Pulling out his halberd, Larek got to work. Activating Fleetfoot, Tactician Mind, Consuming Speed, and Furious Rampage, his Agility increased by 250% while his Strength doubled; his Body stat took a hit by reducing by 90%, but that was just fine – because he wasn’t planning on being hit by anything.

  Speeding up to the point where anyone seeing him would have trouble seeing him move through the air, the Divine Fusionist channeled his anger into his first swing against a female, robe-wearing Mage that had very recently bombarded him with lightning and fire spells. Upon contact, he activated the Acid-based Gust Sphere Effect along the edge of the weapon, which only marginally punched through her flesh; what it did do, however, was weaken it to the point where the blade of the halberd – which was incredibly sharp because of a Strengthen and Sharpen Edge +18 Fusion on it – was able to cut through with minimal resistance.

  His first swing was through her torso, so fast that both halves of her were barely separating by the time his return swing – with another few applications of the Acid-based Gust Sphere – had sliced off both legs at the knees. Once it was through her lower appendages, he turned its arc upwards in a curve, keeping its momentum, before he detached her left arm at the shoulder, cut through her neck, and then brought it down to cut through her right shoulder to remove her right arm. Whipping the halberd’s shaft around his body in a follow-through swing, he planted the blade right between her eyes, before activating a Stone-based Gust Sphere to completely obliterate her brain.

  He was just getting started.

  Forming a dozen spinning sawblades of Pattern Cohesion, he strengthened them with an application of Mana and Stama, before sending them toward the Gergasi in full plate armor at different angles. The screech of his internal Pattern cutting through the powerful armor of the Gergasi was simply background music as he pointed his halberd at a third Gergasi and activated the Heavy Load Effect from the Arsenal multiple times, each of them forcing the woman with her bow drawn to start collapsing into a ball of heavy weight. The biggest difference between what he had used against Farmas and now was the strength of the Fusion, which was now at least twice as strong as it had been before – and he was able to get off a half-dozen activations that all activated fast enough that they compiled one on top of another, increasing its potency.

  That wasn’t enough to kill her, unfortunately, but that was just the prelude to what was going to happen next. Pulling an extremely powerful Weaken +25 stone from his Void Pocket sack, he threw it at the collapsing space around the Gergasi archer and activated it. Even as he saw it get sucked into the heavy area surrounding the woman, he felt it start to break apart as it was pulled nearly into her chest. All of the Mana that he’d poured into the Weaken Fusion was released all at once, and with nowhere to go because all of the space was collapsing inward, the explosion was contained within the confines of the Heavy Load. Unfortunately for the archer, she was inside the space while it happened.

  Meanwhile, Larek was still moving toward his next target. Aiming his halberd at another Gergasi near him, he activated the Portable Lifter Effect and flipped the chainmail-wearing woman over until her head was pointing straight down. Again with his halberd, he activated the Vacuum Blast effect multiple times in a row, directed right at the Gergasi’s feet, and he felt a massive amount of air get sucked into a condensed space, where it would soon decompress in a powerful blast of air. Before that happened, however, he formed a shell of thick Pattern Cohesion around her lower body and up to her shoulders, leaving one end open with her head exposed, with the closed end also encompassing the compressed air from Vacuum Blast. He wanted to contain the explosive decompression in as small of a space as possible, so that it would be more concentrated.

  The result exceeded his expectations.

  When the air decompressed, the air had nowhere to go but the open end where the woman’s head was located. As it rapidly expanded, the Pattern Cohesion shell cracked and then exploded, but not before the majority of the pressure pushed against the body blocking its primary escape route. One moment, the Gergasi was floating 200 feet above the ground, and the next, she had been shot out of the end of the Pattern tube at such an incredible velocity that not even Larek could perceive it with his heightened Intellect and Acuity due to Tactician Mind. When he glanced at the ground below, he saw the results, at least; not only had the woman hit the ground with such force that her body crumpled and then burst from the impact, but she left a crater 50 feet wide and 15 feet deep, blasting dirt, stone, and grass in all directions.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that his sawblade Pattern constructs had finally cut through the plate armor of the Gergasi he had targeted, and they were currently tearing through the flesh beneath. They weren’t getting too far, however, because the Body stat on the man was apparently even higher than Larek’s, but he let them continue; while they weren’t biting too deep at first, he could sense that they would eventually get through everything in their way, given enough time. He didn’t have a lot of time before the Effect of his Zone of Traveling Restrictions started to fade, but it would be more than enough to eviscerate the armored Gergasi from multiple angles.

  Pulling out another Fusion from his Void Pocket sack, he wrapped the heavy column of stone with another Pattern construct, which allowed him to direct the powerful Focused Light Beam +18 without having to carry it himself. He positioned it over another Gergasi wearing white-and-gold robes and wielding a golden spear, with white, feathery, Mana construct wings positioned behind her back. A glow emanated from her body as if she was being illuminated by her own importance, so he only thought it fitting for him to put even more of a spotlight on her. Positioning the Focused Light Beam right above her head, only 6 inches away and pointing downwards, he remotely activated it and watched as the beam of light emerged from the end of the Fusion.

  At first, nothing much happened, though he could see a little smoke wisp up from the Gergasi’s hair, but only a second later the intense heat of the concentrated light finally produced a satisfactory result. With her not being able to move, the beam began to melt the skin off her head as her long, silvery hair caught fire; soon after that, the rest of her flesh started to run off the top of her head as the beam cooked her brain inside of her skull, before even that blackened and cracked, causing her eyes to explode from the intense build-up of heat.

  He left the Focused Light Beam running as he reached out and grabbed yet another Gergasi, the man’s powerful hands outstretched from his robe sleeves as he had prepared to fling another spell at Larek. This time, instead of utilizing a Fusion that he’d at least used before or experimented with, he figured he might as well use another of his new, untested toys. Reaching into his Void Pocket sack once again, he produced a small steel rod with a flared end like a trumpet, and he placed it against the man’s chest.

  While he normally thought about designing Fusions that could be used at a distance, especially when thinking about fighting the Gergasi, he had developed a Fusion that was designed to be used for close combat. He hadn’t tested it yet, and he was actually unsure whether he actually would be able to in his journey inside the Calamity, but he was fairly certain it would work as long as he had something with a biological body.

  He'd developed Fusions such as Healing Shelter, which rapidly sped up the healing and regeneration of any living beings caught inside of its area of effect. This was useful against living monsters in a limited capacity, and had been integral to his defeat of Chinli when he trapped her in the range of one of these Fusions long enough to weaken her to the point where she made a mistake. But it hadn’t actually killed her, and it was unlikely that he might run into the same sort of circumstance in which he could effectively use that kind of strategy again.

  Whereas Healing Shelter might not be effective, his new Fusion, Health Reversal, mostly likely would be. After experiencing the aura of necrotic energy within the undead Calamity, he adapted the idea behind it and applied it to his Healing Shelter Fusion – and created somewhat of a reversal effect. Instead of an area, however, he concentrated the Effect into a space as wide as the flared portion of the steel rod in his hand, only about 5 inches in width. When it was concentrated like that, he could pack a lot more power into it than before, so the result was both faster and stronger than anything he could’ve predicted.

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  With the activation of the Health Reversal Fusion, there was an inaudible *thump* that indicated that the Effect had penetrated the robe and outer flesh of the Gergasi, and he pulled back the Fusion and quickly stored it back in his sack. While he couldn’t see the beginning stages of what happened, as it was covered by the man’s clothes, what he expected happened was that a portion of the Gergasi’s flesh – as large as the flared portion of the rod – had immediately been necrotized as the opposite Effect as Body Regeneration took hold at a rapid pace. And then, because it was closely associated with the Skill, the man’s inherent health regeneration incorporated this Effect and spread it throughout his entire body. If the man had been able to do anything but float there in front of him, he likely would’ve been able to use a spell or even a Battle Art to reverse the Effect. Unfortunately for the Gergasi, without the ability to do either, the necrotizing of his flesh and internal organs spread within seconds to encompass his entire body, and Larek watched as the flesh on his rival’s face and arms turned black and sloughed off, rotting away at a rapid pace from the inside.

  It was a horrible way to die – but Larek only nodded at the efficiency of his Fusion, the rage he was still experiencing telling him that it was only what the man deserved.

  By this time, all but 3 of the Gergasi he’d faced were dead, with the man in full plate armor being systematically chopped into pieces as he turned to the last two. The closer one was a woman in a tight-fitting dark blue robe who had held slightly back from the main melee, creating massive ice boulders that attempted to crush him before shattering in an explosion of cracking ice, freezing the air around it – and then attempting to impale him with the shards. As he approached, he saw her hand begin to twitch, which told him that his Zone of Traveling Restrictions was wearing off faster than he had calculated.

  Without any time to waste on trying something new, he swung his halberd with all the force he could push into the weapon, slicing upward through the woman’s neck, where it got caught on the tough bone of her jaw. Larek quickly activated multiple Fire-based Gust Spheres inside of her skull, and he ripped the axe out in grim satisfaction as her head first turned red from the intense heat inside, before it exploded from the inside, spraying blood and brains everywhere.

  It was then that he looked over to see the armored Gergasi screaming in pain as he began to get his functionality back, but it was too late for him to do anything as two of the sawblades finally cut through his spine, coming from opposite sides of his neck. As he and the rest of the dead Gergasi, who were still floating in the air because of his Zone Fusion, began to fall, as they were no longer supported by the Effect or their own abilities, he turned to the last victim.

  Varlera.

  The Mentalist who had caused so much pain to Larek by tricking him into believing his family was actually free was already turning to flee, her ability to move now restored to her. A bubble of transparent force appeared around her, indicating that she had some sort of protective barrier to defend against him, but he wasn’t going to let a little thing like that deter him. He’d saved the best for last, after all.

  She had only fled a few thousand feet before he caught up to her, and when he was within 200 feet she had turned around and had flown backwards while flinging powerful spells at him – all of which were nullified by his Absolute Protective Fields. He could see her attempt to ensnare his mind again with something similar to what he’d done before, the attempt disguised behind a flaming boulder that exploded a dozen feet in front of his flight path, but it was unsuccessful. It wasn’t because he reached out and snuffed the connection before it could affect him, but because he was still so furious that his mind couldn’t be swayed from its purpose.

  Larek’s hand pushed through the bubble of force protecting Verlara as if it wasn’t even there, and he caught the Gergasi by the neck. As much as he wanted to crush her throat and snap her neck right at that moment, there was something he needed to know.

  “WHERE ARE THEY? WHERE IS MY FAMILY!” he shouted, forcefully bringing her face right up to his until they were only inches apart. He sensed that she attempted to stab him with a knife she pulled out of a hidden portion of her robe sleeve, but while she managed to get through his void layer because of his contact with her, and through the air barrier behind it with her sheer Strength stat, the blow had been slowed down enough that the tip of the knife couldn’t penetrate his clothes enhanced by Multi-Resistance. It still made him grunt a little at the force of the blow, as it was a powerful stab and his Body stat was so low because of the Battle Arts he had running, but all it did was create a bruise that would likely heal itself within a minute or less.

  Before she could try to stab him again, he reached down and grabbed her hand and wrist, crushing both with a flex of his own Strength, and she cried out in pain as almost all of the bones in her hand shattered. He was sure that her Body Regeneration would heal her in time – but if he got what he wanted, she wasn’t going to live long enough to find out.

  “How—? What are you? You’re not the half-breed we were told—”

  “ENOUGH! WHERE ARE THEY?”

  He hadn’t captured her to bandy words about; he caught her so that he could find out where his family was. The inadvertent connection he’d experienced with her before told him that she’d at least seen them, as she needed to form a mental connection with them in order to force it upon Larek, but it didn’t tell him more than that.

  “I don’t know what—”

  The rage-filled Divine Fusionist shook her violently, nearly snapping her neck in the process. He had to calm himself down before he did so, because he still needed answers.

  “ENOUGH! TELL ME WHERE THEY ARE!”

  Even shaken up a little at the hands of someone who was clearly more powerful than her right then, Verlara looked at him with disdain. “Who, your so-called pathetic family? Lord Vilnesh has them, and they’re as safe as can be. Unless you kill me, of course.”

  He almost did just that at her words, as he got what he needed – but he held off at the obvious warning. “WHAT DO YOU MEAN?”

  “If you kill me while my mental connection to them is still intact, my death will break their minds so completely that their bodies will shut down within minutes. The same goes for you; so, if you want them and yourself to live, then you have to let me go—”

  Larek could see the connection she was talking about as a thin string of Mana heading off into the northwest – right toward where the capitol and supposedly the Enclave were located. It somewhat reminded him of when he found that one of the Unspoken Response leadership had been watching him from a distance, but in this case the connection was different. It was more subtle in intensity, but he suspected it was just as strong if not stronger than what he’d seen before.

  That being said, he could see the way the Mana flowed through the connection string. One look was all he needed to see that what Verlara had said was likely true, as there seemed to be a one-way feedback loop associated with the connection; what happened to one side would happen to the other. If he snapped her neck, the death of her brain and mind would transfer to those connected with her – but if he or his family were to die, it wouldn’t do the same as her. He supposed that this type of connection was how she was able to do whatever she did with regards to mental manipulation spells, but that wasn’t the important part.

  What was important was that he could sense that there would only be a temporary rebounding effect on his family if the connection was broken before the Gergasi died.

  Larek smiled grimly at her, and she seemed to intuit what he was planning.

  “STOP! If you try anything, I’ll kill them—”

  “No, you won’t,” he interrupted, before he used his superior manipulation of energy to slice through not only the connections she had with his family, but the one she had managed to worm into his mind, as well. The rebounding effect he expected was like a weak jab to his mind, and while it might knock his family out from the abrupt pain, he was fairly certain they would be perfectly fine once they recovered.

  As for the Gergasi in his grasp, she didn’t fare so well. Using every bit of his boosted Strength, he crushed her throat and snapped her neck with just one hand; to ensure she was dead and not coming back, he then wrapped his arm around her wobbly neck and his legs around her waist for leverage…

  …and then he pulled. It took less effort than he expected to rip her head off her body, and he immediately let her headless corpse drop to the ground below, while he kept her head in his hand, his fingers wrapped around her hair for a firm grip. Then, with the dripping evidence of his vengeance bleeding from his grizzly trophy, Larek felt the anger and fury begin to drain from his entire body, which was feeling worn out and stressed more than he’d expected it to.

  What…. What did I just do? How was I able to manipulate all that energy like that?

  Somehow, while in the heat of his rage, he had easily controlled or manipulated various forms of energy as if it was second nature to him, and he’d also formed many more Pattern constructs than he’d ever had simultaneously active at one point, and it didn’t feel as if he was close to his limit. Even now, as he thought back to the Zone of Restricted Movement Fusion he’d created in the spur of the moment, he had no idea how it had even worked in the first place, and he had slight trouble even picturing it working like that again if he tried it.

  His ruminations were interrupted by the approach of something out of the corner of his eye. Unbeknownst to him, Nedira and the others had only retreated a short way from the battle going on and had seen the entire thing – and now they were coming back to see if he had gone crazy… or if he had recovered from the ordeal.