“So it is not peaceful in the slightest,” Siren muttered, “ well then we’ll just have to kill it. “

“How do you intend to do that? The room moved when it hit it from the other side.” Tristan said.

Siren only shook his head, “If there is something down there with a brain connection to you, there is no way I can tell you how we intend to kill it. “

Tristan supposed that made sense, however it did not make him feel any better. He would not normally call himself a coward, but that thing terrified him. It could get inside his head and that was not a battlefield that he had trained himself for. Unfortunately for the elemental lord, Tristan had a fight reflex, not a flight reflex. There was no way around it, the elemental lord needed to die.

Luke slapped him on the back, “No worries this is a guaranteed method, we just need to go get it from Hadrid. It should be done in the next few days.”

Siren nodded, “Luke and I will be retrieving the tool and the elemental lord will die within the week.”

He felt a little useless and a bit like he was no longer needed. All he had accomplished was to stop a few wandering elementals and be a metal detector. He needed to do something productive.

At first, his mind went to the books on alchemy and forces. They were interesting, but nothing in them would make the upcoming situation easier. It was not like he would create his own mythical beast in the few days until they moved. Training would not help as even if he broke his kern every day for the next week, he would only reach halfway through tier four. At that time the elemental lord would only outclass him nine times over.

Tristan looked down the hundred-foot hole. The shadows were deep enough that he could not see the bottom. A memory was brought to the surface, not his, though it felt like he had been there.

The force of absorption in the metal lessened the impact on Hailey’s section.

There was a way to put a force into ordinary metal. It was the entire reason that the elemental lord could not break out. Normally Tristan would need to run back to his bunk and look up the force of absorption, but he was relatively familiar with the forces in the ‘a’ section. Absorption was a pretty standard force that earth, water, metal, and air had access to. All things that could be touched could absorb something, even if that something was just force. It made sense then that a metal specializing in absorbing impacts would stop the blunt strikes of the elementals, but still fail to stop Hestia’s Sickle. Despite the sickle being five tiers below the elemental, it could burn as well as cut, neither process was impact-heavy.

Tristan looked down at his palm, a savage red cut ran across it. Could he make a metal like that? It would definitely be weaker than the tower steel, but none of his alloyed essences were really defensive in nature. Well, the last one he got might have been, but he had no idea how to use it. He grimaced at that third of his essence, he had hoped it would be considered used and his kern would refill. No, it just wasted space.

Still, he had two other forces he could use, neither were natural to metal, so he might end up with something interesting. Looking over his shoulder, he even had six people to arm and send into battle. He had to abandon that thought, if the tier nine was fifteen times greater than himself, it would be thirty times greater than them. No weaponry could bridge that kind of gap.

It hurt his pride a little, but he was not sure that weaponry would help him at all either. If he could not use it then who could? Siren, maybe. He would be using whatever weapon the alchemist made. Was there really nothing that could be done? He was skeptical of decay being helpful, but consumption should do wonders if it could pierce the elemental’s body. His eyes fell on a wooden rod around three feet long with a razor-sharp cap on it.

He grinned as he picked up one of the bolts. This would be excellent, any warrior could use it and it would be easy to outfit with tower steel as only a sharp tip was necessary.

“Do any of you guys know how to forge?” Tristan asked his butlers.

They all looked at each other for a few moments. Finally one answered, “I did pottery for a short time.”

That did not help. Tristan knew very little about either pottery or smithing. He was sure you would use fire to shape the latter and water to shape the former. Shrugging he made his way over to the smiths. Even if he was unaware of how it worked, there were a few dozen masters working on sight.

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It only took him a few moments to snag one of the boys who was running errands for their master. To his surprise, Tristan recognized the kid. They went to the same sifting but had rarely seen each other around the Forest Caldera. Still, it felt odd to look at a young man the same age he was and think of him as a child. Maybe it was the violence that Tristan had been through, even if it was self-inflicted, it would leave its mark.

“Where is your master, I have a proposal for him,” Tristan asked.

The boy jumped and looked around as if Tristan was threatening him. After a few moments, he deflated and sighed, “Follow me.”

They took several turns through the little gathering of tents before coming to a smith’s workshop. The sound of hammering could be heard from within and smoke was rising from the open top. Tristan looked around, none of the tents had roofs. He wondered why all of them had set up what amounted to a flammable room, a room that did not even keep the snow out.

The assistant stopped before the tent, “Please wait outside while I get Master Doil.”

Tristan nodded, he had almost a week to use. He did not expect that mixing his essence with metal would pose any issue. The affinities matched, they were simply different flavors of the same forces. Just like different foods complement each other, different metal essences should also be complementary.

“Sir, the silver devil has come to see you,” The boy said.

“Did the mine foreman send him?” Doil said. At least Tristan assumed it was Doil, as no one else in the tent was moving. While Tristan could not see the man, he was covered in a scattering of metal shavings giving Tristan’s metal sense a decent outline of the man.

“No, sir, he said he has an offer,” The boy said.

“Probably wants to eat my soul,” Doil scoffed, “he’s tier zero, I was there when you two were sifted, there’s no issue with telling him to leave.”

Tristan was a little disorientated. It had been a while since anyone had mistaken him for tier zero. Even if he was not part of the military, he was still part of the Forest Caldera. Everyone in the plains conflict should have heard of him in one way or another, he was too strange of a figure not to be known. In the Forest Caldera, he had fought Henry Golden Heart in a very public duel. An entire building had been destroyed, there was simply no way for a tier zero to do something like that.

The only thing he could think of was the temple not wanting to admit their priests getting manhandled by an unruly silver devil. Regardless of whether this smith was just an idiot or too focused on crafting to receive the local news, Tristan still needed a smith. One that had scorned him half a decade ago would work fine.

Tristan shoved the tent flap aside and stepped inside, “Hello Doil, I would like your help.”

“No. Get out.” Doil grunted.

Tristan placed his hands on his hips and attempted to channel his best salesman, “Don’t you want to be the smith that saves the Caldera?”

“No - what?” The confusion on the bearded man’s face was quite comical.

“There is currently a tier nine, intelligent elemental lord buried one hundred feet under our feet, and Elder Forest wants us to crack open its prison to get the metal sealing it in,” Tristan said this all in one breath as he did not want to give the man any time to talk.

Doil shook his head, “I can’t believe anyone would accept this trash.”

“Actually,” the apprentice said, “Sir Ren did tell us that there was a highly dangerous entity down there.”

“How come no one told me?” Doil asked indignantly.

“I did, Sir Ren did, Conni did, and now this silver devil did,” The boy said, “I don’t know about the devil, but Sir Ren is trustworthy right?”

Doil huffed, setting his hammer beside the bar of metal he was currently shaping. He folded his arms over his large belly, “So what’s your idea devil, and don’t think you can trick me! I go to temple gatherings at least once a year, I’ll smell your evil plans.”

Tristan rolled his eyes, “sure you will.” Doil narrowed his eyes, so Tristan held up a palm to forestall the smith’s rant. He needed to say something that agreed with the man’s odd worldview and also got his goals accomplished.

Uncertainly, Tristan started, “I am very powerful for my tier, but I am not powerful enough to survive that elemental. I don’t want to die, but I can’t both let the elemental kill all you who worship false gods and survive the ordeal myself.” Tristan winced. That sounded so fake, he had basically spat out Hailey’s opinions on Furnace right before the deity’s death.

The apprentice raised an eyebrow, clearly seeing through Tristan's ploy. One of his butlers facepalmed. Doil however nodded smugly, evidently when semi-religious people were faced with the supposed enemies of their gods, they threw rationality out the window. Tristan was sure that if they dug around in the caldera enough, they would find the bones of at least Furnace, but still, he was thankful to the deceased being for making his life easier.

“Your schemes were foiled before you could implement them! Ha the irony,” Doil laughed.

“Well, I don’t want to die,” Tristan decided to play up the spawn of the silver demon lord, so he brandished the bolt, “These are the weapons that can kill the elemental lord. Although I cannot use them, I can still empower them. My blood is the same as the Demon Lord’s it hungers and eats any essence it attaches to.”

He demonstrated by placing a palm on the tent and pushed out some decay alloy from the conveniently placed cut. The tent eroded from the point of contact. The last time he had tried this on something with no essence, he had been strapped to a table. Now he was stronger and far more skilled at concentrating it. On top of that, he no longer needed to cut himself, as his skin was no longer a barrier to the essence. An entire wall of canvas was turned into a wet pulpy mess.

Doil stared, slack-jawed. The man was high tier zero and had no way to control the essence in his body, to him it looked like Tristan had used the eldritch power of death.

“I want you to make a metal with my essence to do that to the inside of the elemental lord,” Tristan grinned evilly, “After my survival is guaranteed, I promise we can talk about what you want for your soul.”

Doil gulped and nodded, “Right away, we’ll get to work on that.”