While he did not have void he might have something nearly as bad. After robbing the army of mercenaries he had a bunch of odd reservoirs. After seeing Vulcan’s craftsmanship and Hadrids, the alchemist had downright basic workmanship. The knives had the same lines, but with the alloy force, Hadrid could simply make them when he created the construct. It hampered their effects, as alloy channels weren’t as capable of moving a force. To add to that, all the channels were straight lines leaving some areas of low coverage.
He pulled out the essence reservoir he was considering. While he could not be sure, the same channels should work within each element. What he was holding was a reservoir containing erosion. Decay for inert matter, which is what composed the Lord of the Underworld. The best part was that erosion was part of earth, water, and air. Both Siren and Luke could fuel the essence needed to maintain the construct within the reservoir.
There was another issue with the technical skill required to forge it. Making the channels was considered too rudimentary for Vulcan to have thought about it. To him it was akin to hammering in a nail, a novice would worry about the how, a master would consider where.
So he drew the knives he had purchased from Hadrid and examined them. He could sense the strings of adamance within directing the essence from the reservoirs. So it was a solid piece of crystalized force. That was not weird for adamance but it went against the very concept of void. It was a bit of a brain bender but it appeared that the embodiment of absence could be touched and held, though not without consequence.
With little more thought he started making it. He could simply make the whole thing with a construct, but Vulcan had avoided it for some reason. Tristan could have taken the shortcut, but taking shortcuts hadn’t gone well recently. So he put together the gauntlets in a more old fashion way.
He did have several things that gave him an advantage over normal smiths. The greatest being that he could feel the properties of the metal. He grabbed one of the heavy leather smithing gloves and used it as a base. Vulcan had not shown him what the plates were attached to, but heavy leather seemed appropriate.
Tristan poured the metal out into a sheet and waited for it to cool. While waiting he looked around. Siren had left, though a man in armor stood off to the side watching him. Drew also frowned at Tristan, not appreciating the lost glove.
Once the metal was cool enough to handle Tristan used the knives to slice them into the pieces that he wanted. He inherited his father’s art skills, so they were only mostly the correct shape. As he worked it drifted farther and farther from the original design, Tristan had assumed the process of sculpting metal would be simple. He was wrong.
He struggled to make the knuckle guard, out of which the erosion would be discharged. Finally, he gave up and simply riveted the plate directly onto the glove. Instead of the streamlined receptacle for the essence reservoir, he had a crude bulge in the center of the palm. The channels were also more difficult than he had thought.
Tristan used every bit of his control to carve grooves into the metal. It was simple, straight lines. None of the runes that Vulcan used seemed possible. Tristan was not even sure how he had managed to use those to get channels. In short, what Tristan came up with looked like a child’s attempt at copying their father. When he finally got around to placing the reservoir he had a piece of junk.
To make it worse he felt a soft sense of amusement coming from Vulcan, “Why don’t you give advice instead of laughing.”
Tristan immediately felt bad for harassing the injured soul tool. Still, he didn’t need to laugh. He heard some footsteps approaching and turning he found Drew approaching.
The young smith examined Tristan’s shoddy craftsmanship and asked, “What were you trying to make?”
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Another blow to his pride, Drew couldn’t even tell what he was making. Though to be fair, his only explanation had been about punching math. Tristan thought about explaining the weapon that he had in his mind, however the backstory would only distract Drew.
“I found the blueprints for a powerful weapon,” Tristan started, “I don’t have all the materials, but I would like to make something similar.”
Drew glanced at the gauntlet, “can I see the blueprint?”
“No, it's in my head,” Tristan said. He sighed, that made him sound like a crazy person, “I found it in the cave where the Lord of the Underworld was originally imprisoned. I couldn’t take it so I memorized it.”
Drew raised an eyebrow in disbelief. Tristan settled for using his architect alloy to build a replica of what was in his mind. It was a few sizes bigger than even Siren could wear. A large plate of metal covered the outer forearm, and the rest was made of concentric rings of metal. The joints had a fine chainmail mesh. Tristan’s skill with the architect alloy was not enough to make the chain mail joints articulate, but the texture was still distinguishable.
The smith’s eyes widened at the construct being woven into existence. It took quite a bit of his essence reserves to do that, a limitation that most tier fours did not possess. He set the sculpture of a gauntlet on the table and inspected it. Fortunately, he was able to preserve the runes, though he still had no idea what they meant.
“I was trying to make this, maybe a few sizes smaller,” Tristan gestured to the glove.
“If you could just magic one up, why did you ruin my glove?” Drew said.
“I can’t ‘magic’ one up,” Tristan made air quotes at the word magic, “I don’t know why yet, but I’m pretty sure that my constructs are useless for artifacts.”
Drew’s eyes widened, “An artifact?”
It took Tristan a few moments to comprehend the smith's amazement. Most people only had the artifacts that were handed down in the family. Even then, someone’s death producing an elemental or artifact was rare, to add to that, most people had more than one child and many artifacts were purchased and absorbed by the leadership of the caldera. Drew might not have ever held an artifact, and now he was asked to take part in constructing one.
“Yes, though this one will be much weaker than what you are currently looking at,” Tristan said, “As I said, we lack the materials needed. If I read it correctly it was designed by the Silver Demon lord to kill gods.”
Not entirely inaccurate. It was designed by the Silver Demon Lord’s nephew to kill a deity that could have cut through the Temple’s pantheon like a scythe through grass. Tristan was sure that if they could get a prototype up and running, the far weaker Lord of the Underworld could be put down for good.
Drew’s eyes widened even further, “This is a divine artifact?”
Tristan was not going to get into a theological debate over a misdirection, so he shrugged, “Only if you believe the description. But considering where I found it, the chances are not nonexistent.”
“Where do we start?” Drew was excited, bouncing from one foot to the other.
“Well we need to substitute some things, for starters, we will be using Erosion instead of void to deal damage,” Tristan held up the reservoir.
The smith inspected it, “I want to ask questions, but I am not sure I will understand the answer.”
“This is a reservoir, the heart of an elemental,” Tristan explained, “I can use it as a power source for an artifact.”
Drew nodded, before starting to recycle the metal that Tristan had wasted. He dumped it into the crucible and started to explain what was done wrong. Turns out that metal is not just bent into the correct position, not because all the smiths were tier zero, but because it would create weak points in the finished product if done incorrectly.
It took substantially longer to do it Drews way. Long enough that the onlookers got bored and left. The guard Siren had left was swapped out two times and the sun was completely set by the time most of the parts were cool. Tristan’s tier four strength did come into play when hammering the metal flat. He was five times stronger than Drew, making a difficult task relatively simple.
The metal slid together quite easily. Tristan could see the obvious difference in craftsmanship between Vulcan’s product and their own. Still, even the shadow of divinity was better than anything Tristan could bring forth. The receptacles had to be designed with a clip that would weaken the overall rigidity of the piece, however, the whole thing would be covered with an adamant plate making it quite sturdy.
The last step was quite surprising. Drew demonstrated the value of experience when he pulled out a liquid solution that etched the surface of the metal. It was much more precise than Tristan attempting the same thing with his knives.
Tristan clipped the erosion reservoir in, alongside the only two absorption reservoirs he had. He lacked execution, but erosion was not as volatile as void, so he hoped it was unnecessary. One of his daggers, the sword breaker had been sacrificed to give the plate covering the arm adamance.
Tristan grinned at Drew, “Want to go test it?”
“Not in my shop.”