Grand Saint Alloy

Tristan cracked open the book and flipped to the section on soul revenants. There were a few things that the book did mention about them, and that was how to harvest an essence reservoir. He wondered if the same harvesting process would work on an elemental. Unfortunately, he had no soul revenant to experiment on. It would be nice to have something he could use as a control.

There were some things that a soul revenant had in common with an elemental. For instance, a revenant had a core, while this elemental had its kern in which they stored essence. Getting an essence reservoir was rather simple, one only needed to push out the native essence from that core. It would naturally reject that essence, killing the revenant and leaving an empty core to be filled by whatever essence was on hand.

What Tristan wanted to do was fill the heart of the elemental with metal essence. His issue was, that he had no way of projecting anything from his kern. So he started experimenting.

In ‘Biological Tampering’ he had read that the bones, specifically bone marrow, produced blood. The blood would carry both essence and nutrients around the body. Even though the heart is what pulled in primordial essence, the blood is what moved it. It was why higher tier kerns were more resistant to blood loss, and why losing a lot of blood slowed down essence recovery.

The purpose of that section of the book was relatively unhelpful as it focused more on how alterations could affect the blood. After all, the entire book was based on warping the building blocks of a creature to suit one's own purposes. Tristan believed that most of the alterations could actually be performed on himself as his own will should not stop his own essence.

Tentatively, he placed his fingertips on the heart. It did not beat and it felt no different than any other piece of granite. The elemental had a soul, but no life, it was a container for essence no different than any tier-one artifact. Just like the essence reservoirs. But it still looked like a person, it still moved, and Siren had hypothesized about this person’s background.

Tristan needed to put some of his essence into its circulatory system. The method was distasteful and made him worried he was walking the same path as Hadrid. He knew he was not stable, but he centered himself before proceeding. Tristan was not madly searching for knowledge, he was searching for a solution to potentially save a friend’s life.

Turning to the guard, Tristan held out a hand, “Give me your axe.”

The man was starting to get used to Tristan’s odd requests by this point. He handed it over, “It is a tier one artifact, one side only reflects the light from both sides while the other side reflects nothing.”

Tristan inspected the axe. It was a standard bearded axe, and one face was con-caved enough to focus the light on a smaller point. Whoever this man’s ancestor had been was a very thoughtful person. This could double as a fire starter and a weapon.

“Neat,” Was all Tristan said in response. Tier one artifacts were still valuable, but Hadrid, the tier six hammer, and Hestia’s Sickle had deadened his appreciation for tier one weapons.

Turning back to the elemental, Tristan shoved his distaste aside and chopped its foot off right above the ankle. He raised the axe to his hand and cut his palm. The odd curved shape of the axe blade left a wider cut than he intended, but it did not really matter, it would still work. He placed the cut right on the center of the exposed bone, right where the marrow would normally be.

It hurt, the same as shoving any piece of stone into an open wound would. Forcing essence into his palm, the blood turned silver. Nothing happened, except the bone was painted a metallic color. Then the elemental started to thrash.

Hissing, Tristan pulled his hand back and shook it slightly. That had hurt. He was half tempted to load up a decay essence and melt the elemental. His mood soured a little more when he realized that the inorganic skeleton was probably immune to decay.

He rocked back onto his heels. Why would the bones not take in the metal essence? The elemental was a kern’s worth of essence animated by a soul. Its kern should work the same as his, but with earth as opposed to metal. He flipped his palm over, the cut had been deep, and the elemental’s thrashing stopped it from scabbing over.

Blood dripped off his palm. Mentally he went through the process his body used to create blood. It was made by the bones and transferred air essence around the body. He watched the silver blood pool and realized where he had gone wrong. Sure the bones were part of a kern, but the elemental did not have blood, yet it still had blood vessels.

Reaching out, Tristan grabbed one of the vessels that was in the process of regenerating. He was more careful this time, he wrapped his hand around it instead of sticking the thin stone rod in his injury. Instantly he felt his grip weaken. He frowned, his grip hadn’t felt this weak since he was in tier one.

Quickly, he investigated his kern. Earth essence was being pumped into his bloodstream. Not a lot, but it was enough to dilute the concentration of his metal essence. Focusing, Tristan activated the consumption alloy. He wondered why he could see earth essence, but not dark essence. Did the number of shared forces change how well one could detect various elements? He was sure that earth and metal had a lot in common.

The consumption alloy bonded and converted the earth essence. It was very similar to the few chemical reactions he had been able to observe in Hadrid’s lab. As fast as it came in, the earth essence was converted into fuel for Tristan’s kern. It allowed him to observe what was happening, as he was no longer on a time limit.

It appeared that some type of cross-contamination was occurring. This lined up with how the book described flooding the revenant’s core with foreign essence. Only in reverse, it was not really an issue, as Tristan was feeding on the essence to fuel himself. Anyone else would get temporarily weakened by this.

Tristan turned to the guards, “Do any of you have a pencil?” They all looked at each other in confusion, of course, they didn’t, “One of you go find Conni and ask for a pencil and a pad of paper.”

One of them ran off. Tristan was starting to think crime really did pay, at least it got him six butlers that someone else paid for. All he had to do was fight a civil protector and commit massive property damage. Probably not something most people could do.

Tristan’s attention was grabbed when something odd occurred in his kern. The consumption alloy was now feeding his decay. Time to let go then. The feeding did not stop, and Tristan started panicking. If this activated all his decay essence at the same time, it would kill him. There was not a lot of decay essence inside his kern, but there was still enough to have some in every appendage, even his head.

How could he have forgotten, that consumption always has a waste product? Fire left ash and animals left feces, there was always some material that could not be used. Material that would be left to decay. He contemplated just cutting his hand off to stop his brain from melting, but it quickly spread out past his hand.

Now that he was able to watch the decay take in the waste product he realized how little of it there was. He had momentarily forgotten how much essence it took to activate decay, a small dose of processed earth essence from a tier one was nowhere near enough to activate even a single decay essence. Especially as it was randomly distributed along the bloodstream.

Previously he had wondered what the limit was on consumption. It had appeared to be powerful, as it was free essence. Here was the limitation, a waste product would gum up one's kern. In Tristan’s case, it could activate his decay if he processed too much essence. It was something he should relegate to short bursts only.

Tristan was not a proponent of the saying ‘If it's too good to be true, it probably is.’ That was just a pessimist’s excuse for missing opportunities. Instead, he believed that every action had an equal cost, it was true in physics, it was true in the economy, and true in relationships. Once he knew the cost he could properly figure out if the action was worth it.

He believed that consumption had a fair price. It was something that could be converted into a benefit, given the correct circumstances. Free fuel for decay was exceptionally valuable if he could control it. He clenched his fist and turned his attention towards the opposite vein. If the one he first gripped pushed essence in, the other should pull essence out.