Eleven sets of eyes landed on Tristan. He wondered why Luke always set him up to get slapped around. When they had broken Siren’s kern, the plan had been to place Tristan between Siren and survival. There was just one flaw, it was one that the warriors also saw.
“You can’t be serious,” the dual wielder scoffed, “We both know that we are too valuable to kill off just because you refuse to heal us. Nothing about this is truly dangerous.”
That was the crux of the issue. Any situation did not have to be dangerous, Tristan just needed to convince them that it was. It was theoretically possible to be completely safe while convincing yourself that you were in enough danger to warrant that extra third that a kern withheld. Also, it did not need to be them that was in danger, if their child was in danger it may create the same reaction. Not that Tristan was willing to risk a child for this.
Luke seemed surprised at the warrior’s cavalier attitude, “Well, you’re right. I guess.”
Tristan mentally groaned. That was not something one could admit to the victim, and still have them take it seriously. They needed to get beyond the rational mind that would realize their value and target their animal mind. Really, he needed to make them afraid.
“Luke, what does the venom in your pets mouth do?” Tristan asked, depending on the effect it might work.
“Blacklake said it was something that causes a fever, why,” Luke asked.
“They need to be afraid, so I was hoping it would be a hallucinogen,” Tristan deflated slightly.
Luke growled in exasperation, “You know what, screw this whole thing, I don’t care about this. If you can’t fight for your lives then you’re not worth keeping around.” He gently set Fluffy down and waited for his pet to scamper off, “Tristan, hand Fluffy the amulet.”
Tristan had seen Luke get frustrated before. He seemed to have a set amount of patience, after which he would solve his problems with violence. Fluffy ran over tail wagging, Tristan made an identical copy with architect alloy and let Fluffy take it in her mouth. The original went into his pocket.
The man with the hammer shifted from one foot to the other warily, and the dual wielder crossed his arms, “You can’t seriously believe that. We are the best the Caldera has to.”
Luke flashed forward and grabbed the man by his face and slammed him into the ground. The man grunted, but the soil was soft enough to soften the impact. Both swords were drawn from their scabbards, but not by the warrior. Luke drew both of them and shoved them through the man’s guts.
Everyone stared in shock for a moment before Luke ripped the weapons out and pointed at Fluffy, “Heal Dane. Or don’t.”
The man with the hammer sprinted for Fluffy, who was startled by the large man charging him. Like any smaller creature does, the golize fled. Not that it mattered, Luke closed in and stabbed the man through the thigh, his leathers barely putting up any resistance. He cried out as the weapon slid in, but Luke did not stop, he punched the larger man in the sternum.
A flash and the sound of burning clothes followed. By this time, all the others were moving. Tristan was not sure who to help, on one hand, Luke seemed unhinged, on the other, the warriors were taking this seriously. He decided he would go and check on the dual wielder, Dane he assumed.
The man was slowly getting up, his face contorted with the pain of movement. Tristan’s metal sense washed over the man, discovering something startling. Dane was not bleeding. He was injured, but the wound was not gushing the arterial blood it should be. Why?
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“What are you doing?’ Dane asked. His hands went for weapons that were absent as Tristan probed the injury.
Luke had cauterized the wound. Gut wounds were notoriously slow to kill in most situations, the seared flesh would slow it down further. It would still be lethal if left untreated, infection would just take the place of blood loss. However, Tristan had multiple healing reservoirs infection was a nonissue.
Dane knew none of this, and Tristan was not willing to share the discovery. He needed to put Dane in survival mode. Tristan had just the method. He used his tier four abilities to inject the clothes around his hand with decay. From the warrior's perspective, Tristan was trying to rot him apart, when all he was doing was destroying the top layer of skin and clothing.
The warrior shoved Tristan back as hard as he could. It only pushed Tristan back by one step, which gave Tristan enough space to wind up a large sweeping punch. Haymakers were generally not advised in combat, highly telegraphed strikes were the easiest to counter. Tristan paid for taking it easy on an elite.
Dane stepped into the blow, grabbing the arm and pivoting Tristan over his leg. That left Tristan on the ground with a very angry Dane standing over him. Thankfully, Dale had an air kern, so he was unable to make weapons. Tristan reinforced his ribs as Dane stomped down on them, before summoning Vulcan and driving the flaming end into Dane’s face.
Tristan couldn’t just beat Dane up. That would not be helpful, he needed him to use up his essence. As air was a poor offensive essence type, Tristan needed to make him use it. Adamantine flakes were constructed midair and flames circled around the two of them. Smoke and small blades of fluttering metal should keep him from breathing.
The next task was to keep Dane inside the circle. It was not easy, but Tristan kept the exertion high enough to plow through the man’s essence reserves in a short time. When Dane finally took a breath, Tristan knew that he had exhausted him. The warrior staggered before Tristan caught him.
It was a simple matter to give the healing he needed and pass him an air reservoir. Dane should be fine. Tristan just hoped the man would not hold a grudge.
With that, he turned to his next victim. He focused on the people with fire, water, and air kerns, as he had a large number of those reservoirs. He had no dark or light reservoirs, so the warrior with the dark kern would need to be put under the effect of the stasis artifact. Kale was the perfect target.
Luke was flitting around, keeping the warriors from grouping up. Blasts of combustible air constructs would rock the elites every time they tried to get coordinated. All of the ones without a fire kern sported burns, but despite having a fire kern, Kale was doing the worst. His injured leg slowed him down. He struggled to follow the combat or catch the golize, who was happily playing keep away with the fake amulet.
Using Vulcan, Tristan made a long needle like construct. He coated its tip with a touch of his decay alloy before throwing it at Kale. Just as before with Eve, Tristan missed. Fortunately, he hit someone else with a fire kern, it was the dominant kern in the Forrest Caldera. He decided then that he would need to practice his aim.
The warrior who was hit ignored the glancing blow for a moment. Normally that would have been the right call, but the decay on the spear started eating into his arm. He cursed and brought a flaming palm up to his arm. While burning the injury would be problematic for most people, it would burn away the decay and leave the fire resistant body alone.
Luke filled the air with droplets of smoking air. Tristan had been told that the quirk of tier five was state control. Solid air was not something that Tristan had ever considered, and it made him wonder where the line between earth, water, and air was truly drawn. He was only in a position to wonder because the droplets weren’t hosting him.
They were so cold that skin received frost burns and any exposed fire exploded out of control. Including the fire being used to wipe away Tristan’s decay alloy. The warrior screamed as he was burned down to the muscle. It made Tristan feel a little sick inside. He had never really been close with many of the warriors, they mostly saw him as a little kid back at the mine. Still, he did not like watching them get hurt like this.
Hurt is better than dead. Tristan chanted to himself as he pushed forward. Kale and the injured man noticed his approach at the same time, mostly due to the golden flames collecting with his approach. Tristan would bet that fire resistance was more similar to his reinforcement than innate immunity, it wouldn’t make sense for the skin which was not part of the kern to share the kern’s immunities.
With that thought in mind, he threw the rotating ball of fire at the two warriors. To Tristan’s surprise, Kale stepped in front of the other man so only one would expend essence defending against the fire. Once the flames passed, Kale stood, sooty but otherwise unharmed. The man he protected stepped out from behind cover holding Tristan's spear.
He was a much better shot. Tristan lunged to the side before launching more fire out of Vulcan. His goal was to get them to break their kerns, but he also needed to empty Vulcan. Tristan had noticed something odd about the soul tool. It was not recovering essence as quickly as it should. Normally that would be a bad thing, but currently, it was something he wanted, he needed to expend essence faster than it recovered.
That was a bad thing for his two opponents. Tristan dumped as much flame as he could pull out of the artifact. Yes, it was scaled to a tier four, but he was torching tier three foes. It took only a few seconds for the flood of fire to tear through the warrior's already drained kerns. Tristan winced at the burns they received. Both were alive, but crispy, he hadn’t taken into account how hot the stones they collapsed on would be either.
One fire and one healing reservoir each. Tristan was simply glad that he had raided the Forest Caldera’s stockpile before this.