One moment, Larek was telling his mother the story of how he’d met Nedira, enjoying the experience of having his family back together as all of the Volunteers and former SIC inside The Hopper gathered around; and then the next moment, the world seemed to blink, and his family was gone. Not only that, but he was still on the top deck of The Hopper, instead of having retreated inside to talk with them. But rather than it being stationary, it was dropping like a rock through the air.

  He instinctively grabbed at Nedira near him, who was starting to lift up from the descending vessel, as he tried to figure out what had happened. Were we hit by a Clockwork Elemental? I was almost entirely sure that the defensive measures I had designed would work. Regardless of what had happened to cause something like this, the important thing was stabilizing The Hopper so that they wouldn’t crash into the ground below, so he quickly established a connection with the Fusions—How did I lose that connection?—and brought it slowly to a stop.

  As he did so, he noticed that the top deck of the vessel was in horrible shape, and he couldn’t seem to remember how it had gotten that way. Fortunately, from what he could feel from it, the internal portions of it were fine, as only the top had been damaged—likely from whatever knocked us out of the sky—so his family should be fine. He looked at Nedira and intended to ask her if she knew what happened, but he only got out a single word before a wider sense of the area suddenly flooded his mind.

  Up above, he could feel what was likely the result of his Mass Energy Absorption Fusion; he didn’t remember actually activating it, so he could only assume that Nedira or one of the others had. Further out, he could still sense that the Primal Essence barrier keeping The Hopper inside the Calamity was still there, though it was being rapidly absorbed by the activated Fusion above – which was working exactly as he had intended.

  Rather than being happy that his creation was operating correctly, as he hadn’t been fully sure it would work given that it would destroy itself in the process, his senses caught something else. Above him and outside of the Calamity, right along the border, were 9 distinct Gergasi signatures, and his vision snapped right to them. He didn’t recognize any of them as he quickly searched to see if his biological father was among their number, and Larek was glad that Vilnesh wasn’t there; the Divine Fusionist wasn’t sure if he could face his biological father at that moment, especially after speaking with his family.

  That thought led him to look at a particular Gergasi, a woman who was staring down at him with purposeful intent. A tendril of Mana shot out at him from the robed woman, and he instinctively caught it with his own, stopping it immediately in its downward trajectory. The moment his Mana touched the woman’s energy, a flood of information cascaded through his mind, telling him who this woman was—Verlara—and what her main Specialization was. Once he learned that she was a Mentalist, one thing after another *clicked* in his head, connecting this woman to the experience he’d just undergone only moments ago.

  Somehow, she had connected the minds of his real family to his mind, and because those he experienced were familiar and trusted, he hadn’t even noticed it. Despite his doubts while he had been mentally reunited with his family, at no point did he consider that it hadn’t been real. But it was, technically. I actually was connected with them, at a distance, and now I know that they are alive and relatively well. He supposed that he owed a debt of gratitude toward the woman for reuniting them that way, but…

  …she had deliberately used the love of his family to manipulate him, forcing him into a fugue-like state so that the other Gergasi could kill him. In other words, there wasn’t a shred of gratitude in his body for such a person.

  More than that, the sheer violation of his mind made him angry, more furious than he’d ever been before. To not only have his family locked away but to dangle them in front of him like bait was going too far, and their loss, after he discovered they weren’t actually there with him, was like an open wound.

  And the only salve that would help mitigate the fresh pain was righteous vengeance.

  “Move further into the Calamity,” he said through gritted teeth, his eyes on the Gergasi as they began to descend to the level where The Hopper was, even as he assigned control of the vessel to his betrothed. “I’ll come find you when I’m done.”

  He didn’t wait for a response, as his leap from the top of The Hopper caused the wooden vessel to nearly flip over, and he shot toward the Primal Essence barrier around the border. His tunnel vision had focused on the Gergasi, all of whom looked annoyed at first but then amused at his jump, as he was heading straight toward them. He suspected that they figured he would be stopped by the same thing that kept The Hopper from leaving, and then they would be able to kill him while he was separated by his allies.

  Unfortunately for them, the barrier wasn’t an obstacle to someone like him.

  Without even really thinking about it, he reached out and used his Primal Essence Mastery to part the thick layer of Primal Essence in front of him, dispersing it to the sides as he shot through it, slowing down not a whit as he emerged from the other side and finally left the Calamity. He caught the astonishment on the face of a Gergasi in thick leather armor as he collided at full speed with them, sending both of them tumbling as he used his entire strength to rain a series of punches down on him. He didn’t bother to pull out a weapon because he didn’t need one; all he needed was his fist and leverage, both of which he had as his legs wrapped around the Gergasi’s waist.

  Of course, despite his abrupt aggression and the initial barrage of blows he was able to get through before his opponent could fully react, he was still facing one of the extremely powerful Gergasi. Through his unending rage, he could see that he’d actually caved in a portion of his victim’s face, but that wasn’t enough to stop the man from trying to extract himself and stab Larek through the eye with one of the daggers he was holding.

  Most people, when throwing themselves into combat with 9 different foes that were all—at least theoretically—around the same strength as them, might think about their steps before taking some like Larek’s, but he was almost beyond thought by this point. The absolute fury that had flooded his entire body from the acts that had been perpetrated upon him had taken over, and he felt like he dared the Gergasi to try to actually harm him. He saw the knife coming for his eye, but he didn’t even blink or flinch; instead, he watched with rage-fueled amusement as the blade hit disappeared into the void surrounding Larek due to his Absolute Protective Fields Fusion. A second knife tried stabbing into his kidneys, but it, too, was swallowed up by the void that was protecting the Divine Fusionist.

  The panic on the Gergasi’s face as neither of his attacks seemed to be able to penetrate Larek’s defense was like a shot of happiness to the Fusionist’s psyche, and he felt himself smiling as both of them were engulfed in a blaze of fire so hot that it could melt steel. One of the other Gergasi had taken advantage of Larek being in one position to try to finish him off, but all his attempt did was singe the one he had a hold on, as it was largely absorbed by the Magical Energy Absorption Effect of his protective Fusion. Any effort that made it through was also lost to the void, proving that his new creation was more than enough to handle anything that the Gergasi could throw at him.

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  A surge of energy inside his opponent had him staring at the combination of Mana and Stama being used together, and when he felt what seemed like a spell finish, he reached out with his ability to manipulate energy and… dispersed the Mana and Stama into the environment.

  “What? How—?”

  Larek slammed his forehead into the leather-armored Gergasi’s face, breaking the man’s nose, even as he unleashed another flurry of punches into his chest. Ultimately, that wasn’t doing a lot, as the Gergasi had a Body stat that could withstand quite a bit of abuse, but Larek wasn’t done.

  Instinctually, he started layering his internal Pattern onto the outside of his fists, forming spikes that extended out from his knuckles like claws, and when he stabbed them into the man, he used his Stama to layer the outside of the spikes, hardening them past what they could normally handle, while injecting his internal Pattern with Mana to stabilize its internal structure.

  The wide-eyed look on the Gergasi’s face, when Larek’s next right-hand punch not only pierced his extremely tough leather but also slid through his flesh like a slab of beef, left him feeling ecstatic – especially when it pierced right through the man’s heart. That still wasn’t enough to kill him, but when he stabbed his left hand into the other side of the man’s ribcage and then pulled them away from each other, essentially ripping the Gergasi’s chest apart and severing his spine, Larek didn’t think his victim would survive for much longer.

  All of that had only taken a few seconds to accomplish, which meant that they were barely even starting to fall from where he’d slammed into his opponent; so, Larek released his legs from around the dying Gergasi and formed a platform under his feet. The others were already bombarding him with spells, all of which failed in one way or another, but they weren’t content to hit him from afar. Nearly all of them sped toward him through the air, their weapons ready and prepared to crush or eviscerate, and the glow of Battle Arts speeding them up or lending extra damage to their attacks was visible. A few of them even seemed to teleport short distances in order to reach him quicker, which he realized was what his first opponent had been trying to do: teleport away from him. It was too bad for him that Larek wasn’t willing to let him go once he had his hands on his first victim.

  The first victim of many that day.

  Quickly forming a dozen copies of himself through the use of his Guardian Skills, Larek added layers of Stama and Mana throughout their exteriors to bolster their defenses, and then let them free to distract the Gergasi as much as possible. An explosive arrow detonated just outside of his protective Fusion, creating a much bigger explosion than he would’ve expected; he supposed that the attacker might have thought that if it wasn’t directly absorbed by his defenses, it might get through, but that didn’t happen as the void swallowed it up completely. Once the first melee attacker attempted to bisect him twice in a crosscut of massive swords, temporarily destabilizing the protective Energy Negation shield around him, he could see the others attempt to take advantage of this by bombarding him with even more spells designed to kill just about anyone hit by them.

  His void was overwhelmed almost immediately, but he formed a layer of Pattern Cohesion around his body and firmed it up using Mana and Stama like he had his claws, and he withstood the destructive forces slamming into him almost non-stop. He also created a Pattern shield that not only slammed into the Gergasi who attempted to bisect him, pushing the man away slightly, but it also deflected yet another explosive arrow right into the path of a woman who was wielding a two-bladed staff. She wasn’t hurt by the explosion, as it only sent her tumbling backwards, but it relieved some of the pressure on him as he dealt with the others.

  Using a Pattern shield to block attacks headed his way, as well as his newly Leveled Dodge Skill, Larek was able to push himself to avoid many of the attacks headed his way, while his clones harried them from behind. Not everything was able to be avoided or blocked, or even negated or absorbed by a void, and he began accumulating a few wounds here and there – which he let stay as they simply fueled his rage even further.

  That was because he wasn’t simply trying to avoid getting killed by the Gergasi; he intended to kill each and every one of them.

  As his fury built, so apparently did his capacity for manipulating energy. He became more and more adept at creating Pattern shields to block incoming attacks, and he was able to strengthen them with Mana and Stama until they could actually start to inflict a little bit of damage when they hit one of his opponents. Of course, this still didn’t actually do much, as they were much more robust than any monster he’d faced before, and they had just as strong of Martial Skills as he did, if not even stronger. He might have improved lately when it came to holding his own in a fight like this, at least one-on-one, but this was a losing battle against so many – especially as none of them would let him get close enough to do what he’d done to the first one he got his hands on.

  But he didn’t need to fight them on their terms. Larek wasn’t just any half-breed that they decided didn’t deserve to exist because of who he was; he was a Divine Fusionist, after all, and they were just about to find out what that meant.

  When Larek had first been researching Apertures and how they seemed to connect to another world, that led him to the creation of the Traveling Gates, each of which was fueled by Primal Essence that it formed from the ambient energy in the environment. Since then, he had only gotten better at forming and manipulating the powerful energy, applying it in a few unique ways, such as utilizing it to reignite the potential within the Bereft. But now he wanted to use it for the original purpose.

  Movement. Or, to be more exact, the lack of movement.

  Above the battle, even while he had been defending himself against the Gergasi, Larek had been creating a formation in the air. While he typically needed some sort of solid material to fuse the formation to, in this case, he was using the very air as an attachment anchor; it wouldn’t last very long once he released it, but it didn’t need to. It simply needed to perform the purpose for which he was designing it.

  He wasn’t going to fill the formation with Mana or even Stama, though; instead, he was going to fill it with Primal Essence, similar to his Traveling Gates. Thankfully, he didn’t need to try to scrounge up and create a bunch of the powerful energy, as there was a ready source of it nearby.

  Reaching out to the Primal Essence along the inside of the Calamity’s border, he funneled it out and began filling the formation at a rapid pace. He nearly faltered in the process when he was suddenly attacked by an organized group of Gergasi, who managed to not only overwhelm all of his Pattern shields and his Absolute Protective Fields, but also managed to slice deep into the front of his neck, cutting off his airway as it filled with blood.

  Still, he didn’t heal himself, both as a way to bolster his anger and ability to manipulate so much energy, as well as to encourage the Gergasi. With him bleeding out, they were visibly beginning to believe he was losing.

  Oh, how wrong they are.

  “Kill him, already! Finish him off quickly, and then we can lure out the rest of them!”

  “He can’t keep this up forever!”

  “Die, half-breed! This is for what you did to Biddlew!”

  “Pathetic scum! He can’t do anything against us now!”

  “Hold on, what is that up there—?”

  Larek ignored them all and kept up his defense, though it was getting harder to do as he struggled to hold enough Primal Essence within his formation. The last question came from the same Mentalist who had messed with his mind earlier, and who had been largely staying back and only slinging the occasional spell his way, as if she was too scared to get too close to him ever since he crushed her attempt to return him to his mental prison.

  When he heard that, he knew that time was just about up; fortunately, so was his aerial Fusion.

  With a powerful *click* that reverberated through the area like an explosion, the formation’s Effect washed over everyone in the vicinity but him, as he’d specifically excluded himself. The results were immediate, as all of the Gergasi attacking him froze, their movement paused in the Zone of Traveling Restrictions, the new Fusion he’d created in the spur of the moment. It would only last as long as it took the formation to disperse in the air, but that was all the time he needed.

  With a grim smile, punctuated by the blood still dripping from his quickly closing neck wound, Larek let free the fury and rage that he’d been accumulating this entire time.