Larek walked into Grandmaster Fusionist Carleton’s office at the Guardian Center for Magical Learning, which was located inside the large complex within the Fusionist Sanctuary, and he nodded at the older man with a smile on his face. Even though it had only been a little more than a week since he’d been there, walking through the CML, which was what those living in or near the Guardian Center for Magical Learning called it for short, it still amazed him how much things had changed in such a short time. Even as he’d walked past numerous classrooms and training rooms filled with those who wanted to learn more about their status as Guardians, or those with fully unlocked potential, he couldn’t help but feel encouraged at how everyone seemed to be progressing.

  The majority of the teaching done in the CML was focused around Fusions, as spells and Battle Arts were primarily taught back in the training facility in Thanesh, but that didn’t mean that there weren’t those who – even if they primarily focused on Fusions – needed to expand their development to include classes that would help them increase their Mage and Martial Skills. Skill Levels and AP were useful to them no matter who they were, so it wasn’t something that could be ignored if they wanted to be as powerful and as useful as possible. Larek had learned that the hard way, and while his own development had some obstacles in the way, these people weren’t hindered by such disadvantages; they could be who they wanted to be, and the CML would help them get there.

  “Ah, Larek! And Nedira! What brings you both here? Can I do something for you?” There was a brief pause before the Grandmaster Fusionist tilted his head to the side in confusion, and then asked, “And why does it look like you’re glowing?”

  The Divine Fusionist shook his head with a chuckle as he sat in one of the chairs across from Carleton, and Nedira sat down in the other chair, having come in right after him. The glow was something that he’d discovered he was unable to prevent, at least not consciously; apparently, the Divine Spirit that had filled his body during his evolution had lingered, and it manifested itself as a subtle illumination of his skin. It didn’t hurt or seem to have any other side effects, so Larek had mostly started to ignore it.

  “That’s a long story, and not one I want to get into right now,” he deferred. “As for doing something for me? I’m actually here to do something for you. Or more specifically, for you as well as the Fusionists and trainees here.”

  “Oh?” Carleton asked, seemingly surprised – if the expression on his face meant anything. “And what is that?”

  Larek leaned forward and stretched his arm toward the Grandmaster Fusionist. “Take my hand.” Carleton only hesitated for a moment before he did so, and the newly evolved Divine Fusionist didn’t waste any time imparting a total of 4 new Skills to the leader of the Fusionist Sanctuary.

  “W-What? What is—?”

  There was silence after Carleton couldn’t finish his question, as his eyes went unfocused. Larek didn’t say anything either. He just let the Grandmaster come to terms with what had just happened. He’d done the same thing with Nedira and his friends earlier, so he knew that it took a little while for the mind to catch up with such changes.

  “This… this is unbelievable. Guardian Skills? Primal Essence? Fusional Growth? A Complete Fusionary Specialization? How? How did you…?” The shock on the older man’s face wasn’t something that Larek thought he would ever get used to, and he felt more than a bit of pride at being the one to evoke those reactions in people. It was similar to how he felt when he told people he could unlock their full potential, but this was different somehow; if anything, this meant more to him than unlocking someone’s full potential, because being able to impart a brand-new Skill – and one related to Fusions, no less – was much more impactful to him.

  “It was a lot of hard work, let me tell you,” Larek responded as an explanation. While he enjoyed the looks of complete shock, he sometimes still felt a little uncomfortable describing his personal achievements. He wasn’t one to personally to brag about his accomplishments very often, so he’d rather share what he’d learned with other people and let what he imparted to them speak for themselves.

  When Carleton had recovered somewhat from the sudden dump of brand-new Skills into his repertoire, Larek began to describe what each of the Skills did, how they functioned, their limitations, and how to improve them. He’d gotten fairly good at the recital of these things after the last day, as he’d imparted these Skills to hundreds of people back in Thanesh.

  To say that his friends, as well as the others high up in the Volunteer and SIC leadership, were stunned at the sudden Skills being thrust upon them was an understatement. Equally, the excitement and enthusiasm with which they took to exploring their new acquisitions was amazing to watch, and even within the first few hours, multiple people had managed to personally Level-up after they improved their new Skill Levels enough to achieve the next threshold. To be able to make people physically and mentally stronger just by imparting Skills unto them was an incredible rush of power that was fairly intoxicating, and he wanted to keep doing it as much as possible.

  Unfortunately, there were only so many people he could interact with and impart these Skills to, especially as he also needed to inform them of the same information that he’d just told the Grandmaster Fusionist. Eventually, all of this would become common knowledge, but he was the only one uniquely suited to fielding any questions about them, and he didn’t want anyone to accidentally hurt themselves if they weren’t properly informed.

  “I… see. While I’m interested to see what these Guardian Skills can do for me, I’m most excited to try out Fusional Growth. The possibilities for what this can allow me to create are almost endless, even if the growth is limited at first. Do you mind if I test it out real quick?”

  Larek shook his head, waving for the man to go ahead. He watched as Carleton pulled a simple wooden square to a spot on his desk, and a moment later he could see the Grandmaster’s Pattern Cohesion forming a very simple Strengthen Wood formation above it. There was a temporary pause before he saw a relatively crude-looking growth containment line surrounding the outside of the formation, as the older Fusionist used the Skill’s inherent teaching ability to form it. As if sensing how poorly it was created, Carleton reabsorbed all of the Pattern Cohesion he was working with and tried again, forming the formation in half the time – and with a better-quality growth containment line. It still wasn’t anything near what Larek could create, but having had no real experience with it before this, the Divine Fusionist thought it was amazingly well done.

  “That’s an interesting addition to the formation, Larek. How did you ever figure this out and unlock this Skill?” Carleton asked, after staring at the entire formation for nearly half a minute.

  Larek cleared his throat as he leaned forward to take a better look at the man’s formation. “It was a bit of an accident, actually.” He then went on to explain his method behind the discovery of the Skill, and how – once someone had better control over energy manipulation – anyone could improve upon the growth rate speed and Magnitude maximums, once they understood the concepts involved in the process well enough.

  “Unbelievable. I truly don’t know what to say,” Carleton said, even as he finished the process for the Magnitude 1 Strengthen Wood Fusion, which would grow using Fusional Growth into a Magnitude 3 strength once it pulled in enough energy. Even as it snapped into place, he could see the smile on the older man’s face at the ease at which it occurred. “And I even got a Level-up in the Skill. Simply amazing.” He looked up at Larek for a moment before he snapped his fingers. “That’s right, you said you wanted to share these Skills not only with me, but with everyone here?”

  Nedira sat up straighter as she took over for Larek. “That’s correct. I suppose we actually do need your help with this, as it will be much easier for everyone involved if you were to be able to gather everyone together so that he can impart these Skills to everyone, rather than having to track everyone down. Perhaps in one of the auditoriums? That way, he can review everything he just went over with you with everyone there, rather than one-on-one or in small groups.”

  “Ah, yes, I can see logic in that. How soon do you need everyone together?”

  Nedira looked over at Larek, and he nodded. “As soon as possible. Things are moving quite quickly on the outside, and there isn’t any time to waste,” his betrothed said.

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  “What do you mean? What’s going on?”

  “Nothing in particular that we can point to, but there’s been some reported movement of the Gergasi. They haven’t done anything specific, but we fear that it is only a matter of time before something happens. We’re still working on our preparations for the closure of the final Calamity, but I suspect it won’t be more than a week before we’ll be forced to tackle it. When, not if, the Gergasi start deliberately acting, it could be even sooner.”

  “I… see.” The Grandmaster Fusionist looked pointedly at Larek. There was an unspoken worry that this might be the only chance – that Larek might not be around later to impart these Skills. So, it was better to get it done while they still could. “I’ll have everyone ready to go in about 2 hours; there’s a lot of people to gather. Otherwise, I would love to do it even faster.”

  “That’ll work for us,” Nedira confirmed. “Thank you so much for your assistance.”

  “There’s no need to thank me,” Carleton said, shaking his head as he stood up. “We should all be thanking you. This is an amazing gift that you’re giving us, and we’ll do our best to live up to your expectations.”

  Larek shifted in his chair. “I appreciate it. I’ll also have a list of Fusions that those in training or the experienced Fusionists can help to create for us using Fusional Growth – once it Levels-up, of course.”

  “We would be delighted to help,” the Grandmaster assured him. “Now, I need to get moving if I’m going to get everyone assembled in time. Forgive me for dashing away; make yourself comfortable wherever you want. I’ll be back once I get everything organized.”

  The two of them watched Carleton leave, and Larek slumped down in the chair. It had been a crazy last couple of days as his Fusion-creation efforts finally paid off. Hundreds of thousands of growing Fusions had reached their final Magnitude, and while there were still tens of thousands more that were still undergoing the process, Larek had worked with Kimble and General Auran to start distributing those that were complete to where they needed to be. Larek was just glad that he wasn’t in charge of figuring out what went where and how to distribute them properly, because it ended up being a huge amount of work. Even if he wasn’t directly involved in the distribution and installation of the Fusions, he was still involved in teaching others how his new creations worked and what to be wary of, as more than a few of them could be extremely dangerous if handled improperly.

  Take the extremely powerful Focused Light Beam +18 Fusions, for instance. They were heavy enough that, while they could be carried around by those with a high enough Strength stat, their somewhat unwieldy size made it entirely possible that something could go wrong while aiming them at a target. To eliminate most of this danger, they were instead placed inside of transports – as well as The Hopper – and integrated into a swivel mount that allowed those inside to fire out the holes located in the bottom deck. Two of them were added to each transport, making them even more powerful than before – especially once they had their Camouflaged Magical Energy Negation Spheres added to their defenses. He demonstrated to a group of Volunteers where they had to be placed to make full use of them, as well as how they worked and why they were being installed in the first place.

  The Volunteers then took this information about both the Light Beam and the Negation Sphere and spread out to start installing them in all of the transports, letting Larek get back to his other necessary duties. Those duties included demonstrating how the new Absolute Protective Fields worked for defense, as well as explaining what was included in the Multi-Purpose Arsenal Fusions that he placed on hundreds of staves. They were almost identical to what he had on his own halberd, minus the Transfer Potential Effect; there was no way he was letting that get into the hands of anyone other than himself – and he wasn’t planning on using it anytime soon. After the near-disaster with the Bereft, he didn’t want to risk that sort of thing happening again.

  In the end, Larek decided to only produce a limited number of Multi-Purpose Arsenals for use by former SIC members and Volunteers. Why? Because they were extremely powerful, and there were only so many people he could trust with that kind of power. While they were all technically on the same side, there were still many former Faction and SIC members who hadn’t fully integrated into the Volunteer organization; in short, he didn’t trust them completely. Therefore, he thought it was better to be a little more cautious about who received these powerful weapons, rather than let them simply spread among the general population.

  In addition to the Arsenals, he also grew hundreds of All Skills Boosts at Magnitude 10 and Omni-Boosts at Magnitude 20, which were also distributed among those who were considered trustworthy enough to be as powerful as could be.

  As for the general population among the Volunteers and former-SIC, he’d ramped up his own production of VREP and VED staves for them to use, but he was already planning on off-loading the production of these to the Fusionists in Sanctuary – especially once they learned about Fusional Growth. They were already producing smaller-Magnitude Boost Fusions for those in the organization, as well as working on adding Strengthen, Sharpen Edge, and Multi-Resistance Fusions for weapons and armor. A few of the Fusionists in Sanctuary had also managed to learn how to create Healing Surge Fusions, and they were pumping them out as quickly as possible.

  Soon enough, his hope was that they could take over production of everything; they were well on their way, and with these new Skills, that hope was quickly becoming a reality.

  There were also a few new offensive Fusions, as well as a single additional defensive Fusion, that he still needed to test before putting them into full production. They were what he was going to concentrate on, once he’d passed on the knowledge of these new Skills to those in the CML, which was another reason why they didn’t have a lot of time to spend there. The bigger reason, however, was what they’d already told the Grandmaster Fusionist.

  The Gergasi were on the move. Or, at least, they were doing something.

  Cautious scouting reports – far outside of the danger zone – told them that there had been more than a few detections of Gergasi moving about near the center of the Kingdom and close to the Calamity, but no one who’d gotten close enough to actually see them had made it back. The same overwhelming feeling of danger and fear that had been coming from the Gergasi had abated somewhat, but hadn’t disappeared; that, more than anything, hinted to Larek that they were planning something. He had—hopefully—developed a new Fusion that might help mitigate the effects of that danger and fear that made most people want to flee for their lives once they felt it, but it was both untested and would prove to be a flimsy defense if the Gergasi attacked for real. It was for this reason that distributing all of his finished Fusions had taken precedence over sharing his new Skills with others, as they needed to prepare as quickly as possible for anything that might occur.

  Larek was lost in his thoughts as the door to the Grandmaster’s office suddenly opened, and a slightly winded Carleton swept inside. He needs to increase his Martial stats some more, Larek couldn’t help but think as he turned toward the older man.

  “Alright! It’s all set up; if you’ll follow me, I’ll bring you to Auditorium A, where you can start imparting these amazing new Skills!”

  “Thank you,” the Divine Fusionist said, getting up out of his chair, with Nedira walking out next to him. It didn’t take more than 5 minutes for them to make it down to Auditorium A, where a low murmur could be heard from those inside, all speaking among themselves in questioning tones. As he walked in after the Grandmaster, he nearly missed a step when thousands of people suddenly turned their attention toward him. He managed to recover quickly enough that it was unlikely that anyone noticed, though he heard a chuckle from his betrothed from behind him.

  Walking up to the podium at the front of the auditorium, he was momentarily reminded of his first day of classes as Crystalview, and the way Dean Wilburt had spoken to all of the incoming students – except that he was on the other side of the situation now, and not forced to listen to someone that would end up betraying his duty because of some foolish vendetta against Fusionists.

  He loudly cleared his throat, which encouraged those sitting in the auditorium to settle down and spread the quiet that started in the front and quickly reached the entire audience. Larek wasn’t one for speeches, as he liked to get straight to the point, and he didn’t bother giving one at this point, either.

  “Welcome. For those who don’t know me, I’m Fusionist Larek. Many of you may be wondering why you’re here and what I happen to be doing here, and the answer is simple.

  “You’re about to receive a number of new Skills that will help you get stronger and produce better Fusions, as well as learning more about energy in all of its different forms.

  “So, once I stop talking, I’d like you all to get up and form a line, which will pass in front of me, where I can impart these new Skills to all of you. Once that is done, I’ll explain what it is you’ve received, leaving you to go experiment with them as soon as I’m finished.

  “Any questions? Good, let’s get to it.”

  He didn’t bother looking for anyone who had questions, as he fully expected to be able to cover most of them with his explanation later. For now, it was most important to get the imparting of Skills done before anything else.

  It took a few seconds of stunned silence before the first of those in the audience stood up and started making their way to the front, but with those first few brave individuals moving, it started a flood, as nearly everyone stood up and rushed toward the side of the stage where Larek was standing patiently. He let them work themselves out as there was some pushing involved, but thankfully, it didn’t progress from there.

  As the first student/trainee started walking across to him, excitement and trepidation warring with themselves in his features, Larek held out a hand to touch the young man’s head.

  This is going to be a long day.