Tristan pulled on the rope, he and about a dozen other miners were helping pull a sheet of metal out of the hole. It would have been easier if they had a pulley, but there was nowhere to anchor it. Still, these miners were proponents of the concept, that if you don’t succeed at first, go and get more muscle. What was difficult for someone at tier three was child’s play for thirteen men at tier one and two.
As the highest tier, not in the mine, it fell to Tristan to grab the metal when it reached the edge. Guiding it up was not hard, simply tedious. If he did not then it would catch on roots and rocks making it a much more difficult job.
There had been two other confrontations with elementals. The second was larger, but they were all of lower tiers. Two normal ones and five of the slime elementals of various essence flavors. After the breakout of the dark version of the slimes, no one was going to take risks with them. They each died to the first five bolts spearing them. Tristan was curious how the other elementals would control their environment, would it be smoke like the dark ones? He suspected not.
The second confrontation was barely one at all. Luke had finished slicing away the outer portion. They had found that the structure was cylindrical and layered like an onion. In the second layer, they had found quite a few elementals, most of them were air variants. Luke later explained that he had shoved as much nitrogen into as small of an area as possible. Tristan had no idea what nitrogen really was, aside from a different kind of air.
The explosion it caused when it lit up was insane. Everything inside the second layer room was vaporized. Tristan suspected that it only worked because it was a contained area, but still, one spark wiped out a few handfuls of elementals. The weapon came from someone with dual kerns, and the combination was brutal.
“Pull!” Tristan yelled as he moved the slab.
It slid out of the hole and a team of blacksmith assistants put it on a cart to take to their masters. Tristan vaguely recognized the older versions of kids who were sifted alongside him. Sighing he looked back down to where Luke was slicing another chunk off the deposit. He wanted to be down there, he was sure that it was not healthy to consistently run into unnecessary life or death confrontations.
His philosophy was that he needed to have the biggest stick in any conflict. That meant he would need to build said stick in a prior event. It was selfish to expect the entire mine to bend to his desires, but this was a golden opportunity. When else would he have three tier fours and two dozen elite warriors backing him up? Never, that's when.
“Get it!” A yell came from down below.
“What do I do with it?” a warrior Tristan was unfamiliar with said.
Quizzically, Tristan looked down as several warriors pinned down a child. What was a child doing down there? It took him a few moments to realize that it was not a child, it was a short elemental. Maybe four and a half feet tall, and by the struggles it was putting up, the elemental was below tier three.
Siren stepped in and wrapped a stone covered hand around the elemental’s spine. His index finger rested on the creature's heart. It was stupid and struggled harder, but when Siren lifted it off the ground all its struggles were rendered pointless.
“Thank you,” Siren said to the guards, who saluted with a smile and returned to the survey of the cleared floor. Siren turned and stared straight up at Tristan, “Can you do anything with this.”
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Tristan shrugged and yelled back down, “Depends on what you want me to do.”
“Meet me by the training yard,” Siren said, “Luke, kill anything that is not on our side.”
Luke turned and started eyeing Henry,
“You know what I meant!” Siren huffed.
Tristan immediately left the tow crew and jogged to the training yard. He beat Siren there by quite a margin, the warrior had chosen to go through the mine to pick up a chain. The elemental thrashed like a fish on a line, even when its finger bones struck Siren they did not even chip his stone armor.
Tristan frowned at the weak creature, “That thing is about tier one, what is it doing in the mine?”
Siren shrugged, “It's not uncommon for women to move closer to the area of the wall that their spouse protects. I would guess that this is a similar case.”
Tristan grimaced, that would be a depressing way to go. Closing yourself inside a bunker only to die, either to beast or dehydration in a metal coffin. He did wonder why there weren’t more of these weak elementals in the mine, it had supposedly been a fallen civilization. It was a conclusion that Tristan was starting to find harder and harder to believe as time went on.
“What do you want me to attempt?” Tristan asked. He would try anything, but he could not make any guarantees.
“Remember the time you asked if they could be harvested or drained?” Siren asked.
Tristan nodded, “Yes, you want me to try?”
“Yes, the temple does something with them, I don’t know what,” Siren said, “But if there’s one thing I know, it's that Guider Daphan does not do anything for pure sentimentality.”
That was odd. Why would the temple handle the disposal of all elementals? The average farmer could handle them just fine. In truth, the average elemental was closer to the one Siren was holding, than the monsters in the mine. Most weren’t even violent, if the correct regret was there, they could probably be helpful.
Tristan could imagine a situation where an elemental would regret not building a proper home for its children and go about creating a new home. It would most likely steal the materials, but it would be a source of infinite, tireless labor that could be a great asset. Tristan and most of the Caldera were used to seeing elementals as horrible monsters when they were actually single minded monsters.
“That’s true, though if they process the elementals, I might not be able to duplicate it,” Tristan said honestly, “I lack both the appropriate resources and more importantly, the ability to move essence outside my own body.”
Siren simply raised an eyebrow, “You’re not really doing anything important now. Supposedly, you’re trying to become an alchemist, so experiment. If you find something, excellent. If you improve your skills enough, then we won’t need to keep going to Alchehall for our supplies.”
Tristan grinned, “Well, I’ll try my best.”
Siren simply nodded and marched over to one of the walls they used for their drills. The partition was not that cumbersome, but it would work to anchor the earth elemental down. Siren fed the chain through the slats and looped it through the elemental’s rib cage. He wrapped it through the forearm bones and shin bones. Once he was done anchoring the elemental down, Siren took the two loose ends.
First, he pried a rib up and slid the last link over it before replacing the granite bone. It healed right back into place. Tristan took a half step back when Siren shoved the hook on the end of the chain through the back of the skull and hooked it through an eye socket. The elemental healed around the chain, locking itself down. It still thrashed, but it could barely move.
Dusting off his hands, Siren said, “Experiment to your heart's content. So long as the heart remains intact it will regenerate.”
Tristan frowned and pointed at the sand filling the training yard, “will it be a problem if it touches the ground?”
Siren shook his head, “It will heal faster, but it is neither intelligent enough nor strong enough to generate essence structures.”
Tristan nodded that was good to know. Also, elementals could create essence constructs like people could? That was something to watch out for in the future. He inspected the chained elemental briefly. It would be easy to just start trying random things, but he had two different books that could help him.
He pointed at two of his guards, “You stay here and guard the elemental, if it escapes chop its limbs off, but avoid killing it.”
He glared at the two of them until they started fidgeting and accepted his orders. They were weirdly dedicated to serving Elder Forest, even though they were woefully inadequate to complete their assigned task. He went back to the bunkhouse and retrieved his bag with the skull and three metal binders.
While he did not think ‘Natural Forces’ would be of any help, he did believe that ‘Collecting and Transferring Essence’ would be helpful. The elemental would be able to recover any essence it lost, so long as he did not kill it. He wanted to see if it could be used as a battery for limitless essence.