The door led to a stone hallway that ended in a staircase that cut back upon itself after a few feet. Tristan started climbing and found another spriggon sprawled over the steps as if it had fallen and broken its neck. He frowned when he realized that was likely what had happened. These plant monsters were just as disgusting as the ghost crabs, it gave Tristan the urge to kill it. Unfortunately, he had no way of doing that quietly, as even fire was still too slow to be instantly lethal.

Stepping over the prone spriggon, he made his way up the steps. The switchback was steep, taking him to what should be the ceiling quickly. When there was a chance to get off, he exited onto a small open area with a railing. It was necessary because circular tiered seats went from the wall down to the open area at the center. Above him was a second level with a similar hole in the roof for people to look in.

From where he was standing, Tristan could see the second tier was smaller. A third tier might have been above that, but he was not at the right angle to look at it. This was set up like several of the coliseums that Vulcan had shown him stacked upon each other, which made sense if the entire city was supposed to fit in here.

Scanning the bowl like seating area, Tristan found a large chunk of the rest of the population. They were packed around the exit aisles slumped over each other. Bodies had piled up as people crawled over others in an attempt to escape. Tristan see a similar scene unfolding on the layers above, as a not insignificant number of bodies had fallen into the arena.

If only he had enough oil or hard liquor to light the whole stand on fire. As it was he would just have to hope that the first sizable group of people would have enough of a motivation to kill these beasts off. Vulcan had mentioned that most successful nations had a legend at their head. That was tiers eleven through fifteen, anyone at that tier should be able to kill all the spriggon in here.

Tristan’s gaze slid down to the central arena. At first glance, it appeared to be made of a sandy floor with a large misshapen bush in the center. He only said first glance, because the sand was made up of thousands of mushrooms. They were packed tightly together and were only visible due to their dimpled appearance.

“Are you familiar with that type of mushroom?” Tristan asked.

“What mushrooms?” Vulcan returned.

Tristan was surprised, they shared senses and he had assumed that Vulcan noticed everything he did. Evidently, there was some level of attentiveness required. Tristan pointed out at the field of mushrooms, quickly explaining his theory to Vulcan.

“I believe that the mushrooms released a spore that killed everyone here. If this was set up beforehand, then it is possible that they filled the room with spores before whatever event they were going to put on,” Tristan believed this would work on most populations. Any enemy that was clever enough to use honey to attain victory was one that he would need to be wary of.

“Sounds reasonable, though you should be more worried about the ent sitting in the middle of the arena,” Vulcan drew Tristan’s attention to some oddly placed branches.

Tristan squinted his eyes. He did not have the best vision, but that was only for a tier four. His near sight developed slightly faster than his far sight. Vulcan claimed this was due to metal being found underground, being farsighted was not a big help while in a dark cave. Still, he was able to make out the oddities that Vulcan pointed out.

What had first appeared as a gnarled trunk, instead looked like a man with his head between his knees and arms wrapped around his shins. Leafy foliage grew out of the large tree man’s back like a forest. Branches also grew from the top of his head and ran down his neck to meet the greenery on his back.

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It was also substantially larger than the spriggon several times over. Only about a foot of that mass was spent vertically, making the ent tall but not ridiculously so. Though the weakness of being a lightweight most likely did not apply, Tristan would not be surprised if the ent weighed in at nearly five hundred pounds. That was a conservative estimate created by multiplying how many spriggons he thought could be packed inside it, so it could have been much heavier.

Something about the creature resonated with Tristan. He examined himself and was surprised to find that his growth alloy was in an excited state. Frowning he quickly fused it with architect alloy to make healing alloy. He deposited the exited essence into the amulet before it finally calmed down. The last thing he wanted was for a tree man to give him cancer.

“I think I can kill if I can dump some fire and decay from the start of the fight,” Tristan muttered. He did not doubt that the ent was strong, but he doubted it was strong enough to fight him while suffering from two of its counters.

He took a step closer to the spriggon clogged stairway down. Then paused. Tristan thought over what he was doing, he was making a lot of assumptions. For starters he was thinking the ent was only tier six, he had no proof. While he doubted it, he could be walking off to fight a tier ten ent.

If that was not bad enough, the creature was sentient. What were the chances a sentient tier six would not address a weakness as obvious as fire. Pretty low, especially if it was also part of a larger tree man society. Tristan did not want to risk running into an instant kill situation, like with Viral. He was pretty sure he had used up all his luck surviving the psychotic god.

As if it weren’t enough that the ent was at least tier six plus, it also had a seven digit army to call on. While most appeared to be tier zero, a million tier zeroes would be more than enough to tear Tristan to pieces. Looking around at all the slumbering spriggons, the room suddenly felt much less safe.

Tristan turned to leave. His foot was right over the first step when Vulcan finally exploded, “What kind of slagging moron are you? Fist you walk into a room you know is filled with danger, then you actually consider fighting a tree monster not even I know about. Do you know what kind of power it takes to animate a tree, cause I don’t. Alchemists from my time did not do that kind of mutation.”

The explosion of mental noise caused Tristan to miss the top step. Due to how steep the steps were he missed the second and third as well. Tristan cursed when he realized he was not going to be able to catch himself and prepared to take a tumble. He would not be hurt by such a short fall, but he did not wish to bounce off the wall and fall down the second flight.

He executed his plan perfectly. One hand braced off the wall the other pushed him upright. His feet were braced and he felt quite proud until something beneath him squirmed. Looking down he cursed again, this time at Vulcan. If he hadn’t said anything, Tristan would not have fallen on one of the spriggons that lying in awkward positions.

The spriggon slowly looked up at Tristan, doing a creepy parody of a sleepy person. Tristan did not have much time, but at least he was now familiar enough with spriggons to know they only screamed while on fire or being melted by decay. They did not make a peep when getting dragged around, which is what Tristan proceeded to do.

Grabbing the spriggon by an arm and leg he slung it over his shoulders and sprinted off. He only needed to get far enough away that its friends couldn’t hear its screams. The spriggon did not go willingly, it tried to claw off Tristan’s arm at the wrist. It proved to be a fruitless endeavor, as Tristan’s absorption augmented arms ignored the spriggon’s attempts.

After realizing that going for tha arm wouldn’t work, the spriggon made a knife hand and stabbed the nearest part of the body to it. Tristan yelped and dropped the creature as it stabbed him in the butt. The attack was not particularly dangerous, it had barely managed to draw blood, but it was just so unexpected.

Tristan glared at the spriggon while he rubbed his rear, “Could you just go back to sleep?”

This spriggon was less talkative, as it ignored Tristan choosing to circle instead of talk. The last one was probably more talkative because Tristan had been actively poisoning it with decay alloy when he spoke to it. Still, he had no need to fight this thing, so he waved at it, then ran away. The spriggon watched, dumbfounded as the enemy who had woken it turned and left.