Chapter 51
Larek’s heart pounded as he shot up into the air, chasing after the two Gergasi. To be more accurate, he wasn’t exactly chasing them, more like following them as they obviously tried to pull him away from his support, but that was just fine with him. Even with the Mana Siphon Fusion in effect, the two Gergasi were still powerful enough to absolutely devastate the Volunteers and the former SIC members if they were unleashed among them; he’d rather that they be as far away from his friends as possible.
What are they doing here? Why are they working with the assassins?
Those questions had been rotating through his mind one after another since they’d appeared, but he realized it didn’t really matter why they were there or why they were working with the Unspoken Response; all that mattered was that he kill them as soon as possible.
Granted, accomplishing that was easier said than done. He doubted that he could trick them like he did Chinli, baiting them into blowing up a strong Fusion; more than that, he had no doubt that they would go all-out from the beginning, unlike the previous Gergasi whom he killed because she greatly underestimated him. They had to know by now that he had killed one of their number, so they weren’t going to take any chances. Which was why he was expecting to be overwhelmingly attacked as soon as they stopped moving…
…and yet, that didn’t happen.
Approximately 1,000 feet above the surface and hundreds of feet away from the closest Transport vessel, which he quickly glanced down to see was taking the fight straight to what were likely the assassins on the ground below, the two Gergasi stopped their flight and hovered in the air, turning around to watch him approach. While he previously hadn’t 100% confirmed that these were the same pair that had chased him before, seeing them face-to-face verified that they were exactly the same. Even their magical signatures matched what he remembered coming from them before, which were both now quite obvious now that he was near them; they had somehow completely hidden their presence from him before, giving rise to how surprised he was to have seen them.
“Half-breed!” the male Gergasi shouted, the same warhammer that Larek had seen before angled across his shoulder. Even from where the Fusionist paused about 150 feet away from the pair, he could see the sneer on the face of the one shouting toward him. “Why did you do it?”
The question took him aback, both because he wasn’t expecting the Gergasi to talk to him, and because he had no idea what was being asked of him.
He managed a confused, “Uh… what?” a few seconds later.
“Don’t play as if you don’t know, you worthless filth! Did you really think that these dirty slaves are worthy of wielding the power of a Guardian? Once we kill you, we’ll be hunting down every single one of those that your tainted touch has given a poor copy of a Guardian’s special power!”
Oh. They’re mad that I unlocked the full potential in so many people? I would’ve thought that they might be more mad about the way I blocked their ability to influence them with Dominion mag—
“And let’s not forget the heresy of preventing the slaves from hearing and obeying the divine voice of the true Guardians! For that alone, you should die a thousand deaths; unfortunately for me, I only get to kill you once!”
I guess I well and truly ticked them all off. I wonder, will even more come for me after I kill these two?
Before Larek could make any type of response, the two Gergasi attacked simultaneously. The Fusionist hadn’t been idle, however, and had spent the brief delay in the confrontation on creating a dozen clones of himself, all of them formed behind the two Gergasi and out of their peripheral vision. As soon as the pair appeared to be ready to attack, he had them move to intercept – though they fared worse and lasted less time than they did when up against Chinli
The warhammer-wielding Gergasi streaked across the distance, using some sort of Battle Art that made his entire body glow red to Larek’s eyes. Six of Larek’s Pattern clones zipped in front of the attacker to delay him, their halberds out and ready to strike, but the Gergasi didn’t even seem to see them. As they stabbed or chopped into the Gergasi’s body as he crashed through them, Larek saw the Pattern-created weapons they wielded cut through the relatively thin clothing his attacker was wearing, only to bounce off his body. Whether it actually did any damage, he couldn’t tell, but from the one halberd that rebounded off his attacker’s face without any visible mark being left behind, he was inclined to think not.
A blindingly fast, one-handed swipe of a warhammer was all it took to completely obliterate half of the clones sent against the bloodthirsty Gergasi, and a casual backhand destroyed a fourth – all done while it was ignoring their attacks as it streaked through them. Once through the temporary blockade that did absolutely no blocking, Larek had the clones follow after him, despite knowing that they weren’t going to have any more success than before.
As for the other Gergasi, the one that appeared to be more Mage-focused, two of Larek’s clones intercepted a massive lighting bolt spell that enveloped and annihilated them in a fraction of a second – but it didn’t even stop the lightning bolt completely. Instead, it slightly altered the bolt’s path so that it didn’t immediately cross the distance to Larek and strike him, but instead was deflected just far enough to his left that it missed him completely.
Of course, that was just the start of the magical projectiles coming his way, as there was a barrage of fireballs, ice blocks, boulders, and even a beam of incredibly bright light that nearly blinded him in its pathway toward him. Another of his clones got in the way of a single fireball, which was 10 feet wide in diameter and ended up burning through its Pattern in less than a second on its path, while the other clones instead attacked the robed, female Gergasi directly.
Unfortunately, when they got within 10 feet of her, they ran into some sort of barrier that immediately punched back at them with enough force to break them apart completely. The strength of the Pattern he invested into his clones was of no consequence as they shattered apart, through some clearly defensive spell designed to inflict a maximum amount of damage to whoever attacked her; in other words, it was done by a spell that wasn’t even consciously trying to kill them, but that began automatically in response to them being too close.
And just like that, nearly all of the dozen clones that he’d created to help protect him were destroyed – but they had well served their purpose. While not really too much of a distraction or a delay toward the attacks coming his way, it was enough for Larek to aim his Fusion at the incoming male Gergasi and activate it. The glint of the word, “Danger”, was carved into the side of the copper rod he pointed at the giant wielding the Warhammer, and he felt the Transfer Potential Fusion activate, hitting his target.
He wasn’t playing around anymore by trying something safer first; he was going straight for the Fusion he was hoping would be able to kill the Gergasi immediately. It was something he had made specifically to combat opponents that were much stronger than him, after all, so he would be foolish not to use it immediately.
The one and only time he’d used it, it had been against one of the assassins that had attacked him. At the time, as soon as it was activated against the individual, a swirling mass of energy had emerged from their body before it lifted into the air, breaking apart and dissipating into the environment. At the same time, the assassin had frozen and twitched like he had just been hit by lightning, and his skin had turned grey and lifeless, before collapsing in death.
Unfortunately, that didn’t happen here. He saw the Gergasi he targeted pause momentarily in his streak toward him, with a strange, confused look on his face that lasted only a brief second before it was replaced by anger. “How dare you! You cannot take away what was rightly awarded to us long ago, half-breed!”
Larek gulped slightly when he realized his extremely powerful and dangerous Fusion… did absolutely nothing against the Gergasi. He wasn’t sure why it didn’t do the same thing that it had done against the assassin, and with the way he designed the Fusion to essentially rip out any potential in the target, it should’ve worked. The only conclusion he could envision was that the potential was too strongly rooted inside the Gergasi for it to budge, compared to that inside a Human. With a human, it had been like easily ripping out a weed or a small sapling with one’s bare hands; but with a Gergasi, it was more like trying to rip out a massive plant, such as something like the Treehemoth – it just wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.
Just to make sure it wasn’t a fluke, he used it again on the Gergasi, but this time the giant didn’t even pause as he continued streaking toward him, completely ignoring its effects – if it even did anything. At the same time, Larek dodged the spell projectiles coming at him from his other opponent, deftly avoiding being hit by them entirely, but he was already on the losing end of this confrontation now that his Transfer Potential Fusion hadn’t worked the way he’d expected.
Before he knew it, the warhammer-wielding Gergasi was in his face, having tracked his movements and adjusted his trajectory in mid-streak. Larek somehow ducked under a swing that was so fast it was a blur, and he could see a heat haze pass over his head in its wake. Blue flames could be seen around the head of the weapon, fueled by Stama coming from the Gergasi – which wasn’t something he thought was possible. Elemental effects in a Battle Art?
Before he could contemplate this sudden insight, the Fusionist sent himself flying backwards with his Pattern platform to avoid a backswing of the warhammer as he tried to figure out what to do next. Unlike his fight with Chinli, these two weren’t afraid of his clones, so he had to try—
A pair of enormous stone hands suddenly materialized on either side of him and slammed together, squishing him in between them – or it would have, if the portions of the stone that touched the space around his sides hadn’t disappeared into the Protection of the Void surrounding him. Even though he was kept safe from being squished completely flat, he could feel the strain in his Fusion as it struggled to handle being almost completely covered by the spell. What he’d seen happen underneath the Treehemoth with one of the Volunteers didn’t happen because the bottom of his feet were left exposed, but if the stone hands had been bigger or had simply been positioned lower, it was likely that his Fusion would’ve overloaded. If that had happened, he would’ve taken the full brunt of the spell; his Body stat was high enough that it probably wouldn’t have killed him outright, but the force with which the two stone hands had slammed together let him know that he would’ve been heavily injured, at least.
In short, while Larek was still alive after the attack, he was still in trouble.
Even as the stone crumbled around him, the spell having finished, he was already flying through its remnants, his Protection of the Void allowing him to essentially pass through the spell without harm. He emerged from the spell only to meet a warhammer to the face, which thankfully passed straight into the void, causing a brief bout of confusion in the male Gergasi’s expression, before Larek took off yet again.
He was technically faster than both of them in flight, but only in a larger sense; he could cover more distance in a shorter amount of time, but that didn’t exactly translate to being able to exceed their speed in a combat scenario. That was made extremely clear as he couldn’t shake the two Gergasi, with one doggedly keeping up with him and taking increasingly more powerful swipes at him at every opportunity, while the other continued to cast from a distance, as all manner of spells surrounded him with deadly intensity. He was unable to completely avoid a shower of lava that nearly coated him entirely, and it was only a finger that was exposed when he was almost fully encased in a massive ice block that materialized around him, giving him an avenue of escape from what could’ve collapsed his primary protection.
“WHY WON’T YOU DIE?”
Larek ignored the frustrated shout by the weapon-wielding Gergasi, even as his void barrier absorbed a devastating shockwave that emerged from his opponent’s warhammer, staggering him for a moment as his Fusion was nearly overwhelmed. Thankfully, the shockwave was distributed unequally over the entirety of the Protection of the Void, meaning that his Fusion was able to absorb it all, but things were getting a bit tenuous.
Of course, the Fusionist hadn’t been idle during the attacks, as simply fleeing from the constant assault wouldn’t do anything to save him in the long run. While his Resonating Mana Siphon was still actively draining Mana from the two Gergasi and wasn’t replenishing it, a quick look at the female Gergasi told him that she wasn’t in any danger of running out anytime soon. If he could manage to drain her for another 15 or 20 minutes, she might actually run out – but he doubted he could stay alive for that long.
Therefore, he’d taken out two of his staves, both of the VED variety, and he had begun a barrage of explosions, projectiles, and even high-powered streams of acid that the Gergasi took full-on without even attempting to dodge. The explosions, which Larek was able to handle so close to himself because of his Void Fusion, only staggered his opponent a single time before the Gergasi used his Mana for the first time in the fight, other than being used for flight, to create a barrier over his body that seemed to absorb the explosive detonations without slowing him down. It also worked against shattering boulders and multitudes of ice spears, taking it all in without seemingly any effort; it was only when Larek shifted to streams of acid that it seemed to drain the Mana of the Gergasi at a faster rate, enough so that his opponent actually took some pains to dodge out of the way.
Fortunately, while this barrier around the warhammer-wielding Gergasi was effective against the elemental effects of Larek’s staves, it did absolutely nothing against physical attacks. The Fusionist discovered this when he formed a sharp spear of Pattern Cohesion behind the giant and stabbed it into his back with the force of his intent; he watched as it easily passed through the barrier and impacted the Gergasi’s back, stabbing approximately a half-inch into his flesh before it was stopped completely.
Larek inwardly grinned at the expression of surprise on his opponent’s face, but he quickly blanched at the sheer anger he saw replacing it. Reaching behind himself to rip out the Pattern spear, which the Fusionist had attempted to stab deeper but was unable to pierce the natural durability of the Gergasi’s flesh, the warhammer-wielding giant yanked it out and crushed it in his hand, causing Larek’s construct to shatter apart. He then gingerly touched his back and pulled back a single finger stained by a dot of blood.
The Fusionist was fairly sure that the wound had already closed by this point, but the sight of the blood infuriated the Gergasi.
“What? You— NO ONE MAKES ME BLEED MY OWN BLOOD!”
Larek was glad for his Protection of the Void Fusion’s sound dampening effect, because the eardrum-crushing roar of absolute rage that came next would’ve deafened him. A visible aura of red surrounded the Gergasi, growing larger by the second; and suddenly Larek was again on the back foot as his opponent instantly became twice as fast – and, he estimated, twice as strong, though it was hard to tell because the blows that fell on him were absorbed by the void. Explosive detonations appeared at the end of every swing, which came so fast that it was a constant blur of flaming warhammer heads at his chest or head. His own counterattacks were completely ignored, including the few stabs with Pattern constructs that he managed to slip through, though none of them did even half the damage he’d done at first.
Switching his tactics, he stored the staves away and brought out a few other Fusions to see if they would work better. Heavy Load, which he’d used successfully in the past to squish assassins down into spheres of compressed matter, slowed the Gergasi down only a tiny bit as the giant’s strength was enough to overcome the greater weight that was attempting to condense him down. In short, it only seemed to make him angrier, as the force of the explosive detonations coming from the head of the warhammer increased in potency.
Vacuum Blast, which sucked away all of the air in an area before violently blasting it outward, seemed to affect the Gergasi not at all, as he didn’t seem to care that he couldn’t breathe for a few moments; only a slight wavering in its flight showed that he even cared that there was an explosive decompression in the air.
Blinding Heat and Blinding Freeze came next, and as they floated in the air above where Larek was leading the enraged Gergasi around, the extreme heat and blinding effect of the Fusion got through the aura of rage surrounding him for a moment, before another barrier was cast around him to block its effects. Blinding Freeze didn’t even have the same effect, as it seemed as though the barrier that blocked heat and blinding effects also prevented the blood in the Gergasi’s body from freezing into ice.
Reaching into his Void Pocket sack, he went to pull something else out to try against the Gergasi, but he stopped when he realized he was out of offensive Fusions to use. Just as this realization came about, something else occurred to him.
Where’s the other Gergasi? She hasn’t attacked me in nearly a minute—
That was when he looked around and saw for the first time a spell that was so large in its structure that he couldn’t believe he had missed it until now. A large, transparent blue, glowing sphere approximately 200 feet in diameter surrounded where he had been leading the warhammer-wielding Gergasi, who – when he glanced around some more – was no longer bearing down on him. Instead, his angry and persistent opponent was now outside of the glowing sphere, floating next to the female Gergasi, who was slightly hunched over, a look of intense concentration and effort clear on her face. Larek could see massive streams of Mana flowing out of her and connecting to the enormous sphere; the reason that it seemed like it was taking a lot of effort was because his Resonating Mana Siphon was draining nearly as much Mana as she was pumping in, so much so that he was sure she would run out if she kept it up for much longer.
He wondered exactly what the sphere was supposed to be doing, as it didn’t seem harmful at first – at least until it began to rapidly shrink. A few attempts at using his staves and other Fusions to break out of the glowing blue bubble proved to be a mistake as they rebounded on him, bouncing off the internal surface of the sphere as if it was some sort of anti-magic barrier. He flew to the shrinking edge and slammed his halberd against the surface, only to have it rebound as if it was the strongest rubber in the world, showing not even the slightest scratch or dent. His fist did the same as he punched at it with all his might, and he let his Body Regeneration Skill work on repairing his shoulder muscles as his fist rebounded off with at least twice the force and speed that he threw the punch.
What that punch also revealed was that his Protection of the Void Fusion didn’t seem to work against the contracting bubble, either. Where it should’ve been surrounding his fist, the sphere seemed to not even care if it was there or not.
The sphere continued to shrink, dropping from 200 feet in diameter to half that in only about 10 seconds. The smaller it got, the faster it shrunk, so that a few seconds later, there were only about 30 feet in between the sides – and there didn’t seem to be anything he could do.
If Larek couldn’t figure a way out of there, he was fairly certain he was going to be crushed to death in the next few seconds.