Grand Saint Alloy

Tristan kicked a golize off the man it was gnawing on. Some of Hadrid’s pets were having a good time chowing down on the intruders. Tristan absently wondered if the Caldera would struggle with a wave of golize infesting everything. The creatures were tier zero, but they had good natural armor, were very stealthy, and hunted in packs. Being the size of a sheepdog made them unlikely to kill a human alone, but two or three of them could manage quite easily.

The small creatures were only paying attention to the invaders, all of whom were wearing grey jackets with a patch depicting a spiky circle floating over a mountain with fire pouring out of it. A crown and a volcano, as Vulcan was able to identify them. It seemed to be the symbol of the Lord of the Underworld.

It was a mess out here, but it was one he could make use of. Tristan jerked an arrow out of the corpse, he had probably met the man in the Forrest Caldera before. He inspected the crystalline head of the arrow, this was an essence reservoir. It still had a small amount of earth essence inside.

“So to infuse it I just need to stab myself with it?” Tristan asked. He was uncertain because things hadn’t gone so well the last time he had tried adding things to his kern.

“Yes,” Vulcan said, “You have the force of hunger right? Use that to destroy the essence within, then fill it with whatever alloy of essences you like. It appears to be a tier one reservoir, so it can’t hold too much essence.”

Taking a deep breath, he pricked his finger with the arrowhead. The earth essence dripped out and into his finger slowly enough for his hunger to consume it completely. The next step was to essentially build a construct inside the reservoir, it would release the essence in the construct when it was inserted into an object. Vulcan had been a crafter, specifically a smith, so for his crafts, he would insert it into tools with channels to funnel the essence inside to where he needed it.

In Tristan’s knives, the essence reservoir had been filled with adamance. Being attached to the knife's hilt, they applied those traits. Tristan was able to constantly keep the construct inside filled with his own essence, as adamance was a pretty basic force of metal. For the longest time, he had assumed that he would need to wait until tier four to use this, as he could not currently infuse his essence into things. While he did not need it to refuel a reservoir, he still needed it to make true essence weapons.

He created as much decay alloy as he could reasonably expect to fit inside the arrowhead and created a construct inside it. It was an odd feeling as the metal he could sense filling the arrowhead was substantially larger than what the arrowhead should hold. He could have made a construct the size of his fist with it, but it all seamlessly fit into the head with no issues.

“So that's really all that there is to it?” Luke asked inspecting the head that was now a nearly black chrome color.

“It’s a lot easier than I thought it would be,” Tristan answered. This arrow would now be one of the deadliest implements against a human military. Despite its ridiculous lethality, it would be useless against the elementals.

Luke held out a hand, “Give it here.”

Tristan handed it over without really thinking about it, “Just be careful, the essence in there is very, wait stop.”

Luke turned around and stabbed it back into the original corpse. The man may have been tier one or two in life, but that was not enough to stop the decay from spreading through the torso. Tristan backpedaled away from the body, as did Luke. Neither of them wanted to be around when rotting pieces started falling off.

“Why did you do that?” Tristan yelled.

“Why did you make a death arrow!” Luke yelled back.

Tristan was about to yell back, but Vulcan chipped in, “Why did you? You have the healing alloy and no one would benefit from your other forces.”

“It’s the one I’m the most familiar with,” Tristan sighed after getting his initial irritation at being reprimanded under control.

“You are most familiar with decay?” Vulcan said, “And you wonder why people think you’re a necromancer.”

“Shut up,” Tristan muttered.

Luke started chuckling, “You know, I thought I would be the first one to hear voices in my head.”

Tristan could only shake his head as he picked up another reservoir. He had been lacking reservoirs for so long that having access to hundreds of them evoked some odd emotions. Excitement would be his primary emotion if he was not going through a field of corpses. He picked up a dagger with a glowing red sphere in the hilt.

He inspected the weapon. The essence channels were undetectable, which was odd, as he was able to sense metal and its makeup to some extent. There was a difference between steel and gold after all, he was not sure what the difference was, he could just feel it. What he could feel was metal essence.

Tristan picked the scab off his finger and placed the reservoir in. None of the fire essence leaked out. Did he need to make a bigger cut, Tristan remembered pushing the marble into a cut before he broke into tier one, and that had hurt. Before he did anything stupid he sent a query to Vulcan.

“The arrow just needed me to prick myself, why is this one not doing the same?”

Vulcan sent an image of a man facepalming, “It's pointed the other way.”

“How does that explain anything? It’s round,” Tristan grumbled.

“It's kind of like a magnet, even round ones have a north and south alignment. Reservoirs are souls, and all souls have an input from the primordial forces and an output in the real world. For obvious reasons the output is almost always built pointy end out in weapons,” Vulcan explained, enunciating his worlds like turning ownerless souls into knives was normal. Maybe it was where he came from.

“Do you expect me to stab myself with the knife?” Tristan asked.

“That would be truly stupid. If the essence affects the knife instead of something inside your body, you won't be able to consume it. Pry the orb off and use the output side exactly like the arrowhead,” Vulcan explained.

That made as much sense as anything else in this situation. Tristan started using his architect alloy to make a tong like the blacksmiths used to pull the hot metal out of the fire. Gripping the reservoir with the metal, he stepped on the flat of the blade and pried upward. Whatever anchored the reservoir was strong, it was likely too firmly attached for even a well built tier one to break. He was tier three, so it only took a good bit of strength and leverage to pry it off.

Tristan had to marvel at the adaptability of the metal kern. For the longest time, he had assumed that it was simply the best at combat, however, he had never met a person with a metal kern who did not also have a force. Sure they could make their weapons and armor, but so could everyone else, just not on the spot. It seemed to be an essence type that lent itself very well to production. Need a weird tool, just make it, it was a very convenient essence that did not seem to excel at anything, but was not lacking either.

He picked up the red reservoir, the metal tong had not left a scratch on it, “Why don't people make armor out of this?”

“Some people do,” Vulcan said, “Chainmail mostly, it acts as hundreds of different essence batteries, though one of my uncle’s disciples made a worn tunic out of it, it looked stupid but was very soft.”

Someone would have to be very rich to do something like that. Each ring would be an elemental’s processed kern. A set of chain mail would represent hundreds if not thousands of lives and would be an artifact of unprecedented value. Even one hundred tier one reservoirs could store enough to still be beneficial at the same level as the Lord of the Underworld.

Placing the outlet of the reservoir against his small cut, Tristan felt the hot essence of flame enter his kern. It was swiftly devoured by hunger and converted into metal essence. Tristan then ran some architect alloy through his heart to pick up some growth force and finally become healing alloy. He had never made a construct with it simply because the healing alloy had little use outside his body. It was simply a vastly inferior version of what a light kern could accomplish.

Still, it was not difficult to push it through his skin and into the reservoir. The cut fixed itself as the essence left his body, Tristan was not sure what he was expecting. He had been hoping for it to start glowing golden like some kind of holy object, instead, he got a glowing blue-brown color.

“Why is it this color?” He muttered to himself.

Tristan was not expecting an answer, but Vulcan had one, “Growth is part of water and earth as well, so it should not be surprising that a reservoir filled with that force would be a mixture of those colors.”

That was good news. It would mix better with Siren’s kern and probably Eve and Bruce as well. He looked over the battlefield. The sun was setting making all the luminous reservoirs stand out. Tristan frowned looking out to the east, it looked almost as if the sun were about to rise again, most of the stars blotted out by its light. Something that was impossible as the sun had set in the west just a few minutes ago.

“Is this one of your volcanoes?” Tristan asked. He explained what he was seeing.

“Maybe?” Vulcan said, “Does the light look like it's moving this way?”

“No,”

“Then don’t worry about it,” Vulcan said.

Tristan shrugged, he had more important things to do than to worry about strange lights on the horizon. He had an entire field of reservoirs to turn into healing devices.