Grand Saint Alloy

Bruce and Eve both stared at the tier three ghost crab that was strapped to a wheeled table, Bruce looked uncertainly at Hadrid, “This thing is a plant.”

“Do you doubt me, welp,” Hadrid shot back irritably.

“It bleeds though, I have cut them apart and it even has a tongue. I even saw a heart once.” Bruce defended himself.

“Yes, it has some mammal traits,” Hadrid waved his hands, “But its essence set up is a ninety percent match to both a Venus fly trap and a pitcher plant with the rest being a combination of crab and cockroache. It was made to consume natural resources and multiply fast.”

Hadrid pointed to the table, “That’s a seed, not an egg. Some stupid alchemist is stepping on my turf.”

Bruce shrugged, “Your professional pride is based upon the results you can achieve, can this rival alchemist make something you can’t break?”

Hadrid shook his head, “you don’t get it, this alchemist is not from inside the caldera. There is someone outside that is making these things, hell, we’re most likely not even being targeted.”

Eve frowned, “Grandfather says that no one could survive outside the Caldera, we are the last humans in the world.”

“Your grandpa is an idiot,” Hadrid said off handedly.

“More to the point, can you kill the crabs,” Bruce asked.

“Sure, sure, I just need to increase their aggression and breeding habits to make them cannibalize themselves. Once I make the hormone mutation contagious, it will infect them all. You have them locked up right?” Hadrid asked. Bruce nodded in confirmation, as far as he knew, the one on the table was the only living specimen outside the plains.

Tristan frowned, “What if they get out? Will they be a greater problem then?”

Hadrid made a so-so gesture, “They’ll come at you harder and faster, but they will have no concept of self preservation. Anyone worth more than a sack of potatoes should be fine,”

It would indeed be beneficial then. The problem ghost crabs, ghost traps, Tristan was not sure what to call them anymore, were the little ones that avoided detection and could infiltrate a city. If they were aggressive, then they would be easy to deal with. Even tier zero farmers should be able to stomp them out of existence.

“Will it effect the tree like ones?” Bruce asked, “It really does not matter how many die if those things are still pumping out babies.”

Hadrid nodded, “Sure, so long as one of the new ones head that way. Just give me a few days to put them together and I’ll have a few dozen horny crabs.”

“what?” Eve asked, she seemed uncomfortable.

“I am making it so that they are willing to parasitize each other, like teenagers, they will consume their parents,” Hadrid said. He raised an eyebrow, “Your a teenager, you can’t tell me you didn’t emotionally hollow out your parents before abandoning them?”

Eve shook her head, as did Tristan and Bruce. Hadrid seemed confused, “Maybe they make children differently these days.”

Tristan wasn’t sure how the conversation had gotten off topic so he pushed it back, “How will you do the alchemy?”

Hadrid snorted, “It disgusts me that I have to do a good job teaching you. Watch me, take good notes, and read these books,” He pointed at a shelf with three non journal books on it, “Read those, they are what I will teach little Ruth when she decides to become an alchemist.”

Tristan nodded, his reading ability was not very high. Better than most of the Caldera, due to him being part of the head family in the Forest Caldera, however he was behind people like Bruce who had honed the talent over the last four years. He went to the book shelf while Hadrid was caught up in planning out the extinction of a species.

Tristan believed that he had enough time to at least peruse the books. They were thin, no more than fifty pages apiece, it seemed to be to little for the skill that they supposedly contained. Tristan pulled one off the shelf, it was labeled as ‘Collecting and Transferring Essence’ it was something that he would definitely need. The second was labeled ‘Natural Forces’ and the final one was labeled ‘Biological Tampering.’

He knew that he would not be able to use anything in these books right now, so he opened the most interesting one, ‘Natural Forces’. The index split the fifty or so pages into three sections, which were Conversion, Enhancement, and Motion. He flipped to enhancement hoping to find something he could use, instead he found a list of names and descriptions. The whole book was organized like a dictionary.

Adamance - Unbreakable: Pro; focuses on hardness.Con; sacrifices all flexibility and adaptability. (Earth, Metal, [Water with Ice prerequisite])

AdroitnessControl: Pro; control over the body and essenceCon; does not add anything that could not be substituted by an artifact. (Air, Water, [Light- unsubstantiated, Dark- unsubstantiated])

Alacrity - Speed/ Control: Pro; speed and control, a superior branch of AdroitnessCon; very difficult to achieve and/or gather data on. (Light, [Dark- unsubstantiated])

It kept going on and on like this. Tristan realized with a bit of dismay that he would probably need to memorize these books. Knowing different forces would be excellent in alchemy, but it would instantly allow him to determine the limits of any enemy he came across. He scanned down to the ‘D’ section to find decay, however it was absent.

Tristan quickly realized that decay should be a conversion, at least if his experiences with compost piles were to be believed. The thought brought his mind to Harp and consequently her father. He looked up and found that everyone but Hadrid and he had left, most likely bored with the mostly mental progress going on.

Shrugging to himself, Tristan flipped to the conversion section and was surprised to find Alloy near the top of that section. It had a warning next to it.

Alloy - Fusion: Pro; Can add an additional force to a kern per tier Con; forces must be diluted by metal essence to be used creating an inferior version of any force not related to metal. (Metal- [Warning, not all forces are healthy or beneficial to use. Supervision during development is advised.])

Tristan could only shake his head, of course he got the only force that had a warning attached to it. To top it all off, Hadrid was the opposite of what someone should want in a supervisor. Tristan wondered if the flavor of his alloy could be changed by the essences that he added at a latter date. If there was a growth force, would it counteract his decay or would he just end up with two different forces.

Decay was fairly standard compared to alloy. Tristan was surprised to find out that water and air had a connection to decay. Hadrid had also said fire had decay which the book skipped over. The book did not explain why each essence type contained what it had, it just said it did. Fortunately, Tristan had just the person to ask.

“Hadrid?” the man grunted, so Tristan continued, “How are water and air related to decay, also there is no mention of fire here?”

Hadrid absentmindedly answered, “Its the cycle, water and air are related to the cycle of rot and rebirth. So is fire and darkness, they destroy, air and water rebuild.”

Tristan did not understand what Hadrid was talking about. However one thing Tristan knew for sure was that he needed these books. He could not memorize them in a week, however with a few late nights he could copy them and take them with. He had two entire tiers before it would even be relevant. Tristan did not believe that his memory was good enough to remember everything that was written that far into the future.

The next week was spent mostly with the crabby alchemist, taking note of the waves of essence that he could pick up and copying the books. Tristan did not worry about committing anything to memory, he simple took records that he could study later. Hadrid grumbled at the amount of paper that Tristan chewed through, despite the fact that it grew on trees, it was not cheap.

Seven days later, Tristan was engrossed in transcribing the last pages of ‘Biological Tampering’, the book he found the least helpful. He never intended to rewrite the base functions of an animal, let alone a pre born fetus, though he could see the uses for it. It could be used to heal some pretty nasty disabilities in the womb. Though after seeing the sheer number of different discovered forces, it seemed to be a very difficult feat.

It was on that day that Hadrid stood, “All done, who’s the better alchemist now!”

Before him were fourteen eggs. Tristan could not see them as anything else, despite them being seeds. He had even cut one in half and sure enough, it was solid, no yolk or white, yet it looked identical to a small egg. Hadrid had placed them all in individual crimson jell packs wrapped in a clear substance that Hadrid called glass wrap.