The next few days were filled with rest and relaxation, courtesy of a plethora of Fusion creation and experimentation – at least for Larek. For the rest of the Volunteers and the newly arrived SIC members, it was something more approaching controlled chaos than anything else.
“…and so the first problem arose when there were some arguments about implanting your Illuminated Free Will Fusions,” Nedira began to recount the events of the last 96 hours as they sat down to eat breakfast on the fifth day since they returned to Thanesh. “Fortunately, or unfortunately as it was, there was apparently a rogue bug that slipped into the group as they were being processed outside the gates of the city, and one of the SIC Lieutenants began acting strangely enough that it caught everyone’s attention. Panic set in as they realized their fellow Corps member was now being mind-controlled by a bug, and it didn’t take long for them to see the results of your Fusion, once it was forced upon the poor Mage that had been controlled.
“After that, the installation of the IFW Fusion went swiftly, with only a few grumbles from the SIC. Thankfully, just as we’d seen a change in the attitudes of the Volunteers once they were fully cleared of any lingering Dominion magic, our new arrivals also became a lot more enthusiastic about joining with us, as many of their reservations faded away.”
Larek nodded, stuffing his face with a mixture of breakfast meats and sweet pastries as he indicated that he was listening.
“From that point on, things went a bit smoother. There was originally some concern that Auran would attempt to usurp Kimble’s place in the leadership, but she seemed to want to concentrate on defenses and negotiating with Factions, rather than overseeing the entire operation, so there wasn’t a problem there. The only issues arose when we started handing out your Gradual Aetheric Purification Arrays, or GAPAs, as there was a scramble among the SIC to start the process of unlocking their full potential – which got in the way of our normal culling schedules until they got what they needed.
“Once unlocked, though, it seemed to mellow our new Volunteer branch members out a bit, and they’ve taken to their duties with a new vigor. Nearby Factions, which had previously been prepared to march on the city and fight the Volunteers, have already changed their tunes once Auran and hundreds of SIC members swept into their towns and cities to set the record straight about everything. It also didn’t hurt that they brought along thousands of Illuminated Free Will Fusions to help with the mind bug epidemic still sweeping through the area. With a bit of work, we’ve already begun getting ahead of their spread, with the hopes that the majority of the outbreak will be contained within a week or so. Thankful Faction members are now working with us closely to handle the nearby Apertures with very little pushback, especially as Fusions are starting to spread to them.”
She smirked at him briefly as he nodded again. “And no, not just your Fusions. The first few batches of Fusions created by your student have already begun to spread, and while they’re not anywhere close to the quality and strength of yours, they’re still being utilized by those who have very little alternative. Eventually, they may rival your own, but for now, we’ve been appreciative of the effort you’ve put in over the last few days to bolster our dwindling supplies.”
He was only slightly surprised to hear that his students were already producing some quality Fusions, as he had been shocked at how well they had performed when he was last with them. He had another class scheduled with them in a few days, and he was looking forward to seeing how much they had improved.
“As for the Traveling Gates that had previously been used to help stop the Factions from attacking us by sending monsters through toward their towns and cities, they’ve been recommissioned to act as quick methods of travel, and with hundreds of others that you’ve been able to create for us lately, we’re hoping to have the majority of the Kingdom accessible within a month or two.”
Larek finished his plate of food as he thought about the creation of those Gates, which he’d spent an entire day on after it was mentioned to him that they needed more. He was more than happy to make them, especially as they’d helped to improve his Skills. While he eventually lost track of how many he’d created, he figured that he’d made at least 1,000 paired Fusions.
“It’s amazing how much can get done when you have access to fast travel, either through your Gates or from flying with your Buoyancy Fusions – which have changed the time it takes to respond to emergencies greatly. As our coordination expands, it won’t be long until every single Mage, Martial, and Guardian will be working as an enormous team to tackle the Apertures and the threat they present to the Kingdom.
“But more importantly, as the SIC branch of the Volunteers has taken charge of stabilizing the regions around the two closed northern Calamity territories, it’s gradually freeing up more and more resources for us. Farming using your Fusions has spread, solving potential famine issues already, and the rapid transport between areas is helping with trade, allowing for a greater exchange of necessities and materials to where it is needed most. Even something as simple as a pair of VREP staves and a few Graduated Parahealing Fusions gifted to Faction-run towns is enough to bolster their defenses against their nearby Apertures, allowing them to be more effective and protect wider areas.
“Of course, it’s still early to see how much of an impact the spread of your Fusions has, but it has been incredible so far. I suspect that, if things keep going this way, the Kingdom will be fully protected and integrated together in 6 months, and we could continue to expand into other nations and countries, to spread our influence and help safeguard the entire world, over the next decade.”
That definitely sounded ambitious to Larek, but that wasn’t exactly what he was most concerned about. “How long do you think it’ll be until we can start closing the rest of the Calamities?”
There were only two Calamities left: the southwestern one, which he’d been forced to visit while running from the Gergasi, and the central one, which was smaller in size, but apparently strong enough that it made the others look weak in comparison.
Nedira paused for a moment before answering. “I’d say it will be about a week or so before we’re completely stabilized enough to attempt the one to our west. After that, we’ll have to prepare a little bit more to tackle the central one.”
While he wanted to help close the Calamities, the primary reason behind closing them hadn’t changed – and he knew that Nedira was aware of that. Once the Calamities were all closed and the Kingdom stabilized enough, he would be assaulting the Gergasi Enclave in an effort to free his family.
“And is there any information about our missing SIC advisors, or on the whereabouts of the remaining Unspoken Response?” It still rankled him that the Dean and the Noble woman responsible for siccing the assassins on him had managed to get away. As for the assassins themselves, now that they’d been essentially gutted from the loss of so many of their number, he wasn’t too worried about them; at the same time, he’d rather not have to worry about those remaining attacking him at random.
In other words, it was better for everyone if they weren’t around anymore to kill innocent people.
Unfortunately, that outcome didn’t seem to be likely, as his betrothed shook her head. “Unfortunately, no,” she responded. “It’s like they completely disappeared.”
“That’s… unfortunate. I’d rather be done with worrying about them, especially with everything coming up.”
“I agree, but as the Volunteer and SIC information networks are expanding and meshing together, we’re bound to learn something soon.” Nedira placed her hand on his arm, squeezing it consolingly. “You just need to give it some time.”
He knew she was right, but now that they were getting closer to consolidating the defenders in the Kingdom into at least a loose organization that was no longer at odds, the more pressure he felt on himself to fulfill the promise to himself that he would do everything in his power to save his family – and to punish those who’d caused so much grief for him and nearly everyone else in the Kingdom over the centuries that they’d been in power.
Removing her hand from his arm, his betrothed started cleaning up from their breakfast. “Did you have any more thoughts on the problem Bartholomew came to you with yesterday?” she asked as she placed the plates in the sink.
It took him a second to remember what she was talking about. “Oh, uh, yeah; let me go grab it.” Larek got up from the table and wandered over to his throne of pillows where he did all of his Fusion-creation, before spotting the steel plate holding the Fusion he’d designed the night before.
“You already solved it?” Nedira asked incredulously. After he nodded, she chuckled for a moment before saying, “Of course you did. I should’ve known.”
He certainly had found a solution, though he hadn’t tried it yet – and he let her know that, as well. Once he was holding the palm-sized steel plate in his hand, he realized that it should probably be a little more compact, especially considering what it did – and what problem it solved.
The issue that Bartholomew – in conjunction with multiple teams within the Volunteers, including the SIC branch – had was concerning transportation. The Transports that were currently being used were amazing, but they still took about half a day to get from one side of the Kingdom to the other, even at full speed. The Traveling Gates he’d designed had helped cut this down to seconds, of course, but what happened when a group of Volunteers or SIC defenders were responding to an emergency on the other side of a Gate – but their target was actually many miles away? They might be able to get to the vicinity fairly quickly by using the Gates, but if they needed to quickly respond to an Aperture that was 100 miles away, for example, it wouldn’t necessarily be faster than flying there on a Transport.This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
A quick-response team was only as quick as the transportation could get them to the emergency, after all.
Taking a Transport through a Traveling Gate was basically impossible, as they were too large to fit through any but the largest Gates – and he had yet to create any that were large enough for that size of object moving through. Most of the time, Gates would only be big enough to fit individual people through; while there were ones that could accommodate wagons and small caravans, especially in the case of trade, they weren’t quite as common – at least not yet. But something with enough clearance for a Transport was unlikely to ever be too common, as the energy to keep it operational would be a huge drain on the ambient environment, even if that ambient environment was displaced from its actual location.
This was the problem that Bartholomew had come to him with the day before, and thankfully Larek had a solution for him – all thanks to the new spells he’d just learned. Up to that point, he hadn’t been able to experiment with the effect of those spells since he’d returned, but his old bodyguard gave him the perfect excuse to play around.
“This it?” Nedira asked when he handed it to her.
Larek shrugged. “Hopefully? Let’s go try it out.”
After a few minutes to finish cleaning up, the two of them left their home, and he took them out of the city with an old-style Pattern box and windshield, flying about a mile away from the walls. Setting down in a strip of land in between fields, which was overgrown with weeds and covered in loose gravel, he took the new Fusion he’d designed and looked it over for a final time for any flaws. It had been late the night before when he’d finished, so he hadn’t had a chance to check it over, other than to make sure it wasn’t going to start fracturing because he was tired at the time. As usual, though, it was basically flawless in its formation – at least in terms of strength and precise placement of each component.
Whether or not it actually did what he designed it to do was another matter.
“So, the issue with the teams moving through the Gates was transportation on the other side. I originally thought about simply designing something similar to the Portable Lifter but for individuals, but that wouldn’t necessarily help if, say, a team went through a Gate and needed to transport the local defenders to an Aperture to work as a larger group. It’s still something I want to develop, however… but back to this,” he said as he lifted up his new Fusion, getting back on track.
“With this,” he continued, “a team can go through with a spare set of a Buoyant Sphere, a Buoyant-Thruster, and a Strengthen Fusion, and then use this particular Fusion to create what they need for transport. Ideally, stone will be the most plentiful of materials for them to use, but this Fusion can manipulate nearly any inorganic resource to make a transport. Watch.”
With a mental command that utilized his exact thoughts, an idea based on the way some of his Automatic Fusions could detect the ideal temperature or what he considered a threat, he directed the Fusion to claim a large chunk of the gravel and dirt strip in front of him, before lifting it a few feet into the air. When it activated, there were the sounds of crunching and grinding as it looked like someone suddenly took a chunk out of the ground about 6 feet in diameter, with it still being flat on top.
“This is the first step of this multi-purpose Fusion. I wanted to play around with the effects of the Stone Extraction spell, altering it to include any nearby material within range; the end result was being able to extract just about anything you can see, but the drawback was that I couldn’t find a way for it to locate and pull up resources from far distances. There’s a component to the Stone Extraction effect that seems reliant on an instinctual locational knowledge of the stone in the caster that was difficult to replicate perfectly, so I had to figure out a compromise.
“However, when I took a look at Form Barrier, I was able to vastly improve upon what that spell effect could do.” Demonstrating it with his mental command to the Fusion, the chunk of dirt, gravel, and overgrown weeds began to change shape as compressed with a force that was very similar to the Effect of Heavy Load, but in this case it pressed the material together so strongly that the dirt and gravel combined together into one cohesive material, as strong or stronger than stone.
The organic material, which included hundreds of bugs that had been crawling in the dirt as well as the weeds, was completely untouched, despite the compression of the inorganic material. Both watched as the bugs and plants all rained down below the compressing ball of dirt and gravel, squeezed out like juice from an orange, landing in the hole he’d made in a spreading pile.
Once it was compressed completely and all of the organic material was ejected, it was time for the third Activatable Effect of the Fusion. Using mental imaging, he used the Fusion to shape the compressed dirt/gravel material into a flat disk approximately 3 inches thick and 60 feet wide, before raising the edges to create an outer barrier 3 feet high, until it looked like a sharp-edged bowl. He mentally added a few holes similar to The Hopper and the other wooden transports, which would allow staves or spells to be aimed down below, and then used a little bit of extra material to add some small, simple stools to the center, where someone could sit down if they wanted.
There wasn’t enough material to make more than a half-dozen of them, but the Fusion could theoretically form more of the resource and add to his creation, but he would have to set it down first. It was a limitation of the Fusion that it could only pull up a certain amount of material at a time and couldn’t handle more than one chunk at a time, but if someone needed something a little more ornate, then they would be able to add to an existing construct. The chunk limit also applied to the amount that could be manipulated into a design at one time, but different parts of it could be worked on separately.
The greyish-brown “Transport” construct was then set down away from the hole thanks to a process of the Fusion, and he was pleased to see that it didn’t fall apart. He had been hoping that the compression of the material would work the way he designed it, but he hadn’t been entirely sure if it would; the Effect was based on multiple concepts from both the Extract Stone and the Form Barrier spells, so it was hard to determine ahead of time whether his alterations would work.
“And now, all anyone would need to do would be to attach the suite of Buoyant Fusions and an additional Strengthen Fusion to enhance the durability of this material, so that it won’t fall apart if they’re a bit rough with it. When all is said and done, it shouldn’t take more than a minute or so to fully form some sort of basic transportation and be on their way. It should operate similarly to what we already utilize as Transports, just made with a different material. Stone is ideal because there shouldn’t have to be any compressing involved, and as much as I’d like it to be able to shape wood, the organic nature of the material makes that a bit more difficult – so I left it out.”
Larek turned to see that Nedira had caught all that, only to see her staring at the dirt and gravel construct he’d created. He was about to ask if she was alright, but she shook her head and said, “This is incredible. Do you have any idea what you’ve created?”
He shrugged. “A way to create Transports much faster?” he asked uncertainly. That was the original goal, after all.
“No. Well, yes, but it’s so much more than that. Tell me a few things, Larek. How fine of detail can you shape? Can you manipulate much smaller quantities of material? Does this work on metal?”
He thought about it for a moment. “I guess that there’s no real limit to how fine of detail you can create, as it’s limited only by whatever mental image you can picture. You can manipulate material anywhere from something the size of a fingernail all the way up to what you saw here. And since metal is inorganic, there shouldn’t be any problems with manipulating it just like stone or dirt.” He wasn’t sure where she was going with this.
“Think about it, Larek. With this, you could construct a building in minutes, forge a sword without needing an actual forge, or even create an art piece if you were so inclined. This is going to revolutionize everything. And it isn’t even for large things, either; do you know how long it takes a silversmith to make a chain of silver links? It could take days, but with this, they could do it in minutes. As I said before, this is incredible.”
When he finally stepped back and looked at it that way, he had to admit that she had a good point. It made him feel even better about what he’d designed, even if it had been originally created to solve a completely different problem.
“Huh. I guess you’re right.” With a shrug, he stored away his new Fusion, before approaching his newly formed creation. He didn’t have any spare Fusions in his sack to make it flyable, but he didn’t need them; instead, he created the necessary suite of Fusions on the material directly, and minutes later, they were headed back to the city – where he parked it outside the walls, giving it over to the attendants there for them to distribute to whoever wanted to use it. He didn’t need it, after all; he still had The Hopper – which had been repaired, thankfully – or he could simply make another Transport using his new Fusion.
Soon after arriving back home, he spent a little time making multiple copies for the Volunteers to use, keeping the first one he’d made for his own collection, as he placed them on smaller blank plates which would be easier to carry. Afterwards, he looked at the changes to his Skills over the last few days.
<u>Mage Skills:</u>
Pattern Restoration Level 90 (+2)
Spellcasting Focus Level 92[102] (+2)
Pattern Recognition Level 105[115] (+3)
Multi-effect Fusion Focus Level 115 (+5)
Focused Division Level 113 (+3)
Fusion Level 120[130] (+5)
Pattern Formation Level 120[130] (+5)
Mana Control Level 120[130] (+4)
Magical Detection Level 120[130] (+2)
Pattern Manipulation Level 122
<u>Guardian Skills:</u>
Energetic Transmission Level 15 (+3)
Aetheric Authority Level 15
Primal Essence Mastery Level 9 (+4)
The increases in his Skills were enough to push him to another personal Level, and with achieving Level 65, he split the 40 AP he received evenly between Strength and Agility, bringing both to 360. Other than that, there weren’t too many changes – but everything around Fusions continued to become more and more smooth during the creation process – for which he was thoroughly grateful. The increase in his Primal Essence Mastery, in particular, made the creation of Traveling Gates easier and faster, as that continued to be the most complicated and intense formation process of any of his Fusions. Any reduction of the strain involved was more than welcome.
Based on what Nedira had told him, it sounded like the Volunteers and the SIC were getting along and working together, so it was only a matter of time before the next phase in his plans could take place. As his betrothed had mentioned, he just had to be patient and things would come together – but he was beginning to get restless with every passing day. He knew that he’d be able to hold on until they were ready, despite the desire to venture out on his own and start early. After all this time, he’d learned the value of having assistance to help him out if things got a bit hairy, so he was more than willing to wait until the others were as ready as they could be without having to wait years for them to get stronger.
Unfortunately for his applied patience, the sudden overwhelming sensation originating from the west didn’t want to conform to his timeline.