Stress was an odd thing. It could make someone paranoid, and see shadows and enemies where none previously existed. Stress after hearing a scary story made the coat hanging off the back of a chair appear monstrous in the dark. After being told that Mythical beasts roamed the world, Tristan was jumping every time some bushes rustled.
Everyone in the Caldera was constantly told of the dangers outside the wall. That had led him to make the false assumption that everything outside was a beast. To date, he had seen seven squirrels, several sparrows, and various other small animals. No bloodthirsty monsters. Tristan was almost disappointed. If he had not fought the ghost crabs he might have started to relax.
Stopping in a clearing, Tristan took a deep breath. Exhaustion was getting to him as well. He was going to start his third full day without sleep. Adrenaline could only take a person so far, and he had gone far. Nearly seventy miles far. That would put him outside of Viral’s sensory range, probably. The man would have to be tier twenty-one to have a seventy-five mile metal sense.
“He isn’t tier twenty-one,” Vulcan reassured.
“How do you know?” Tristan asked, he grimaced, he did not have any concrete directions.
He knew mythical beasts were running around. Few shelters would be able to resist a hungry beast. It would be better to set up a place to sleep near a larger beast that would be uninterested in a single human. The guard who had let him out had mentioned turtles. They were in a canyon so what if he built a shelter into the canyon wall? As far as he knew, turtles could not climb, and they would keep anything that could climb away. With a plan in mind, Tristan started on his way over to the turtles.
“He was part of my family, a distant branch member, but still talented,” Vulcan explained.
“That doesn’t explain why you know he is below tier twenty-one, is tier twenty the highest tier?” Tristan wanted straight answers that made sense. He was too tired to play twenty questions with a lamp post.
“No, there is no official limit to the tiers,” Vulcan said, “We just crippled Viral’s growth when he started his journey.”
“How?” Tristan had not been aware that it was possible to cripple a kern and keep the body alive. At least for as long as Viral had been around. That brought up a different question, how old was Viral? If Vulcan had met him, then he was older than the Caldera by at least thirteen years, as that was when whatever stood in the for the sifting was used in the Numitor Empire.
“How is not important, why is,” Vulcan pointed out. Tristan disagreed because he would like to avoid what crippled Viral. He chose not to interrupt Vulcan, “Viral was a talented kid. Normally hard work and immense talent don’t come in the same children. You, for example, have comparatively little talent, but immense drive… Or at least a propensity to survive exceeds your stupidity. Normally the Numitors would welcome a talent like this, but he was also unable to feel empathy. We simply cannot tolerate someone with sadistic tendencies reaching the pinnacle of power. So we gave him a faulty cultivation method that stopped him from breaking out of the sovereign realm.”
Tristan was about to comment on how Viral seemed to be at the pinnacle already. However, he was having trouble splitting his attention. Something started buzzing inside his backpack. He reached back to find what it was, it was a metallic buzzing. Between the new noise and listening to Vulcan, he failed to catch himself when a shrub he stepped through disguised the edge of a wash.
Tristan toppled over and fell into the bed of sand and gravel. He instinctively reinforced himself, which saved him from rebreaking any of his partially healed bones. Grumbling to himself, he opened his backpack to see what had caused him to lose focus. Inside a small metallic disk was vibrating. Confused, Tristan removed it.
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The pendant was his payment from Janis for assisting in saving Eve’s life. It was supposed to alert him to the locations of warrior hideouts. Tristan had assumed that all of them were close to the Caldera, but he had no real idea what the warriors did. Sure, they fought mythical beasts, but he had always assumed that they used the wall. After seeing none all day he now suspected that they actively hunted them down. It was most likely the reason he had not stumbled across any of them.
A growl caused him to look up. From his sitting position, Tristan was at eye level with a dog. It was stocky, possessing shaggy brown and orange fur and ears that drooped at the tips. It had a boxy muzzle with drool dripping through its orange teeth. It took Tristan’s metal sense verifying that it had an iron coat and teeth - both heavily oxidized - for him to realize that he was looking at his first mythical beast.
The wroughtwiler growled menacingly, its hackles stood up, but it appeared uncertain. Tristan was sure the guard had claimed that these dogs were pack hunters. Glancing around, he failed to find any more wroughtwilers. There weren’t any within his metal sense, this one was truly alone.
“Good dog,” Tristan said.
It was a tier two beast, Tristan could handle it, even in his injured state. However, if it did bite, he wanted his face and throat to be out of biting range. For normal people, tetanus would also be a problem, but for obvious reasons, it would be ineffective against his kern. That was not to say that two-inch metal teeth would not be a problem. Getting bit would feel like getting stuck in a bear trap.
The growling intensified. Barking, the wroughtwiler took a few steps forward. It looked vicious, but the fact it hadn’t tried latching onto him said more about the beast’s mental state. As a pack animal, the wroughtwiler understood the dangers of taking down prey alone. Its actions also made Tristan sure that it did indeed have a pack, what else could it be waiting for?
He tested his leg. A twinge of discomfort let him know that running or jumping was out of the question. Tristan quickly slung his backpack on and went for his knife. That was too much for the skittish dog. With a savage growl, it rushed in and bit into Tristan’s leg.
Pain coursed through his leg, as the architect alloy holding his bones together flexed. Tristan yelled in pain, reinforcing the bitten area. The dog had moved so fast that he had reinforced after the bite landed. Silver blood ran down his shin and into the silty dust of the wash. Then the wroughtwiler started thrashing its head.
Tristan’s shin was reinforced now, causing the thrashing to inflict much less damage. Out of spite, Tristan infused some decay alloy into the blood, tinging it a darker silver. The decay alloy did substantially less than Tristan had expected, as the wroughtwiler’s teeth were made of metal. Its gums did start rotting, but the main casualty was the tattered remains of Tristan’s pants and his shoe.
Drawing his knife, Tristan drove it straight through the top of the dog’s skull. Its bone put up a substantial resistance, more than any tier two beast had any right to. After it had a tier five artifact knife shoved into its brain, the wroughtwiler still refused to let go. Even dead, the canine tried to keep Tristan in place.
Kneeling, he grabbed the top and bottom jaw. He pried them apart. It was difficult, the beast had a powerful bite and seemingly had locked its jaw. With a creak of bone, Tristan was able to finally get the creature off of him. For a moment, he considered harvesting the skin. If it could be harvested with the fur intact, he would have some good armor.
A howl in the distance made Trisrtan’s choice. Injured as he was now, a whole pack stood a good chance of taking him down. He held up the pendant, it vibrated at different rates depending on the direction he pointed it. The vibration was strongest when pointed west, down the wash.
He followed it, limping and leaving a trail of silver droplets. Could the dogs follow it, sure, however, Tristan doubted he was currently capable of disguising his scent from any animal primarily known for their olfactory prowess. They were also dogs, a building could keep them out, so long as it lacked any structural weak points, like windows.
The pendant took him out of the wash a quarter-mile later. Tristan took a moment to truly see the outpost. It was hidden under a bush, and Tristan would have entirely missed it if he hadn’t been using his metal sense on full blast to keep watch for approaching wroughtwilers.
He pushed the greenery aside and sighed in relief when he saw a steel trap door set into a metal tube. It went only ten feet down, but six of that was a room large enough to sleep a handful of people. They would be cramped if the spacing of the metal bunks was any indicator, but they would be safe.
Tristan pulled open the tap door and rushed down the steps. It was pitch black in the outpost and Tristan had to hunch so his head did not touch the roof, but there were beds. He placed a hand on one. There were mattresses. Tristan did not waste any time, climbing into the nearest bunk and closing his eyes.