The land underneath him flashed by as Larek flew alone for the first time in what felt like months.  Granted, there were times when he found himself flying on his own, but there was still someone relatively nearby; most of the time, though, he was always accompanied by someone such as Nedira or one of his other companions.


    Now he was on his own.  It was a bit more liberating than he expected, if he was being truthful with himself, though not because he wanted to be alone.  Instead, it was more that he didn’t have to worry about safeguarding those who accompanied him from any harm, which could be a distraction during the heat of battle.  Even given the new protective Fusions he’d created to keep them safe, he still worried about them being hurt.  Fortunately, they were rapidly becoming strong enough that he didn’t worry about their safety quite as much, especially as he knew that their help would be both necessary and invaluable in his future plans rescuing his family from the clutches of the Gergasi.


    But for now, he was going to take advantage of his solitude to push himself and his abilities to the brink.  It had been a little while since he’d really been able to stretch his Pattern Manipulation Skill to its limits, as flying a Pattern platform or box construct with a passenger, he had to conform to their physical limitations.  Without having to worry about someone else, he could now fly faster than he ever had before.


    If he had thought his flight with Nedira from the pair of Gergasi that had been chasing him weeks ago had been fast, the speed at which he moved by himself put that to shame.  Normally, The Hopper could make the trip from Thanesh to the border of the southwestern Calamity in about 10 minutes if he pushed it to its limit; with Nedira in a Pattern box with him, he could probably make the trip in about 7 or 8 minutes.


    By himself, however, he arrived in a little less than 90 seconds.  It was so fast, in fact, that with an angled windshield cutting through the air at such speeds, a vortex-like vacuum was formed behind the windshield, sucking all the air away from Larek’s position behind it.  Thankfully, he could easily hold his breath for the duration of his flight, and he didn’t think that it was necessary to breathe while he was testing himself.


    As he approached the border, just as the sun completely set behind the horizon, he finally slowed down and took a deep breath, amazed and amused at how fast he could actually move once he didn’t have to worry about some limitations.  Once he caught his breath, he let the overwhelming feeling of the Calamity wash over him, again prompting an underlying sense of familiarity that he still hadn’t been able to decipher.  It was even stronger at the border, and he imagined it would be the same once he passed over the threshold into the Calamity’s territory, but that still didn’t help him deduce what exactly he was feeling.


    At first, he thought it had to be related to the Gergasi, as he figured that his partial heritage was triggering something deep down inside.  However, try as he might to pinpoint anything inherently “Gergasi-like” about the sinister sensation, he couldn’t necessarily attach anything he felt to the giant race.


    After that, he went through a gamut of different sources that it could be that were familiar, but none of them quite fit exactly.  That didn’t mean it couldn’t be one of them, of course, though he didn’t have enough information to accurately place it.


    Therefore, he’d given up attempting to parse his feelings and turned his attention to finishing up some other Fusions while he waited for evening to set in.  Nedira and the rest of his friends were running around like crazy, delegating tasks to get the Volunteers and the SIC branch ready for their assault on the Calamity in a few days, so he left them to their work while he went out and did his experiment.  He, of course, had told Nedira where he was going and what he was going to do, and while she was worried for him, she knew that he could take care of himself on such a short trip.


    He could tell that she was close to asking to go with him, as she had vowed to never let him go too far from her again, but she must have seen something in his face that made her change her mind.  Whether it was seeing the desire to do this on his own or something else, she had simply made him promise to be careful and to come back safe – which was easy enough to promise.


    As he didn’t want anything to interfere with his experiment, which included his Pattern constructs, Larek set himself down right on the border of the Calamity and watched as night fully fell across the land.  It was definitely a sight to see the sky above him darken, but still be able to see around him well enough with the fading rays of the sun, while only a few feet away, the translucent wall that denoted the limit of the Calamity was darkening to the point where he couldn’t see more than a few dozen feet inside.  Even that distance was shortened over the next minute as he kept watching, as complete darkness washed over the land inside the territory in front of him, the visible effect of the Calamity’s central Aperture making itself known.


    Wait… is it?  Yes; yes, it is.


    It took him a few seconds to confirm it, but it soon became clear that the Calamity was already expanding.  It wasn’t growing at a fast rate, but even as he stood there for a minute, he estimated that it expanded another half-inch or less.  For it to be beginning its expansion already, he realized that something had to be speeding up the process, because it typically took a while with an Aperture this large.  It normally “surged”, which allowed it to gather the energy it took to start expanding, and that could take a few days to weeks for a Calamity; seeing it already growing at the speed it currently was, however, was alarming.


    I’ll have to let them know when I get back; we may have to push up our timeline.


    But that was something he would deal with later; the reason he came to the Calamity wasn’t to see if it was expanding or not.  It was to test his new Fusions.


    With that in mind, as he stepped over the threshold into the Calamity, a few things happened simultaneously.  First, the underlying sinister sensation that he’d been feeling outside of the border… stopped.  He had expected it to grow stronger, or perhaps change; what he hadn’t expected was for it to disappear completely.  He stood there, wrapped in nearly complete darkness for about a minute, searching for any hint of what he was feeling before, but there was nothing.  A quick step back outside brought it crashing back down into him, while another step into the Calamity’s territory caused it to disappear immediately.


    That’s… odd.


    He had no explanation for it, as all it gave him were more questions.


    The second thing he noticed had to do with the reason he was there.  The aura of death that he’d previously felt while inside the Calamity was back, and it felt even more intense than before.  He could feel the pervasive aura eating away at him, but fortunately his Body Regeneration was more than sufficient to counteract the persistent necrotic force pushing into him.


    And that was all through his Protection of the Void Fusion, too.  To confirm that his suspicions about his protective Fusion not having any effect on the aura, he deactivated Protection of the Void and felt absolutely no increase in the constant aura of death passing through his body.  A touch of vindication shot through his mind, as he was immediately glad that he hadn’t relied on his previous protective Fusion to ward against such a malevolent effect, as entering into the Calamity unprotected against the aura of death would’ve been highly dangerous for a large number of the Volunteers, especially those who didn’t have a higher enough Body Regeneration Skill.  Relying on healing Fusions to heal someone from the aura’s effect would only be so beneficial before it started to eat away at their physical body, unless they also constantly ate food to counteract the physical energy being used by the healing process.


    Granted, he still had to try his new Fusion to make sure it worked.  Pulling it out of his Void Pocket sack at his waist, Larek held the Reactive Necrotic Siphon in his hand, pleased to see it automatically activate as it sensed the necrotic energy around them.  For the first time, the aura of death became visible to his Magical Detection, as streaks of energy blacker than the darkness itself streamed toward the Fusion in his hand.


    Magical Detection has reached Level 121!


    Magical Detection has reached Level 122!


    Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    Within seconds, the constant drain on his body’s physical well-being dropped to nearly nothing, though it was still slightly present.  As the area around him began to clear of the persistent aura of death, with only the most distant streaks of necrotic energy still flowing into the Fusion as it drifted near its radius of effect, so too did the overwhelming darkness that continued to envelop the entirety of the Aperture’s territory.  It wasn’t a significant lightening of the environment around him, as it only made it possible for his vision to penetrate about a dozen feet or so before being cut off, but that was better than the few inches it had been when the utter darkness surrounded him.


    Huh.  The darkness and the aura of death are the same?  But what about during the day, when the aura of death still exists?


    Larek didn’t have the answer to this question, but he supposed it didn’t really matter.  What mattered was that his new Fusion was working, though he still had to see if sucking up the nearby necrotic energy would be dangerous, after a while, as it was condensed inside the formation.  Placing it down on the ground, he pulled his halberd out from his sack, along with his other new Fusion, Adjustable Illuminate Area.  Placing it right next to the Necrotic Siphon, he activated it at its full illumination distance, and a second later, the darkness was pushed back in a 200-foot radius as the light expanded to fill the entire area.


    It also revealed why he’d pulled his halberd out of his sack.  In short, he had company.


    A large horde of Bone Wraiths floated a few feet above the ground as they rushed toward him from the west.  He counted approximately three dozen of them, which was a larger group than he’d seen before when he was there previously with Nedira, but that didn’t really deter him.


    As they approached, he began to see wisps of darkness flowing off of their forms, which were quickly sucked up by his new Fusion; it seemed as though the information about the Bone Wraiths being the source of the necrotic energy behind the aura of death was correct.  It wasn’t a lot coming from each Bone Wraith, barely enough to seriously worry about, but he could only imagine that over a while of constantly leaking the stuff, the Calamity would quickly replace whatever he sucked up with his Fusion.


    Larek could’ve blasted the Bone Wraiths apart with his VED staff, making short work of them, but he decided to flex his Martial muscles a little, as he’d had little chance to lately.  After ensuring his Protection of the Void was active again, another Pattern platform under his feet took him straight toward the undead monsters coming his way.


    A quick streak through their numbers with his halberd split six in half, while he also activated the Variable Elemental Gust Sphere with Magnitude 4 fire-based gust spheres exploding in the middle of their bodies, sending them up in flames.  As they burned to their second death, he swooped back down on the remaining horde – only to pause when he realized that none of them seemed to have noticed he was even there.  In fact, they continued on the same course they were on before, completely ignoring that some of their number had been annihilated.


    His confusion lasted all of a second as he evaluated their path, seeing that they were on a straight shot toward his Fusions on the ground ahead of them.  As they were separated from each other by about 5 feet, it only took a half-second to see that they weren’t heading toward his Adjustable Illuminate Area Fusion; rather, they were seemingly homing in on his other one.


    Larek wasn’t exactly sure why they seemed to be attracted to it, but the fact that it was absorbing the very same necrotic energy that they unnaturally gave off probably had something to do with it.  But why they were so focused on it to the extent that they completely ignored him was a mystery… for the moment.


    Curious, he dashed in with his Pattern platform and easily whittled their numbers down from behind, as they didn’t do anything to defend themselves or even attack him, even when he paused right near one of them.  It was as if they didn’t even see him, for some reason.  He turned off his Protection of the Void Fusion temporarily, thinking that perhaps they couldn’t sense his life force, perhaps, as he figured that was how they saw their victims, considering that they didn’t have actual eyes, but that didn’t seem to change anything.


    It didn’t take long to destroy all but one of the Bone Wraiths, which he allowed to reach his Reactive Necrotic Siphon Fusion.  He wasn’t too worried about it destroying the formation on the steel plate, as it would take something much stronger than the weak monster in front of him to do that, but he needed to know why it seemed so interested in it that it ignored everything else.


    As he looked at the Fusion, he saw that the gathering deposit of darkness – which was the necrotic energy that was siphoned from the environment – was compressed into a small sphere of swirling energy.  It was only about the size of one of his fingernails at that point, so it wasn’t large, but it also appeared fairly stable and unlikely to suddenly rupture or explode like he worried about.  Of course, it was still fairly early to tell if there were any other issues that might arise once it siphoned out a lot more necrotic energy; that was why he was planning for his experiment to last most of the night, as he needed long-term data to determine whether it was safe to use or not.


    Contrary to what he expected, which was for the Bone Wraith to attack the Fusion with the intent to destroy it, given that it was essentially absorbing the same necrotic energy it gave off, the undead monster reached down almost gently with a bony hand and plucked the orb of condensed necrotic energy from the center of the formation, like someone would pick a berry off a bush.


    The next moment was strange, and it was only because he was watching closely that he saw what happened due to it occurring so quickly.  With a rapid squeeze of its skeletal fingers, the sphere of necrotic energy was crushed in the Wraith’s hand, and Larek witnessed the energy within it quickly be absorbed by the monster’s appendage before spreading throughout its entire body.  In no more than a second, the energy dispersed completely through the undead, seeming to disappear, but then he watched in horrid fascination as the Bone Wraith began to transform.


    Gone was the relatively frail skeletal form that was no taller than the average Kingdom citizen, its head covered by a ragged cloak with a hood to hide its skeletal face.  What replaced it was an 8-foot-tall skeleton with burning red eyes in its exposed skull, which was due to the cloak having shifted shape into a black-colored metal spear.  It still floated above the ground, as its feet seemed to have disappeared and its leg bones were cut off at the ankles; the biggest difference in its aerial ability was that it was much faster than the relatively slow Bone Wraith it was before.


    Not nearly as fast as Larek, of course, but as it seemed to notice him for the first time and lunged with its spear, seeking to impale him through the chest, he estimated that it was between 3 and 4 times as fast as before.


    What did I just witness?  Did this thing just evolve?


    He put off trying to answer that at the moment as he struck back at the transformed Wraith, killing it fairly easily for all that it was larger and faster.  When it died, he received a larger chunk of Corrupted Aetheric Force from it than from its unevolved cousins, which he supposed was a bonus.  At the same time, there was no sign of the necrotic energy that it had absorbed, as if it had all been consumed in its transformation.


    Huh.  That was… very odd.


    Shaking his head at the impossibility of what he’d just seen, he was interrupted from contemplating about it any more as another horde of Bone Wraiths entered the sphere of illumination provided by his other Fusion, and he quickly intercepted them before they could reach the Necrotic Siphon.  Even though this was a different group, and smaller in number than the first, they also seemed to be fixated on his Siphon, so it was easy enough to tear through them without any opposition.


    A few minutes later, another horde of Bone Wraiths arrived, as if following a call that they couldn’t ignore.  This pattern continued for another hour or so, with another horde of weak Wraiths appearing every 5 to 10 minutes, all of them seeking the Fusion he’d created – or more precisely, the necrotic energy compressing within its formation.


    As for the Reactive Necrotic Siphon, it appeared to be doing its job quite well, but as Larek looked at it after the latest horde of Wraiths was destroyed, he heard a small *clink* that drew his attention.  Falling from where it had been condensing was a sphere of darkness approximately half the size of his fist, which smacked into the steel plate and then rolled off.  In its place, where the formation had been condensing necrotic energy, was another tiny sphere of darkness, as if the Fusion could only make a sphere so big before it ejected it.


    Preparing himself as best he could, Larek activated his Healing Surge Fusion as he picked up the solid orb of necrotic energy, expecting it to immediately start killing him from the concentration of deadly miasma inside.  Thankfully, touching the sphere didn’t seem to do a single thing to him, even when he—stupidly—turned off all of his protections and simply held the orb in his hand.  He could feel the strong necrotic energy contained inside, but whatever his Fusion had done, that necrotic energy was sealed away in its new shape.  He thought that, perhaps, it was only extremely deadly when it was in its free-floating energy form, but he couldn’t be sure.  He couldn’t even be sure how long it would stay in this shape.  Would it eventually fall apart, releasing all of the necrotic energy at once, killing anyone nearby?  Was it fragile, and would it break apart if he tried to crush it like a piece of sandstone?


    More experiments were needed.


    Because he didn’t want to try breaking it anywhere near him, he instead tossed it high up into the air and away from him.  He lost track of it as it disappeared in the darkness above, before it plummeted back down about 190 feet away from him, slamming right into a rock sticking out of the dead earth around it.  He watched it bounce off the stone without breaking, which was a good sign that it wasn’t too fragile, as it was fairly heavy for its size and had hit the rock with a significant amount of force.


    Before he could retrieve it, another horde of Bone Wraiths floated out of the darkness, heading straight for the condensed ball of necrotic energy.  Not knowing what it would do if a Bone Wraith got a hold of such a concentrated sphere, he pulled his VED staff out and attempted to blow them up before they could reach it.  Unfortunately, by the time the explosion he’d caused dissipated enough for him to see, as it had knocked up a significant amount of dirt in the process, he could only watch as a half-dead, surviving Bone Wraith picked up the orb of necrotic energy in its one remaining skeletal hand.


    Uh-oh.  This might be bad.