Tristan returned the journal to its original place. He did not need it, but anyone who came after him might find a use for it. The tome cleared up some of the holes in history and had given him a name for the city; had not been too helpful otherwise. He knew not to eat the mushrooms he saw growing on every rotting surface, however he was already not inclined to consume random plants he found.
The one thing he did receive that might save his life was a record of how the ents acted. They possessed the ability to mimic human level intelligence, they demonstrated both creativity and cunning. Tristan had seen humans take advantage of other human’s emotions. Elder Forest had used Eve’s value to Elder River to force the older man into an unwinnable situation when he sent his granddaughter to meet with Hadrid.
Tristan knew he was not beyond this kind of manipulation. He had no practice in resisting emotional attacks, and it was scary that a tree of all monsters was skilled at its execution. Now he knew to be wary.
Going quickly through the other rooms, Tristan found little of interest. There were some doodles and a good number of stone chips that Vulcan had him take.
“That’s jade, I don’t know how valuable it is outside this city, but it is a common form of currency in the sects,” Vulcan explained.
Tristan tried to feel for a force, but couldn’t locate anything. He wondered why anyone would choose stone for a currency. Much of the value would be lost when making the token, as it was more difficult to heat it and place it in a mold. Metal, especially gold and silver, could be melted and poured with little waste. Deciding that it ultimately did not matter if he could exchange it for something of value, he placed them in his pack.
This building done, Tristan explored the second one finding it to be a clone of the first, minus the corpse. He wondered where the other people had gone. They might have left, but there was no way the low tier scribe closed the gate by himself. He thought back to the first corpse he had found.
It had been in a jewelry store, covered in moss, and looked to have a tree growing inside it. That could have been a fleeing scribe. It was in an odd location, but that would make sense if she had been trying to escape. Tristan tried to think back to how his essence recovery had reacted and came to a realization. The air down here was toxic, filled with spores that served as biological weapons.
Tristan shuddered, without his very specific set of forces he would be slowly turning into a spriggon right now. His dark mood got a bit darker when he rounded the second building while heading to the third. The lawn, or what was left of it, had been dug up and converted into a cemetery. Pots and shards of stucco were placed in neat rows, each bearing a name and a date….
The scribe had buried most of his colleagues. Tristan shook his head, he rarely felt pity, it was an emotion reserved for those who had it worse than himself. He hadn’t met many of those people. It was likely a self centered worldview, but he had just met the first person he felt pity for. This man had been through too much and had even hope taken away from him.
“Poor guy,” Vulcan muttered, Tristan was confused at the artifact’s statement and mentally prodded him to continue, “I was stuck in a room and forced to look at the remnants of my friends. You called the Lord of the Underworld an enemy, but I knew him as Ajax, Hades, and Gaia. It would have been maddening if I had been incapable of sleeping for hundreds of years at a time.”
Tristan had nothing to say to that. He had never been in a similar situation. So he moved on to the final building. It was nestled against the far wall and nearly hidden behind the first two. The reason was immediately obvious. This building was made for function.
Grey stone walls that radiated a force Tristan couldn’t name, but felt familiar. They formed a box with arrow slits on the second floor and a door wide enough for only a single person to enter at a time. This building was a last stand in case the city fell. It hadn’t helped. Though Tristan was glad he had to break through the front door, as opposed to this brick of a building.
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Touching the wall Tristan raised an eyebrow, “Cohesion? This building could have been made by Siren.”
The question pulled Vulcan out of his morose mindset, “Connection. It's similar but is better for overcoming the structural weaknesses of a material. Most engineers love the force, it pairs well with execution, synchrony, and flow. I used it on a marble I forged once to make it stick to the first person who picked it up as a prank. It was supposed to prank my wife, but the cat stuck its paws together first.”
Tristan was impressed. Vulcan had a cat, the only cats he had heard of were things like tigers or the saber tooth cat mythical beasts. Maybe he treated cats like most people treated dogs.
Structural forces aside the building was unremarkable, so Tristan tried the door. It was open and swung inward easily. He entered a hallway just as narrow as the door, and upon looking up the reason became clear. A balcony ran along an open second floor that soldiers could use to attack the single file line of intruders.
There was a good chance that a team of well equipped tier zeros could hold this building against Siren’s elites. All it would take was some oil, a box of poisoned caltrops, and a cannon at the far end. Aside from the cannon, it would not even be that expensive. The Caldera had not had much practice with warfare against people. If any of them had the experience the civil war would have been much shorter.
Looking around Tristan frowned, “I know people are rarely kind to each other, but tell me, are humans normally the most dangerous thing to other humans?”
He had been under the impression that mythical beasts were the most dangerous. Yes, the Caldera had been finished off by a human, but most of the people had died to mythical beasts and elementals. In Deep Cradle, mythical beasts once again were the primary destroyers. Tristan had seen the destruction that the three gods fighting the Steel Saint had wrought, but that had to be the exception, not the rule.
Vulcan chuckled darkly, “Monsters are the most consistent threat, but humans are the most dangerous creatures under the sun. Aside from negligence, disease, and time, war has killed more people than anything else.”
Tristan felt disappointed at that revelation. He had expected better of the human race. Walking in deeper, Tristan found more fortifications. The floor looked normal and would even support Tristan’s substantial weight, but his metal sense picked up several needle sharp spikes within a pit under the floor. If an enemy traversed the entry hall’s killing field, they would dive into the perceived safety of the next room and find themselves impaled.
He had expected this to be a barracks for soldiers or guards. Those kinds of people certainly worked here, but they did not rest here. Tristan triggered a trap that lacked any recognizable metal components. It was simple, a pressure plate that had a hook and latch of some kind. The latch released a rope and a wooden door fell just behind him.
Tristan waited for something else to happen. When nothing did, he frowned, was this only designed to stop people from leaving? He placed a hand on the gate, feeling for a force. Nothing, he would have no trouble using decay to get back out.
“And you just failed burglary 101,” Vulcan piped up.
“Wait, this was actually meant to stop me from leaving?” Tristan asked incredulously.
“Normally there are guards with pikes trying to stab you from the second floor,” Vulcan pulled Tristan's attention to the second floor.
He had contemplated jumping up there and taking a look around, but metal bars stopped anyone from jumping to the second floor. All these defenses made Tristan happy. Whatever needed this kind of protection had to be valuable. Tristan forged on through hallways and rooms filled with disarmed traps, not that they would have been dangerous to him.
Trying to hide a giant metal blade in the wall was not feasible. Nearly invisible wires worked as garrotes, carpets with poisoned needles hidden in the cloth, and bladders that coughed out poisoned air riddled the building. The thing all the traps had in common was metal. After the door, Tristan knew to avoid anything made of it, and it nullified most of Deep Cradle’s security.
He was almost disappointed when he stepped into a well appointed office with chairs along one wall. A staircase ran up to the second floor and a hidden passage allowed the guards to come and go without setting off any of the protection. Tristan had been expecting something more draconian, like a torture chamber or an armory. It felt like he was back in Elder River’s reception room.
There was just one massive difference. A massive vault door right behind the desk. Tristan rubbed his hands together and got ready to loot another vault.