Grand Saint Alloy

Capitalizing on the elemental lord’s weaker bones proved to be very difficult. The creature was not stupid and knew its own weaknesses. The sudden shift away from the center of the ice caused it to tip by a degree or two. Water rushed over the top, it was only about two inches, but it was enough.

The elemental froze it, locking Luke’s side to the ground while giving itself a few moments to jump back. Luke simply growled and tore himself out of the ice. It took his top layer of skin, but at the moment he did not care. The elemental seemed surprised when Luke regained his feet so fast.

Luke wished that he had brought Hestia’s Sickle, fire and lightning both had reduced effectiveness when on water, but still the power it offered was intoxicating. He would also like to have something more than his belt knife to fight this creature. The elemental waved its hands and launched spinning blades of water that cut into the platform they were standing on.

To Luke‘s perception, they moved slowly, he palmed one out of the air and whipped the circular blade back at the elemental. He felt one graze his jacket, slicing a line through it. He paid it little mind.

As they fought, Luke found that this elemental could be considered a perfect counter to him. Water did not conduct electricity, the minerals in it did, the earthen brain and eyes might have been a vulnerability if Luke could throw his lightning. Unfortunately, it was not willing to let him close to its skull again.

It also demonstrated a truly ridiculous essence reserve. No one should be able to freeze the amount of water the elemental had. Luke understood that it was winter, but still, it threw out ice like Hadrid threw out insults. Poorly made but in large volumes. If they had been fighting on land he was sure that he would have already lost.

Luke looked around for anything he could use but all he saw was water. Which of course made sense, they were on a lake. The issue was he had no way to put this thing down without a weapon. It seemed to have a greater essence reserve than him, so he could not outlast it, and it was resistant to his abilities.

He needed to stall it, “What do you want here?”

The elemental paused, it seemed surprised that Luke wanted to talk, “You are an enemy, you do not deserve an answer.”

“What would a walking corpse want with the lake,” Luke asked, “It’s not like you need to drink, are you trying to poison the Caldera’s water?”

“No, is that why you are resisting, you think we desire your death?” It cocked its head to the side.

“No, your Lord destroyed my home, that’s why I’m going to kill you,” Luke drew his knife and removed the sheath from his belt. He knelt and dipped it in the half inch of water covering the platform.

“You can’t kill us, you can barely contend with me,” the creature mocked, “how do you expect to face my lord or his greater servants?”

“Watch me contend with you,” Luke said, shoving the knife back into its sheath and winding the attached cord around the crossbar.

The elemental lord tried to say something else, but Luke had enough. He lunged at it forcing it to take a few steps back and raise its arm to block. While it was not as good as a heart shot, Luke still shoved the sheathed knife into the elemental's arm. He then ran as much lightning as he could through the blade.

The lake water was not pure, and unlike the elemental, it could conduct electricity. It was not under the elemental’s control either, so when he ran electricity through it, there was a spark. The released energy was not provided with an outlet, so it made its own. While the knife was damaged, so was the elemental, its whole forearm was blown off.

Luke had not wanted to take risks, so he had poured half his essence into that attack. Coming from someone near the peak of tier four, it was a substantial amount. The elemental staggered back, but Luke was not going to let it recover, and it would recover. That was the nasty thing about elementals. They had an absurd healing factor. In two hours it would likely be as good as new.

Luke would not give it two hours. He slammed a lightning powered roundhouse into the creature’s side. It failed to block due to missing an arm on that side, getting a few broken ribs for the failure. Luke grinned as the creature bounced across the ice. His grin faded as the creature slid off the edge of the ice and into the water.

The elemental did not need to breathe, and without lungs full of air it was not buoyant. In fact, it had a literal rock brain, so it should sink straight to the bottom. Cursing, Luke ran and dove off the edge of the land. He demonstrated why fighting a water user on a lake wasn’t as risky as one might believe, he converted the air essence in his blood into air in his lungs. Drowning would not be an issue while he had essence.

He paddled after the water elemental. It noticed him coming and chose to run instead of fight moving to the bottom of the lake. Luke cursed at his bad luck. Cursing was very unsatisfying underwater. The light dimmed to twilight, despite the fact that the noonday sun hung overhead. Long grasses covered the bottom and fish darted around avoiding the two invaders.

Luke landed on something hard. His feet sank into the mud until they landed on something. His conductivity told him it was metal. Why was there an entire plane of metal at the bottom of the lake?

The elemental looked down, pushing aside mud, “It was here the whole time! Thank you, barbaric child, you have cut my search short.”

Luke was getting a bad feeling about this. Tristan had said there were two flying structures, so was this elemental looking for a second army for its master. An untapped resource of minions, Luke would not let that happen.

He ran at the elemental, his movements sluggish at the lake bottom. The creature just stood there as he approached, only moving when he got close enough. It punched forward, completely unrestricted by the water. Luke was too shocked to get out of the way in time. Water kerns should not allow a creature to ignore water resistance, it was not like Luke could walk in a tornado without getting sucked into the sky. The anima elemental, it had to be that.

Conni had spoken about people from other planes and how they stored essence differently. If someone in a different world had different abilities, did that mean the forces in that world were different? If they were the same, then why couldn’t Luke use the same power? The issue was, that it would not help him with his current circumstances. Having a body full of air essence might make him even more buoyant.

The elemental attacked again, and Luke was unable to dodge, but he did manage to grab the elemental’s arm. The strike hurt, but Luke returned the favor. He pulled himself in, grabbed the elementals head, and wrapped his legs around its waist. Water could be used to his advantage as well, it would both slow and support his lateral movements.

Lightning lit up the lake floor, turning a good amount of the lake floor to steam and briefly causing some grass to blacken. If he got some sort of combustion force he might have started the world’s first underwater fire. The elemental screamed and writhed, and then all of Luke’s appendages froze.

Ice expanded from the elemental’s stomach, forming an ever expanding sphere. Luke’s arms and legs froze a second before he tore himself away. Blood started dyeing the water from the skin he had just lost. Then the real purpose of the ice was made known.

It rocketed towards the surface. The sphere seemed like a meteor traveling in reverse, dragging up a plume of mud from the lake floor in its wake. Luke filled his lungs with as much air as he could and swam after it. He was fast, as he was now working with the water instead of against it, but he was still too slow.

Luke was running low on essence, he would make it to the surface, but he did not have another lightning storm in him. The ball of ice shattered letting the elemental out. A film spread across the surface of the water, getting thicker and thicker. Swimming for all he was worth Luke smashed into the bottom of the ice.

He did not have the leverage to even crack it. Drawing back a fist he punched it. It cracked more with each punch. Luke wound up for another strike when a blue hand smashed through the ice and grabbed his arm. He was jerked halfway out of the water before his new hole was frozen shut trapping his other arm in the ice. In response, he ran lightning through the elemental’s hand. It was more than his kern could take.

The elemental noticed the sudden lack of essence as weakness overtook Luke, “How does it feel to be faced with your mortality? That is a genuine question, we are eternal so it is something I will never feel.”

Luke could only scoff at the irony, “Really, you’re going to live forever?”

“Yes, we are born through death, we shall never, uhh,” It was cut short by a diamond headed axe smashing through its skull. Half a second later a similar spear was shoved through its heart.

“I softened it for you,” Luke said.

Siren watched the dispersing corpse of a once powerful elemental fall to the ice, “What were you thinking? It’s clearly a water elemental, two of them actually, and it has an artifact.”

“Well, I thought I could handle it. Wait, an artifact?!” Luke’s surprise turned to anger, “The forsaken thing was cheating! Ha! That makes me better than it. Where was it at?”

Siren knelt down and picked up something that looked like a necklace made of a blue string with a sapphire rose adorning it. He examined it for a moment, “Looks like a tier four artifact, water affinity, I think he ate it.”

Luke remembered the ice expanding from the elemental lord's stomach. That was clever. He had assumed that it had possessed a massive essence reserve, though an artifact would have put its essence at around the same level as Luke’s, if not slightly lower.

“Hey, that’s mine,” Luke complained as Siren pocketed the artifact.

The other man raised an eyebrow, “Why should I trust you with it?”

“I’m careful,” Luke lied.

“Hand me the spare weapon capsule in exchange, then,” Siren said.

Luke reached into his pocket and felt for the capsule. Hadrid had created an alchemical bomb that would be super effective on the metal elemental lord. All he felt was ice. Confused he looked down only to see that the bottom half of his jacket on that side had been sliced off. The capsule was at the bottom of the lake. He gave Siren a helpless smile, at least it was the spare.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought, now let’s get back to Frank before he decides to row away,” Siren pointed to a boat a few hundred feet away.

Luke felt like a toddler asking to get held when Siren grabbed him by his forearm and wrenched him out of the ice. They had to swim, which Luke also had to ask for help with. He did not have a protein shake to heal his body quickly.

When they got to the boat Siren sat down. The boatman looked down at Luke, “You sure he has ten silver parces to his name?”

“I’m sure that if you flip him upside down and shake hard enough, some money will fall out,” Siren answered.