For the first 30 minutes of walking around the city, Larek let Nedira lead the way for their smaller group, as he focused more on his wider senses to see if he could detect anything out of the ordinary. For those 30 minutes, he couldn’t feel a single thing, despite how much he sent his awareness of the area out a few miles. As far as he could tell, there wasn’t a single bit of magical energy out of place; nor was there any lingering trace of something out of the ordinary that had been there, but wasn’t any longer. It had been too long since the Mages and the Martials from the Faction stationed there had disappeared, and any energy signatures had dissipated with time.
With his efforts not producing any results, he turned his attention to what Nedira was doing, which was leading him around and asking the citizens of the city if they knew anything that might help them in the investigation.
“…and then they just up and disappeared. No one saw where they went, like I said.”
Larek’s focus came back in the middle of an older woman speaking to his betrothed, before turning away to hang some wet laundry on a drying line set up between the two buildings they were near.
Hmmm… I bet I could create a Fusion that would quickly dry clothing. Perhaps something that would absorb all the water without severely drying out the fabric? All it would take is—
“Thank you for your time. Let us know if you remember anything,” Nedira spoke, cutting into Larek’s thoughts. Turning to him, she noticed his attention. “Ah, you’re back. Find anything?”
He shook his head. “No, and as much as I hope this will help, I honestly don’t believe anyone has any information for us. Something drastic happened here without their knowing, and it’s unlikely that they’re hiding anything.” He sighed. “Still, it can’t hurt to visually look at everything and see if there is anything out of the ordinary.”
“I’ll talk while you look,” she said, moving up the street and approaching a relatively large man with arms the size of his legs and a shaved head, carrying a crate of what appeared to be vegetables. While she stopped him and started asking questions, Larek used every bit of his Mage stats to perceive the area around him without tapping into his Magical Detection Skill.
His perception was amazingly precise, as he could look at every speck of dust on the ground, every crack in the foundation of a nearby building, and even the slight fluttering of a window curtain as someone looked out at them suspiciously. He did his best to get a read on the one looking at them, thinking it might be some clue that he could follow up with, but it turned out to be a young woman who he could tell only looked at them – though more him, in particular – because of his height and presence in the city. The same sort of suspicion and fear colored the expressions of most of the people he saw throughout Zecklent, but he attributed it to them simply reacting to the unexpected loss of their magically gifted defenders.
He took in pretty much everything in the street with a few glances within seconds, but just as it had been throughout their search so far, nothing popped out at him that screamed “suspicious”. Despite that, he wasn’t giving up quite yet. When Nedira inevitably moved on from her questioning the bald man, he followed after her at a slight distance, giving her the space she needed to allow the people with whom she spoke to feel more comfortable; his proximity always seemed to make strangers tense up a bit, which he was used to by that point, so it wasn’t that big of a deal.
As Nedira stopped to talk to a young man who was probably around 15 years old, Larek glanced around. His attention was focused on the ground for a moment, as he saw a few ruts in the cobblestone street that didn’t make much sense, as they didn’t follow the path, but instead crossed the path. It wasn’t until he noticed a warehouse nearby containing what appeared to be farm equipment that he deduced that the ruts were formed by more than a few of the plows hanging too low off the wagons inside, which would scrape against the stone. Doing this a few hundred or thousands of times would lead to those kinds of ruts in the cobblestone street.
Having solved that conundrum, his gaze passed by the market stall near Nedira, noticing that they sold what appeared to be a variety of leather sacks, satchels, and handbags, which made him think about upgrading his Void Pocket sack that he’d made a long time ago. It was rather plain and unadorned, and while that was fine with him, he’d seen more than one person looking at it with disdain and distrust, as if it was a sack a thief would use to rob someone’s house.
Idly considering the idea, his eyes roamed past the market stall and off to the other side of the street, past the man in a robe calmly reaching toward the neck of his betrothed as if to strangle her, and looked at the entrance of the Slippery Fall Inn, which had a unique—
Larek instinctively moved before the conscious thought even passed through his mind, and the next thing he knew, his hands were around the throat of an older man in a robe. Even as he held the person off the ground, his hands wanted to squeeze as hard as he could and break the man’s neck, especially after his memories caught up to what he had nearly witnessed. He looked toward Nedira to see that she was fine, though she looked both shocked and confused, blinking and shaking her head as if trying to figure something out.
“What— what is going on? What are you doing, Larek? There’s no one—but wait, I see… no, they’re gone. What?”
It didn’t take more than a moment to understand what she was talking about, as while he held the man off the ground in his hand, he had difficulty actually seeing him. Reaching out with his Magical Detection Skill, it passed through the robed figure as if he wasn’t even there. For all intents and purposes, the man didn’t exist.
And yet, despite his visual and magical senses telling him one thing, as even his eyes wanted to slide away from the person in his grasp, he could feel his hands around the man.
It took an effort of willpower to finally look the robed figure in his eyes, fully stabilizing him into his field of vision, and he could see the anger and shock in them that mirrored his own. The biggest difference was that Larek’s anger was from the near-attack on Nedira, while he could tell that this man’s anger and shock came from the fact that he had been detected and stopped from doing whatever he had planned.
“Who are you? Better yet, what are you?” The Fusionist couldn’t help but feel like he was talking to some sort of spirit, despite the man’s tangibility, as nothing but his baser senses could even detect the figure. The man was simply so devoid of any energy, even the miniscule amounts found in every single person he’d ever met, that it was like staring at a hollow shell of a person without anything inside.
In fact, as he probed deeper, both visually and with his magical senses, it didn’t take more than a half-second to realize what the difference was.
There wasn’t even the faintest trace of any magical potential, at all. That shouldn’t have been possible, as everyone had at least a tiny spark of potential, as it was what allowed them to create Pure Aetheric Force that filtered out in the world; and even if it wasn’t measured on their Status, Mana and Stama were still incorporated into their bodies in minute amounts. It was never enough to be significant, but it was what allowed, at least, General Skills to grow, as their potential applied an extremely basic and watered-down form of Primal Essence into their bodies to help it improve from Skill increases.
And yet, inside this man was nothing. In fact, it was almost like there was an energy void in him that blinded Larek from even sensing or seeing him clearly.
As he found out a moment later, the energy void inside of the man was apparently hungry, as well. Instead of answering his questions, the robed man seemed to send whatever it was that was inside of him into Larek, and the Fusionist felt it pass through his hand and arm in a quest to reach the magical potential inside of his chest.
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Unfortunately for the attacker, Larek was too strong for the weak hunger sniffing around at his potential. With a swift mental thought, he wielded his magical strength like a club and smacked that hunger away, hitting it so hard that the hunger rocketed back out through his arm and hand before it could get very far. At the same time, his counterattack was so powerful that it actually shattered the hungry probe, blasting apart as it reentered the man.
An explosion, even if it wasn’t inherently physical to begin with, wasn’t the best thing to experience inside of a body. As a result, the robed figure literally exploded in his hand, as hundreds of bodily chunks flew out from the detonation, along with the shredded robe that used to clothe the man.
The scream that emitted from those who witnessed the explosion proved that the difficult-to-see nature of the individual had disappeared once the man no longer existed as a greater whole. Larek, who was thankfully saved from being covered in the blood and viscera of the exploding man, could only stare at his empty hand in shock at what happened.
What… was that?
“Larek? What just happened?”
The Fusionist didn’t know how to respond, because he was just as confused. The way the man had attacked him, seemingly through his Protection of the Void Fusion he was using to protect himself, had been a surprise. The hunger he felt from the robed individual was relatively weak, or so it seemed when it tried to fight against his magical potential. It almost reminded him of when he used the Transfer Potential Fusion on the Gergasi back in the Undead Calamity; they had shrugged off its powerful attempt at tearing out their potential like it was a weak tickle. He was just thankful that Nedira hadn’t been attacked like that, as he wasn’t sure if her potential was strong enough to defend against—
Larek’s thoughts froze as he reached out with his Magical Detection Skill, searching for the teams of Volunteers that had spread out through the city in search of any clues as to where the Mages and Martials had disappeared to. As he suddenly dreaded, his efforts only found 2 other people with their full potential unlocked, far to the east of their current location, which he identified as his Volunteers. Even as he pinpointed them, their presence seemed to fade, as if they were being killed.
“No time to talk,” Larek said to his betrothed, before picking her up in his arms. A leap from street level brought him up to the nearest rooftop, and he began to run with every bit of his speed across the roofs of the city buildings, aiming straight for where he felt the last of the magical potential in his Volunteers slip away. It was also where he could feel their Fusions gathered, which he also noticed were collected in three other spots around the city, each of the caches so close together that he knew that they were literally touching each other instead of being held by a group.
What the hell is happening? How did I not notice this?
It had happened so quickly that Larek hadn’t felt it, as his focus had been on observing the city in a physical rather than a magical sense. Unfortunately, even now that his magical senses were fully extended again, he still couldn’t detect anything out of the ordinary – but then he remembered how the robed man had also not seemed to exist. There was an absence to his presence that was unique in the fact that none of the free-floating ambient energy of the world was absorbed into his body, making him appear non-corporeal, but obviously that was disproven by the explosion.
That didn’t mean that the energy of the world didn’t react to him, either. Rather than being absorbed or simply passing through him, the energy parted around the man, as if he was a rock in a stream. It was subtle, as the energy didn’t so much move as somewhat shift in seemingly natural ways against the energy void that was the man, but it was certainly noticeable to someone looking for it.
Larek was definitely looking for it, now that he knew what to look for. And he found it a few seconds later, as he dropped down into an alleyway, only to find the unconscious or dead forms of a group of Volunteers seemingly floating in the air, the Fusions they had held thrown in a rubbish bin. It took a bit of willpower for him to look closer at the fluctuations in the flow of energy, but once he did, he could see the shocked faces of 5 men and women, with two of them in robes and the others in leather armor that wouldn’t be out of place on a Martial.
“Stop!” he shouted as he practically threw Nedira down, before racing toward the one closest to him. The armored man deftly shifted out of the way of his grab, but Larek was faster, and a swift movement had the man in his grasp. As he lifted the hard-to-see individual up by the front of his boiled leather breastplate, he debated seeing if he could knock the man out as he went for the others – but his choice was taken away from him as the other 4 attackers dropped the bodies they were carrying and attacked him in turn.
“We’ll feast well with this one!” he heard one of the women shout, before the quartet surrounded him. None of them had their weapons drawn, though he could see that they had some belted to their waists; instead, they jumped at him with their arms outstretched, as if they wanted to grapple with him to take him down.
Larek was having none of that, and he used the man he was holding as a projectile, launching him toward the woman who had shouted. He nearly used the man as a weapon, but he was also still holding on to the Volunteer, who admittedly appeared dead, though he couldn’t tell at the moment. As the two went crashing down from the impromptu attack, the others managed to close the distance, using a surprising amount of speed to reach him as he pulled out his halberd. He barely had a chance to turn it on the next-closest individual and activate the Portable Lifter effect on the weapon, hoping to toss the attacker away… but nothing happened.
It was as if the effect parted around the man and dissipated, similar to the ambient energy in the environment.
Shocked that his Fusion had no effect, Larek failed to move out of the way of the grasping hands that quickly forced their way through his Protection of the Void defenses and touched his bare skin. As he began internally defending against a sudden onslaught of hungry mouths attempting to reach his magical potential, he was temporarily frozen in place during the struggle; because of that pause, the two that he’d knocked over were able to get back to their feet and rush him, and before he knew it, he was being attacked by the equivalent of 5 rabid wolves, all attempting to take a chunk out of his potential.
With so many attacking him from seemingly different locations around his body, he struggled to keep them away from anything vital. Unfortunately, just as he was pushing one away, with the intent of smashing them like he had smashed the robed man from before, he was assaulted by another one of them, and he had to switch up his defense. With the addition of the last 2, he found it almost impossible to keep them at bay, as he needed to concentrate for a second or so to really hit one hard enough to expel them.
After what felt like hours of defense, but was probably only a few seconds, he identified that one of the attackers was weaker than the others, and he focused his efforts on that one. The woman who had shouted before seemed to be significantly weaker, for some reason he didn’t understand, so he reasoned that he didn’t need to hit her as hard to get her hunger to leave. As he pushed back the others, he spent a fraction of a second charging up his attack, and he hit her with every bit of power he could gather in that short of a time, which ended up being just hard enough to push her out, but not to explode like the robed man. The Fusionist barely noticed as the woman collapsed to the ground and let him go, either unconscious or dead, but he had more issues to deal with right then.
Fortunately, with one less attacker and time to evaluate the voracious-yet-uncoordinated hunger attacks toward him, he was able to time his own next attack for when there was a gap in between assaults. He hit this one hard enough to make them explode again, which seemed to cause the confidence of the others to waver. Even then, they didn’t retreat from their attack on his magical potential, which somehow felt insistent enough that he was wondering if they even could. He took advantage of their slight hesitation to strike out again, taking out a third, leaving only two left.
They weren’t nearly enough to challenge him, however. He exploded them relatively quickly, now that he’d gotten a hang of how to battle on this strange field, and as soon as the last of them died, he could look around for the first time.
The Volunteers he thought might be dead suddenly started to stir, as if waking up from a deep sleep, and Nedira simply stood back near the entrance of the alleyway, looking at everything in pure shock. That quickly morphed into action as the woman he’d forced out of his body first began to stir, and his betrothed seemed to finally be able to see her. Before the woman could fully wake up, Nedira had grabbed her hands and feet and tied them with steel chains she took from her own Void Pocket bag, effectively making sure she couldn’t escape, unless she was even stronger than Larek. The Fusionist kept a watch the whole time to ensure the woman didn’t try to use her hunger against his betrothed, but it seemed like she had to consciously do it.
She then moved to slowly waking Volunteers, but Larek held her back. They were his people, of course, but they were different: Just like those who’d attacked him, they no longer had any potential in them. While they weren’t “invisible,” they were practically at that point to his magical senses.
He didn’t want to risk her touching them until he knew a bit more about what was going on.
Thankfully, he now had someone tied up at his feet that could provide those answers.
