“You want me to fill my muscle fibers with metal?” Tristan asked. There was no way that was safe.

“That is what I said, though to be more specific, you will be filling every cell wall in the limb you choose with metal,” Vulcan said, “I know this sounds crazy.” He paused as if in thought, “It is crazy, but you’re the one who doesn’t want to cut your limbs off. However, the absorption needs something to be integrated with, and you need to make your body a viable source. Thankfully, you have picked up some of the better alchemy related forces by some miracle.”

Tristan wondered how he had become the crazy one for not wanting to chop off his arms. Sure, filling his arm with metal would not hurt if it was not attached to him, but he did not want to chop off any body parts. He would rather waste some material and go through some pain than lose a hand. Maybe at higher tiers, he could build himself a prosthetic, but he needed to live that long first.

“You need to use your infusion force to infuse the limb. It will probably take days. If you were to place everything you want to infuse end to end, it could probably circle the globe. Your kern will run out of essence several times over before we are done,” Vulcan explained, “You will want to use your architect alloy as well to guarantee you don’t give yourself some sort of metal based cancer, so what limb do you want to do? I would suggest an arm, as they tend to be more universally useful. Absorption will also allow you to handle more dangerous materials.”

Tristan had thought about this. He had enough material for one limb, which meant it was not a location restriction, it was a material restriction. He could do both arms up to his elbows. That would allow him to reap most of the benefits of having two limbs augmented as upper arm durability would rarely come into play.

“I agree, I will do both arms up to my elbows,” Tristan waggled his fingers at the lamp post, which lacked the eyes to see them.

Vulcan sent a nod, “That’s not a bad idea. I would cook and salt all the food you need and collect at least two weeks of water beforehand. I have never done anything like this on a person before, but we are essentially turning your body into an artifact. You probably won’t be able to use your hands during this whole process.”

Tristan had never considered it from that angle. Did that mean he would get a god level artifact? It would make it difficult to break his kern, but having a difficult time getting into life and death situations was not necessarily a bad thing. Tristan smiled to himself, thinking about the possibilities.

Vulcan came in and popped his bubble, “That’s not how it works. I’m tier fifteen, can you use tier fifteen techniques and forces? You will be limited to the tier you are at.” Tristan could not keep the disappointment off his face, “Don’t be like that, it's a good thing, the reason why these are so valuable is if you get them while under their tier, they can grow with you once you exceed their current tier.”

Tristan sighed as he stood up, “I don’t think it will matter what equipment I have once I’m the same tier as Viral. I’m going to go prep the water and food.”

He set about collecting water first. The little creek had gotten larger ever since Viral left. After a brief period where it was full of soot and ash, the stream ran clear again. It took several trips, but he managed to fill several of his buckets. He was working under the assumption that a person drank two gallons of water a day, meaning he would need six five-gallon buckets of water.

Following that he started butchering all the mythical beats who had died above his hideout. It would be a stretch to say he cooked the food as he more or less shoved it in the fire to kill anything that could make him sick. Fortunately, the bone sloth had killed the wroughtwilers that he was currently butchering. Normally, ruptured organs would make meat inedible, but that was a problem solved when a sloth immediately slurped out the organs.

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Was he happy to be eating a dog, no. Would he eat as many as he had to to survive, yes. Man’s best friend could make the ultimate sacrifice.

It took Tristan the better part of a day to get everything ready. Everything was set up so that he would not need to use his hands to get it. Using his face was a bit awkward, but Vulcan was the only one who would watch him waddle around for food like a bird.

Tristan also did one other thing. He filled all the empty essence reservoirs he had. It was not truly a time saver, as his essence would not recover naturally any slower or faster. His goal was to reduce the amount of time he was in pain by increasing the amount of essence at his disposal to negate some of the time he would invariably have to wait to recharge.

“So now we set up the alchemical bath?” Tristan asked.

“Yes, don’t worry, they are cheap to make, even if you lack the associated forces. You need infusion, the rarest of the group, a disassembling force, your consumption is one of the less effective ones, but we’re not going for efficiency here. Lastly, if it’s a metal, you want the architect force, if it's a living tissue you want the growth force,” Vulcan explained.

Tristan frowned, “Those forces are suspiciously specific to what I have.”

Vulcan chuckled, “Don’t think that you are lucky, they are some of the most common forces out there. If you were from a wealthy family who knew how to harness the alloy force, all your alloys would be dedicated to one purpose. Whether that was alchemy, runesmithing, construction, or even combat. As it is, you are a hodgepodge of combat, survivability, and crafting.”

That was not comforting. To Tristan that made it sound like he had crippled his potential by not focusing down on one thing. When he went through his first three tiers he didn’t know what he was doing. However, after the vision of Vulcan starting to craft the void gauntlet he understood. If he wanted good weapons and tools, forces like containment, execution, synchronicity, and adamance would be far better.

Tristan could only shake his head at the unfairness of it and make the best of his situation. Currently, that was by mixing a slurry for the kharkodine. Creating the mixture took most of Tristan's essence reservoir. Decay was the only alloy he had that was naturally a liquid when made into a construct. That meant the others had to be made as a fine powder and mixed in water to get a consistency similar to mud. The final step was to drop the kharkodine in and let it sit.

At that point, he was mostly out of essence and it was late into the night. He would rather attempt this self mutilation with a well rested mind, so he got some sleep. Without seeing the sun, he could not tell what time it was, but he assumed it was morning. It was finally time to get to the real work.

Tristan sat down cross legged and stared at his hands while Vulcan gave instructions, “You need to keep your hands as still as you possibly can. Now you need to infuse your arms with a small amount of metal essence, just enough to see what you’re working with.”

Tristan successfully spread a thin mist of metal essence through his arms. It was the first time he had done anything outside his bloodstream, and it felt strange. A numbness filled his hands and forearms, not dissimilar to the pins and needles when he held a limb at an awkward angle for too long. He almost shook his hands to get rid of the feeling, but stopped himself, moving was bad.

“Good, use your senses to look at the area you want to change, tier four should be enough to see cellular structures with a bit of mental backlash,” Vulcan explained what Tristan was looking for.

Vulcan did not truly need to explain this one, as Tristan had already discovered it when examining the skull. He had noticed that the bone was made of smaller interconnected metal packets. Both Vulcan and his book called them cells. Tristan’s metal sense was three-dimensional and unlike vision, which could only look upon the part that reflected light, he got information on every layer. It was not an understatement to say that a lot was going on in his body.

Millions, if not billions of these tiny objects were bound together and not all of them were the same. The muscles that made up the tendons and muscles were stringy and long while the ones making up the bones were jagged. The skin was made of something different, and this was the first time Tristan had taken a look at what blood did.

It only took a few moments for a headache to start throbbing. He hadn’t considered this part. Tristan needed to effectively do surgery on himself while suffering from a headache.