Grand Saint Alloy

Tristan’s mind was made up when Eve started talking, “I get why you want to hurt me, by why attack the smiths? They did not do anything wrong.”

Shut up Eve, Tristan mentally yelled at her. It was too late, Regis remembered the person he hated most in this group and turned to her. His hand lit on fire. Regis took his first step towards Eve, but Tristan arrived first. Normally smashing into someone's shoulder first was a bad move. The most common defense for that attack was to grab the back of the attacker's head and use the leverage to drive a knee into their face.

Tristan was able to successfully make contact and actually lift Regis armor and all. He was very heavy, but they did not need to go very far. Three long strides took Regis to the edge of the pit, however throwing him proved to be harder than expected. Like any person who was about to be thrown down a chasm, Regis grabbed onto the nearest thing he could. That thing being Tristan.

Unable to keep his balance with the four hundred pound weight now dragging him forward, Tristan stumbled out into empty air. He wished he had a force that would let him fly because he was not looking forward to hitting the bottom. Though that was not his immediate issue, Regis had gotten his bearings and was now dragging Tristan around below him, clearly intending to use him as a cushion.

Being the lighter person, he could not really resist, but he could touch Regis's back. So he shoved his hand onto the visor of Regis’s helmet. Then he used the advantage of tier three to shove a decay alloy powder into his helmet. It took only a moment for the screaming to start. Tristan was blasted against the wall by a sphere of flame.

The concussive blast disoriented him enough, that he missed his chance to grab the wall. He was running low on essence, as he needed to keep enough to survive the impact. Tristan was sure it would still injure him, but so long as he survived, Henry could put him back together.

Regis tore his helmet off and tried to wipe the decay out of his eyes. He gave up after a moment, as the metal gauntlets were not designed for that. Instead, he lit his head on fire, Tristan thought this was dumb at first, as when he used consumption on anything, it only fed decay. Unfortunately, that only seemed to apply to pure consumption, there was something different between the consumption of flame and the consumption of a living creature that allowed the element of fire to trump Tristan’s decay.

Still, the damage was done. Half of Regis’s face was blackened from both the flame and forced necrosis. He now only had one good eye and was using it to glare murderously at Tristan. There was not much he could do as Tristan was both higher and across the pit, throwing any flame would only accelerate his own descent.

Something around Regis’s neck caught Tristan's eye. An essence reservoir, what was that doing here? He could not be sure without inspecting it, but the reservoir appeared to be holding a ridiculous amount of essence. If he was guessing, he would say it was somewhere around tier five or six. He could not be sure what effect it had, but it probably facilitated those rings of flame.

A ring of fire blasted out of Regis when he was only thirty feet from the floor. The fire and force normally would have spread out, but the tube shape of the pit actually sent it straight up into the air. Regis slowed dramatically before landing, completely unharmed on the ground. The blast slowed Tristan’s fall as well, though not quite as much. He hit hard after being thrown against the wall again, but not with the bone shattering force he had anticipated.

Tristan jumped to his feet as fast as he could. He did not want to give Regis enough time to close on him. The man had expended so much since they started the fight that he should’ve run himself dry long ago. It was almost enough to make Tristan wonder if he had broken his kern and the boost that Tristan had gotten. The first time took him from tier zero all the way to tier one, if Regis had gone from four to five it would explain his ridiculous reserves.

Tristan shook the thought out of his head, a two tier difference should be a one hundred and twenty-five percent increase in striking power. Sure, he was still stronger, but the difference was not large enough to get around Tristan's defenses for now. How did the civil protector’s kern hold more than his tier should allow?

The artifact around Regis’s neck glowed brightly before a wave of flame expanded from his body. Metal was highly resistant to flame, there was a reason why one used a metal hammer when smithing. Tristan was not made of metal and he was getting overheated. It was bearable for now, but if Regis had much more in his kern, Tristan would start suffering from hyperthermia.

“You’re a fool,” Regis chuckled, “you would trap yourself inside a clay structure with a metal platform at the bottom with me. It’s like you want to die.”

Tristan got the parallels. He had trapped himself inside a giant oven with a crazy zealot. If the analogy were taken one step further, Tristan even had a kern that facilitated an even temperature.

“I was hoping you would splatter on the ground,” Tristan wondered, if the man was really a zealot, would he tell Tristan why he had so much essence, “You have probably guessed, I made it to tier three, I should be able to match you. Why do you have so much essence?”

“The temple recognizes me for my gifts, I am blessed by the gods, so I am blessed by the temple!” Regis explained in the most unhelpful way possible.

Tristan’s eyes landed on the reservoir around Regis’s neck. This reminded him of a different situation. Hadrid had fought off two tier fours and an elite hit squad of tier threes. He had made it look effortless. At that time he had assumed the overweight alchemist was a paragon of martial prowess. However, what would happen if he had an expansion to his kern, a reservoir to draw on? If it was already his essence, there should be no barrier to him using it.

Tristan needed to remove that reservoir from Regis, if it was the same tier as he was, it would effectively give him the essence reserves of a tier six. Fortunately, it did not grant the other abilities a tier six would possess, no second force and no essence pulses.

“Feel the weight of my power!” Regis yelled, “Turn to ash for your transgressions.”

The temperature in the pit started rising. Regis stalked to the center of the pit and simply stood smirking with his arms crossed. Tristan could only feel anger that the same strategy he had intended to use on Regis was now going to be used on him. How long could his body hold out? Tier threes were very resilient.

Tristan could not wait while the temperature rose to the point it would boil him. He needed to destroy Regis, thankfully he had just been given an excellent crash course on how flame burned. It turned everything to ash, he could do that too, after all his oldest force was consumption. Metal essence dripped down his hand solidifying into a solid gauntlet of consumption alloy. Fire may be able to weaken decay, but it was hunger, it would not stop itself. He tipped each finger with a claw that would tear the essence out of Regis. If he could not wear him out then he would bleed him dry.

He shot towards Regis like an arrow, the temperature surpassing one hundred fifty degrees at the halfway point. Burns started collecting on his skin as he got closer. Tristan tried to consume the heat with his consumption alloy, but that only worked on essence invading his body. This was simply a poor environment.

It hurt, but Tristan knew in his heart that he could do this. Regis realized that while his barrier was injuring the silver devil, it was not stopping him.

The civil protector grinned, “You would have made a fine warrior.”

He spun his sword, now coated in an extremely hot white flame. Tristan slid beneath it, the rubber soles of his shoes actually melting to create a frictionless surface. His claws shot towards Regis’s neck. Originally he had wanted to simply take the reservoir, but if he had access to the man's neck, why wouldn’t he destroy the esophagus?

Realization dawned in Regis’s eyes, he had gotten cocky and it had bitten him. He would die today and no divine protection could save him.

“Be still.”

Tristan froze. He had known the elemental lord was down here, but he had wanted Tristan to kill Luke for the potential elemental he represented. The same should have been true of Regis. Tristan gritted his teeth and powered through the command. Their effects on him were getting weaker and weaker as time went on, but right now it was enough.

Regis would not give Tristan another chance. A massive wave of white flame blasted out, increasing the temperature and launching Tristan backward like a meteor. He felt like one too; burning up during entry, then smashing into the earth. He used the essence he had intended to save for the fall when he hit the wall, leaving a Tristan shaped crater six inches into the wall.

“You got lucky,” Regis heaved, “The gods gave me the power to melt the world, witness their gift, devil!”

An aura of heat vibrated the area around Tristan as even the air started burning. If Regis had done this while they were face to face it would have killed Tristan. The world around Regis started glowing, and the tower steel plate he was wearing started glowing white hot. The tower steel!

Tristan tore his focus away from the terrifying amount of essence that Regis was putting out. He expanded his metal sense to see the metal around Regis’s boots softening. It would not normally be an issue, as the tower steel here was a good two feet thick, but something was heating the metal from the other side and together they were rapidly reaching the melting point of tower steel.

Tristan realized they had only identified one of the three elementals that composed the elemental lord. What if one of its components was also fire? A tier six fire kern from below and an augmented tier four from above seemed to be enough to weaken the metal’s integrity.

“Stop!” Tristan yelled, “You’re going to release an elemental lord!”

Regis looked down briefly, “Lies, that's all a devil can do. Simply die in my holy fire!”

Tristan had stopped sweating. He knew that was a bad thing, but there was simply not much he could do about it. All hope appeared to be lost, when a bolt slammed into the floor, mere feet away from Regis’s feet. At the top of the shaft, a few of the purifiers were using artifacts to pressurize the cannons. It was slow, taking almost a minute each, but with five cannons that was a bolt every twelve seconds.

Hope died when Regis sneered, “Pathetic.”

He raised a hand and the room abruptly cooled, though not because there was less heat in it. It cooled because Regis had concentrated it on himself, the next bolt was rendered into ash before it could hit him.

“You can’t hurt me, I am chosen,” Regis yelled. Then the reservoir ran out of essence, even its massive reserves could not keep up with the pace he was going through essence. Regis staggered when the heat construct burned through his essence in less than five seconds.

“Don’t think this means you have won. I am still more than enough to.. what the hell,” Regis yelled as the heat from below finally met the heat coming from above. The floor shuddered and buckled upward from a massive impact.