Grand Saint Alloy

It took them quite some time to find Conni, as he was not in his office. He was actually above ground inspecting a new shipment of supplies from the alchemist. In addition to the wind tuber they also got most of their antiseptics and flour and salt from him. When Tristan and Luke found him he was hauling a bag of flour into his house. It turned out that Grace used a lot of flour and salt to make their food.

Tristan could look forward to having garlic bread and maybe even some baked goods in the next few days. Grace had made him something called a cinnamon roll on his birthday last year and it had taken the place of meat as his favorite food. Conni noticed them and gestured for them to help cutting the time it would have taken him in half.

When they finished Conni invited them inside while he dusted the white powder off his hands, “What can I do for you?”

“We need to meet with Siren, I think I found something that he might not want us to dig up,” Tristan answered.

Conni stiffened, he cared for the well being of his workers and did not expect more out of them than they could handle. However if Siren could not handle it, no one here could. Possibly, no one in the Caldera could. There was only one thing that Siren would need to be wary of, and that was extremely high tier elementals. The reason that Siren was permitted to guard such an out of the way location was the tier seven elemental. Once it had been released, the light elemental killed almost one hundred miners and killed about fifteen warriors.

“Follow me,” Conni said. He led them to the training yard were seven men were practicing ax forms. Siren had cordoned off the area for his subordinates to practice. Kale was easily the weakest in terms of power, but Siren worked all his men so hard that the ones who stayed on rapidly became the elite of any other location.

They were moving in slow motion and Tristan could see sweat beading on their foreheads. After losing a man, Siren had been much stricter in his training. Several of the younger warriors quit, preferring to fight on the Caldera ramparts than protect a mine. It was a good thing as Kale was sent as a replacement. He was a low tier three and had been injured, so he could not hold a shield for long, the mine ended up being the perfect place for him. His shoulder could get the time it needed to heal and he could still contribute.

They waited patiently on the side of the yard for Siren to finish his form before getting his attention. Conni yelled to break his focus and get his attention, “Hey, Ren, we need to talk.”

Siren nodded, grabbing a towel off the bench that would normally hold spectators. He glared at his men, “none of you slack off, Kale, set the pace.”

Tristan hid a grin as he watched all the warriors sigh in relief. Kale had much lower stamina and had a shoulder injury, going at his pace was easy when compared to Siren. However, he was the only one Siren could trust not to slack off, so Kale ended up as second in command.

“What is the issue,” Siren asked.

Conni looked at Tristan, who asked, “Can we talk about this where no one an hear? A lot of money is involved.”

“My house,” Conni said, “The only person that should be there is Grace, and we can trust her.”

Five minutes later they were sitting around Conni’s dinning room table. Tristan had eaten here a few times, Conni used the room to get to know his people better. It was an excellent method to build loyalty.

Tristan did not wast any time, “Siren, could you kill a tier four or higher metal elemental?”

Siren’s eyes widened, “Come again,”

“How hard is it to kill metal elementals?” Tristan asked.

Siren grimaced, “The healing ability that elementals possess would make it difficult to cause significant harm,” He paused, running some scenarios in his head, “we could win, though not without casualties, with a metal heart the creature’s only real weakness is lessened.”

That was what Tristan expected. The water elemental had been highly resistant to damage, and that was not even water’s specialty. Metal on the other hand was made to resist damage. Fighting a metal elemental would not be dissimilar to fighting a suit of armor with infinite stamina and higher physical capabilities.

Tristan explained what he sensed. The massive quantity of metal and the elemental he could sense and that it reacted to him as if it knew he was looking at it. Tristan was not sure what that meant, but he was sure that it implied sentience, or at the very least some form of intelligence.

Conni rubbed his chin, “this is not good, that metal deposit is good enough that it could be considered a strategic resource. I will have to let Elder Forest know about it.”

“You’ll let him know what’s down there right?” Tristan asked. If they were going to dig it up, he intended to be absent on the day they unearthed it. He liked Conni, but he was not willing to sacrifice his life for his uncle’s greed.

“Of course,” Conni said, “If it is a metal elemental, we would have to sacrifice a few warriors, and they are not so common that we can just burn them like fuel to get some materials.”

Siren nodded, “All of this is assuming two things,” he held up a finger, “This is the biggest structure we have ever found, we would be lucky if it was the only one down there.”

That had not even crossed his mind. Tristan had witnessed the danger represented by two water elementals. If a metal elemental was supported by others, it could turn into a massacre.

Siren held up a second finger, “Also this is the biggest structure we have ever found and it is substantially lower than the others. I assume it is a bunker where the leadership died. If their culture was based on strength like ours, the strongest elemental we have ever seen is down there.”

Everyone went silent imagining what a tier eight elemental of any kind would do. It would be capable of killing everyone in the Forest Caldera. It could most likely be stopped by a concerted effort by most of the warrior caste at great loss. If the body count was high enough the elemental could end up spawning a small army of weaker elementals from the kerns of its victims.

Luke leaned back with a relaxed expression, “So, we have two different self replicating problem critters. Crabs and elementals don’t seem to bad we can just deal with them both when the time comes.”

Siren frowned, “Yes. How did you know about the ghost crab?”

Just as he suspected that was confidential information. Reaching into his pocket Tristan grinned internally as he removed his parents letter. He enjoyed the fact that Shadow Fist had actually written this letter. Tristin leaned forward, handing over the paper. Siren’s eyes widened as he read it, before scowling. After a few moments he folded it so that Helen’s writing was visible and set it on the table.

“Well, congratulations on the sister, condolences on the father, however, I need to destroy this,” Siren said, “There is a reason that Shadow Fist and managers like him were not made aware of the ghost crab.”

Tristan nodded, “I assume it is because it would create a panic or a man hunt for elusive eggs, especially as the creature has a maximum of tier three.”

Luke sighed, “So it is a ghost crab. I was hoping for a manticore, at least that is a real mythical beast, this bug barely qualifies.”

Tristan could only nod, the ghost crab had only natural weapons. Aside from its reproductive cycle, it was a very unthreatening creature. The strength of a mythical beast was determined by the tier that would normally be needed to kill it alone. The ghost crab was a one warrior enemy, maximum. On top of that their average strength was likely in the tier two range.

Conni pulled his inventory notes off his pad and replaced the paper. He pushed the clip board across the table, “Please write down your experiences, we will need your thoughts to help sway Elder Forest away from mining this. Despite the military advantage armoring all the warriors of the caldera would give us.”

There was more than enough material to armor the entire army and enough to upgrade all their weapons from alloys to true steel weapons. However, it was simply not worth the risk, so Tristan nodded and started writing. There was no way a well equipped military was worth releasing whatever was down there. However he had to write mostly unfounded explanations, based mostly on the ‘feeling’ it gave him. He hoped that Siren’s opinion would be more effective than his, because if there was one thing he was sure of, it was that Elder Forest did not care about his feelings.