Tristan could admit that he was ignorant about some things, but Vulcan normally filled in the empty spaces that he lacked. It turned out that neither of them knew anything about boats. The Numitor empire had a border with something called an ocean, but the city Vulcan ruled from had been centralized.
He had copied a design he had seen in the caldera. It was long and narrow with multiple seats in a single file row. Tristan had no idea what this boat was called, and it had worked great in the Lake Caldera. However, if the craft was river worthy was a bit beyond Tristan. He knew oars were a thing, but was not sure how to use them, they kept sliding across the smooth upper edge of the boat every time he tried.
Fulcrum, I should have put a fulcrum along the edge, Tristan thought as the boat tipped precariously. He corrected it by shoving against a rock and had to correct again when he hit a different rock almost losing his balance. The only upside to this method of travel was how fast it was. Running was fast, but he had to deal with uneven terrain and natural obstacles, the river was nearly as fast but lacked any impediments.
“I suggest we stop once we leave the ravine and revise the construction of our vehicle,” Vulcan said.
Tristan winced as another rock dented the side of his boat, “Agreed. I’m thinking something with a larger internal footprint.”
Vulcan sent an image of a boxy boat with thicker walls, but also displacing more water. Tristan nodded, he wouldn’t need to worry about capsizing in that one. Not unless something strange happened, like a river monster. He hoped mythical fish didn’t exist.
Tristan would have already exited the boat if there was any land on either side of the river. Only cliffs were visible as far as the eye could see. He grimaced and prepared for a few hours or days of bouncing around in a boat. At least he wouldn’t have to worry about drinking water.
The sun set early, leaving the ravine in twilight. Darkness set in before he reached the end of the ravine. It came suddenly, as white water transitioned to a smooth flow within the space of a few feet. Most of the turbulence came from stones falling from the ravine wall, while here nothing was obstructing his boat’s path.
“This isn’t so bad,” Tristan said, though he still started making his way to shore.
While this part of the river was nice, that was no reason to believe the rest of it would be as well. He had no desire to capsize and lose his hard earned essence reservoirs, books, and artifacts. He pulled the boat up onto land and inspected it. The hull was badly damaged, dents from hitting rocks had flexed the metal nearly to the point of breaking.
Looking around he found himself in a woodland, pine trees were scattered about, but trees with seasonal foliage were in the majority. This would be an excellent location for an ent to hide. Tristan frowned at the idea of a society of plant monsters scattered throughout the trees, it was a problem for another day as he could do little about it.
He was a good two hundred miles from Deep Cradle now, so it was unlikely that he would run across the same groups of ents. Still, he had no knowledge of what lurked in the trees and did not want to take the risk of staying here. Thankfully, his post tier up nap had only been eight or nine hours before so he could keep going.
“Should I just make a box and toss it in the water?” Tristan asked.
“Maybe smooth out the front corner, all boats I have seen have something like that to reduce water resistance,” Vulcan said.
“So basically a box,” Tristan said, though it would not be made exclusively out of base metal essence.
First, he made the shell. It was not thicker than the previous boat, but he used infusion to push some absorption force into it. Any impacts should have substantially less effect. A construct of this size took more than his whole kern, especially moving the absorption force.
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The weakness of alloy was that it required a minimum of twice the essence to get anything done. One unit to bond to a foreign force and a unit of that foreign force. His issue was that absorption was part of his anima, not his kern, making the process less automatic. Tristan had to push essence into his anima, bond it to his absorption, remove it so he could add infusion alloy to what was starting to look like a molecule, and finally use his tier four talent to add it to the boat’s frame. If he had an absorption force kern it would have only taken a quarter of the essence.
Thankfully he had a large number of reservoirs to subsidize the cost. He could always restock the reservoirs in the calm parts of the river trip. Tristan was aware that he might not have many more calm moments left for a long time.
Not wanting to waste time, he dragged his boat to the shore and hopped in. He had no doubts that it would float. Everyone has a moment in their life when they place a bowl in the washing basin and start loading in other dishes to see how much it can hold. Despite his rather excessive weight, he knew that he was nowhere near the upper limit of what the boat could hold.
He had room this time, it was five feet wide and ten feet long with walls that went up a good three feet. It looked awkward, nothing like Franks ferry boat, or any of the fishermen's boats, but it would work. He had made the walls higher to be used as cover in the event of an attack. The entire vehicle only weighed between thirty and forty pounds.
Tristan got in and continued down the river. He spent his time doing some of the chants that Vulcan had taught him. The environment stayed consistent, and every so often a smaller creek would merge with the river. The sun started to rise and he was starting to wonder if he was one of the only people in the world.
“People will always build cities beside rivers. It's a one way road they don’t need to maintain,” Vulcan addressed the concern.
Logically that was true, but three hundred miles in less than a day. That was a lot of distance to cover without seeing another human being. It was several times farther than the entire breadth of the Caldera. Worrying wouldn’t help, but Tristan couldn’t help but worry. Even if he found people would they speak the same language, would they be friendly, would they view him as a threat? The Caldera would have been hostile if a new tier five had stumbled in from outside.
Tristan had not been able to see a true down in months. Viral's approach had bled too much light into the sky, and Tristan had been underground for the rest of the time. He smiled, everything was tranquil right now, a feeling that had also been absent for months. No monsters wanted to eat him, and nothing truly urgent was taking his attention.
That was about the time he realized there was something different in the air. He stretched out his senses trying to understand it. It was familiar, and not in a good way. The feeling was similar to dissonance, like the silver flames that Hadrid had made, though much less caustic. He couldn’t get a good feeling for it because it had no overlap with metal essence.
Tristan reached for his hammer, preparing for a fight. He was not looking forward to facing anything that could use dissonance. There was nothing, no metal was within his senses, and he swept the banks of the river with a focused observation. He saw the iron in a few creature's blood, but nothing human like and nothing big enough to be dangerous.
“Tier eleven, not bad,” Vulcan said.
Tristan froze, “It's tier eleven, where is it?”
“I don’t know,” Vulcan did the mental equivalent of shrugging, “I can just tell that the owner of this land is tier eleven.”
“Please explain,” Tristan huffed irritably, he had assumed that the tier eleven was a threat.
“Simple, anyone with a perfected kern or domain can expel essence in the sphere. It is a bit like the echolocation a bat uses, though less precise. You do know what echolocation is right?” Vulcan asked. Tristan nodded, the temple’s book on animals had mentioned bats “It has two results, first, it gives the originator an overview of all essence in his area of effect, and tells everyone that he is here.”
“Is that how Viral found the Caldera?” Tristan frowned.
“It is a possibility, I was not subtle,” at Tristan’s glare he continued, “Viral was supposed to have died in the war or of old age.”
Tristan sighed, “So it's the legend equivalent of a dog marking its territory?”
Vulcan chuckled, “Don’t say that out loud, legends tend to be prideful. This does mean two things. First, you can’t rely on me, the owner can most certainly sense me when I’m outside the primordial realm. Second, prepare to get detained.”
“What? Why?” Tristan said indignantly.
“With your stockpile of metal essence reservoirs, you will appear like a good sized raiding force to this legend's senses,” Vulcan said right as a few structures came into view on the riverside.