the Martials, which meant that they could walk and run on their own; more importantly, they could carry who didn’t have their feet under them yet.
No one spoke as they began to do just that, with Martials just barely freed from their forced paralyzation picking up their fellow SIC members and stumbling up the tunnel ahead of Larek and his friends and Volunteers, who had to stick back and eliminate the few monsters that managed to somehow avoid the heat and fire he’d left behind.
Their fighting retreat became a bit more intense as a quickly strengthening red glow from below told him that it wasn’t just the monsters and the roots that were in the wooden sphere that were affected. His perceptions were a bit of a shambles with everything going on, but they were at least good enough to see that the heat and fire he’d caused down below had ignited the entire area – and it was spreading… fast.
In other words, it was only a matter of time before the entire Treehemoth went up like a torch from the inside.
Their flight became even more desperate as the tunnel behind them began to collapse as the fire spread, which was hot enough break down its structure within seconds, and Larek was forced to pull some other Fusions from his sack and toss them behind him, such as an Occlusion Sphere that filled the tunnel and prevented a lot of the super-heated air rising from below from cooking the SIC members, as well as leaving some Strong Watered Growths with a quick alteration to have them permanently active, which would hopefully slow down the spread of fire long enough for them to escape.
The shaking of the larger tree had largely stopped by the time they could finally see the exit – or at least the wooden wall blocking them from the world outside. Fortunately, Larek didn’t have to do anything to open the way, as many of the freed SIC Mages, especially the Naturalists, were able to cast spells again. The wooden wall resisted their spells for all of a pair of seconds before the barrier cracked and flowed away to the edges, retreating into the sides and flooding the tunnel with daylight.
As Larek and his companions shepherded everyone out, he didn’t notice who was leading the former captives until a shout interrupted their escape.
Framed by the daylight of the outside world, General Maxwell stood about 20 feet outside the entrance and held up his hand in front of the escapees, forcing them to stop just before they exited for good.
“Stop! We can’t allow these individuals, especially that one—” he shouted with a deranged look in his eye as he pointed toward Larek in the back, who was easy to spot because of his height, “to leave here! They represent everything that is wrong in the Kingdom and directly oppose the SIC, undermining us at every opportunity! Mages! We must seal them inside and then we can finish what we came here—”
The annoying General couldn’t finish his statement, however, as one of the Treehemoth’s roots, large enough to block out the entire entrance, suddenly slammed down on him, obliterating him into nothing but a paste. The impact was so strong that nearly everyone fell to the ground from the incredible force, and a blast of displaced air knocked a few others further down the tunnel. Larek somehow kept his feet as he watched the root raise back up, revealing the aftermath of the blow, and there was very little evidence of the former SIC General other than some flattened armor pieces embedded into the dirt, accompanied by a huge splatter of blood and a few, tiny, unrecognizable pieces of a body.
Well, I wanted to get rid of the SIC leadership, but that wasn’t exactly the way I was planning on going about it.
There were still more who were part of that leadership that he had to contend with, but now they had other things to deal with. They couldn’t leave because of the roots, and they couldn’t stay because the fire down below was getting closer and closer.
It was time to make a decision – and if they made the wrong one, then there was the potential that almost all of the SIC members could die.