In the end, Tristan chose not to break the bottles. Instead, he cracked the seals and dripped a few drops of decay alloy into the concoction. He placed the now contaminated blood back in the straw bedding and returned it to the shelf. Anyone who used it now would have a nasty surprise.
“That is a messy way to die,” Vulcan muttered.
“That wouldn’t kill someone, would it?” Tristan knew that the decay alloy would remain active for longer, as he had used his infusion alloy to bind it to the blood. However, it should only ruin the blood and damage the consumer’s esophagus.
“It wouldn’t kill a tier three, but this is meant for a tier one. They will die from complications from a ruptured stomach,” Vulcan said.
“Serves them right,” Tristan grumbled.
“Oh, I wasn’t disagreeing,” Vulcan said, “Cannibalism carries the death sentence in the Numitor Empire. The power that can be gained is not worth the monsters it creates.”
Tristan frowned but did not comment. He felt that there were other issues with the practice besides the corruption of the partakers. There would probably never be a time when he completely understood how Vulcan thought. Moving down the shelf he had Vulcan read the labels moving forward.
Thankfully, whoever created this place knew how to keep things organized, “This section is entirely made up of something called life tools. I assume that to be bioengineered resources.”
“Am I right in assuming those to be more products like the blood?” Tristan asked, preparing himself to destroy everything in this vault.
Vulcan sent a mental image of himself shaking his head, “No, I believe there will be items similar to the mythical leather your Caldera liked. Many beasts who possess forces make excellent crafting materials. While I focused on metal, many craftsmen work exclusively with bone or skin. I would hire a bone smith every time I needed to make a new hammer for a friction imbued bone grip.”
That both relieved and excited Tristan. Unlike artifacts, animal parts did not have a tier restriction. If he made bone armor from a tier five bone sloth, a tier zero would be able to wear it. So it was with great enthusiasm that he removed the next box and checked inside.
“Cutlery?” Tristan said incredulously as he looked at a box full of bone spoons, forks, and butter knives.
“Label says they neutralize the active ingredients of most fruit based toxins,” Vulcan muttered, “That is super specific, was this made from a mythical fruit bat?”
Shrugging, Tristan tossed a few of each utensil into his bag. When he left he would survive mostly on scavenging and having the ability to eat any fruit he found would be valuable. He continued down the shelves, finding many interesting things, but few useful ones.
There was a pair of fuzzy gloves that would let him dig through stone like it was sand, useful in Deep Cradle, but less interesting anywhere else. He found a pair of boots made of mythical beast leather, with a bone toe protector. They stopped dust from rising above the ankle, a relatively useless ability, as any dust already above that level was unaffected. Tristan still took them, his boots were a mess and these were made of mythical leather.
Most of the items were useful for a person with a desk job. There was a pen loaded with the architect force that would allow someone to copy any handwriting or picture. He found a leather codex that could have three overlapping writings in it. One would only need to shake the codex between one and three times and the letters would shift to a different book. Tristan felt that a spy would love to have both this book and the pen.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
Tristan had been hoping for some mythical beast leather armor, but true to Vulcan’s predictions, no armor or weapons were left in this section. The lack of a tier limitation was most likely a big reason why none were left. Still, he had ninety percent of a warehouse left to go through.
“Ores and Stone,” Vulcan read as Tristan moved on.
He found lots of jade. Dozens of crates filled with jade bricks. Tristan would have considered it similar to a bar of gold. However, there was no reason to cut jade into bricks. These were created by an earth kern who was at least tier three. Picking up the bar he inspected it, but it looked no different than ordinary jade.
Tristan wondered if he would have been locked up and used to make gold to be melted down into talents. Probably not, he would have been sentenced to death if he had been born at tier three. Moving past the jade, he found more interesting objects. There was a geode that had an odd aura. Tristan was surprised to feel a force inside it, he had been under the impression that only living things could naturally possess a force. That had held true so far, the vault door and walls had both been constructed and infused. He asked Vulcan about it.
“Remember when I told you of ecosystems that get imbalanced by an excess of a force? An ecosystem includes the minerals in the surroundings. It is true that only living things can have forces because they are the only ones that have a connection to the primordial realm. However, just like anything it will attune to the energy in its environment,” Vulcan said, “This geode has confinement as a force.”
Confinement is the equal opposite of exclusion. Tristan frowned as he tried to imagine an ecosystem based on confinement. His mind conjured images of prison like trees and dark caves with no exits. It did not sound like a pleasant place to live.
“Is it good for crafting?” Tristan asked, wondering how he would transport the large rock.
“It would be good for someone in construction. I think if you had enough for a dam it might work well,” Vulcan’s voice was uncertain, meaning that it was likely a pointless item for Tristan’s purposes.
There were several other interesting rocks, including a few that Vulcan said to stay away from. Uranium, charged copper, and a piece of onyx that radiated division. The last had managed to cut Tristan, even through his absorption augmented hands. He wanted to crush the rock to powder and then lace it through a construct axe or sword. Unfortunately, it sliced his hammer to pieces as it got closer to the stone. He wondered how they transported it, as the box it was inside had no damage.
“Artifacts, separated by essence type,” Vulcan read the next section.
Tristan walked through the aisles before finding what he should have been expecting, “Where are the metal artifacts?”
The Caldera had a few, he could even use Ajax’s hammer now. Why would a much larger civilization lack even a single one? Tristan knew that people with metal kerns were rare, and he knew that had mostly due to eugenics in the Caldera. However, that shouldn’t be an issue everywhere else.
“Top shelf, two racks over,” Vulcan drew his attention to a box set out of the way where no one would notice.
Tristan focused his metal sense on the box and sighed with relief. He was glad that he hadn’t whined out loud. Walking over he pulled the box down and opened it up. There were two artifacts within, but neither were impressive. One was tier three the other was tier one, making them both under tier for Tristan’s current needs.
The one on the left was a hammer. He read it with his metal sense, it would increase in size as the essence was pushed into it. That sounded like it would decrease in durability as it grew. Tentatively he pushed in essence. The small hammer, good for little more than hanging pictures on a wall, changed into a metal mallet. Then it morphed into a mason’s hammer, then a sledgehammer. It was made for tier three, so Tristan shoved in the whole essence pool a tier three warrior would have. The hammer changed one more time, one edge flattening into a blade and the other into a pick.
“This is a mason or sculptor’s multi-tool,” Tristan exclaimed.
Vulcan only showed disinterest. At least until Tristan hit him with the blade of the artifact, “Hey, what was that for.”
Tristan did not answer, he inspected the blade. No damage. He remembered chipping Regis’s sword with a similar blow, the axe like blade was not as sharp as the sword. There was a light deformation, but no real damage. It would hold up.
Now to shrink it back down. He tried pulling on the essence and was surprised. The artifact doubled as an essence reservoir, albeit a leaky one. He pulled all his essence out and placed the hammer in his bag. He was inordinately happy to have a real metal artifact.
Turning to the second one, he found a much simpler artifact. It was a bracelet that would make any metal touching it magnetic. Not the most life changing, but he still slipped the metal band onto his wrist. Today was a good example of why he loved looting so much, especially when no one was going to come looking for the stuff.
‘BOOM’
Tristan froze what could only be the front gate being bashed open.