Just as Kanbu had predicted, he soon was faced with a plea for aid from the newfangled elder of Willowdale’s resident cultivation sect. The way she asked for said help, however, was not one he had predicted; in the stead of threats or simple demands, there was a downpour of questions, accusatory and pointed.

“Tell me, what will you do if we fail and Ubul runs rampant?” she asked with uncharacteristic calm, the absence of smugness or joviality a greater verbal force multiplier than anger or expletives. “Willowdale will be the first place he consigns to ruin, will you fight then, when it is already too late? Will you run? Maybe hide underground? I hear there’s a city’s worth of ruins beneath this one, will you crawl down there and wait until things blow over?”

Kanbu smiled sadly, glancing over at the censored sketch of his younger, heroic self on the wall, juxtaposed with the young hero standing before him.

“I can take up neither armor nor spear, as much as I might wish to do so… But that does not mean I can render no aid. My soul is too old and burns much too brightly, even for those talismans you speak of to cover me - the Living Storm was created to strike down those like Ubul - like me.”

“Wait, what do you mean by “like Ubul”?”

“Different cultivation methods, same fundamentals,” he said, matter-of-factly, despite never having mentioned that he was a cultivator in the first place. “It makes the soul burn brighter, and so the Living Storm would strike me as if I were Ubul even if I could don my armor and take up my spear - which, again, I am prevented from doing by geas. There are things I can do to aid your cause, being that, as you yourself pointed out, I still live here and I would very much like to continue doing so for at least a few centuries more.”

The cook let out a heavy sigh, as if he anticipated pain when he spoke his next words.

“Let the governor know that the stones will walk again, in those exact words.”

When nothing seemed to happen as he curiously looked about, relief washed over his face and he leaned on the counter with a renewed sense of his usual relaxed attitude, “Now, how about some pierogi? Running errands all day while recovering from exertion like yesterday’s must up your energy consumption to that of three grown men at the least.”

Zel saw no reason to refuse.

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The latter half of Zel’s monday was taken up by as much training as she could withstand, the Mercenary’s and Makhus’ - and later in the day, Zef’s - presence serving as great help in her quest to get at least a basic grasp on the Core of Earthly Iron. Skin hardening was simple enough that it galvanized into a technique long before she had expected it to - Skin of Iron for Style: Slayer, and a reserved listing for its Style: Beast counterpart.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

As drawing on the earthly spirits grew increasingly difficult and the sun began to set, the Mercenary, in his increasingly apparent jack-of-all-trades skillset, suggested that once her connection to the Core of Earthly Iron recovered, he could just pelt her with weak magical bolts no stronger than a light punch, and see if she could muster up some manner of anti-magical defense, either unaware or willfully ignorant of the fact Zefaris could do the very same thing. At her questioning, his logic was clear and straightforward: “Well you’ve got Dualism, and it’s clear that your hardening is a purely physical defense, so it stands to reason that the other side of the coin be arcane in nature. Almost as many metals that repel magic as there are ones that conduct it.”

She decided to look into the arcane properties of various metals as a result of this brief exchange, burning away the remainder of her day buried in books, finding herself pulled in every which way by material that was simultaneously mind-numbing, confusing, and enthralling all at once… The question was how he knew about her Dualism trait, as she had never shown him her trait list.

Through her search in the openly-accessible library, she found quite quickly what she was looking for - tomes detailing the arcane properties of various metals, even if outdated by a few decades. Silver was conductive and aligned to Aether, and just like Aether, was an ideal allrounder. Gold, much in the same way, was a strong allrounder, but for fundamental unliving elements and their first-stage composites - such as Ignis, Aer, and Fulgur.

Brass, being an alloy, could surprisingly be made either a conductor or insulator depending on its composition and use, and had a natural affinity for Ignis.

Bronze, conversely, while only possessing marginal affinities for Ignis and Rubedo, was described as: “Not ideal in a vacuum, bronze is nevertheless an eternal mainstay of the self-respecting arkatek engineer. An alloy best used in tumultuous scenarios, able to allow magicks to flow within itself unimpeded while shutting out influences counter to those it has been attuned with.”

“Bronze magick channels are as underground waterways, nigh impossible to alter from without.”

“Recommended for anti-magickal armor in the absence of more advanced protection - a bronze chain shirt should be able to deflect a Grade-3 Impact Bolt or lesser, and protect against magickal fire no hotter than that which melts lead. Furthermore, bronze weaponry performs against magickal creatures not quite as well as silvered steel, but ably wounds even werebeasts and Sand Shamblers, as our southern neighbors have shown in their recent purging of their lands. The preceding recommendations assume that one is using bronze of good quality, containing no less than 12% and no more than 13% tin with the remainder being copper of purity no lesser than…”

It went on into the specs of bronze necessary for the capabilities described, at which point Zel thought to move on, but went back to read the whole thing after she realized she would likely need to know the composition of whatever alloy’s properties she would take unto her flesh. Bronze, it seemed, was the ideal fit for an expansion upon Graze Pulse, hopefully permitting her to deflect arcane attacks and perhaps steal some of their power in the process just as the original technique did to physical attacks.