Tristan had a new theory. Dads were all strange. It took him quite some time to get Merrick to believe nothing untoward had happened. How could Tristan have known that Eve had decided to keep the ring around? He had no idea what it did, but he was sure that it must have a good effect if it was worth keeping.

Eventually, Merrick was mollified by Eve, who was mortified at the situation occurring in public. Tristan sighed as he left the city, what was wrong with people? Closing his eyes he reoriented himself and started heading toward where he had seen the flashing lights. Turns out it was much harder to locate on sight than from a distance, the flashes of light were strangely silent.

Tristan finally pulled aside one of the men running back and forth with supplies, “Hey, can you point me towards Luke, uh the guy with lightning.”

The man repositioned the bag of flower he was holding. His eyes were confused until Tristan mentioned the lightning, “Oh no, you don’t want to meet him. He’s crazy.”

Tristan couldn’t argue with that, but it did make him curious, “What did Luke do?”

“He advertised himself at tier five, then offered lessons,” The carrier said, “some of the warriors tried it and I saw a few be taken out on stretchers.”

“Well, that sounds tough, I still need to know where he is,” Tristan pushed.

Finally, the carrier nodded, “Sure, he’s over in the old rubble pile, “at Tristan’s uncomprehending expression, he continued, “It’s where we put all the dirt from the foundations of any new home that is built. It’s about a mile to the east.”

“Thank you,” Tristan nodded, then turned and started jogging towards the rubble pile.

Digging foundations for homes was a new concept for Tristan. In the Forrest Caldera, many homes did have foundations, but none had been built in his short time in the city. Most homes there were made of mud and straw to create a sturdy but small structure, they were built on top of the dirt.

It contrasted what he grew up with against what the other calderas experienced. The Forrest Caldera was the second wealthiest, but its people were the second poorest. Tristan could only believe that it was yet another sign of bad management.

After a few minutes of dodging around wagons and busy people, Tristan left the camp behind. The piles of dirt were less obvious than the courier made them sound. Yes, they were made of dirt, but many were so old that trees had taken root. He would have missed them entirely if bricks from a condemned building hadn’t caught his eye. Once he saw one piece, more came into view. A chunk of tile, some broken glass, and other parts of buildings were scattered about.

The hills were wider than they were tall, standing at about twenty feet tall and between thirty and fifty feet wide. The sounds of grunts and the thudding of wood against metal could be heard from the other side. Sounded like something interesting was going on. Tristan climbed the dirt pile and was surprised at the design.

All the piles were arraigned in a ‘C’ shape. A road led directly into the center where the construction workers would presumably park carts of dirt while they unloaded it. Where that cart would be, a three way sparring match was occurring. Kale and another of Siren’s twelve were trying to strike Luke.

The other nine were standing off to the side. So Shale did not make it out after all. The other eleven were all present, and all sported bruises. Luke was out of their league at tier four. Now that he was a good chunk of the way through tier five, they did not stand a chance. Though tier was not the only reason he was winning.

Luke’s father had taught him to fight before he could walk. Rail was a relatively unknown figure, as he never made himself public, but he was one of the most dangerous people in the Caldera’s history. That young start and brutal upbringing did pay dividends when he needed to kill something. An unfortunate lesson that was being driven home to the warriors.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Tristan summoned Vulcan. He needed to expend a large amount of essence, multiple times over to empty Vulcan’s reserves and there was no time like the present. A set of adamant armor wrapped around him and a sphere of metal enclosed the fire at the lamp post’s tip. He did not want to burn anyone. Then he charged down towards the combatants without considering the fact that no one could see his face.

Luke noticed him at the last moment. He tried to spin out of the way of Tristan’s charge, but he made a handful of marble constructs and threw them. Luke managed to avoid being run over, but the marbles all startled him. It did not do any damage, but when he tried throwing lightning at Tristan, the metal orbs pulled it off target.

Tristan was about to start laughing at Luke’s incredulous expression, but he had to scramble out of the way of a sword. The armor probably could have taken it, Tristan was not used to fighting in it. Kale’s swing went wide, but it allowed him to step in and shove a small sun into his chest.

The fire construct exploded, doing little to the armor. However, Tristan was launched backward. Those suns were too powerful. Also wasn’t Kale armed with a tree branch? He looked over to see the other warriors setting down their club’s and removing their real weapons. The man who had been fighting alongside Kale had gotten a hammer from somewhere.

Tristan scrambled to his feet and brought the shaft of his lamp post up and braced himself. The hammer was heavy, but not to the point it would stagger Tristan.

“He has tower plate!” Kale yelled.

Tristan reinforced the armor as it slowly drifted into smoke. He kicked the warrior back. It probably packed as much power as the hammer blow, which startled the man. Tristan lacked both the desire and time to capitalize on the prone man, as Kale came in again, followed by another warrior.

“Hey, it's me,” Tristan yelled, he did not want to hurt them. Also, he did not want to get hurt, as there was no way he could handle eleven of them non-lethally. Even then it was only possible to survive due to Vulcan’s ocean of essence, as Kale’s firebomb would have seriously injured him without it.

Unfortunately, they either didn’t hear, or ‘it’s me’ was not descriptive enough. The great sword was unable to get through the adamance plate, Kale’s blade threw out sparks as it scraped into Tristan's pauldron. Tristan grabbed Kale’s wrist and pulled him into another warriors swing. Tristan coated his knuckles in gravity empowered metal. Then set the gravity on it to pull on the oncoming warrior.

The man had an air kern causing him to weigh substantially less than Tristan. Now the ground effectively became a wall and he fell at Tristan. He fell right into the smooth knuckles on Tristan’s gauntlet. Nothing broke, but it still knocked the wind out of the air kern.

Someone would be seriously hurt if this continued. He reached up to pull off his helmet when something inconceivably fast slammed into him. It dented the adamant armor and threw Tristan into one of the piles of dirt. A quick scan of his kern revealed that the chest plate had a concave section that had broken a rib.

A quick pulse of healing alloy informed Tristan that he couldn’t heal the rib until the armor was gone. Unfortunately, it was a construct, generated as a single piece with no buckles. He would have to wait for it to dissipate. Who had hit him hard enough to dent his armor, Tristan hadn’t thought that was possible.

He looked up to see Luke with a lattice of electricity connecting his forearms. One of Tristans beads was smashed into a puck and floating between them. All thoughts of taking his helmet off were gone as he wove a shield first, then a wall. Good thing too, as Luke released the pent-up energy. The wall was thicker than his armor but also had a lower concentration of adamance. An impact rung the metal like a gong, as the small projectile hammered into it.

He had found an issue. Vulcan had the forces of a tier fifteen, but Tristan was tier four, and his ability to use them was drying up. A headache started forming as he tried to pull more and more. Fine, he could admit that running at a group of highly trained killers was stupid, he needed to end this.

Fire collected at the end of the lamp post as Tristan powered through the headache and shoved combustion and gravity into the rotating ball. The charge on the attack was rather slow, which was an issue because Luke was rather fast. He closed the distance with plenty of time to spare.

In frustration, Tristan activated the attack early. Everything about it was lesser, but at this distance, it was still enough to drive them both to their knees. Luke gritted his teeth under the downward pressure and slowly got back to his feet. Then his eyes saw the now visible flames at the end of the metal pole.

“Tristan. You’re an idiot.” Then Luke slapped him.