The satisfying *thunk* of his axe sliding into the pale wood of the tree ahead of him caused Larek to smile as he hit it precisely where he had aimed. A significantly large chunk of the trunk fell away from the wedge he was creating, adding yet another to the precise piles he had already cut away. Each subsequent strike cut even further into the trunk of the Rushwood tree he was felling, and he applied a very small portion of his innate Strength to bite deep into the pale wood, enjoying the feeling of satisfaction as he finally cut enough away that he could push on it a little further up the trunk to crack it the rest of the way.

  Exercising a much larger portion of his Strength, he maneuvered the falling tree to precisely where he wanted it, landing 30 feet away from his previous arboreal victim. In the past, this was where either he or his siblings would scramble over the branches, trimming them off so that the fallen tree could be turned into a log, which would then be transported downstream to the Rushwood sawmill.

  Times had certainly changed since then.

  Pulling a slightly curved steel plate with two spikes sticking out below on the bottom of the fallen tree, he tapped it with his fist, driving the plate into the bark, where it was stuck fast. Mentally activating the Accelerated Delimbing Fusion on it, he turned toward his next target as it went to work. Thousands of sharp air blades worked their way up the trunk just above the bark, ripping through the tree limbs sticking out in all directions, even those that were facing the ground, all without having to roll the tree to get to them. Less than a minute later, a second tree fell near the first, and he pulled out yet another curved steel plate with the Accelerated Delimbing Fusion on it, and let it do its thing.

  A few hours later, there were hundreds of fallen trees that had been completely delimbed and were ready to transport. Theoretically, he could’ve cut down even more if he had been seriously behind, as he had only used a fraction of his true Strength and his axe only had a Strengthen and Sharpen Edge +2 Fusion on it, but that wasn’t his purpose for being there in the Rushwood Forest in the first place. The steady exercise was instead a relaxing experience, somewhere he could lose himself without falling into a Fusion-related trance that could last for hours or even days. While he didn’t consider either of the activities actual work, being in the forest and engaging in a familiar activity was an enjoyable experience that he wouldn’t trade for just about anything in the world.

  “All done?”

  Larek turned around at the voice, seeing that Luciana had brought her team with her, the older woman still as strong and spry as she was when he was younger. “Yep, that should do it for the day.”

  The Divine Fusionist watched as Luciana and her team went to work, activating the secondary Portable Lifter Effect on the steel plates still on each tree, and they started lifting each of them as if they only weighed as much as an axe, rather than their actual weight. Once they hauled the trees to the river, they would detach the plate and bring it back to Larek, so that it could be used again, though Larek had thousands of them in his sack if he really needed them.

  While they started moving things out, he began to send his senses into the ground, finding the loci of energy underneath each Rushwood tree that caused them to grow so fast, rerouting the feeds so that they dispersed into the air instead. Soon after returning to the northern part of the Kingdom, Larek had discovered that the magical trait that caused the Rushwood Forest to grow so quickly emerged from tendrils of helixed Pattern Cohesion, Mana, and Stama – like a natural Fusion formation on a fundamental level. Once he discovered that, he had taken it upon himself to start trimming down the wildly overgrown Rushwood Forest and snuffing out the regrowth aspect of those he felled, so that they wouldn’t grow back. That didn’t stop the other trees from sending out tendrils of these natural energy helixes to spread themselves into cleared areas once again, but by getting rid of the loci underneath felled trees, he was able to slow down the regrowth of an area by a few months.

  That was perfectly fine with him, since it gave him – and the Rushwood Logging Company he founded – something to do. Supplying the entire Kingdom with wood was an important endeavor, one that he was happy to do every day. With the availability of instantaneous travel between areas thanks to his Traveling Gates, it was easy enough to move a shipment of lumber from the sawmill to just about anywhere in the Kingdom, and even beyond, within hours, instead of it taking weeks or months like it used to. When he developed a few Fusions that helped with safely drying out the wood and seasoning it for use in construction, there wasn’t much better than having Rushwood as a material for building just about anything.

  It also helped that each and every plank or block of wood, which was fabricated in the new workshop near the sawmill, also had a small army of Fusionists, who added Strengthen Fusions to them to keep them safe from cracking or splitting. Of course, with stronger wood came the need for nails that could penetrate it and connect wooden pieces together, which led to the construction of yet another workshop that dealt with that kind of material. Adding Fusions to so many nails had required Larek to finally develop the idea he’d had a while ago concerning arrays of Fusions to perform multiple Effects, and he had stumbled upon a way to add a Fusion to an object without specifically needing a Fusionist to perform the task. It only worked for mass production right now, and each individual nail had to be an almost-perfect copy of one another, but all it would take was someone inserting batches of nails into the Sharpening array of Fusions and then activating it. The process had revolutionized the way certain things were made and how Fusions were applied to them, as it saved a lot of time and headaches along the way.

  Now that his morning shift was over, Larek took his time scanning the landscape as he quickly made his way home. Over the last few weeks, they had been clearing out larger swathes of the Rushwood Forest, and they had nearly achieved enough progress to bring it back to where it had been before it had been allowed to grow nearly unchecked. Once they got it to that relatively arbitrary line, he wasn’t planning on unraveling the loci of energy underneath the trees further on, as they would’ve cleared more than enough for construction of additional towns to begin.

  It had been a long time coming, but he was looking forward to seeing the end result of nearly a decade and a half of hard work. He just wished that it hadn’t taken him so long to get to it, because once he had finally had a chance to set his sights on clearing the Forest, it had grown so extensively that it had covered nearly a quarter of the northern portion of the Kingdom. Then again, he’d had some more important things on his mind back then – such as the Clockwork Calamity.

  While the Calamity hadn’t grown nearly as large as any of the others that he’d help close, it had still taken him and the rest of the Volunteer organization a few weeks to systematically clear out all of the monsters inside, as the creatures’ populations had grown to such astronomical numbers that it took that long just to kill them. They didn’t have any issues killing the Clockwork Elementals, thankfully, as Larek’s Fusions were more than powerful enough to destroy them while protecting the people doing the destroying – though the Divine Fusionist hadn’t actually participated in the slaughter.

  Instead, he had spent a few weeks gradually siphoning off the Primal Essence that had filled the Calamity’s territory, using it to fuel thousands of relatively simple Fusions around the Kingdom that created an aura of safety around villages, towns, and cities. The aura his Fusions created was basically a zone that masked the presence of Pure Aetheric Force, which was what monsters used to locate and target people, as they produced that energy more than anything else in the world. Ultimately, all Larek’s work did was essentially blind the monsters to the presence of the towns and cities around the Kingdom, though anyone traveling around in between them was still in danger.

  This success was important to have, as the flood of monsters out of the Diregate had spread nearly everywhere, and even 16 years later, he wasn’t sure if they had all been found. In addition, as soon as the Calamity was cleared of monsters and the Aperture in the middle was closed, the remnants of the high energy content trapped inside of its territory was released, which spawned hundreds of thousands of monsters within 1,000 miles of the former Calamity. It wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been if he hadn’t siphoned off quite a lot of the Primal Essence, but it was still a major threat that had taken over a year to fully recover from.

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  Fortunately, with all of the Calamities closed, the Volunteers took over running the Kingdom and were well-suited to ensuring that no other Calamities formed. Kimble and a few others had tried to convince Larek to become the leader of the Kingdom – like some kind of King or something – but he had no desire to be shoved into that kind of role. Instead, Kimble himself took on that role, but instead of being the sole leader, there was a council of sorts that ran the Kingdom. Or perhaps Councildom? No, that sounds ridiculous. Whatever it was called now, the decade after the Gergasi had been eliminated had been a time of rebuilding and substantial growth, as Fusions made almost every part of typical life better and ensured that everyone had food to eat and a place to live.

  Apertures still existed, despite the Breach being largely closed, as did the Diregate – but the threats they posed were minimal, as it was still a relatively tiny Scission that spat out a wave of weak monsters every day or so. It seemed as though he was correct about it being connected to the Breach, and with the Breach hardly letting any energy out of it, the Diregate couldn’t expand, nor create any monsters worth worrying about.

  What had expanded was the Fusionist Sanctuary, which had been wildly successful in adapting to Larek’s techniques and improving the Skills that were passed on, and it soon became the best place for learning on the entire continent. Students from places as far away as the Empire of Sealance and beyond traveled to the Kingdom to attend classes in the Sanctuary, both to learn more about Fusions and to bring that knowledge back to their home countries, as well as to make connections with those who lived here. Traveling Gates had been installed in nearly every nation that they knew of, though it was usually only 1 or 2 for security purposes on both sides.

  As for his friends, Kimble and Esmer were on the council ruling the Kingdom, and they seemed to be quite busy, as Larek hadn’t seen either of them in years – it had been when he attended their wedding, if he remembered correctly. Verne went back to the Dyran Hearthwood with Teena and helped to rebuild from the devastation his people had undergone after the Apertures began to form, but they’d been back to visit at least once a year; fortunately, journeying far distances was easy enough when Traveling Gates were involved.

  General Auran maintained control over most of the fighting forces in the Kingdom, along with Bartholomew as her right-hand man, and they had done a spectacular job ensuring that every village, town, and city was equipped to help alleviate the threat that nearby Apertures represented. Most of the Fusions needed for the equipment had been provided by the Fusionist Sanctuary, and it had been years since Larek had been asked to create anything for them to keep operating at full capacity.

  Penelope and Vivienne had spent almost a decade working with the Volunteers to help stabilize the Kingdom, but had eventually “retired” and settled down, and they now lived far to the south, about halfway from the Kingdom and the Protectorate of Jaroup, and Larek hadn’t seen either of them for about a year at that point.

  As for Norde, Nedira’s brother, he had gone back to Tyrendel shortly after Larek’s wedding, in which he married his former roommate’s sister, Nedira. It turned out that the two of them were the children of some politically powerful people back in their homeland, and after her parents came to visit for the wedding, they took him back to Tyrendel so that he could resume his duties back there.

  Thankfully, neither of her parents had objected to Larek marrying their daughter. As much as the Divine Fusionist hadn’t cared for all of the attention, their wedding had been one of the biggest events in the Kingdom’s entire history, and it lasted nearly a month in constant celebration. Over 10 million people packed into and around Thanesh, where the ceremony had been held, and Nedira even hinted, some days, that it was still talked about in a reverent tone by some people.

  Larek hadn’t heard anyone talking about it lately, so he couldn’t say whether she was exaggerating or not.

  Rounding a hill on his relatively long trek back home, he saw his house just up ahead. Unlike the small cottage in which Larek grown up, Nedira had opted to build something a bit more grand.

  To call it a palace wasn’t that far off, though Larek thought that it was a bit ostentatious to think that he lived in such a regal-sounding building. It was massive, however, as building material and construction were things that the Divine Fusionist had no trouble producing, and once he started building it and adding more and more as the fancy struck him, it had sort of grown out of control. Covering almost a full square mile by itself, the house ranged from only a story tall to 5 stories tall, and there were hundreds of rooms inside – just in case they had to host a party or something like that.

  At least, that was what Nedira told him it was for. He hadn’t really cared at the time, as he had enjoyed putting the house together; it was similar to forming a three-dimensional formation, though it was one that they could live within. His family lived inside of it along with Larek and Nedira, which had originally included his parents and his siblings, though Marco and Kendee had moved out and pursued other challenges once they got a little older – as neither of them liked the Logging business like Larek had. The last he’d heard, which was a few months out of date, was that both of them were working in and out of the capital, though what they were doing wasn’t something he pried into too much.

  As it was, the enormous house was fairly empty at the moment. They had a few people they’d hired over the years to help out here and there, but the majority of the cleaning and maintenance was handled by custom-made Fusions, after the Divine Fusionist had learned that Nedira was running herself ragged trying to keep everything clean and dusted.

  Now, it was all automatically taken care of, with only occasional monitoring to ensure that nothing got missed. The only thing that Nedira spent time doing was nurturing the massive garden outside, as she genuinely loved it almost as much as Larek loved Fusions.

  Thinking about Nedira and her gardens, he wasn’t surprised to see her kneeling in the dirt, manually weeding and planting some new flowers; just as Larek could probably chop down the entire Rushwood Forest in a day if he chose to use his abilities but didn’t because he enjoyed the manual labor, Nedira also preferred to get down and dirty in the garden rather than use spells to weed, plant, or grow everything within.

  He snuck up on her while she was distracted, which was hard to do nowadays because she was so perceptive, but just like when he got focused on his Fusions, she lost herself in her gardening. Picking her up by the waist, she screamed momentarily at her sudden change of position, before she began laughing as he twirled her around. He kissed his wife even as they spun, and he laughed along with her before he put her down.

  Slapping his arm, she said, “Don’t do that! You scared me half to death!”

  “Sorry, not sorry,” he replied with a grin.

  “Whatever,” she grunted, hands on her hips – which transferred the dirt on her fingers to her pretty green dress. “Already done for the day? Good. You know who has been impatiently waiting for—”

  “Dad! There you are!”

  Still smiling, Larek swung around and grabbed the flying missile that was his son, swooping him around in a parody of what he’d just done with his wife. “What’s up, kiddo?”

  “Dad, I’m not a kid anymore! I’m 12 years old, as you know, and as of today you said you would take me along to the Aperture!”

  Larek pretended to think about it for a moment before turning to Nedira. “Really? Did I say that? That seems way too dangerous for a kid like him.”

  “Uh, uh – you aren’t getting out of this, Dad. You know what you said, and I even have the sword you had made for me so that I could kill some monsters.”

  His wife threw up her hands. “I’m not in this – keep me out of it,” she said with a smile. “But if I have to hear one more plea from your son to let him go to the Aperture, I’ll take him myself.”

  Sighing dramatically, Larek paused in thought one more time. Just as he saw his boy – who was nearly 6 feet tall even at 12 years old, taking after his father – start to open his mouth to argue again, the Divine Fusionist said, “Oh, alright. Do you have your Absolute Protective Fields Fusion, at least?”

  “Come on, please—wait. You said we can go?”

  “I guess so. But only if you’re fully protected,” Larek warned, his voice serious.

  “Of course, of course. I’m as ready as can be,” he replied, showing the active medallion around his neck.

  That was all Larek needed to see. The nearby Aperture was about two miles from the house, but it was filled with Bog Goblins – who were honestly very little threat to his son, even without a protective Fusion. He had personally trained him in some basic swordsmanship, and he knew his boy could tear through the Goblins without any trouble. Next year, his child would be heading to Thanesh to attend the Academy there to learn more about his abilities in a more structured format, as well to expose him to a bit more socialization.

  There wasn’t much in the way of friends to be had on the frontier of the Rushwood Forest, after all.

  “Well then, what are we waiting for? Let’s go; you can lead the way.” As his son smiled and took off at a run, heading precisely for the Aperture in the distance, Larek couldn’t help but think of the one after whom he had named his son, the same one who’d formally introduced him to Fusions all the way back at Crystalview Academy.

  “You keep Annik safe, you hear?” Nedira told him, her voice firm and uncompromising.

  Leaning over, he kissed her quickly before starting after his son.

  Shouting over his shoulder as he left, Larek, Avatar of Fusions and Divine Fusionist, replied, “Of course, I will. He’s my family; and I don’t let anyone mess with my family.”

  THE END…

  …and the end of the Magical Fusion series.