Luke missed this. When Rail had taken him from his mother and butchered the Civil Protector who she had married after he had abandoned them, Luke had been young. The ex-pit fighter was blessed with a strong body and a weak mind, always blaming others for his problems and taking it out on Luke. He was happy when he broke his son’s kern.
To this day Luke was not sure how that was possible. Kerns weren’t accessible until puberty was well underway. It gave Luke a taste of what his father sought at a young age. Having the potential of one's body jump by fifty percent in one night was intoxicating. More intoxicating than the pain of injury. He never feared for his life, it would end one day, regardless of how he lived it.
Rail had shown him the rush of a petty life. He had also shown him the wonder of flipping that coin, not knowing if today would be the last. There was only one person he had ever met who even vaguely understood that. Tristan would jump into unfeasible situations, and he would still survive. They were nothing alike other than that, but a pack of wolves did not need to be the same, just to be in the same hunt.
He grinned as he watched Tristan unleash a torrent of flame on Hastings and Kale. Luke also saw the softness as Tristan quickly administered first aid before jumping back into the fray. The warriors had said that they were too important to be killed, which was true, but only from the Caldera’s perspective. They were not part of his hunt.
He caught the fist of Jenna. Her eyes widened as the spiked gauntlets she used crumbled. Normally, Luke viewed women as weaker variants of men. Within the tier, they were slower and less muscular. Jenna was an exception. She consistently trained herself to exhaustion, and her earth and light kern more than made up for the physical deficits that were the norm. The light and earth essence did not conflict too badly, she couldn’t make light constructs and all her earth ones had to be prisms.
Luke crushed the prismatic gauntlet and punched her sternum. He enhanced the conductivity of a hair-thin piece of stone. All the force of the blow was directed into that section, shearing it in two. Most people thought lightning was the force he held. It wasn’t, Tristan’s book defined it as the ability to direct waves of excitation.
Jenna staggered back out of Luke’s range. He made an air construct made of pure nitrogen to smother a fire, the warrior blinked in shock as his power simply shut off. Before he lost control of the nitrogen he packed a dozen times more volume into the same space. The sweet spot was about fourteen times, Luke had no idea why, but when loaded to that level, it went from smothering flame to causing it.
The explosion threw everyone, including Luke backward. One of Jenna’s arms was bent the wrong way. Luke smiled at her and pointed his stolen sword at her. She gritted her teeth and tried to get up. Her leg seemed to be injured too.
Grant rumbled in with his earth kern and a giant hammer. Of course, the explosion wouldn’t keep a man covered in three hundred pounds of stone down. He also had an injured leg but was doing a good job ignoring it. Luke sidestepped the hammer and stepped into Grant’s arms. A ball of super-heated air formed before Luke shoved it into the stone on Grant’s chest. The heat inside was instantly transferred into Grant’s armor, Luke pumped more and more in utilizing his force. It turned the chest plate into a stove.
Luke left him to disassemble the armor and turned to find the last fire kern getting treated by Tristan. Two people aside from Grant were still standing, or at least attempting to. Jenna and Haver, so light and dark were the last ones standing. He did not have to worry about Grant, Tristan moved around Luke after rendering aid. The sound of cursing and crunching stones followed.
Luke looked over at the final two. Normally it would be difficult to break a dark kern. There were few occasions where the essence was useful in a dangerous occasion. It had no mass and desperately needed a force to be dominant to show the power dormant within it. Luke had a theory that the strongest kern, in the end, would be a dark kern. All the forces in it dealt with destruction or forceful seizure. Kill an enemy and then take their power.
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At tier three with no force in the middle of the day, it was cute. Haver at least had two dark artifacts. Two kitchen knives that would always stay clean. It was a nasty weapon, annihilating any dirt, grime, and flesh that it was stabbed into. It would be better if Haver had a spear or sword, but he did not pick the shape of the available artifacts.
“You alright, Jenna?” Haver asked.
“I’ll manage,” she gritted out. Jenna whimpered slightly as she pulled her arm the correct way, then braced it with stone. A similar boot construct was formed around her left ankle. So it was at least sprained.
“You both done dawdling,” Luke said, affecting a bored tone.
“Oh, you shut,” Haver’s words were cut off when Luke rushed him.
Knives met the short sword, blade on blades. Haver’s were artifacts, both digging into the short sword. Luke pressed down with one hand, grinding the weapons together. Haver was bent backward as Luke tried to cut him. Finally, the man activated his artifacts, and slowly they started cutting through the stolen weapon. It was odd to see a cleaning function turned to violence so effectively.
Jenna didn’t let the standoff last. She came in swinging. Luke released the pressure on Haver, letting him stagger forward into Jenna’s path. His knives were trapped in the short sword, and he could not get them out before Jenna arrived. With her bum leg, she could not evade. She tripped over Haver and would have gotten impaled on the sword if she hadn’t patched her armor.
“You forsaken dog,” Jenna swore at Luke.
“Forsaken golize,” Luke corrected.
She wasn’t given the opportunity to process Luke's correction. Tristan arrived. He punted her in the chest. Luke frowned, that was way less force than Tristan could generate. Jenna landed on her back wide-eyed at the strike that came out of nowhere. Tristan caught up to her and hammered the butt of the lamp post down on her cracking the armor she was frantically repairing to keep him out.
He broke it three times before the exhaustion dimmed her eyes. At that point, he stopped and knelt beside her. He fed her a healing reservoir and then an earth one. So much money was being fed to these warriors, each reservoir had the potential to be an artifact. They had probably blown through a couple of lifetimes of riches in the last few minutes.
“So it's just you and me,” Luke said to Haver, who was getting back to his feet.
“Oh, go to hell,” Haver hissed back.
Luke shrugged, “Probably, the temple considers me a heretic.”
He clenched his fist, for dramatic effect, he did not need to do that to coat it in lightning. Haver readied himself to evade Luke’s attack. Somewhere in the background, Tristan cursed. Luke ignored it once he heard that it was something about dual kerns. Probably just meant it was twice as expensive to break her kern.
Luke charged, Haver successfully dodged to the side despite his obvious exhaustion. Then he stabbed out at Luke with both knives. He was far too slow, Luke shoved both weapons aside using Haver’s wrists. Electricity burned the hand he touched, still, it did not stop Haver from pushing forward with the other knife. Luke pumped more electricity into his wrist causing him to jerk.
“Stop!” Tristan yelled.
Luke froze for a moment. He felt that there was something off with his tone. Haver jumped at the opportunity and stabbed Luke. It was a shoulder wound, and not that dangerous. The effect on Haver was immediate, no one realized how tiers affected the body. Luke was very resistant to tier one kitchen knives, his skin was almost ten times tougher than an ordinary person's. It was a durability that most would associate with mythical beasts.
Did that stop the knife? No, but it ramped up the essence needed to resist Luke. The effect was a broken kern for Haver and an injured shoulder for Luke. Tristan slammed into Haver a moment later, dragging the blade back out of Luke’s shoulder. Luke was confused at the almost frantic look in his friend’s eyes.
“What happened,” Luke asked, putting pressure on the stab wound.
“I didn’t know she had a dual kern,” Tristan said. He pulled out the amulet that Fluffy should have had and pressed it to Haver’s forehead. Then he fed the prone warrior another one.
“So?” Luke asked. It did not seem like that big of a deal.
“I don’t have any light or dark reservoirs,” Tristan said, “We only have one stasis artifact.”
Luke frowned, he did not see the issue. Sure Haver’s life would be at risk, but safety was a relatively new phenomenon, at least when it came to breaking kerns. However, risk of death was expected, Haver would either pull through, or he wouldn’t. Luke could tell that it distressed his friend, even if he struggled to understand why.
“Hey, could you…” Luke trailed off as Tristan sprinted up the hill and over the top, “Sure, I’m just bleeding everywhere, I’ll just drink this wonderful protein shake.”