Chapter 152: You Are Covered In Sand

It was a good thing that with his perfect memory, Elias had only needed to practice four times until he was extremely capable of understanding heavy plate armor.

There was also an odd sense of experience in his fingers that he knew did not come from his personal knowledge, but it seemed to be from the Art of Stone itself, as his fingers that were filled with warmth almost seemed to disassemble the armor with a single touch.

After unbuckling the cauldrons, the cuirass came next, and it was in two halves, front and back, and those halves clamped together at the sides.

Elias unclasped the hidden buckles and lifted the front plate free, then reached around to release the back plate from the mannequin’s spine.

The legs are the most complex, attached to the mannequin at the hips and knees. Elias worked patiently, releasing each section, until the mannequin stood bare and the armor lay in organized pieces on the workbench.

Elias glanced at the mannequin, which was made from wood and had become dark with age, but it was still impossibly solid. Its stance had been carved to be slightly aggressive, and he nodded at the faceless wood, who knew how long it had served.

With the armor disassembled, it was time to wear it, and if not for his calm nature, the feverish rush of heat from the Art of Stone would have been making him sweat.

Elias is already wearing his swarm-woven robe, but plate armor requires an undersuit, which is the padded clothing that sits between metal and skin, absorbing shock and preventing chafing.

There were various undersuits in the armory, but Elias had a pair with him that he had kept behind when he was researching heavy plate armor, and he went to bring it down since it was hanging from a hook nearby.

He could have used his swarm to replicate this undersuit, but for the first time he was activating his Stone Skin talent for the first time.

The undersuit was a thick gambeson of quilted linen and wool, stained with age but still serviceable. Elias had created several of these gambesons, but he wanted to use this old one because it was still extremely functional, and in many ways, possessed properties that his work could not yet match.

His robe vanished into his skin, and Elias allowed the flower that was hanging on his hip to fall to the ground, still covered by his swarm. Naked, he pulls the gambeson on. It is heavy, warm, and slightly scratchy, exactly what he needs.

With his present strength and durability, there was the odd moment where his body seemed to show him the weight of this undersuit as if he still had mortal strength, and then the weight on his body just vanished as his present strength made its weight negligible.

Elias sat on his workbench and began putting on his armor. He starts with the legs, as any soldier would. The Order of Unbroken Shield was a military organization, and so he had been trained like a soldier.

First, Elias pulls on the cuisses, strapping them to his thighs with leather ties. The poleyns hinge over his knees, clicking into place with practiced ease with a satisfying snap.

The greaves closed around his shins with spring-loaded clasps, and he had to adjust them twice to get the fit right, his calves slightly larger than the previous owner’s.

Standing, he tests his mobility; his legs felt heavy but not restrictive for a brief moment, before the weight of the armor vanished when his strength was placed into the equation.

He walked around for a moment, crouched, then there was a loud whoosh as he kicked the air in front of him. His kicks were already devastating, and now, with almost a hundred pounds of extra weight added to his lower limbs, Elias would be able to easily kick through walls, and he pitied the body of the person who would suffer under his metallic boots.

“Good mobility,” Elias muttered as he stretched his lower body.

Perhaps such heavy armor would make a lesser Siphon move rather slowly, but Elias was anything but average, and he could as well be wearing light clothes.

He knew what this meant; he would have to get heavier armor in the future if he wanted to see the full benefit of this Lumina Vein Art. Now that he was an Ascendant Candidate with a long lifespan, Elias was going to fully pursue his act of craftsmanship because he knew that some of his best tools would have to be created by himself, and becoming a blacksmith was a must.

Satisfied with the lower part of the armor, next, the arms. Elias slid his hands into thecold gauntlets first; they were far colder than any normal metal, as they chilled his fingers through the gambeson’s fabric.

There was a lot of Profound Iron plus other unknown alloys used in the creation of this gauntlet, and as he flexes his hands, watching the articulated fingers move, Elias could not help but be amazed by this craftsmanship.

Smiling with satisfaction, he closed the vambraces around his forearms with more straps, then the rerebraces around his upper arms followed. With that done, he rotates his shoulders, feeling the weight settle, and that odd sensation again as the weight vanished.

At first, he felt that this must be the effect of his strength, but the warmth that he felt connecting to each piece of armor that he placed on his body showed Elias that his Lumina Art was causing these changes.

He paused for a moment before he picked up the cuirass, which was easily the most complex of the entire get-up to put on by oneself.

Elias lifts the back plate first, holding it against his spine while he reaches around to position the front plate; his strength made it easy to hold nearly eighty pounds with ease.

The two halves met at his sides, and he began fastening the buckles, aligned on a row that ran from his ribs down to his hips. Each one clicks shut with a satisfying finality, and with the last buckle snapped in place, the weight of the cuirass settled onto his shoulders and hips, distributed by the armor’s internal structure.

He was nearly done with his armor as he picked up the pauldrons, heavy and designed to protect the vulnerable shoulder joint where multiple plates meet. These pauldrons had no embellishment, but Elias saw that the few scars upon them were the best designs that they needed.

Lifting them one at a time, Elias settled each pauldron onto his shoulders and fastened the connecting straps that link them to the cuirass and his arms.

Elias felt a growing heat in his core, and he knew that only the final part of the armor remaining before the core of the Art of Stone was complete, and that was the helmet.

There was a faint hum that was beginning to emerge from Elias’s skin that he was unaware of, and even Commander Yseult did not hear it hum, because it was special and traveled on only a single wavelength of sound.

Deep in the desert on the western side of Stormfall, in a place that would take even Commander Yseult decades to travel to, a broken temple had been partially buried in the sand.

The temple was not very large, but its structure was extremely detailed, despite much of it having been destroyed. There was nothing seemingly special about this temple, but a figure who sat by one of its columns, with their head bowed in front of them as if they were asleep.

Half of their body had been covered in sand, and from their position, it was possible that they had not moved for thousands of years.

This hum reached this figure’s ears, and they shook, and for a moment a feeling of awakening filled the air, before it subsided, and this figure returned to their endless sleep.

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