Water turned out to be less of an issue than he had thought. There was a small brook only a quarter mile away. It was only a few inches deep and a foot wide. The water was clear, most likely being a small branch of the River Caldera’s river. Judging by the mostly dry riverbed it was set in, the lack of snow had impacted the ecosystem at the base of the mountain.
Despite having witnessed it, Tristan still felt disbelief at the effect Viral had on the world. He was so powerful that seasons were rearranged by his merely refusing to control his aura. It was something greater than the geometric increase of tiers could explain.
“Huh,” Vulcan muttered, “I am getting a feeling of trace amounts of absorption.”
Tristan was in the process of making several metal canteens. He rolled his eyes, “Of course you do. This water comes from the Lake Caldera, which has an entire tower steel fortress buried in the lake bed.”
It was something that Vulcan probably shouldn’t have been aware of. He had been unconscious the entire time Tristan had been fighting the Lord of the Underworld. This did mean that forces could potentially pollute their surroundings if they were not kept within their natural bounds. Maybe that's what the sects did to make regions they could grow their anima in. It would explain ever-burning forests.
An absorption ecosystem would be difficult to use. Absorption could take in energy and release it at a slow pace. It made any material made of it excelled at taking impacts, it was silvery but not reflective, and Tristan's metal sense struggled to latch onto it unless he could also see it. Tristan had a hard time seeing an ecosystem based on that force surviving, herbivores would struggle to eat plants and carnivores would struggle to eat herbivores.
Vulcan interrupted Tristan’s train of thought, “This is not from my ship.”
Ship? That was an odd term to use for a fortress, Tristan was focused on another part of Vulcan’s statement, “There is someone with a force out here?”
“I don’t think so,” Vulcan sent a mental shrug, “It is over there if you want to take a look.”
Vulcan directed Tristan’s gaze to an area about fifty feet downstream. He finished filling his canteens and then made his way over. Frowning he knelt. Something heavy had stood here. It had large clawed feet, that left circular tracks. Tristan could see various tracks, meaning there were probably more than one and they came here regularly. He knew that these were the tracks of a mythical beast.
Each footprint was bigger than Tristan’s. That was not normal for animals, even large ones, like bulls, left small tracks. He did not know if that was true of all animals, but he believed this creature to have a similar mass to a guard crab. Normally, he would avoid a mythical beast, but Vulcan was right, a faint feeling of a force did linger in the footprint. All of them.
Tristan looked up at the sun. It was a few hours past noon. Daylight was not an issue recently. Viral still lit up the Eastern skyline like a massive bonfire. Tristan checked over his body, the bites still hurt, but they did not delay his movement and his bones were all but mended at this point. Still, Tristan decided to wait until the next morning.
Moving back to the outpost, Tristan checked if the wroughtwilers were still alive. There was no barking or growling, so he took the risk and opened the hatch. He had expected to see charred remains, burned walls, and smoke. Tristan smacked one of the canteens on the shaft wall. He could see the wroughtwilers in his metal sense. None of them moved.
He climbed down to see what had happened. Nine beasts lay unmoving in a shallow puddle of rum. The room smelled of alcohol, not fire. There was a scorch mark right at the liquid’s surface on the wall.
Poking a wroughtwiler with his toe, Tristan asked Vulcan, “Is this some quirk of fire essence that I should be concerned about.”
He got a feeling of disbelief from Vulcan, “Fire consumes oxygen. They all suffocated.”
“Is that why air elementals are vulnerable to fire ones?” Tristan asked. It was not something that he had ever experimented with, but he had seen Luke use his Hestia’s Sickle to make explosive air. Luke had tried to explain it and now Tristan wished he had paid more attention.
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“Yes, even Saint’s need to breathe, so it will be something you need to watch out for,” Vulcan said.
Tristan started hauling the beasts out one at a time. He deposited them in the wash. If another mythical beast came by, Tristan did not want it to be drawn to his hideout. While the wroughtwilers weren’t capable of digging through the dirt to get to him, he did not know what the other mythical beasts were capable of.
The Drake was tier eight, at least by the Caldera’s metrics. It was a metric he was starting to doubt. Most of the warriors who rated mythical beasts were ignorant of forces, meaning that Tristan could not fully trust the rating system for anything above tier five. So the Drake was probably only tier six or seven with forces added to the human side of the equation.
Tristan frowned, Hadrid had claimed that the ghost crabs were artificial. Maybe the wroughtwilers were as well, “Hey Vulcan, are Mythical beasts all alchemical creations?”
“I don’t know,” Vulcan said, “I was a smith and artificer. However, I do know that many alchemists specialized in making custom beasts. Any competent alchemist would make them sterile. Releasing a variant animal into an ecosystem is a good way to get the local lord to hunt you down.”
Tristan tossed the last wroughtwiler out of the outpost. He went to the far back of the room, inspecting it for any type of drainage system. If there was a bad rain storm, he could see floods being an issue. There should be a pump of some kind to get water out. When he did not find any, he set about constructing one.
He was reminded yet again that metal was the best essence due to exactly this kind of situation. Who cared if you could win in a fight if you also had to sleep in a puddle of alcohol? The seal for the plunger was difficult, but he was able to cut up one of the boots that was on the small side to make an air-tight plunger. Without grease or any other type of lubricant, it was tiring to pump the liquid into a bucket.
Tristan had no intention of getting rid of the rum. It had saved his life, without destroying most of the supplies in his hideout. Another encounter with wroughtwilers might not turn out so well if he was missing it. Five gallons of rum went into three buckets of architect alloy and set on the floor where the barrel used to be.
Both the shelf and the barrel would be used to cook any food Tristan managed to catch. He had considered the wroughtwilers, but, while he had no fondness for dogs, eating one felt just a step too far. He remembered that Eve refused to eat meat, maybe this was how she felt about all animals. Tristan felt a pang of regret, he should have brought Eve and Luke with him.
He suppressed those thoughts, they would not help him now. Time to see if he could catch some real food. Tristan reached for a spear, then thought better of it. When hunting, he would need to throw it. Ranged weapons and combat were something that he struggled with. Making a handful of metal balls, Tristan decided to use quantity to make up for his lack of quality aim.
Truthfully, Tristan had no idea what to look for. Hunting was not a large activity in the Caldera. There was a decent amount of land, but not so much that they could waste it on wildlife preserves. Cattle were held in small areas and farmed for their meat. Artifacts were used to speed up the growth of corn to feed them and the citizens of the Caldera. It was an efficient system designed to give a balanced diet from just a few crops.
One thing made it easier. Tristan had the tracks of a pack of wroughtwilers to follow. They had brought back food as a pack yesterday, so Tristan had a dragmark to lead the way. He walked through the underbrush, hoping to see a living deer or elk. As a nephew of the elder, he had eaten some of the rare meat before. His memory of it was hazy, but he was sure it tasted good.
The drag mark did lead somewhere. Tristan was not sure what he was looking at. A large burrow was carved into the ground at a thirty-degree angle. It was large enough for Tristan to crawl down. He focused his metal sense down on the tunnel. Nothing had shown up on a cursory inspection, however when he focused a creature showed up.
It had iron in its blood, just like every living creature did. Unfortunately, he could not tell much more than that. He could see that the tunnel went straight down and that the creature occupied most of it. Did deer dig burrows? It seemed about the right size.
Regardless, it was too small to be the Drake, bone sloth, turtles, or nightmare. Tristan was confident in handling this beast, so he hurled a metal orb down at it.
‘Squeak’
Tristan froze. Squeak? It was a rodent. He checked again with his metal sense, it was the largest rodent he had ever seen. Feeling much more confident, he made a metal gauntlet for himself and reached for the creature. The tunnel was longer than his arm, but he was planning on summoning Vulcan to spear the rodent and drag it out.
The ‘rodent’ preemptively struck. A wall of spikes came barreling out of the burrow. Tristan backpedaled as fast as he could, barely avoiding the loss of an eye. Instinctively he had tried to redirect the attack, fortunately moving one spear point rotated the whole wall away from his face.
Tristan heard laughter. He almost yelled at Vulcan, but then he saw what had attacked him. A large jack rabbit squeaked angrily at him from where he held its horns off to one side. Tristan had thought ill of the warrior who had died to the bunny mythical beast, but now he understood how it had happened. Tightening his grip on the horn, Tristan picked it up.
“Laugh it up,” Tristan huffed, “At least I can taste it.”