Even with an skilled craftsman, Tristan found that the gauntlet had its draw backs. Namely due to the fact that he had zero experience laying essence channels. They worked and worked well, but they also worked all the time and both ways. That meant two things, first it would always need to be held by a person at tier two or higher with an air, water, or earth kern if the reservoir was to stay charged, and second the person should have a high pain tolerance.
Tristan used a large amount of metal essence from Vulcan to build a metal brick. He had started noticing that the essence inside the lamp post was recovering more slowly than he had assumed it would. That was a good thing for Vulcan’s overall recovery, but a bad thing for his usefulness in combat. At the current rate of recovery it would take Vulcan about a month to recover his essence reserves completely, a pitiful rate compared to Tristan’s three hours with meditation. Still the three percent Vulcan recovered a day was more essence than a tier seven would possess, making the low recovery rate relative.
Drew had wanted to use the glove until Tristan explained the dangers of using higher tier reservoirs. Not that Drew would be in danger of overdrawing his kern, his fire kern would not feed any of the reservoirs. Tristan’s kern would feed the absorption reservoirs, which were all tier two and the tier five adamance reservoir. He put the gauntlet on and immediately it felt like sandpaper was being ground across his knuckles.
“What’s wrong?” Drew asked after seeing Tristan wince.
“I didn’t know that the runes went both ways,” Tristan said gritting his teeth, he balled his hand into a fist and punched the metal block.
The pain it caused his knuckles was nothing compared to what it did to ridged surfaces. Tristan’s fist went almost six inches into the metal block before he felt resistance. Corroded powder trickled out of the gaps between his fist and the metal. As he held his hand there it ate deeper into the block, threatening to tip him over.
“I wouldn’t want to get hit by that,” Drew whispered.
“It would not do this to you,” Tristan jerked his arm out of the block, then removed the glove, “It would do this to you.”
Both of them examined the hand. The top layer of skin had been removed and blood was slowly leaking out. This is what it did to a tier four, if Drew had worn it the damage would have been at least five times worse. Erosion was a good choice, Tristan was not sure what it would do to an elemental, but as they weren’t organic, he hoped they would be more within the force’s purview.
“So, I want some metal mixed with whatever that is and I want to keep the model,” Drew said.
Tristan shook his head, “I can’t do that, I can only do that with forces that I have. Your choices are architect, growth, decay, consumption, and infusion.”
He only knew the effect of decay. Any metal would start breaking down any organic material it was lodged in. Unfortunately, that included any wooden grip or shaft. It would also be dangerous to sharpen as the shavings would damage anything they fell on.
The others were unknown. He suspected that architect would do nothing. Infusion might increase the even distribution of a material when mixed. Consumption and growth were completely unknown, would it become vampiric or would more material grow out of the mixed metal?
“Am I right to assume you haven’t had a chance to test them since last time we did it? Drew asked, and at Tristans nod he continued, “HHmm, I would like one ingot of the decay, hunger, growth, and infusion.”
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Tristan raised an eyebrow, that was a lot of valuable material. Potentially valuable, for all he knew it was complete garbage. So he agreed, a few ingots of steel force alloy would be more time consuming than difficult to make. The crucible needed to be cleaned before the next ingot could be made. Tristan was not sure what cross contamination in alloys outside his body would cause and Drew was not keen on finding out.
They started with decay, as it was a known quantity. It was mostly uneventful. It came out as a flakey metal, which made sense, any construct Tristan made with it produced a liquid, no metal produced that way should be sturdy. While Tristan suspected that it would better used to make toxic projectiles, he could also run channels of adamance through to make it more rigid. Tristan shelved that thought, blades of rot and death were not something he wanted to invent.
Consumption came out porous, making it lighter than the original amount of steel put in. Tristan would have simply discarded consumption as an alloy for smithing, it ate metal after all. Drew simply nodded and set it aside.
“What are you going to use that for?” Tristan asked.
“I don’t know. I am thinking of making a tap to thread screw holes in metal. If I can get it to eat into the metal in a threaded pattern, it will make my job much easier,” Drew explained.
Tristan did not believe that it functioned that way, but experimentation was the only way to find out. Infusion and growth had very lackluster results. Infusion looked identical to the basic ingots and not even Drew could tell the difference. He ended up marking it so he did not accidentally use it in a horse shoe or a set of nails.
Growth had caused a swirling pattern. It almost looked like the metal had never stopped moving until it hardened. The surface was also not perfectly level, slight ripples ran width wise along the ingot.
“Be careful with them,” Tristan advised, “They may look harmless, but each of them is dangerous in their own way.”
Drew nodded, “Oh, I know. Master Doil always said I was too quick to cut corners.”
Doil probably had a conniption over every misstep. Tristan chuckled at the thought, “Regardless, do you want to do this again? I had fun making this.”
Fun. That was a weird concept, he had not done something because it was fun since the excavation of the tower. Not that pushing himself was not fun, just that he would do it regardless of the pleasure that it brought. Making the gauntlet was different, he would be willing to do that for no other reason than it was interesting.
Drew nodded, “Even if you were kind of weird in the beginning, I can agree with that.”
Tristan waved farewell and left the smiths workshop. It was the middle of the night, but the sky was streaked with red, the light in the east was definitely getting closer. Was that one the signs that Vulcan said to worry about? It did not matter, even if it was a threat they would still have to deal with the Lord of the Underworld first.
Even in the middle of the night the camp was alive. People scurried back and forth like ants in a kicked mound. Tristan stepped off to the side of the path between tents to avoid impeding traffic. He contemplated who to take the glove to. Without the ability to provide power for the erosion reservoir, he could be the one to use it.
Luke had the most power, but could only supply the erosion with juice. Siren could do the same, but also provided power to adamance. The absorption reservoirs wouldn’t be refilled though. Tristan was left with a surprising third choice, Merrick. He could not resupply the adamance reservoir, but he could do both erosion and absorption.
A bell rang in the distance, pulling Tristan from his thoughts. He glanced over at the Lake Caldera, was there a gathering going on? Maybe Elder Lake had an announcement to make. Tristan started making his way to the city, he was not in a rush, but he also was not far from the gates. He paused when he noticed more people exiting said gates than entering.
“What is going on?” Tristan looked for someone to pull aside to answer the question.
“There you are,” Tristan turned to find Luke jogging up, “You are a difficult person to find.”
“Can you explain this,” Tristan gestured to the camp in general.
Luke raised an eyebrow, “You did not hear the crier? Of course you didn’t. The Lord of the Underworlds army was spotted entering the plains, moving towards the Lake Caldera.”
That was something to take note of. In Tristan’s experience armies took time to move. If it was large enough to destroy the Lake Caldera it should be a few days out. Tristan said as much.
“No,” Luke said, “You are forgetting that it is mostly composed of tireless elementals. The enemy soldiers don’t have to carry their supplies or walk, as wagons are hitched to teams of elementals. Estimations put them arriving by this morning.”
Now that was a problem.