Tristan looked at the glowing heart, a grin plastered across his face, “I can do so much with this.”

“That is a relatively weak variant, though, with my essence, the core created should not be too bad,” Vulcan muttered.

As they were alone Tristan opted to speak aloud, “What do you mean, does it matter whose essence is used?”

“Yes, the process of mixing the heart with another essence will create an essence core that averages out the tiers of essence used, that's why you never see peasants running around with tier ten weapons. A core of a low enough grade for them to use will end up with a tier too high to sustain,” Vulcan said.

That actually made sense, but Tristan still wanted to verify, “Back when I was tier zero, I purchased a pair of knives made with these cores. They were super useful but held the essence of a tier five kern. I was able to use them because it was a tier one essence core with tier five essence volume.”

“Yes, back in the Numitor empire we had a metric we used to measure essence quantity, tier zero got one hundred, and it went up by fifty percent every tier. If the essence draw of a weapon exceeds the maximum capacity by too much the owner will die, so it was illegal to sell an artifact of three tiers higher to anyone. Your knives had an essence draw of around eight hundred, they must have been mostly passive or it would have killed you,” Vulcan said.

Well if he was running around with tier five knives, that explained why they were so ridiculous and why nothing could really stop them. He would love to get those back. He wondered how good they would be now that he was within the three tier minimum that Vulcan used.

“How high would this be if we mixed your essence with it?” Tristan asked.

“Around tier eight,” Vulcan said, “You would have to turn it into a simple storage device, and it would be unwise to touch it until tier five.”

“Alright then,” Tristan worked back the simple average equation and got a truly monstrous number.

Tier fifteen did exist, and he had one talking to him right now. No, he had one who had offered to push him to tier six so he could go home. The frustration of having a mental parasite was washed away, this relationship was unbalanced in the opposite direction.

“Well then, I know an alchemist who has made at least tier five essence cores, we’ll have him take a look at it,” Tristan said, “Though on second thought, how did he make a tier five core while also being in tier five.”

“I assume he converted multiple cores at the same time, if you have two hearts and process them in the same container they will take the shape of the container,” Vulcan said, “Though it is quite the waste of potential, as two tier one essence cores will make only one tier two essence core.”

That was a loss, two tier ones should make a tier three if they were simply added. It also was not as if these were easy to harvest as one could never get one without a revenant being harvested. Tristan was not willing to harvest people like the Lord of the Underworld did just to get at their revenants.

Tristan set off towards Hadrid’s labs. Over the next two days, he realized how lucky he had been. More and more elementals appeared, each looking for something. Most were so noisy that they were easy to avoid. One time a sickly fire elemental saw Tristan, but ignored him. That light elemental might not have been a patrol. Was there something in the forest that they needed?

He would have to come back to find out later. That tier one fire elemental looked weak, but that was probably due to the snowfall, and while he could defeat that one, the last four he had seen could hear and wipe him out. So as long as they left him alone, he would leave them alone.

It was nearing noon on the third day when he reached Alchehall, he chose to go around the lake instead of taking a ferry, the last thing he needed was to find out that his heart could rust. That day also brought with it a new issue. His ability would not keep him alive forever, an infection was starting to set in. It was slow, as it could not enter the bloodstream, but it would kill him if it was left unattended.

So it was with a big feeling of relief that he entered Alchehall. It was a different city, a wall had sprung up around it though the guards at the top were very inconsistent. Despite the lack of dedication that the town of criminals showed to public safety, the people on the top of the walls were armed well. At the gate the man had a quiver full of artifact arrows between tiers one and three, the essence cores were easily visible, as they had been mounted as arrowheads.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

The guard simply nodded as Tristan walked through the gate. He knew that all the criminal citizens had standing orders to allow anyone who had been here before. Still, having fifty people remember someone who had only been here a few times was impressive. Especially as he looked quite different.

Regis had burned all the hair off his body, and the fall had given him several bruises. The metal kern being a solid now gave him silver veins running through the whites of his eyes. Only his golden irises were unchanged, though that might have been enough. Not many people had metallic eyes, as far as he knew it was just Hadrid and himself.

Ignoring the populace, one he now realized was armed with the souls of hundreds of people. Tristan marched up to the castle. Had Hadrid killed enough people to build that many cores? The man had no morals, but he took evil to a whole new level if he was arming criminals with his victim's souls. Still, he needed help, so he kept going.

He walked up to the gate of the box shaped castle and pounded his fist on the door. The golize looked up from where they were napping on the front lawn, but nothing else happened. Tristan knew that Hadrid was inside, the man never left, so he continued banging on the door. Eventually, he made the occupants angry enough to answer.

Tristan could hear the angry stomping through the thick double doors, and was greeted by the angry visage of Ruth when she opened the door, “What do you want!”

“I want to do some alchemy, where’s Hadrid?” Tristan answered.

“You can’t just barge in here and demand anything,” Ruth scolded. She tried to slam the door, but Tristan stopped her with his foot.

“Your boss agreed to teach me, now I’m here to learn,” Tristan said with a forced smile, “You’re not going to make Hadrid a liar are you?”

Ruth looked conflicted, but eventually, she sighed and stepped aside, “Fine, he’ll decide, but if you’re incorrect I going to beat you black and blue.”

Tristan was sure that she would follow through on that threat. He was also sure that he would not survive the ordeal in his current condition. Stepping into the storage and tool shed floor of the castle, Tristan realized that all the tools had been replaced with tier four weapons. It appeared that Hadrid was capitalizing off the crab infestation and the war between Elder Forest and Elder River.

They went downstairs into the underground lab and entered another room. Tristan had only been in the main workshop up to this point, but now Ruth turned left through one of the side doors. He paused at the doorway and inspected the interior, wary of some kind of trap or hazard. It was a simple room with a desk in one corner with cabinets overhead and a large square object that appeared to be a table with a glass dome over the top. A black sheet of metal with some paper clipped to it hung in the perfect position to take notes.

“Hello, Mr. Hadrid, your apprentice is here,” Ruth said.

The alchemist did not respond for several long moments. He made some notations and crossed out a few lines of text, before turning to Tristan, “What apprentice? Oh, yeah, you. What do you want.”

“I want to make a deal,” Tristan said setting his bag down on the floor, “I want to do something that no alchemist has ever done or ever will do again.”

As he reached into his bag and removed the frozen heart he sent a message to Vulcan, “I will need help letting this guy know what to do, but if if anyone can do it, he can.”

“Sure, though my knowledge of alchemy is limited to what colleges deem mandatory education, and the easiest ways to circumvent the soul to disable an alchemical beast,” Vulcan cautioned.

Tristan felt that there were some things there that he would address later, but for now, he took the yes for what it was and pulled out his heart. If anyone in the caldera would be able to fix him it would be Hadrid.

“What do you want me to do with that?” Hadrid asked. He was watching his words closely, Tristan had taken advantage of him for his bad choice of words too many times for him to be comfortable.

Tristan pulled his jacket aside, exposing the hole there, “This is actually my heart, I managed to alloy with something that saved me, but I would like to use this opportunity to see if it is possible to improve a heart.”

Hadrid’s eyes widened, curiosity clearly evident, “What do I get it of it?”

He would probably do the experiment out of pure curiosity, however, Tristan would not have any control over the man. As he could not physically stop him even when he had full power, he would need another leverage, “How about a tier eight soul core, I can’t use it as the essence draw is far too high, I don’t know if you will even be able to use it, but its value should be very high.”

“You have a tier eight essence core?” Hadrid said with his eyes wide.

“Not on me, I could not risk the essence draw while this construct is keeping me alive,” Tristan said, “Once I am no longer one bad decision away from dying we can go get it.”

“Little troll, you have yourself a deal,” Hadrid grinned.

He went to the table and lifted the glass dome, revealing a clutch of eggs. Tristan assumed they were Golize eggs, though it was possible that the goat, lizard, dog hybrids had live young and this was some other species. After wiping down the surface with some alcohol and a rag, he took Tristan’s heart and placed it on the table.

“So what is this machine?” Tristan asked.

“A focus, have you read the book on biological tampering?” Hadrid asked.

Tristan nodded, “Yes, though I must admit my comprehension was low.”

“Don’t feel bad, Trolls are known for their low intellect,” Hadrid said, “This focus allows me to sort through the inputs I get from infusing essence into my environment. With enough time, I can sort the uses and tasks each different part of the body has. Most of it is far too small to see, so I need some assistance to find and affect only the desired area, and then apply to all matching processes. It is unwieldy, but it is also the only way to effect a developed organism, as going one piece at a time would take thousands of years.”

Tristan nodded and went to Vulcan, “Could you translate that.”

“Your body is made of cells which are given instructions by genes. Genes are made of even smaller bits of information locked in spirals called Living Libraries, these living libraries are transcribed by small bits of information that work like scribes. There are hundreds of these scribes per library, hundreds of libraries per cell, and millions of cells in that heart alone. This alchemist needs to change them all, or the heart will kill itself,” Vulcan said. Tristan was sure the lamp had dumbed down his terminology halfway through, but this still seemed to be a massive undertaking.