Tristan did not waste time as he charged at the civil protector. While the man was hurt, Tristan knew he could heal, and Tristan was not doing great. That pot of bloody mud had taken a lot of material. Tristan had not expected blood loss to make him woozy. Weren't higher tiers supposed to be resistant to blood loss?
Another thing, Tristan's left hand was messed up. Cracks ran through it and most of the epidermis was gone. Despite the fact that Tristan was the source of decay, he did not have a resistance to it. Still, he went on the offensive with only a knife in his right hand.
The civil protector flailed his blade at Tristan, but he lacked a proper stance. So long as Tristan blocked the strikes close to the guard, he could handle the difference in strength. Catching the machete on the thicker metal of the long knife’s cross guard, Tristan lashed out with his foot.
The man barely moved. Tristan cursed at the pain lancing up the ball of his foot, he hadn’t thought he would need to reinforce himself to push the man over. The patriarch had to weigh at least a quarter ton. Tristan ducked under a horizontal slash that cut through two plant shelves and disrupted half a dozen wire traps.
Using his metal sense, Tristan avoided the ankle-height wires and ducked below the chest level ones. The second variety would be useless as the patriarch’s massive weight would simply overwhelm the trap.
“Just because I can’t see you well doesn’t mean I can’t see you at all!” The patriarch yelled.
He grabbed one of the shelves he had cut down and hurled it at Tristan. The fifty pound object moved fast, and Tristan sidestepped allowing it to miss by a few inches. It blocked his line of sight and the other half of the shelf took him in the chest. Tristan staggered back and tripped over one of his own traps.
Two more shelves fell on top of him and pots crashed to the ground and shattered. Tristan desperately wanted to shove his way out, but he needed to take advantage of the patriarch’s limited vision. Crawling on his belly he slowly slunk out and behind another obstacle. This one was a stone retaining wall that housed a raised garden full of herbs.
The sound of very heavy footsteps caused Tristan to hurry up. When they stopped, he gave up all pretense of stealth as the patriarch jumped and landed on the two shelves. He did not land gracefully, or even on his feet, but he did smash both shelves to kindling. The roof groaned underneath the weight.
Tristan was pelted by wood, but he was clear. While the patriarch was getting to his feet, Tristan rushed him again. The man saw him coming and brought a hand tangled in wires up. All the taught wires connected to that hand jerked whatever they were tied to over. Just about every trap, trip line, and hazard was disarmed by the chaos.
Tristan had no time to stop, he had to cut through the wires in the patriarch’s hand or get tangled in them himself. He slammed a reinforced shoulder into the man’s chest plate and that was enough to knock him over. It arrested all of Tristan’s momentum, allowing him to bring his blade around.
The light started returning to the Golden Heart Patriarch’s eyes. It instantly locked onto Tristan’s blade while he was still falling. He caught Tristan's wrist and only reinforcing the bones stopped them from being broken. The patriarch shoved off the ground with his feet, taking advantage of the odd angle falling gave him.
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To Tristan, the movement was reminiscent of the one time he had seen fish traveling upstream. Though this time he was towed along and used as a cushion. The strength of tier four was terrifying. Tristan had not been joking when he said he believed that the Golden Heart patriarch was the weakest. Still, the man slammed him around like a toy.
They landed not far from the first trap the patriarch had set off. The mud had eaten through the wooden planks, turning them mushy and rotten. The extra seven hundred pounds of weight crashing onto it caused the roof to buckle. Both of them fell down through the ceiling. Tristan was light enough to be suspended halfway by some wires, but the patriarch tore straight through and fell into what looked like a kitchen.
Several cabinets were annihilated and the steel stove dazed the civil protector when his head bounced off of it. Tristan quickly cut himself free and dropped the remaining five feet to the floor. His ankle twinged from where it was most likely sprained. Quickly he reinforced it and the pain lessened. It would be a constant drain on his essence, but mobility was worth the price.
He stabbed down at the patriarch's prone form. The blade sank unhindered into the center of his chest slicing the heart in half. He stood over the body of the patriarch and stared up at the noonday sky. The familiar feeling of accomplishment did not overcome him. He tried to push Bruce’s betrayed expression out of his mind.
The clattering of something metal falling to the floor brought him back to the present. Tristan took a few steps back as he watched the clearly dead patriarch rise to his feet. His eyes were no longer glowing, but they still burned with rage.
“How are you alive?” Tristan asked, not expecting an answer.
“Easy,” the patriarch grinned through bloody teeth, “You’re not as clever as you think you are.”
The patriarch grabbed a wooden chair from the nearby dining set and swung at Tristan. He tried to dodge, but the small living space did not give him enough room. The walls were made of solid wood, and the incoming chair took up most of the available space. Tristan could only reinforce his arms and let the chair smash into him.
The chair broke, bruising his arms and bouncing him off the wall. Tristan barely had time to reorient himself before the patriarch slammed into him. It was easy to forget how fast light kerns could make a person, especially in a straight line. The wall that had resisted Tristan, failed to stop the patriarch.
The attack would have killed Tristan if he had not reinforced his ribs and spine. He had not had time to protect his head, he could feel the dizziness of a concussion approaching. While the patriarch had his arms around his waist, Tristan reached up with his left hand, the one covered in decay.
They entered the home’s bedroom through the wall. Tristan grabbed the right side of the patriarch’s face and shoved his thumb into the man’s eye. The eye resisted and the patriarch flinched back, but Tristan held on. Decay alloy popped the eye and his other fingers drew black bubbling lines into the side of his face.
The rage filled rush turned into a pained stagger as they hit the bed and toppled over. At least the landing was soft. The patriarch ended on top, tearing Tristan's grip free along with most of his cheek and the skin on that side of his face. Screaming, the patriarch punched Tristan in the face with two punches. With horror Tristan realized that his reinforcement did barely anything, he had artifact gauntlets at a higher tier than he was.
With a yell, Tristan drew his sword breaker across the patriarch’s abdomen. It cut cleanly through and into his gut. The patriarch rocked away, though his face did not register this pain. Tristan did not waste the opportunity, he rolled off the bed and put his back to the wall. The patriarch was fast and was almost immediately on Tristan. He led with a punch.
Tristan spun out of the way, gripping his armored wrist and placing a palm on his shoulder. The leverage was not great enough to put someone as strong as the patriarch into an arm bar, but it did let Tristan add his own strength to the patriarchs. He slammed into the wall, cracking it. Tristan took a step back, then shoulder checked the man through the already crumbling wall. He was not sure if he understood distances right, but he had somehow missed that this was an exterior wall.
They plowed through and out into the open air. The patriarch landed hard on his back, he tried to rise, but Tristan reinforced his knees and hit the already weakened chest plate. His bones held, but his skin split. Reversing his grip on the sword breaker, he planned to go for the head this time.
Weakly, the patriarch opened his remaining eye. Torn up like this, the similarity to Bruce was very evident. Tristan hesitated, he could live with strangers hating him. But he never actually wanted to be the monster they feared. That hesitation was too much.
In the next moment, Shadow Fist was there, delivering a roundhouse to Tristan’s hand. Switching targets, Tristan prepared for hand to hand combat. A golden gauntleted hand gripped his face. The patriarch twisted and slammed him to the ground. He clung to consciousness and succeeded, but something was wrong. There was a ringing in his ears and he could not move, the only relief was pain. Pain meant his spine was still intact.