“Let go you,” whap, “You stupid,” whap,” tree!” whap. Tristan said all this while bouncing off the ground behind an ent that was making a beeline for the outer wall.
Could he have let go? Yes, that would have even been the superior choice, given the fact that he had Vulcan. However, he was not giving up his new artifact. He had waited so long to find himself a metal one, and no he did not truly consider Vulcan to be an artifact. It was hard to consider something a tool when it partially lived inside his head and he had lived one of Vulcan’s memories.
The ent came to a screeching halt, twisting its hips and singing Tristan like a whip into the adamance infused wall around the three government buildings. He reinforced himself and took the impact. It hurt, but nothing broke. Getting hit by the bars in the fort had hurt more. Then the ent drove a punch into his gut.
Braced against an immovable object, Tristan took the full force of the blow. Something ruptured and the fight became much more real. Pain was an old friend, but Tristan had never been hit this hard. The Lord of the Underworld was stronger, but Tristan had been cloaked in adamant plate and underwater.
Releasing his axe, Tristan drained every essence reservoir filled with metal and infused two kerns worth of decay into the arm pinning him to the wall. The ent shouted in pain and staggered back trying to molt the decay away.
A tree's second weakness was no soul. Tristan didn’t have to worry about memories if he shoved essence into its body. The entire arm turned into a pulpy mess and splattered across the dirt. Some got on Tristan spreading the decay to him, but he quickly used consumption to nullify it.
Falling to the ground he vomited a load of stomach acid and blood onto the dirt. Did he rupture his stomach? That was not something he could wait on. He hadn’t touched his natural essence reserves yet, thankfully. That let him dump a third of his essence into architect alloy. The feeling of his internals seizing up as severed arteries were patched by metallic replacements was uncomfortable, but he was no longer in imminent danger.
One blow from a real heroic entity had nearly killed Tristan. If the ent had been holding a knife or even something as simple as a spike of wood, he would be dead. Looking up, he was shocked a the state of the ent. It had torn its shoulder off to stop the decay from spreading, however unlike its smaller brethren, it stored excess vitality on its back.
Leaves withered and branches fell to the ground, coinciding with the rapid reconstitution of the arm. Tristan cursed as he watched a twig-like arm grow before rings of wood grew around it. He scooped his artifact up and rushed at the ent. Injured or not, he couldn’t let this thing heal. Tristan roared as he brought the axe down on the ent.
It twisted so its good arm could take the blow. Bark splintered and wood groaned. The lack of a sharpened edge pulped the top few inches of wood but left the arm fully functional. Now that the force of the blow was exhausted, the ent shoved back. Tristan was not going to let himself be backed against another wall. He let the push spin him and bring the axe around into the ent’s opposite side.
The twig arm was smashed at the elbow. Tristan grinned at the frustration this caused the ent. Then it kicked him. He reinforced his bones, but his ribs still creaked from the impact. It pushed him back causing him to trip over a tombstone and fall on his back.
Tristan scrambled to his feet, a smart opponent would try to stomp his face in while he was down. The ent backed off and let the spriggons swarm in. It would heal while its lessors died. The first spriggon jumped on his back and another latched onto the hammer. Another tried to sink its claws into his leg.
Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
They piled on like the elementals in the plains had. Thankfully there were no soldiers with spears. There was an ent, so Tristan did not have time to dawdle. He sank his fingers into one and used both the tier four ability and infusion force to fill its torso with decay. The process was almost instant as every fiber was infused with the alloy.
Tristan was glad that the spriggons lacked souls, otherwise, things like this would be impossible. A thought struck him, if they lacked souls, why couldn’t he start using other forces? A combination of infusion and consumption was used next. Something seemed to click into place as the absorption integrated into his arms and consumption alloy reacted to each other.
He knew that forces weren’t mutually exclusive from each other. Architect and duplication had many similarities, as did attraction and magnetism, it seemed that absorption and consumption were similar. Was this how higher order forces were made?
It was a thought for later, all he could know for certain was that the essence the spriggon was using was being eaten and converted into fuel for Tristan’s kern. The waves of spriggon suddenly became much less imposing. One hand siphoned essence away from the spriggons while the other took the power from their friends and flooded them with decay.
The claws of the spriggon were no longer able to do more than scratch silver lines into his skin. Not needing to budget his essence for full body reinforcement made their efforts almost meaningless. The one he was draining attempted to flee, but it could do nothing as he held it around the neck.
Despite the discovery, he did not forget about his real opponent. The ent was nearly healed. Tristan couldn’t see any expression on its mask like face, but the body language seemed to indicate anger. It clenched its fists and walked towards the melee, good as new.
“Vulcan, I’m gonna need some of your metal,” Tristan said. Only adamance would let him make a blade both sharp and heavy enough to cut into the ent’s dense body.
“I’m at about ten percent, so go for it,” Vulcan said, “Just remember, I am better than a stupid tier three axe.”
Did he detect some jealousy? The thought was amusing. Spriggon backed off as their leader approached not wanting to get crushed underfoot. Vulcan fell into Tristan’s hand, an axe blade made of adamance coalescing just below the flaming head. It was thin - almost transparent like his old knives along the edge. The reverse side was much thicker, adding the weight needed to drive the razor edge into the ent’s flesh.
His guts still ached, but he smiled. When he had fought Henry, Tristan had a two tier disadvantage. Now he was facing something similar, facing down the heroic level ent was the same. With one exception, his weaponry was significantly better.
Tristan dashed forward to meet the ent and brought the makeshift axe down. The ent had seen this trick before and knew how to counter it. It raised a forearm to deflect the blade. Unfortunately for it, this one was as sharp as physics would permit. The blade sank halfway through the arm with little issue.
That did not inhibit the ent in the slightest. It wrenched Vulcan out of Tristan’s hands, using the lodged blade as leverage. Tristan let him go. The ent brought the other fist around to smash Tristan. Vulcan remanifested in Tristan’s hand, he did not have time to dodge the punch, so he shoved the ethereal flames into the ent's chest.
Without essence being injected into them, the fire was harmless. It was warm enough to keep his hands warm in the winter, but little else. His opponent did not know this. The ent abandoned its strike and staggered back to avoid taking the fire to the sternum.
Immediately, Tristan made a second axe construct. He slashed with a wide overhead chop again. For a third time, the ent used its forearm. This time the hammer-like reverse edges of both axes connected. The first blade which was still lodged in the mythical beast’s arm was driven all the way through.
The ent roared, less in pain than in frustration, “Basta cortarme mis brazos!”
“Again, I don’t speak tree,” Tristan yelled.
“It’s saying, stop cutting my arms,” Vulcan commented.
“I can do that,” Tristan said as he brought the axe around into the ent’s knee.
The joint was thicker than its forearm making the damage from the swing proportionately less dangerous. Unlike a human, the tree man lacked both a muscular and skeletal system to disable. Tristan was not sure how the creature moved its limbs, but it was not via contraction a chord, or tendon.
A slap caught Tristan in the shoulder. It was not particularly powerful as far as the ent went, but it was still enough to shove Tristan into the side of the scribe’s office. He had a moment to reinforce himself as a stomp connected with his chest and smashed him into the building.