Tristan looked over at one of his butlers, “How long was I out?”

Strangely, that topic had never come up. Now he knew why, Luke thought it would be funny to leave him in the dark. The operation had cleared another two floors. Instead of widening the hole to reset the trap pit, Siren had simply anchored the spikes to the inside wall of the pit like a pike line. It made the vertical tunnel look like the maw of a giant worm.

The five cannons were placed about every seventy degrees around the hole. Anything climbing up would get shot or impaled on the spikes. In the event an elemental somehow reached the edge, the warriors had a pole with a U-shaped tip that they used to shove them back down. fifty feet was not a long way for an elemental to fall, but it was a problem when four cannons could take their time to shoot.

The only person at any real risk was Luke. He was cutting out large slabs of metal and attaching a giant magnet to them. They would then be winched out by the miners. Luke himself was attached to a harness that was itself attached to a pulley by a rope. With Siren at the other end, Luke only had to survive a split second before he was jerked to safety.

“Around two weeks,” the man Tristan now knew as Butler One said. He was the one with the artifact axe.

Tristan sighed, he had to stop taking week-long naps. He was wasting away his life with involuntary snoozing. It was frustrating, he had already proven that a broken kern did not necessarily result in unconsciousness. Unfortunately, it seemed to keep him out until it was repaired, and the higher he went, the longer it seemed to take. Would there be a time when he slept a whole month away?

Regardless, he was similar to a caterpillar in that every time he woke up, he was better than he was before. This time he was not so sure, he inspected the new essence in his kern. It was a force related to light, but he was unsure of how to use it. While he had been hoping for efficiency, he was not disappointed when he received healing instead.

At least that is what he first thought. Evidently, healing itself was composed of multiple forces, and he had only gotten a single one. Worse yet he could not figure out what force it was. Just like decay gave him the feeling of ancientness and rot, this one was odd. It felt like return, repair maybe reflection. Even the idea of a template was not too far off.

He had thought that would narrow the force down. No, one of the broad categories in “Natural Forces” was motion, there were dozens of forces that could fit the feeling he had. Deflection, Reflection, Reversal, Inversion, and those were just some of them. He checked the other sections and found that light was really good at bouncing. Every force that had to do with a sharp change in direction was connected to light essence. It was to the point that Tristan almost believed that all light kerns healed by reversing the injury.

As to how he could use it? He could not. Each particle of this light force was mixed with zero effort and it was at an affordable rate. The issue came when it was mixed, it would stop moving and float in place. Nothing Tristan could do moved it, but it also did not obstruct any of his abilities. Frowning, Tristan cut himself on the palm right above the stationary essence. Nothing happened.

Well, it was part of the healing suite of forces that composed light, maybe his was just too weak to work on a single part. Seeing no harm Tristan alloyed all the light in his kern, just to see if anything happened. It cost Tristan a little under a third of his essence, leaving the new alloy in a honeycomb pattern within his kern. It did not do anything, and his blood flowed smoothly through the construct. He could not see any use to this, so he tried to separate the essence.

To his frustration, he could not. Growling Tristan tried to use consumption on the construct, but this was his body, his own force was not considered food. Had he really just locked a third of his essence into a useless force? He could not think of a way to get it free short of breaking his kern, which he would undoubtedly do in time.

It just meant that it was now more important than ever to make himself some gear. He had chosen chain mail as the armor of choice. While full plate would be better, there was no way he could make it. The constructs could not be fused after they had been created, and he lacked the sheer essence reserves to just build it in one go. Especially now. Chain mail was different, all the links were already separate pieces and small enough to be constantly generated. It was slow, but coming along steadily, no one could see the progress as it was hidden under his shirt and jacket.

Luke sliced away another large sheet of metal and attached the magnet. The piece of metal had to weigh at least two or three tons, but the thirty miners and dozen or so apprentice smiths hauled it out with little effort. Something tried to claw at Luke from the section of the building that had just been extricated.

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“Elemental!” Someone at the surface yelled.

Tristan rolled his eyes. Of course, it was an elemental. These people had to have seen enough of these things die for them to lose their novelty. If Tristan had to guess he would say it was a tier four skeleton elemental. Probably of earth affinity due to its darker color, dark would have turned itself invisible.

“Elemental!” Another person yelled.

Tristan was about to yell back. When he raised his eyes to the smiths, he witnessed chaos. The smiths were scrambling to get out of the way of a water elemental that was shambling through their crafting area. None of the warriors underground could see it, their view of the surface was limited to the edge of the hole.

Tristan yelled, “Hold on!” And started running around the hole. It was slow going as piles of loose dirt were in the way. No one had been too concerned about anything going wrong on the surface, causing them to pile the dirt in the most convenient locations. Fortunately, the elemental was not slaughtering people.

In fact, it was placidly weaving around buildings and leaving the screaming smiths alone. It was just plodding towards the hole like it intended to jump in. That would be a weird regret, as the deceased person would have had to regret not jumping into this specific hole for it to head here. There was a much easier sewage pit to find in most of the Calderas and this hole was only made in the last few weeks.

The only explanation was that it had been ordered here. Tristan was not sure how far the influence of an elemental lord extended, but any elemental that came into range was probably added to the excavation crew. Except the temple almost always caught them before they could do anything, so what was a local elemental doing here?

Tristan jumped off the last dirt pile and charged through the smith’s camp. The elemental was not fast, so he caught up relatively quickly. As he was lacking a weapon, he scooped up an almost finished tower steel halberd. The head was large, with a spike acting as a counterbalance, the metal sheath that normally covered the pole was all he could use as a handle. It was awkward to use a blade this large like a small camping axe.

When he hit the elemental, he did it blade first. He was not sure what tier it was, but there was no sense in taking risks, so he used everything he had. What he did not expect, was to run the elemental over. He was used to them being powerful and dangerous entities. Tristan realized he had never fought a tier-one elemental before.

The disparity between the force needed and the force used was so extreme that the light frame of the skeleton barely put up any resistance. If the blade of the axe had not embedded itself in its sternum, Tristan would have lost contact with it. As it was, Tristan crashed into a temporary smithy. The tent fabric blinded and tangled him up. It was not an issue until Tristan tripped over an anvil, he stepped into something hot while trying to catch his balance.

The elemental struggled against him, but it was weak even for a tier one. Tristan was more concerned with the smoke he could smell than the thrashing elemental. He was resistant to many things, however, flames were not one of them. Heat would pass right through his metal, even be conducted to his organs by it.

Someone grabbed him from behind. It was not a pair of strong hands, but they still managed to pull Tristan out. He left the axe embedded in the bones of the elemental, its points would catch on the canvas.

“We got you, sir,” Butler two said. Tristan really needed to get their names. The fact that they had started calling him sir was also quite odd.

“Thank you,” Tristan said, “I did not expect it to put up so little resistance. “

The canvas was truly on fire now though elemental was fine. It seemed that water's high resistance to fire helped it survive. That was something Tristan could fix. He jerked one of the tent poles out it was scalding hot, but would not cause him any issues. Holding it like a spear, he shoved it through the elemental’s heart.

The sound of boots approached, Tristan looked up to see Conni approaching, “What happened here?”

“For some reason, tier one elemental showed up, “Tristan said.

He had a guess as to why the element had shown up, but he did not want to sully any investigation that might happen if it was a case of a local death. While blacksmiths were more commonly known for fire and earth kerns, a water kern was not completely unheard of. Most temperature-controlling artifacts were either fire or water after all.

Conni quickly called together all the miners and craftsmen. he asked them if anybody had recently been injured and killed, but nobody answered. He asked them to check and see if anyone they knew was missing. Several names popped up however, they ended up just being a master who couldn’t find his apprentice in the crowd. That one confused Tristan as the apprentice had a flame kern.

Conni could only groan and send them back to work. Tristan wasn’t sure what they could do about elementals just wandering in but he did reveal his suspicions to Conni.

“Unfortunately, an elemental Lord makes too much sense, “ Conni said, “the war should’ve started not too long ago and we should start seeing some more elementals as people start dying. I heard that Elder Forest was sending in farmers to harvest the crops before they got trampled. I would say this is probably one of them.”

Tristan could only nod in agreement, “As Siren does not want me down in the mine you want me to keep a lookout for the elementals that are approaching?”

Conni sighed again, “That would probably be for the best, you should be able to handle a mindless tier three elemental right? “

“So long as I have a weapon, “Tristan said.

“ well go get yourself one and be ready, “Conni said.

Tristan turned to the axe lying in the fire, which was slowly burning itself out in the snow. He was thinking about upgrading from his knives. If he couldn’t have the unparalleled cutting power of his artifact knives, then he would go for the brutal chopping power of an axe. He had never fancied himself a brute, however it was not too late to start.