Tristan staggered back. Stabbing the ent had sounded like a good idea. Unfortunately, he jabbed the spear into the bark and half an inch into the dense bark-like flesh. Then he was shoved back as the ent took another step in and the spear’s inflexible pole shoved Tristan backward.
Decay spread, but unlike the spriggons, the ent was dense. The amount of material it had to chew though was a dozen times denser, making the progress slow. Tristan released the spear and stood just in time to watch the ent reach up and tear out a fistful of its chest.
The injury started healing at a visible speed. Six hollow eyes met Tristans, each floor was ten feet tall. This house of traps might not be big enough to allow passage. He did not like those hollow eyes. Cupping his hands he filled them with decay alloy and splashed it on the ent’s upturned gaze.
The tree man blinked. Tristan was surprised
It had eyelids, but blind or blinking either would work. The decay hit the bark skin and started eating into it. Tristan kicked a box into the hallway.
Bark sluffed off, neutralizing the decay and allowing the ent to open its eyes much sooner than he had expected. A new barrier of bark was already growing as the charged copper hit the floor. The warning: DELICATE, HANDLE WITH CARE, label completely ignored.
Tristan did not know what charged copper was. He knew that charging was to move forward rapidly, so it came as a surprise when lightning of all things exploded out of the ore. Tristan backpedaled as tendrils of electricity sought out the closest metal.
Unfortunately, he qualified as a dense piece of metal. If not for the metal bars absorbing the lightning he would have accidentally killed himself with that stunt.
The ent roared in anger, and smoldering chunks of wood hit the floor. Having a lightning bolt originate from between its feet sounded debilitating but the ent had weathered it with only cosmetic damage. Sparks still crackled across the copper’s surface but there would be no repeat lightning strike.
“Alimentaras nuestra carne,” The ent grated out.
“I don’t speak tree!” Tristan yelled.
The ent reached up and grabbed the bars. It was tall enough to reach them while standing flat on the floor. Tristan wasn’t worried, they were solid bars of high carbon steel, both flexible and sturdy, anchored into a force imbued building. The ent bent the bars away from each other. Metal groaned as an enormous amount of force was exerted on the bars.
Tristan had calculated the strength of a tier six human to be eleven to sixteen times that of a tier zero one. Mythical beasts had their abilities arraigned differently. The tortoises were far more durable than their tier four label would suggest but were slower and less versatile in exchange. This ent appeared to be skewed towards strength, as it tore the bars out of the wall.
The tree man staggered back at the sudden absence of resistance. Tristan had to scramble out of the way as the ent hurled both metal bars at him. He evaded both, however one ricocheted off the back wall and struck him. Nothing broke, but his ribs were now bruised. Tristan did not have time to address it, as another set of bars were torn free before a pair of claws gripped the edge.
“Oh no you don’t,” Tristan yelled.
Running up to his final trump card, he kicked it over onto the ents head. It was already halfway up when a piece of obsidian fell into its face. Tristan was unfamiliar with the force of division, but he fortunately had a manual. ‘Natural Forces’ was barren of higher tier forces, but thankfully Division was part of a branch of forces Vulcan termed intangible laws or Forces of Logic.
Division- Separation: Pro; can potentially render anything into smaller pieces. Con; relies on essence difference between target, source, and distance. Not naturally occurring. (Light, Earth, Water, Air, Fire, Metal [Possible: Sound])
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Ignoring the naturally occurring descriptor, the final mineral cut straight through the ent. The initial cut occurred when it was a foot away, however, more appeared as the obsidian made contact. Like a pane of glass thrown at the ground, the entire top half of the ent was diced into pieces no larger than his fist.
The creature wasn’t given time to scream and its body put up no resistance. One moment it was a threat, the next the top half of its body was chopped up. The legs toppled to the side, whatever gave the tree folk their life completely destroyed.
Tristan gulped, “Vulcan how can I get that force?”
“I suppose you could just move the force to an essence stone then eat it when you broke your kern,” Vulcan said, “Though it will be far less impressive than what you just witnessed.”
He cursed and ran for the stairs. Currently, his only way to get his desired force was chopping its way through the floor and into the earth. It would eventually run out of its charge and become inert. He needed to get to it before that could happen.
“Why do you want it?” Vulcan asked.
“It would allow me to cut anything, why wouldn’t I want it?” Tristan said, evading the traps as he made his way through the hallway in reverse.
“No, it lets you cut anything at a lower tier. In life I could have juggled with that stone,” Vulcan said, “Sure it's nice for a glassmaker or carpenter, but no self respecting warrior needs it.”
Tristan’s goal was not to be the best warrior, and Vulcan was wrong. People very rarely used weapons at their own tier. With division, tier three artifacts could be dismantled. Normally a tier three armor plate would stop him, division would render the defense pointless.
“There it is,” Tristan breathed a sigh of relief as he found the black stone.
It had not cut a hole into the floor. Perhaps that had been a foolish assumption. The division did not remove material, it simply separated it. Even dust with nowhere to go would maintain its shape. Stepping over the corpse of the ent, Tristan scooped up the box to place the stone inside it.
That was when he realized how it had been able to hold the rock. Every side was at the minimum safe distance to avoid being cut while a granite padding was shaped to fit the stone. It was cut to pieces but had stopped the obsidian from dicing its way through the bottom of the box.
“How did they get it in the box to start with?” Tristan mused.
“A tier eight picked up the tier eight rock and put it in,” Vulcan said dryly, “Did you forget they had one of those here?”
That was good news. A tier eight force would be a great resource. Tristan summoned Vulcan, “Can I borrow some of your essence?”
“So long as we leave right afterward,” Vulcan said.
Tristan could agree to that. He tapped into Vulcan’s force of gravity. Division was powerful, but there were clear counters. It had no defense against ranged weapons. Using it to stop a cannon’s bolt would only succeed in separating it into a few smaller projectiles that were still dangerous.
Once the obsidian was a few feet off the floor, he placed the box underneath it and let it fall back into place. He was so proud of his acquisition he missed the approach of a second ent. Tristan was close to the door, it did not have to enter, simply grabbing him by the shoulder and dragging him out of the fort.
Vulcan sighed, “Not what I meant by leaving.”
Then he was airborne. The second ent had dragged him out, then tried to throw him out into the open area filled with tombstones. Tried was the operative word, as the ents were strong, but Tristan still weighed quite a bit. He hit a loitering spriggon and knocked it down before rolling into the shins of the next. Its legs cracked as they bent in the wrong direction, a debilitating injury on a human, a five-minute inconvenience for it.
Tristan drained one of his backup essence reservoirs of metal essence and poured it into his hammer. Using the momentum in his roll, Tristan popped to his feet and spun the forty pound tool into an approaching spriggon’s chest. Tristan blinked in surprise as the tree man’s chest disintegrated.
Forty pounds was a bit much for a prolonged fight. It was about five pounds above the sweet spot that coupled weight and control. Thankfully he was surrounded by fifty-pound trees. Even if it was made for stone, and an axe seemed to be perfect for the job.
Another two spriggons were turned to kindling before the ent made it to him. Tristan wasn’t foolish enough to think that a forty-pound tool would instantly kill a quarter-ton mythical beast. That did not mean it couldn’t do damage. Tristan jumped out of the way and discovered the ent’s first weakness. It could not redirect its momentum. Like the tortoises it had to keep going until its speed was bled off.
He lashed out with his axe, intending to use the ents charge against it. That was a mistake. It was heavy, not slow, the ent snatched up the axe head and dragged it and Tristan after it.
Who would have thought, a tree’s weakness was not in fact its mobility?