It did not take long to move the eight survivors to a more comfortable location. There was a tent near the wall where several of the healers were keeping diseases from festering in the cramped living conditions. Tristan hadn’t known that a hospital had been set up, his need for one was greatly reduced compared to the average person.
All the doctors gave him dirty looks as they bustled about the unconscious warriors. There was one tier three healer on staff, but the rest were tier one or two light kerns that had access to some of the army’s healing artifacts. More mundane doctors were available, but they were mostly trained in first aid.
“What were you thinking,” Siren asked. He gazed down at the four-by-four block of beds that his friends and students now occupied.
“I thought I understood how to make it safe,” Tristan answered. The only person he could have asked was currently in a pain filled coma and he was not sure how long it would take to wake him up. Vulcan might not have even possessed the answers.
“There was no way you could have verified it,” Luke said. He was much more relaxed and was probably the true reason the medical staff was grumpy, “You should be proud that only three died, normally the mortality rate is higher.”
Tristan desperately wanted to blame Luke for everything. He had started it, but Tristan had enabled it. Plus he could do nothing about Luke, while he was supposed to have control over his own actions.
Luke’s words touched a nerve, causing Siren to turn and glare at both of them, “If it were any other point in the Caldera’s history, you two would be jailed for murder or simply put to death. High tier people do not get the choice to make careless decisions, we are walking disasters if we lack the foresight to use self-control.”
That was something Tristan was becoming more and more aware of. Due to the fifty percent geometric increase every tier, a baseline warrior was more than three times stronger than a tier zero person. If a force was added in that was skewed even more, though in a much less measurable way. Everything from houses to tools were designed with tier zero and one people in mind. Tristan remembered having the thought that if he torqued his wrist too hard, he would rip door nobs off.
Luke sneered, “No one was there to help me when high-tier people killed my mom and stepfather, no one was there when high-tier people wiped out a whole Grass Caldera, and no one was there to stop high-tier people from releasing elementals. Wait, you were in the same room when Forrest made that decision. I don’t care if you are evil or holy but at least be consistent.”
That was not fair. Siren had attempted to mitigate a bad situation, but it was true, none of those people had been held accountable by the legal system. Rail had been killed by Hadrid, a criminal, Forrest was still alive, and so was Elder Plain. Unpopular people at high tiers were punished.
“Luke,” Tristan said, “Just because it's not the way things are doesn’t mean that it is not the way they should be. I have talked with Vulcan a lot and his civilization was not ruled that way, so it’s not impossible for things to change.”
“Sure, but this is not his civilization,” Luke said, “It’s also not something that I really care to talk about.”
He opened the tent and stepped outside. Tristan could only shake his head sadly, Luke was the strongest in the Caldera, except the Lord of the Underworld. He was the villain in his argument. Still, Tristan did not know how to make his blunder right. He was not sure that death became reversible at any tier.
Looking up at Siren he asked, “What do I need to do?”
Siren sighed, “If you are trying to soothe chaotic emotions, nothing you do can really help. If you want to be productive, then I would suggest making something, I heard you made springs and screws in the River Caldera, more of that will help.”
Screws and springs seemed underwhelming, but he was not making them for himself. Making some things would take his mind off what happened. He stood and exited the tent as well. For a moment he thought about simply making screws and dumping them at the nearest carpenters work station. It was dumb, he had something vastly more productive he could use his time with.
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He pulled a piece of tower steel out of his pocket. If he could make a few dozen suites of adamance armor, it would dramatically increase the survivability of everyone. Maybe he couldn’t bring back the dead, but he could keep the living alive.
Finding a quiet area he sat down and examined the shard of tower steel. Luke had done something that directly countered the force of absorption. The more Tristan saw it in action, the less Tristan was sure conductivity was about lightning. This piece had been from Jenna, It was from her chest plate, and not an edge.
Tristan pulled in his metal sense. As it was, he was filtering out most of the stimuli. The fist sized deposit of iron, buckles, knives, tent steaks, and so much more filled Tristan’s sense. It was a tool he mostly used to find things and one he should be using better. Even just training himself to notice objects moving quickly could alert him to danger.
Narrowing his focus decreased the number of objects within his range, but it also increased his awareness of them. It was not quite noise, but the awareness could give him a similar headache. He stopped when it became strenuous just before the point of pain. Ten feet was as narrow as he was willing to go, but it was so much more detailed that he suspected he would not need to.
The piece of tower steel was odd, it acted like a void. It took in the energy exerted upon it, then released it over a period of time. Tristan frowned, absorption should absorb and keep it. From his understanding, the force was similar to hunger, except it took impacts instead of essence.
Tristan prodded it. Nothing happened. His issue was that he did not know what he was looking for. He held out his hand and created an architect alloy copy of the metal shard. Aside from the force used nothing was different, the alloy also showed no signs of dispersing. Comparing two things that were the same did not help, so he removed his dagger.
It could channel a force from a reservoir, but it was normal metal. The indestructibility of adamance was carried over to standard steel somehow. Under such intense magnification, Tristan saw something similar to a spider's web inside the metal. It was so thin that he would never see it with this intense magnification.
The threads connected to the reservoir and extended throughout the dagger. Tristan blinked in surprise when he realized that they were threads of infused adamance. It was exactly the same as his armor, except that it drew from a reservoir like a battery. He summoned Vulcan and created an adamant ball to compare the two.
Identical, then he compared it with the first two. The ball was already starting to disperse into smoke. Comparing the shard of tower steel to the adamant ball was confusing. They were different, but not in a way that he had expected. The tower steel felt dirty, almost unclean when held next to the adamance.
All of them were made out of pure essence, condensed into a construct how could they be dirty? It should not be possible, he had just made the architect alloy. The spiderweb of adamance filament had the same feeling, while the steel had the same dirty feeling.
There was only one reason Tristan could think of for the difference. Tower steel was an alloy while adamance was a pure manifested force. It was by nature unbalanced and unable to exist. It would make sense, only an essence reservoir could contain a pure force. A soul's inability to interact with it allowed it to exist within a sterile environment.
This theory had little beyond circumstance and a few baubles substantiating it. That was fine, he had a way to test it. He couldn’t make a pure alloy force, as it was by definition impure. Tristan decided to make an alloy with adamance, he gazed at the lamp post and steeled himself. It was a risk, Vulcan’s forces were at tier fifteen, Tristan’s alloy grew by adding more mixtures, while everyone else seemed to grow in volume and control.
Could he even make an alloy with something that much larger? The deciding factor came when he realized that he would be the only one to suffer the consequences if this went wrong. He set the lamp post across his lap and placed both hands on it. Reaching out with alloy was easy, it wanted to be part of a greater whole, to mix everything together. Making it only focus on adamance was harder.
As soon as it mixed, Tristan took it back and immediately made a construct with it. It was adamance, but no longer clean. He smiled as it stayed put, not even a wisp of smoke was present. Then the sickness hit him.
What? Tristan thought. Was this the consequence of using a higher tier force? He remembered Vulcan saying it was best to stay within three tiers. Turning his sight inward he inspected his kern and saw something worrying.
A bubble floated lazily though. It was similar to the earth elemental’s, but unlike Hailey, this one seemed to have the weight of a star. Tristan already knew there was no way to stop it, only endure it. Looking around he noticed all the people, he couldn’t risk losing his mind here. Not that he had a choice. So much for only harming himself.